Hi, everyone! I’m Lars, GM and host of Tabletop Gold. We’re an audio/video actual play podcast that started with Pathfinder 2E and has been playing Starfinder 2E since the beginning of the year.

Our Starfinder series, Roughnexx, is an anthology campaign where a ragtag group of Pact Worlds misfits go on shorter adventures. Our goal is sort of to show off as much of the Starfinder setting as we're able to while keeping the game and story moving.

We just wrapped up our first adventure, Murder in Metal City (which we really enjoyed), and have moved on to Battle for Nova Rush by Jessica Catalan, published last year as part of Free RPG Day. The first two episodes are out now.

Episode 28 is the start of the new adventure, and we have set everything up to make it easy to jump in without any additional background. Or if you'd like to start from the very beginning, Murder in Metal City is finished and ready to binge from Roughnexx episode 1.

The show is a fully edited video podcast on YouTube and Spotify, or audio wherever you listen. tabletopgold.com

Everyone knows Viper is the best Technomancer programming language by miles and Servoshell is probably the consensus last place pick.

But what if Servoshell is actually pretty ok? Consider these applications/intepretations of some rules and options:

1. Signal Relay spellshape:

You transfer a spell between yourself and your minion. If the next action you use is to Cast a Spell that affects only you, other than a polymorph spell, the spell affects your minion instead of you.

There's two interpreations. One is that this only works with spells that can only effect the caster. I originally adopted this and didn't consider any other possibility. This makes this extremely limited and very, very bad.

The second possibility, however, is that the limitation only requires that you choose to only affect you - so a mass buff would have to be limited to you, which would then transfer to your minion. I now choose to believe this in order to rescue this and make it actually functional. Now we can cast touch buffs on the technomancer, which then transfer to the minion. Defensive and utility spells are now on the menu.

E.g. putting Invisibility 4 at a distance on your Summon Robot might be worth it. Later with your 8th level jailbreak ability you can split that between you and your robot for 5 rounds each.

2. Minibot combat utility:

"It can't be used in combat!" It can, with other abilities. (These can all also be used with a Summon Robot, but unlike it you don't have to sustain the minibot every turn, and a stationary minion with no actions can do all of these.)

a. Remote spell use: Conceal Spell (feat 2) plus Incognito Spell (feat 4) lets your concealed spell originate from an overclocked minion. An advanced camerabot, which is level 4 and 1000cr, can be up to 1000' from you. As long as both you and it have LOS/LOE to the target the spell originates from the (invisible?) minibot. Great for massive range extensions, "it wasn't me, I wasn't there," and aiming cones/lines in weird ways.

b. Turbocharge Batteries: this feat 10 is a once per 10 minutes single action to have your minion stride (talk to your GM about adding traversal on this, since all but the early bellbot models float and fly instead of stride, otherwise keep a bellbot and only add non flying capabilities into it) and then destroy it in a 10' emanation. The starting damage is only an average of 15 (42% of a fireball for half the action), but scales at +5 per "rank" compared to +7 on a fireball (71%), narrowing the gap. At level 20 you'd be doing 57% of a fireball that's relatively ally friendly.

c. Bonding Charge: Your focus 3 spell is 2a for you to stride, then unleash a lightning bolt between you and your minibot. This starts at 3d12 vs a 4d12 lightning bolt, then only heightens +2 ranks d12. So it's half the time half a lightning bolt for half an action plus an included stride. If you wanted to move anyway and conserve a spell slot, it's not really that bad. Probably better for a Summon Robot on a Command plus Bonding Charge turn, though. Still, the minibot can be your anchoring point if you need.

3. The other focus spells:

a. Repair Protocols: Free focus 1, lets you sustained heal one or two constructs. If you target one construct you get 4.5HP per rank per round (45xrank for a minute), 2.5 HP per rank per round (25xrank for a minute) you target two. In combat this keeps your Summon Robot alive an extra round or two, maybe. If you have a mechanic drone, SRO, or Living Hologram in you party you just greatly increased their sustainability in combat and largely trivialized their out of combat healing needs.

b. Supercharge Satellite: Focus 5, 1 action, makes a tech minion quickened for 1 minute to strike or stride. Obviously best on a Summon Robot, but can also make your minibot extra zippy if you need to send it 1000' away in a hurry to relay a spell.

4. The Spell Cache: Since day one I've though this programming language had the least need to take feats that add to the spell cache.

1st: summon robot; 2nd: illusory creature; 3rd: discharge; 4th: speak with computers; 5th: control machine; 6th: dominate; 7th: wall of steel; 8th: phantasmal fleet; 9th: telekinetic tantrum

You can always pull a high rank summon robot for you main intended playstyle, or fake them out with a low rank illusory creature, three different spells to handle tech threats or challenges, dominate to try the same on gross disgusting meatbags, a shapeable wall for control, etc. Since we need Incognito Spell at 4th it's good that we can probably skip Expanded Cache. I'd still look at Spell Library at 8 but this and FORTRUN are the only subclasses I wouldn't feel a strong compulsion to take it on.

5. Leverage Specs: Feat 8. "Oh, it's Knowledge is Power, but limited to tech minions and not allies, and doesn't give defensive bonuses." Yes, but did you notice the duration? It lasts int bonus rounds! The real problem will be finding a free action way to recall knowledge, because you want to three action summon robot up front. I suppose it could be a round 2 support action. I will find it very funny if you can consistenly get on a summoned robot your overclock item bonus and a -1 circ to enemy AC that lasts the whole fight. Now if we can only get a status bonus to attack, surely not all the good ones are mindless, I can pick up the Viper heroism spell chips late game...

6. Mechanic Dedication for Drone: You can do this, but your Overclock Pulse will do little but provide rereshing HP when you command it (the attack bonus doesn't work with companions, the AC bonus does and I guess saves you a customization that does the same thing). Your focus spells will work fine. Your drone's dex compared to a max dex/defense option mechanic drone will fall behind by 1 at 4th level (and also behind on perception and saving throw proficiency) with equal consequences to AC and strikes, be 2 behind at 8th level when you take Tactical Drone (they get Advanced Drone and Deft, but you catch up on perception and saving throws), be 4 behind at 14 (you also are now behind on weapon proficiency, lagging -6 on strikes), then you'll be 2 behind on dex (-4 strike lag) at 16 when you take Advanced Drone. At 14 a mechanic drone will also boost its armor proficiency, saves, and perception 2 ahead of you (making you -6 worse on AC, -4 worse at 16). Basically at level 16 when you and the mechanic have both advanced as much as you can you're -4 at everything important (-2 on fort/will saves) due to 2 less on dex and proficiency.

Of course you can heal it and quicken it and cast lightning bolts connecting you to it that a mechanic can't do, and use it for a distraction or skill/utility purposes that a Summon Robot can't do, and with more resource durability to preserve spell slots. Something to think about. This will cost you some feats (2/8/16) and disrupt or delay some other things like the conceal/incognito feat chain.

(It is somewhat unlikely I got all the math perfect on this, but nothing should be too far off.)

7. Special Jailbreaks?: I'm not sure I will see a lot of use for the 3rd level Basic Jailbreak. If I'm willing to drop overclocked bonuses on my minion for at least a round to put a spell on it, I doubt it's often going to be 120' away but also not in line of effect. We close a door on it then buff it to fight alone? I Speedrun away at level 18 through some walls? Maybe. (It's not worse than the tickle damage of DPS++, though.)

The advanced at 8th seems more likely to matter - apply a buff to both me and my minion, split duration? Sure.

Conclusion: Overall I think there's plenty to work with here, especially if you have some allied constructs to help heal. You definitely can do some funky social and even combat stuff with the minibot I wouldn't have initially suspected when I first read it.

From a while ago but I forgot to post it here!

Had the idea of a Vesk Mechanic with gecko-like qualities that loses his tail to avoid getting caught by enemies. Trying to make an animalistic character that doesn’t look like a furry OC is, ah, difficult? Anyway, Tech Core is out and I'll probably be GMing for the foreseeable future if it's SF2e.

Anyway, anyone using Tech Core yet or are you saving it for your next character?

Getting ready to run a campaign and familiarizing myself with the starship combat rules, and it feels like there's something missing or that I'm missing with regards to the Magic Conduit battle station and starship spells.

One of my players is eyeing technomancer for their character, so I took a look at the Technomancer Magic Module and the second half doesn't seem to do anything

When you cast a starship spell that deals acid, cold, electricity, or fire damage while the battle station is overclocked, you can change the damage type to acid, cold, electricity, or fire.

It should be a useful feature, allowing a technomancer to change a cold spell to fire against a sentinel or gardenship, for instance. But the only two damaging starship spells we have both deal force damage, so they can't have their damage type changed.

The Magic Conduit also mentions in its helmed benefit that

You can only cast a starship spell from the repository if your spellcasting feature allows you to learn spells of the same tradition.

But all four starship spells (which are in the repository of all Magic Conduits) belong to all four traditions, so this restriction seems unnecessary.

Are these both just examples of future-proofing, or have I missed a section on additional starship spells? If I haven't missed anything, what sort of spells would make the most sense to add to the list of starship spells? Would it make more sense to unlock additional spells with higher-grade magic conduits, or should expanding the repository count as an upgrade?

Mechanic has the 6th level feat, Exocortex Experimenter, to take a second exocortex, or third if you take the feat again at 12th level.

Has anyone built a character with this yet, and what is your concept to combine them, and what pain points did you find and avoid?

My concept for this is late game using Command and/or Reposition Exocortex to send mines followed by a drone or turret with eyes to guide them around corners and into rooms while the mechanic stands way out of LOE/LOS within the 150' control range.

For drone -> mine it looks like if you fully upgrade your drone when you're supposed to (4, 8, 14), you only have level 10 and 12 feats to even think about adding features to a mine, and you've missed on lower level basics like Double Detonation and Double Deployment. The mines can still add some value here as your reaction (skip Auto Target at 8) and your aoe option (put a striking weapon on your drone), but they're definitely supplemental and you'll have a hard time using many of them.

Mine -> Drone is worse unless you just want the drone as a fairly inaccurate (it needs feats at 8 and 10 to get the missing +3 dex a normal drone could have at 8, which costs you Double Deployment and Proximity Alert Mines) or area fire weapon only pair of eyes that follows, spots for, and opens doors for your mines as you Redeploy Exocortex exocortext them around corners and into rooms ahead of you while you stay in the rear with the gear.

Mine/turret seems easier, because it doesn't need feats to upgrade/maintain striking accuracy, the mines cover the aoe gap otherwise filled by turret feats, and it gets both darkvision and cameras for free (the drone needs eyes, darkvision, and weapon mount/hands to eat up all its basic customization budget) for spotting purposes, but the lack of hands means all of this comes to a halt when your advance your turret and mines to the insurmountable obstacle of a closed door. Time for remote bunker buster mods, I guess.

The other downside to this concept is that not only is it hard to upgrade your second exocortex and challening to maintain what you want on your primary, you really want one of the 10th level feats, Parallel Deployment or Parallel Reposition, that help you deploy/move your two exocortexes together, and if you go crazy with massive mine deployments in advance of battle you need Redeploy Munitions to 2a Redeploy each of them 40-60'.

If you're not running this as some sort of custom exploration activity you can still in combat do on turn 1: Double Deployment, Parallel Deployment (deploy turret and move one mine out ahead of turret), stride to somewhere that breaks LOS/LOE and control everything in safety from there on.

...or maybe just stand in the open and Command drone plus Deploy/Detonate a single mine every turn, call it a day.

"A starship can have only one type of passenger quarters installed at a time."

So, if you ever want to carry a passenger who is not crew, you cannot have a brig. Apparently the zoning board passed a space law or something. Not really sure how they would enforce it without a brig.

Ideally without a multiclass archetype and instead some other archetype but I'm curious of all ways to get counterspell

There's a lot of options in this book, and many of them combine well with both other options in this book and those that already existed. What have you found or thought of? Some of mine:

1. Trap and Fry: Witchwarper's Quantum Entanglement feat (save to try to leave Quantum Field) and Burstmoji (spell 4, arcane WW only, moving through a square or starting your turn inflicts damage), Bombarding Emojis (spell 4, arcane WW only, sustained recurring higher damage), or Flight of the Lightning Bees (spell 8, occult WW only, sustained and mobile and debuffing high damage). Burstmoji fills up the whole field, Bombarding does a lot more damage but is only 10' radius and therefore avoidable without leaving the field. Flight of the Lightning Bees is best and better of both worlds (high damage, multiple big areas to interdict even escapees, and can move one of them 15' to chase runners).

2. Cheese Grater Grind: Hazardous terrain (via spell, grenade, WW QF feat, new Distributed Blast unit weapon upgrade) and pushing/pulling effects like Manuevering Mines, Emoji Tsunami (spell 6), Supercharge Prism (Technomancer focus 5; maybe, it has the teleportation trait despite saying it's a push/pull), and at endgame Build Bulkhead Stronghold (spell 10), which with no check/save pushes enemies away when you move them within your 10' emanation. An end game 100' radius quantum field Witchwarper with the hazardous terrain zone effect up can Cast Build Bulkhead Stronghold and then do nothing but triple stride around to push an enemy through 4 points of damage per square traveled.

3. Fastest Gun/Grenade/Gem/Medicinal in the Galaxy: Combine Augmented archetype's Augmented Harmony 12 feat (permanent quicken to activate augmentations) with a Tactical Hideaway Limb (1a to both draw and "use" a L bulk item). This lets you use your quickened action to draw and strike with a L pistol/melee weapon, draw and cast from a 1a spell gem (e.g. Sure Strike), toss a grenade, activate a medicinal, etc. Offer only valid for one activation per round per Tactical Hideaway Arm. Having more than one is probably a good idea as you acquire the funds. Special note: a Cyborg heritage with the Hard Point feat 5 can use this with a 1 bulk weapon, extending your quickened action draw plus activate to include a Boost on a Boom Pistol.

4. He's a Bit Slow (Spellcaster): Much praise has been lavished on Antimagic Grenades, which force you to use an aditional action to cast 1a and 2a spells. But they do so independently of the Slow condition, so if you make them fail a save against this and they're slow 1 they can't cast any 2a spells at all.

5. Grenades Galore: (No, not the mechanic feats!) We already had the Reusuable Grenade Shell, which combines with an advanced grenade to have a 1/day perpetually renewable consumable that only costs 200cr. But we're so far beyond 3d8 damage at 15' burst now, we have nondamaging effects where the DC and any respectable radius like 15' is what we care about. The Antimagic grenade is one. The same is true for the new Glitterbomb grenade, which makes invisible things concealed for 1 hour even on a successful save - they're totally visible if they fail. The Hologrenade makes everyone in its area save or be off-guard as long as they remain there. The Stickybomb is 1 minute of immobilized or until you escape.

And LMAO. The level 19 Reality-Splicing Grenade is 50k credits, and is...advanced, because they skipped some levels. It technically fits in a grenade shell if you want one every day for random chaos effects.

How many of these 200cr (or 50,080cr) advanced grenade shells should you carry? Twelve. No more, no less. Because we now have the level 8 magic item Null-Space Holster, which for 4,750cr, L bulk, and no item investment slot or body slot (usage: worn) for some reason, will hold 12 bulk of weapons, and it gives you a free action draw once per round. For 6,350cr investment you have 12 daily advanced grenades that can be drawn and thrown for 1a for your utility, debuffing, and control needs. You can even assign tags to six of them at a time, and 2a call them back to the holster when you need to on those occasions you need to quickly leave a battlefield with half a dozen grenades chucked in different directions at max range.

The idea is a novian that acts as the power core fore their mech. Using mechanic drone. Is there any good routes beyond "just be mounted on the drone man" that im missing? Any way to get the vibe of being safe inside the mech outside of dm allowances of vibe?

I’ve been thumbing through Techn Core and I’m mostly happy with the Starship section(s), but one thing that eluded me is how the rules describe drift travel. There’s even artwork of a
Drift Engine, but no description of what how it works.

Here’s the question that I’m currently struggling with: How can entering the Drift be used to escape combat?

It’s a common sci-fi trope that when the small hero’s ship is hopelessly outgunned by the massive evil fleet that they succeed in making a faster than light escape at the last possible moment. Going to warp. Jumping to hyperspace. Calculating jump coordinates. Spinning up the FTL engine. It all means that suddenly they are tens of thousands of miles away and untraceable.

How can the Heroes do that in Starfinder 2e without the GM just home-brewing the rules?

While looking through Nethys, I noticed that the five basic PC Witch lessons line up almost one-to-one with each of the core Mystic connections. So I thought, this feels like an opportunity to bridge content between the two systems, especially since Starfinder casters are still pretty light on Focus spell options (compared to the plethora we get in Pathfinder). And mechanically, Mystics also hit a bit of a bland stretch for boring class feats around level 10 while they wait for their big Convert options at level 12, so more options are always nice.

Esoteric Epiphany

Feat 8

Traits: Mystic

Prerequisites: Connection class feature, master in your connection's skill

You attune yourself to foundational cosmic secrets that reflect the nature of your connection in a personal lesson of spiritual growth.

You learn the basic lesson associated with your connection. You gain the lesson’s hex as an epiphany spell, replacing the witch trait with the mystic trait. The regular spell granted by the lesson to a familiar is instead added to your connection spells and your spell repertoire as an additional signature spell.

In addition, your connection individually modifies your epiphany in the following way:

Akashic (Lesson of Protection): When the target of your blood ward succeeds at a Recall Knowledge check to identify a creature, they can swap the creature trait designated by the spell to match one of that creature’s valid traits, and the blood ward is automatically Sustained (as normal, until the end of your next turn).

Elemental (Lesson of the Elements): Casting elemental betrayal sets your active element to the type chosen for the spell, as normal for your other epiphany spells. Both elemental betrayal and the regular spell you chose gain the asterisk (*) adjustment from your connection spells, changing their damage type and traits to match the element of your active elemental epiphany.

Healing (Lesson of Life): When you cast life boost on yourself or an ally bonded to your vitality network, any excess wasted Hit Points that the fast healing would restore while that creature is at its maximum Hit Points are instead added directly to your vitality network pool.

Rhythm (Lesson of Dreams): While the target of veil of dreams is within the area of your active anthem, the status penalties it takes from the spell double on a failure or critical failure (to –2, or –4 against sleep effects).

Shadow (Lesson of Vengeance): When you cast either needle of vengeance or phantom pain, you can choose for it to deal cold damage instead of mental damage. In addition, the target of your needle of vengeance also takes the spell's damage (subject to the basic Will save) whenever it attempts a check to locate or identify the named creature (such as Seek, Recall Knowledge, Disbelieve, Identify or Recognize Spell).

So currently we are in Season 2 of the second edition campaign but a problem has developed.

In Season 1 there was were mainly low level adventures. This makes sense as the campaign was getting underway. The Invasion's Edge story took people through the early levels and ended with two back to back 5-6 scenarios.

The problem is that those are the only 5-6 scenarios currently offered. A couple of months ago I asked about this on the Paizo forums back in August. The answer I got was "Yes, of course we have more 5th through 6th-level scenarios coming this year! In fact, the next Starfinder Society Scenario to be announced is a 5-6, so keep an eye on those product pages!"

Well, it's been two months and no real announcement. No announcement but the store page shows one 5-6 in the pipeline IN JANUARY.

We're still getting 1-2 scenarios that we don't need. We're almost halfway through the season and we might get something higher than 3-4.

It feels like someone really dropped the ball on this.

Is there some general rule about elemental tags on spells that says a spell that allows you to select an element gets the elemental trait when you cast it? It just seems strange to me that casting a spell to add fire damage does not count as a fire spell? Or are traits limited to spells that specifically create just that one element?

I understand that it’s adapted for grid combat, but the new Tech Core book has as vehicle that is essentially a Star Wars speeder bike (p. 134) and is incredibly slow.

It moves twice as fast as a person, or about the speed of a chill bike ride on a level surface.

There’s not one vehicle that could keep up with a 2009 Honda Civic, or even a horse.

Say what you will about the rest of Junkomancer, but Improved Junk Ammo actually is a significant bonus to projectile weapons at level 8. You've got 80 of them per day at that point, spread them around the party.

When you create junk ammo as part of your daily preparations, choose two precious materials from the following list: abysium, adamantine, aucturnite, cold iron, siccatite, or silver. The ammunition created with this feat counts as both materials for the purposes of applying immunities, weaknesses, and resistances.

You can do some strong standard combos for bonus damage and/or debuffs on critical hits, as well as mix and match with silver/cold iron if you expect to face the things weak to those.

Abysium ammo (normally 200cr per shot) normally does 1d4 poison per hit, plus sickened 1 on a crit (sickened 2 for high-grade; there's no indication that these materials upgrade with your level, but maybe your GM will let them).

Adamantine (140cr per shot) is actually fairly weak in SF2. It halves hardness, but only if the initial value 5 or less (8 or less for high-grade). If you're shooting at a level 2 animated object I guess this barely does a little bit for you. Pass.

Aucturnite (92cr per shot) adds the mental crit effect, save or be frightened 1. Not great when abysium gives sickened 1 without a save, and gives minor damage on a regular hit. Pass.

Siccatite (140cr per shot) adds the non-stacking effect of a flaming module or frost module weapon upgrade, and it does d8 instead of d6 (high-grade, if you GM allows you to obtain it, gives the tactical version for ignoring resistance and crit effects).

Sicattite plus Abysium seems the obvious play here, picking between cold or fire as needed every day. You get a bonus d4Po+d8F/C (average +7) damage and crit sickened 1 (use with a stellar cannon if you've got one). If you're expecting to face demons/fey/devils/lycanthropes/whatever you can swap one of those for cold iron.

For those who haven't seen it yet I'll note the existence of the Binary Blaster, which lets you swap between a modular laser gun and projectile weapon to cover your bases if you mostly prefer batteries but want a projectile backup that doesn't cost full upgrade costs on a second weapon.

We’re in a fairly heated debate in my gaming group about what class abilities are and are not allowed in Tactical Starship Combat. We chose to allow all Pathfinder content when we started the campaign (before tech core).

There are arguments about whether a class ability can be used at a battle station. One player is a Thaumaturge and wants to use Exploit Vulnerabilities and Personal Antithesis while in the gunnery station. Another player points out that the book says starships are not “creatures”. However, a Soldier can use Primary Target per Tech Core at the Gunnery Station, which targets nearest “creature”. Also pointed out, any “Strike” targets “creatures”. So per exact wording, no abilities that normally target creatures can be used in Starship Combat.

Please help me clarify. I am the GM, but we usually discuss things like this and come to a consensus.

I’m trying to put a Liquidator (Area (Cone), Tech, Unwieldy) as an integrated mount on my Mechanic drone. Part of the strategy I was going to use with it, is:

- Modify (Killbot) for a damage boost
- Recharge Weapon Cantrip to gain charges
- Command companion: two-action area fire.

Now the problems with this approach, now that I’m reading closer into it, are twofold:

- Modify (Killbot) says that “Your drone gains a +2 status bonus to damage rolls.”, so no mention that it has to be on a strike, however, later text specifies “If your drone's Strikes deal more than one weapon damage die…”. So does that mean that Killbot only affects normal strikes?

- Recharge Weapon says: “The target gains ammunition or charges equal to its expend until the end of your next turn, allowing anyone holding the target to make one Strike with the weapon.”. The prerequisites don’t specify a non-area weapon, but it looks like it wouldn’t work with them.

I understand that both of those options are pretty powerful if combined with area weapons; So I’m trying to understand, whether that’s an oversight, or an intentional balancing mechanism.

Hello all, just wondering if you are using the magnetic levitation mod at all, seems like its not that good unless your really high speed and trying to close distance due to difficult terrain?

Like a melee buddy with a witchwaper partner?

1. Adrenal Autoinjectors (level 8+): Reaction when you are reduced to 0HP to stay at 1HP and be confused for 1 round. I love lowering my AC when I'm at 1HP and randomly lashing out with my strikes, maybe at my allies! Fun! (WTF, Paizo.)

2. Drift Drive Relay (level 17 version): Gives you a 1/day 3a teleport to the attuned Drift drive on your ship within planetary range. Mission complete, beam us up! (You also get a 1/day Translocate 5 from this model, so generally good for coordinated party escapes if you all take it.)

3. Energized Spikes (level 4+): Necessary for a grappler (or garrote) build. Once per round do piercing damage to someone who has you grabbed, restrained, or swallowed, or that you have grabbed/restrained. You can instead make it a one off energy type that you previous absorbed, I guess if you expect to be grabbed by something with a weakness, like a fire/ice dragon. Damage is automatic, no save, ranges from 2d4/5d4/8d4.

4. Flechette Launcher: Fun, but probably not good at the price. This is basically Force Barrage with a 3a only activation (no 1a or 2a, but you can choose any number of darts to fire until your magazine is exhausted) in the form of the Mandalorian's armor micro missiles. Load projectiles up to its capacity at daily prep, do d4+1 piercing automatically per dart you launch. You can put this on a mechanic drone and have it activate it with the 2a command option, if for some reason that appeals to you.

5. Full-Spectrum Sensor Suite: Activate for 10 minutes of tremorsense/scent imprecise sense, at level 11 get precise hearing. I'd take it then for my short range anti-invisibility and concealed needs.

6. Micro-Cutters (level 5+): Constantly renewable burrow 20 speed at 5th level? Sure, why not. An activation that can cut a 5x5 hole in any non-metal surface 1' or less thick? Yes, I will happily go through that concrete wall, even if it does take many minutes.

7. Piloting Instruments (level 11 version): +2 item to Piloting, and no Stunt penalties (usually -1 to -2) or for 3a Drive (normally -5). There's some fun stuff you can do with the Vehicle Pilot archetype and some disposable Conjure Junkrod vehicles, this helps.

8. Psychic Shielding (level 8+): Mental resistance, reaction to reduce stupefied by 1

9. Sound System (level 1/6/15): Gives a +1/2/3 item bonus to ALL Diplomacy, Intimidation, and Performance checks that are auditory actions. WTF, Paizo, but from the opposite direction. What kind of Envoy doesn't have one of these? Also has a forgettable, bad DC sonic AOE.

10. Spell Gauntlet (level 10): It's the mechanically identical PF2 Shadow Signet, but sadly takes up a scarce armor upgrade instead of a more open magic item investment slot.

11. Survival Subroutine (level 7): Just gained the dying condition, and weren't already dying or wounded? For a reaction this thing will puppet your not-yet-a-corpse into a Stride away from danger that doesn't trigger reactions. For the melee guy who Chose Poorly.

0. Tactical Bioscanner (level 4): On a hit you get a free action Recall Knowledge with a +1 circ bonus, on a crit you get a +2. It's then immune for a day. Fantastic on the smart bois.

1. Cryolizer (level 14): The ultimate bounty hunter upgrade! Turn a target you reduce to 0HP into frozen carbonite ice. Costs a reaction, and they could theoretically choose to try to save against it and die, but better than nonlethal methods because you don't need to worry about immunities or the ethics of having too many survivors around all the time.

2. Distributed Blast Unit (level 10): 1/10 minutes leave 1 minute's worth of hazardous terrain (1 point per weapon die) in your Area Fire area. Leave electric terrain around the robots. Combo with some Delayed weapons to set up a dilemma.

3. Exhaust Dispersal Unit (level 11 model): Once per round free action when you strike or area fire to Leap. If you have decent leap enhancing skill feats and other gear this is basically a free quickened stride that stacks with normal quickened.

4. Junk Hopper (level 1): Free battery chargers, chem, or projectiles for your gun as long as you have junk to feed it. Solves problems that certain campaigns want to have.

5. Suspended Fire Modulator (level 8): Toggle on (if your weapon doesn't have it) or off (if your weapon does) the Delayed trait; you can switch it back and forth as necessary regardless of your underlying weapon traits. I'm actually going to argue in favor of Delayed in some cases to set up dilemmas - your mine mechanic may want to encourage enemies to run out of the AOE and trigger a reaction detonated mine or multiple proxmity alert mines, or your witchwarper might have set up hazardous terrain.

6. Tracer Matrix Projector (level 3/9/15): Anti invisibility/concealment tech. 1a to make invisible creatures concealed, concealed not concealed, until start of next turn (so good for operative reactions). Range is a 15/30/60' cone depending on the model, you do have to be close and guess where the invisible guys are. I'd take this just to negate concealed in the approximately 438 ways this game has to introduce concealment, though, if I'm a striker who won't touch area/auto weapons. If you're using a projectile weapon against something invisible, combine with Painter Ammunition (26 credits per round) to paint it for your allies.

Hello fellow Starfinders! I'm a relatively new player to Starfinder 2e, and as per the title I had a question about the Mechanic's Modify feature;

According to the Modify description, "an item can have multiple mods at one time", yet there doesn't seem to be any description that I have been able to read that explicitly bans the stacking/applying multiple of the same mod onto the same item, just that you can only apply one mod at a time (until you get the "Manifold Mods" class feature, in which case it's two per Modify). The only thing I can find is this line of "when you Modify an item, you can apply one of the following effects of your choice, called a mod, or any other mod you know", though to me that sounds more like "when using modify, choose one of the mods" rather than "when you modify, an item can only HAVE one of the following mods".

To further explain my thought process in the hope it'll help find me an answer, here are two scenarios I had in mind of where I can envision the multi-stacking coming in. These take into account my character having the 6th-level Feat of "Boosting the Basics".

1. Our Action-Hero Soldier with a Magnetar Rifle being buffed by my "Long-range Propulsors", potentially granting them an immense 180 feet of extra 1st-range increment. Due to them being Action-Hero it allows the “Automatic” trait to take into account the entire first-range increment, meaning our Soldier would have a 240-feet Cone of Death at the cost of me essentially skipping a turn.

2. Due to me going for the Grenadier Archetype, I’ll have a 1-action Quick Toss ability. In theory, I could spend two turns buffing my grenade (5 actions total), before throwing it with Quick Toss. This would turn my grenade essentially into a nuke, adding 50 feet of additional Burst radius onto the singular grenade. “We have fireball at home” is what one of the other players answered when I asked this to them.

This, admittedly, seems to be incredibly busted which is why I am hesitant to believe that my thought process is correct. Once again however, I couldn't find anything in the class about only being allowed to apply one of the same mods to an item/that bans multi-stacking, so I do hope more knowledgeable players could tell me which they believe should be correct!

Thanks all for reading, and the help in advance!

I kitbashed this guy by head swapping a spare Clan rat head (and tail) onto a Votaan mini i had from Warhammers Mini of the Month promotion a while back. I painted it up between stages of my main project and was very surprised to discover as I finished it today that it's very easily the best model I've ever painted.

He's doubling as the first member of my scavenger crew for Star Grave and an NPC model for a game of Starfinder im running in the future