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That’s moving the goalposts, the situation had been whether you could make a comparable character that wasn’t a Monk or Brawler using the core rulebook. P2 does allow that.

In order for it to be comparable, it has to be similarly effective. Which in terms of "similarly effective" in 2E, it would be 1d4 damage for unarmed (okay, so your Monk Dedication boosts the damage die above that, but that's not really what we're looking at here), and as a 13th level Champion, they have a proficiency bonus of +6.

... Because the chain of comparisons, is that the 1E Unarmed Paladin's damage is less than that of a monk, but their attack bonus is identical to what they as a Paladin would use for a sword.

The only other comparison would be "how much you need to invest to do that", but at this point we can in fact move the goalposts closer and say "so long as it can be gotten by level 13"; given how little the general feats peak my interest.

Because, in fact... Spending 4 general feats on Unarmed proficiency in 2E may as well be the same thing as 1 feat in 1E given how they've changed the feat economy.

That’s high level territory, and only the Fighter gets Legendary.

Its still asking a character who spent their early levels punching things to pick up a sword because "you're better at using swords than with fists"... Despite the character not ever having used a sword in their career since they started punching things at level 1.

...

That said, I just noticed that Gauntlets are a thing in 2E though, and apparently they're simple weapons so they probably would get expert proficiency in that (also no need for Monk Dedication)... I kind of just assumed they were classed under unarmed proficiency (is this the second time I've made that mistake?)

So I probably look pretty stupid now... Possibly more so if someone mentioned spiked gloves earlier.

A lot of these same arguments could apply to Martial weapons though, or to any exotic weapon proficiency... But that narrows the ones going to have to deal with this issue down to Bards, Alchemists, and a handful of weapons for Rogues.

... Looking through "Martial Agile weapons", Starknives seem to stand out as something a Rogue is going to be annoyed they can't be expert or master in.

Edit:

Bringing us back on topic ...

So, does Paizo create the same volume of rule books for 2e as it did for 1e -- just try to make them better?

Or should 2e be constrained to a much smaller set of books?

If they made less content, that would take me from "disappointed" in 2E to "frustrated" in it.

... The shear VOLUME of missing content in 2E could be looked at as the source of all my problems with the system. Just about everything I've complained about could be fixed by just the implementation of like TWO general feats.

... But if that's going to be in their NEXT book, then that has to be in addition to just about all the kinds of stuff you'd have found in the Advanced Players guide to be worth it.

The Monk Dedication pretty much does what you want and more.

The problem, is that exact wording of what it does, still caps unarmed at "Trained", not expert, not master, not Legendary. Which is a fundamental problem with doing proficiency this way to begin with, and there does NOT appear to be any way to boost the proficiency through feats from what I can find.

Monk Dedication:

You become trained in unarmed attacks and gain the powerful fist class feature (page 156). You become trained in your choice of Acrobatics or Athletics; if you are already trained in both of these skills, you become trained in a skill of your choice. You become trained in monk class DC.

Special You can’t select another dedication feat until you have gained two other feats from the monk archetype.

... Not even the Powerful Fist ability leads to it growing in proficiency to even Expert.

Powerful Fist:

You know how to wield your fists as deadly weapons. The damage die for your fist changes to 1d6 instead of 1d4. Most people take a –2 circumstance penalty when making a lethal attack with nonlethal unarmed attacks, because they find it hard to use their fists with deadly force. You don’t take this penalty when making a lethal attack with your fist or any other unarmed attacks.

None of the other Monk Dedication feats boost it beyond this.

You may say "does all you want and more", but when my entry level standard is "the character can use unarmed strikes as well as their normal proficiency", the fact they're stuck at trained while every other weapon can go up to either Master or Legendary, the fact that non-monks are capped at trained EVEN IF they take Monk dedication means this doesn't work.

This is also a problem with the weapon proficiency feat in PF2E, as there's no "higher than trained" equivalent.

Luna Protege wrote:

Pathfinder First edition, meanwhile, was the MASTER of the art of rewarding the pursuit of mastery.

Guess where both D&D 5e and PF2E fail?

Should "rewarding the pursuit of mastery" be a primary goal of a tabletop game of this type? Figuring out broken optimal rule combinations is fun, but is this what the game's all about?

Considering that the purpose of a game is to have fun, and you JUST said its fun to make optimal rule combinations, then I would say yes.

Or rather, I'd say this is a niche that distinguishes it from D&D; and having a game that follows the same path as D&D is going isn't the right path, because people who like what D&D is offering will just play D&D.

For this game to survive, it needs to have a driving philosophy that's different from what D&D is offering. If D&D's philosophy is "the fantasy game EVERYONE can play", then Pathfinder will find a solid base as "the next level in tactical roleplaying games".

There are always going to be people who want to take their experience to the next level, and for quite some time, Pathfinder 1st Edition has been that game. I'd say stick with that.

... Because otherwise, if Pathfinder were to disappear, SOMEONE ELSE will end up making their OWN "High Tactics Roleplaying game" just so they have something to play on that level, and suddenly you've lost a potential niche to market to.

Thinking about it, the one angle you might have on why such a thing isn't necessarily the goal... Is if we make note of the existence of something like Warhammer 40k, which is also a game with a high skill ceiling, but unlike Pathfinder and D&D is a purely tactical game, not a roleplaying game.

But that's only really an argument if one's suggesting removing the roleplaying from the game, and adding more tactical elements to a game does NOT remove the roleplaying from the equation.

In fact, there are many aspects you can add to a roleplaying game while keeping the roleplaying aspects besides just boosting the tactical side, but tactics is what Pathfinder 1st Edition already does better than D&D, so this is why I focus on it.

Coincidentally, some of the alternatives have been covered by quite a few of Pathfinder's optional rules, such as downtime, Kingdom Building, Organizations, and such... But those are some pretty crude rules there, which could have really used a touch up, considering how little reward you get from them... But they're not as much of a focus of this game as being able to customize your character, and play out a highly tactical combat encounter.

... This is coming from someone who's been mocked as "wanting to play a city builder instead" in the times I've been stuck in D&D 5e campaigns and ended up ignoring or avoiding combat in favor of political maneuvering because the combat was dull.

@Luna Protege: Seems like we should asked you for a budget and a character level. If you have tens or hundreds of thousands of GP to throw around, and can buy enormous animated objects and pay for powerful enchantments ... well that sure makes things easier. My suggestion could be done on a shoestring budget, entirely by kobolds, without needing any rare, high level magic.

The multiple suggestions for canals come from people who know the history of cargo technology. We're trying to answer your query with the most appropriate technology. Canals have been used for moving cargo for thousands of years, while railways are a new thing. Canals are drastically simpler, easier, and more reliable. They are the simplest and cheapest way to do the job as initially requested. It sounds like your PC has a psychological opposition to water, and thus canals are not the right solution in this case, which is fine :-)

What does "Water = death" mean?

Addressing the paragraphs in order:

If the entire campaign is focused around building the thing; presumably it would be a... Long Campaign, starting with what I imagine would be a trek to find an investor (probably 1 to 5), followed by finding a guy to build it (probably level 7), so work on the actual project would start by level 8... And then likely have a bunch of side quests to make up the time it takes to complete, plus whatever gold is still missing... Considering crafting time is a long time, I'm going to say it MIGHT be done by 12th level.

Perhaps, but there's already a lot of canals in Golarion. There seems to be one that runs between Nex and the Mana-wastes. So ANOTHER canal is going to be excessive... Also, the size of the canal you'd need for anything like a Galley would be massive, while trains are thin in comparison. In addition, the water through the tunnel is a lot of mess to deal with when it will inevitably result in flooding the tribe itself if anything breaks; considering much of the living space for kobolds will continue to be built downwards rather than upwards. So the transit system will be a decent way above their home... Canals are thus a safety hazard; not to mention, the flow of water being one way is not as conducive to two way travel, at least, not without two separate tunnels with one for each direction, which if the wall between them is punctured will cause... Complications... And I'm sure any group of adventurers going up river on a skiff that's had a gang of Sahagun crawl up from under the water to drag the crew into the water will probably say canals tend to be full of... Unwanted life.

"Water = Death" can have a lot of facets... The millions of monsters that live in it, the chance of being swept over a water fall, the ease of falling off a boat and being unable to swim, being keel hauled by accident or intentionally, getting trapped under ice, being charmed into walking into the water to drown, being stuck on driftwood long enough to starve to death or death by dehydration (while surrounded by water, the irony)… Water is... Dangerous... Period.

Edit:

The undead could be replaced by kobold muscle power, if it comes to that. At that point it's not a railroad, but does accomplish the exact same task.

In the short term, using labour to power things can work; but as I've been trying to demonstrate for much of this thread; the long view is to keep operating costs low, whatever that takes. Tens of thousands of gold is nothing compared to the inevitable march of time, even for a few silver a day, over a hundred years, it adds up to a few thousand gold... That and upscaling, operating costs after upscaling are a nightmare.

Comparing the Witchwarper to the Technomancer on a dpr basis is generally a poor comparison because the Witchwarper is not intended to be a blaster.

I'm a stop you right there, because if we look at the Core classes, all of them have the potential to be built in multiple directions. Each one has DPR potential, each one has some battlefield control or other support potential, each one has survival potential. In case you hadn't noticed, each core class had not ONE viable build provided as an example at the back of their entry, but FOUR.

… and that's just their initial possibilities. With more material, more viable builds will open up.

To claim that this one singular class, out of all others, is only meant for one role, or that they're only meant for a number of similar roles, severely limits the class compared to the others in terms of flexibility.

A better compsrison to make would be between the Witchwarper and the other control caster, the Mystic.

The Mystic can be built into a Paladin-esque heavy fighter, with spells that grant defence buffs to themselves this is covered by the "Crusader Chaplain" build. Or they can take the MINDBREAKER connection and gains immediate DPR potential in its first three levels; sure the third level one is unlikely to trigger on a spell like Mind Thrust, but if you're blending combat and control, it works.

Almost all the connections also seem to have potent offensive abilities at higher levels. The Healer connection can steal life at 9th; the Mindbreaker has a Save or Die ability at 15th and an intense damage ability at 18th; and Star Shaman can call a meteor shower at 15th.

So immediately, the Witchwarper seems to have less offensive options than the supposed "dedicated healer" class, which you're refering to as a control class; as I've struggled to find an offensive ability that the Witchwarper has outside of Infinite worlds, but I can point out multiple offensive abilities for the Mystic.

… This is all BEFORE we go into the fact that the Mystics damaging spell Mind Thrust is probably one of the most suitable tank busters just for targeting a Will save rather than a fortitude or reflex save.

Now I wouldn't say the Mystic is optimized for the role of damage dealer or anything, but at least its abilities acknowledges it as an option; where the Witchwarper either ignores that option up until the spell selection, which it doesn't even give any bonuses to unlike even the Mystic which at least has connection options that can capitalize on their spells.

I'm sure someone else will or likely already has brought this point up; but given that we've already got gear level limits, its not like WBL is going to necessarily need to be stuck to. I find its more of a minimum amount of expected gear by credits.

If you've got less than the WBL, the GM will probably need to give them more, sure... But if the GM ends up accidentally giving the party like... Twice the WBL for the APL. That's not much of an issue; you're still limited by gear level, so the party may either have to decide to buy largely redundant gear for a situational benefit (like, 4 different types of guns with different damage types), OR, they could start grabbing the utility items.

I mean... What's a level 1 character going to do with 10,000 credits? That's probably more money than you'd need to buy most Level 3 items and lower.

... Actually, now that I think about it, if I ran a campaign that had XCOM esque themes, I should very well give them that much, tell them they haven't "researched" certain items yet when the game starts, and then watch as they buy a couple of Urban Cruisers, and then crash one of them to take out a Grey that put the rest of the team to sleep.

I'll let everyone else decide if that's a good trade off to be able to reverse engineer the Ray Gun the grey was holding, or to do an Autopsy.

Also, lets say a party of level 1 heroes do luck out and have a level 20 character drop dead in front of him, and loot the corpse. Is some magical Item Level Police going to show up? No, of course not.

However, if they aren't careful with where they *use* said gear, than word is going to get around that these random noobs have bleeding edge equipment that would make a spec-ops team jealous. This means the relevant authority figures *are* going to get curious. Even places that have no regulations about private citizens having beyond-milspec gear are going to be very interested in why this random group of people has tech *waaaay* beyond their ( apparent ) means. This certainly *looks* like something weird, and worth investigating.

More worrisome for the party, though, would be all the *other* groups of adventurer-equivalents out there. From their perspective, you all have now become an easy loot run. For a group of level 10 mercenaries, killing you to take your stuff is just good common sense. . . and not really *that* much harder for you having that level 20 gear.

This is why you just sell the gear for a loss under the table, and trade in for gear that isn't going to paint a target on your back.

... Or... Don't wave your ill gotten gains around in public. You keep it in a duffel bag, and bring it out when you're storming a place.

... Also, wear a mask when you do that. Don't want the survivors to be able to identify you and tie you to the gear.

Berselius wrote:

I only have one question. How the heck do they wield tools or even guns when their hands end in what appear to be prickly blades?

Regardless of the art, they have some method of grasping, ranging from featherlike filaments on their forearms to articulated claws that can be folded into multiple shapes.

I wonder if this applies to all PC races; Urog (Large Magical Beast) seems an obvious example of the weird fact they can somehow manipulate items with little issue. Got to wonder how that works out.

Given that the door is now open to other Magical Beast creatures being PC races, my main question becomes how this is going to work out when eventually we wind up with Magical Beast Alien PC races that amount to large intelligent cats, wolves, and horses/unicorn/Pegasus (or rather, alien creatures that look like them) and we have to ask ourselves how they're holding the weapons and items.

Granted, I suppose something similar to the Contemplative's drawback on weapon handedness is probably a likely case for creatures with genuinely only maybe a tail and a mouth to use their items with.

This is all stuff I say knowing full well I would play as essentially a blink dog in space, of basically any class. Because that would be fun.

I'm not the only one who saw the title and mistakenly took it as a challenge... Right?

Seriously though, if anyone gave me a manual for "how to make Starfinder races for PCs", I'd probably go nuts with the fact that apparently now you can play as Magical Beasts; yay for the Urog!

Luna Protege wrote:

If the point of contention on the Starfinder Androids is their "Organic" components... Then I have to consider asking... Are they using the term in a scientific sense or a generic sense?

To put it another way, consider the possibility that pieces of an android can likely self reassemble, repair, grow, and regenerate; in the same manner as any other living being... However they may not contain any genetic material such as DNA, proteins, or cells.

If one scientist dropped a piece of plastic in front of you, which you're unable to distinguish from living material unless you perform chemical analysis (including under a microscope), then a casual observer who notes that it behaves like biological material would call it "organic".

...

As a note, the term "organic" refers to a pool of carbon-based compound, not the current definition that was created by a marketing team and slapped on salads. So if carbon-based compounds were used to create an Android, they are "Organic" ;) lol but I see where yer going with the breakdown of language and agree many things will have to be redefined.

As to genetic material, what constitutes as genetic material? A Genome is a blueprint to a living creature. Why can't the nanites in the Android not carry something similar, but instead of using coding of DNA, they use another form of coding? I mean, PF androids do heal naturally if damaged. *shrugs* So some form of coding is going on to replicate and replace damaged pieces of an Android.

Huh... Sounds like Androids could theoretically have their only "organic" components be Carbon Fiber, or perhaps a carbon based plastic, and could still be considered to have organic components. Heck, they might be mostly rubber and latex based for their fleshy-parts.

Your second part also hits on something I was saying about a hypothetical "living metal"; ironically I ended up describing it as non-organic life, and using that term correctly by accident it seems.

I suppose you're right to question if genetics has to be tied to DNA. After all, in evolutionary programing in computer science, they typically call the information used for the passing on of information a "genetic algorithm". Albeit expressed as code rather than chemicals.

"Genetic material" isn't quite the same as genetic information however. There's kind of an implication that the information is encoded in the materials itself, meaning its at least partially chemical.

Personally, if we were to consider whether code on a physical computer component is "genetic material", we have to note that some of these bits and bytes of the information may not be held anywhere adjacent to each other or really connected by any physical medium given cloud computing. And in far future speculative fictions, sometimes data isn't even stored in a physical medium; instead being encoded into some kind of dimensional substrate. In these cases, it does present the possibility that the best term might be more "genetic pattern", assuming "Genetic Algorithm" is somehow ruled out.

If the point of contention on the Starfinder Androids is their "Organic" components... Then I have to consider asking... Are they using the term in a scientific sense or a generic sense?

To put it another way, consider the possibility that pieces of an android can likely self reassemble, repair, grow, and regenerate; in the same manner as any other living being... However they may not contain any genetic material such as DNA, proteins, or cells.

If one scientist dropped a piece of plastic in front of you, which you're unable to distinguish from living material unless you perform chemical analysis (including under a microscope), then a casual observer who notes that it behaves like biological material would call it "organic".

To muddy the waters, consider a "cybernetic organism" made of living metals, that has integrated many technological systems into it over the course of its evolution; yet requires eating, breathing, and sleeping to maintain itself. Not to mention, they perform sexual reproduction. Such a case is another step beyond Android, but it muddles the common usage of "organism", and by extension "organic" far more than an Android would; seeing as its materials behave LESS like a living being's body parts as we understand them, yet are more alive than an Android's parts, though an Android's part's may act more alive than these creatures.

Really, once we've reached this point, language is beginning to break down at its fundamental level. Half the terms we're using need to be redefined, and new terms need to be developed to distinguish one from another, especially when some words based off the same root may be contradictory.

... For example, if a creature is an Organism, but is not "Organic", then what would the adjective form of Organism be for such a creature? Given that "Organic" is taken.

If Golarion is gone, and their final battle will still happen there (and the prophecy isn't somehow bull), then... That probably says a lot about how far their battles are going to have to escalate by the time Golarion shows up again.

Imagine space fleets of outer dragons the size of space ships, alongside fleets of hundreds of dreadnaughts worth of Kobolds, Half-Dragons, and whatever other Draconic race is going to be released in Alien Archives.

... And now imagine them fighting over star systems while charting a course looking for Golarion. Also assume Apsu and Dahak are also looking for it, because otherwise we'd have to assume that they'd already be there, and whatever followers they have in space are going to be annoyed that they can't take part in the final conflict.

Personally, I'm starting to wonder if Golarion has been teleported to another Galaxy. The Drift Drive can't seem to reach too far beyond the rim, and likely won't be able to reach out that far until there's enough Drift beacons to fill the galaxy and reach beyond its limits. If Golarion is somewhere that's unlikely if not impossible to be found by players (as is likely the intent of the developers) then that's a good place to hide it; outside the galaxy.

In other news, I am suddenly finding myself pondering the alignments that these two dragon gods (plus Tiamat) forgot to cover: CG, N, and LE. Hopefully we find an alien Dragon god to cover those.

13-5-MA7 wrote:

Jaçinto wrote:

On the programming thing, it is because the brain has to be made and data is entered into it. I am talking about initial construction since the brain mapping has to be designed, since they are artificial. So someone has to make the neural pathways. A lot of thought has to do with genetics and brain patterns. With an android, all that is designed with intent. That is why I am talking about legislation. True free will is impossible, or at least near impossible, to program into something. An Android brain may seem to have free will, but wouldn't it instead be working on parameters?

Let's turn this around Meatbag, how can you prove that you have free will? All of your decisions are just driven by chemical interactions in your brain. No one wrote them, but they are surely deterministic all the same.

All you organics are quite obsessed with free will, and how they totally have it, but I have yet to see a definition of free will that is not either self-defeating or so broad as to be meaningless. Consider:

If your actions are determined by physics, you can not choose how you act. So you can not be said to have free will.

If your actions are driven by the soul, well the soul must use some lawful, deterministic, process to arrive at its decisions. So you've just moved the determinism up one level, and your actions are determined by soul physics.

If your actions are not driven by the laws of physics, or by a higher level of soul physics, then your actions must be driven by a random process. And if your actions are random, how can you be said to be responsible for anything? Therefore you have no free will.

I actually think organic beings don't really have free will as all thought is dictated by the chemical reactions in your brain responding to the situations you are in, based on the make up of your specific brain. Or something like that. Basically it is impossible to prove you have free will over everything you do is just the response your brain takes in the situation you are in given the input you have. You can't "go back" and test to see if you would have acted differently with all the same input and no knowledge of what you have already done.

Poorly worded because it is 2:14 am.

I tend to think having foresight of the (possible) consequences of one's choices are probably the closest thing to "free will" we can have. Your choices may still be pre-determined, but at least they're made knowing the possible outcomes of the choice; and if its made in that knowledge, then its virtually indistinguishable from "free-will".

Or to put it another way; there's no fault in your choice being inevitable if you knew beforehand that such a choice would be the right one (or at least, the preferable one).

Also, Luna Protege, was that thing you watched one of the Terminator movies or TV series by any chance?

There are a lot of things but suffice to say, androids confuse me and I require much more information.

Actually it was from an Anime.

On a hypothetic side note, would you consider bumping the bonus to +2? I don't see many folks being against that idea but I thought I would toss it out. Obviously, not for Society play.

I've previously pitched this idea on a thread for "what you'd change for Homebrew"... Or was it in some other thread? Probably both. Then I went and did this for a game I set up; though I'll admit I'm not GMing it (I wanted to play the game before I GM'd it).

Voss wrote:

I thought they did. Several thousand years +300something.

So basically, the pathfinder question was "What happened to Aroden"?

Now, the starfinder question will be "What happened to Golarion"?

You know what would be a real troll? If Aroden showed up somewhere in the galaxy right when the gap ended, and because of the gap we'd still be left asking the question "what happened to Aroden?" even then.

Other than that... Imagine an immortal Wizard who's been traveling the galaxy for the whole time during the gap (and wasn't really around before it), essentially became famous on basically every planet they went to, and did this on basically half the planets in the galaxy.

Everyone would be like "hey, I know you!" and have to idea where they know them from. But otherwise it would be like that cheap movie "Dude, where's my car?", but on a galactic scale. Heck, maybe its almost a literal case of that, maybe they left a powerful magical item that has sentimental value to them somewhere in the galaxy, and they've go NO IDEA where they left it or why. Only that it belongs to them.

bookrat wrote:

technarken wrote:

Upon seeing the size of Absalom Station and Idari I'm just gonna add a 0 to the end of their sizes. A 5 mile wide space station strikes me as a bit small for what it is, but a 50 mile wide station? That's more like a nation in space.

I thought about this as I read about Absolom Station in the new AP book.

It's 5 miles wide on it's planar section, and it looks fairly even for it's length. That gives it about 25 square miles the the planar section of the station. Or about the same size as Manhattan.

Manhattan's population is 1.6 mil. Absolom Station has 2.1 mil.

But the station also looks like it's as tall as it is wide (but much more narrow on the non-planar section, called the Spike). It starts at maybe 1/4-1/2 as wide, and narrows down to maybe 1/10 as wide. So we're looking at a good amount of available space in the entire volume of the station - enough to fit 2.1 million people with at most the same (but probably better) population density as Manhattan. For a space station, that seems pretty reasonable. It also doesn't include the Armada surrounding the station.

Your fix will make it bigger than Delaware (or half the size of Connecticut) before we even take into consideration the depth. That is absolutely freaking huge.

(Also, about half the size of the Death Star, which is about 100 miles across)

Well, Absalom station is supposed to be the biggest intergalactic trade hub there is due to its ultapowerful drift beacon. So, absolutely freaking huge would make sense.

I kind of assumed that a lot more that 2.1 million people were in Absolom Station... If it says otherwise, then I'm a little disappointed, I kind of assumed that we didn't loose the majority of Golarion's population when it disappeared; and that the majority of them live on Absolom Station.

... The former can still be true, but the latter seems less likely considering the other planets boast populations in the billions... I can only assume most of Pathfinder's Core races are now spread out over a lot of planets. Partly because (for humans especially) they have to be considering they can't all fit on Absolom and still be anywhere near as populous as the other Starfinder Core races.

What I'm really hoping is that the theme bonus isn't going to be stuck in a state of never being able to translate into a modifier bonus without being cancelled out by the 16 +2, 17 +1 rule of stat increases.

Unless its one of those "odd numbers unlock feats" things, its not worth mentioning it; and even then, its still just going to be made redundant once it inevitably gets raised.

Exactly, Rysky. In some settings undead are mostly tools. In some settings, like Pathfinder, undead are mostly distilled malevolence poured into a corpse. Both examples have their exceptions, of course.

... And sometimes Pure Malevolence is a nearly mindless Kaiju who likes to fight other Kaiju who happen to already be attacking stuff in order to soothe the raging beast inside...

...Or am I thinking of the Hulk?

By now, someone should have already figured out how to reverse the corrosion process that rust monsters use for feeding, to turn base metallic ash back into useful raw materials for building things with.

In case my own statement previously was not enough... Let me remind you that when it comes out of the ground, Iron and other metals are typically already in its "corroded" form.

Iron ore is typically in the form of Iron Oxide, and same goes for most metals: its already oxidised by the time it comes out of the ground.

... In other words, reversing the actions of a Rust Monster turning a metal to rust only requires "the normal forging process" to reverse the process. As opposed to a new process.

So the statement you're making is one of those "no s*$*" moments. Anyone who can smelt ore can return gear bitten by a Rust Monster to "normal metal".

Everything is made out of universal polymer now. Rust monsters are actually on the verge of extinction now, due to environmental pressures.

... Given that "Polymers" and "plastics" are basically interchangeable terms, and given we've established that Rust Monsters only eat metal (however, just about any metal), I think we're safe.

Unless of course there's a form of metallic plastic I'm not aware of. Let me google that.

There seem to be conductive polymers/plastics, which "may have metallic conductivity". But its unclear if it means actual metals or just a property of metals.

Envall wrote:

Plastic eating monster would be very environmental friendly solution to pollution.

Talk about life imitating art:

http://www.iflscience.com/environment/bacteria-evolving-eat-plastic-dump-in to-oceans/

... And so, life finds a way, in which all things return to dust, regardless of their original composition. Metal to rust, polymer to oil/coal, wood to ash.

If this gets converted into Rust Monster 2.0, one may as well hire a martial artist on every ship to punch them into submission.

I'd like to say though... Given that recycling metals and plastics is a common occurrence, and the process that does it works easiest on more broken down materials and especially metallic "dust", since its easier to smelt into new ingots than a solid lump of metal, I imagine that its probably now a common thing for Starfinder Recycling plants to keep trained Rust Monsters around as a cheaper means of breaking down materials before processing them.

Okay, but there is in fact an in-universe reason for why more Undead are able to be Non-Evil though, correct? Cause while Starfinder may be a different game it still takes place in the same universe as Pathfinder.

James Sutter wrote:

But just as you and I aren't allowed to go around being murderous vigilantes every time we object to someone's morality or religion, neither can citizens of the Pact Worlds

It's not about their alignment or religions (which is kinda a bad example since the church of the Devourer are some of the main antagonists for this AP), but that they're monsters most likely actively involved in something Evil.

This suddenly reminds me of how a certain D&D verse handled why evil wasn't purged in an inquisition: basically, being evil doesn't mean it has to be actively harmful, it just has to prioritize you and yours over everyone else.

Said verse gave an example not unlike that of a loan shark, sure they'll call the guards to arrest you if you fail payments, and quite frequently they'll jack up the payments whenever they can, but they're performing a legit business, and aren't doing anything wrong... But yeah, they're evil.

Another example, is that Lex Luthor is "a monster"; but in most incarnations he's typically spending most of his time pondering what's best for Earth, mostly because of the simple fact he lives there. He's supportive of heroes at times, and antagonistic at others.

One example of his behaviour in one cartoon is that he kidnaped a guy, cut off his arm, and cloned him for a spy; but when the original came looking for him, wanting revenge for the losing an arm part, he handed the guy a briefcase containing a high tech military grade prosthesis with inbuilt weapons, by every measure even BETTER than the arm he had. His next statement is priceless.

What do you really want? Revenge? Or Satisfaction?

In that way I find Lex Luthor probably one of the most relatable villains ever; partly because I have a brother who's similar in a way, and just as pragmatic.

It isn't going to solve the problem. Your example of the 17 small short swords proves it. The value vs weight ratio on such items isn't great, but these players you have met still did it. Those players do not care about weight, only value. Unless Starfinder reduces the value of found gear to the point that a hover-barrow, hover-cart, or bottomless bag would be more expensive than the gear that could be hauled(over a few adventures) by such things, those players will still do it.

In fact you are now more likely to hear "I search him, take his weapons, and harvest his organs so I can sell them in town."

I was thinking of making a similar point, with one key extra point.

Reducing the resale price of items means that players will gravitate to spending their money on upgradable items, or items they will never sell, over items that may be more mandatory for their character type.

... For example, a sniper would rather spend their money on Augmentations, rather than buy up to a new Sniper Rifle. Even if a sniper rifle doesn't get dropped by any enemies.

It's a weird inversion of intent and result. They intend it to reduce resale, but the fact they cannot use resale to recoup losses on items they BOUGHT, means they will not BUY those items to begin with... Resulting in rich hobos in a jungle forced into fighting jaguars for money, but since jaguars don't drop rifles, none of them have weapons. Since that would be replaced three levels down the road.

Ventnor wrote:

Wei Ji the Learner wrote:

Tengu are not furry.

...just sayin'.

So clearly, they DID manage to survive, they're just chilling, biding their time, being all zen-monk in the middle of nowhere.

It really is quite astounding that they managed to adapt to living in a starless void.

A truly commendable feat.

Well, given Absalom station is a thing, creating another station out in the middle of nowhere is plausible; provided they have the magic to supply a constant supply of energy of all the kinds needed to support them.

Really, all they need is a healthy population of Mystics, given they provide Positive energy otherwise provided by the sun. Also, presumably they can provide the other energy types as well.

Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:

While I had made it as an offhanded comment, the "Adventurer who is funded through Patreon and live streams their adventures and escapades" character idea is becoming more and more crystallized :3

Playing a similar one! Mechanic with a flying camerabot drone. Rest of the party wants to be fans that won permanent spots on the show early on.

Huh... Sounds like a professional version of what I played as a hobbyist. It would probably be a Starfarer or Scholar though.

Basically imagine that one guy in the team that collects mementoes of their travels, and keeps a scrapbook of their travels. As if they think being an "adventurer" means being a tourist who saves the universe for fun, so they can share stories with their kids in their trophy room.

I miss tourism being a thing. Selfies became terrible when people stopped doing it for legit reasons. As one group I GMed pointed out.

I have to wonder why Half-Orcs would have a name that even sounds like Orcs. After all, Kobolds are related to Dragons, and their name doesn't even sound like Dragon.

Heck, someone could argue its plausible that Kobolds are the direct (yet distant) decendants of Half-Dragon Gnomes or Halflings.

Given Kobolds have a name that basically just means "Miner" in some dead language, I'm pretty sure if Half-Orcs went the same route, it would be some dead language's word for warrior or barbarian, or maybe the name of a warrior god... Or... Maybe fragments of those works.

... like... Serks, Groms, Kenshs, Mercs, Bers, or Erals.

... Which are fragments of Berserker, Gorrum, Kenshin, Mercenary, Berserker again, and General.

Hey, for all we know, the original naming of existing races started off as slang terms for them derived from stereotypical jobs or physical features, and the races those names applied to just went "sounds like a compliment" and just kept using it, and it stuck.

The implication that there are now more living half-orcs than pure-blooded orcs in the Pact Worlds is interesting.

Is it weird that I suddenly had a mental comparison to DBZ Saiyans?

I'm sure that there's probably physically similar races out in space, but given Orcs and Half-Orcs are probably the closest thing to the sprit of it: that being a warrior race who's planet is no longer around.

Now imagine a Half-Orc Solarion... And name them Gohan.

How will I change my games? Simple: Let the player use the Pathfinder Advanced Race Guide. It makes the remnants of Golarion in space feel more real, and less homogenous compared to the more interesting and more alien races of other planets.

I love the idea of aliens. I am less taken with the idea of Elves, Dwarves and Goblins in SPaaaaaaaaace.

Honestly, the Elves, Dwarves and Goblins angle is still fine for me; I like acknowledging that the fantasy aspects exist, and utilizing those races.

That said, I feel that they're something best put in the hands of players than in the hands of the GM; baring jaunts into familiar space, such as Absalom station.

I say this with affection for the similarities between the appeal of fantasy and sci-fi; the idea of exploration and discovery. It's important even in a fantasy story to have adventurers traveling far afield to meet up with weird looking, almost alien new races beyond the horizon of where they live. This is part of the reason I'm not entirely taken with Pathfinder's core races; they're too "normal".

But more than anything, I understand why they're the core races, they're familiar, and having a handful of familiar races to draw from makes it easier to set up the right flow from "ordinary world" to "fantastical world". The fact they're not all humans also prevents the starting land seeming TOO mundane to the point of being ignored; the land they come from still has to stick in their minds in order to make a good mental contrast to the new land.

... Translating this to Starfinder, you start in Absalom station with its familiar Space Elves, who are literally just elves who happen to be in space the same way humans who happen to be in space are space men; and then you pick a random star and meet up with dancing pink squid people with dogs for hands.

Really, in the end, having more familiar fantasy races, or at least ones resembling them are kind of nessacarily for humans to even feel relevant on a stage of a dozen truly alien aliens. If Starfinder had instead forgone including Pathfinder core, and Lashaunta weren't a thing, then more than anything, it would be the humans who feel the most "alienated" compared to the other aliens. And by alienated, I mean both the usual meaning of that word, and the idea that if we took a group shot of the core races in Starfinder; you'd say the humans are the most "alien" creature in the whole image.

That's basically a good rule of thumb: don't let the humans feel like aliens compared to the actual aliens.

** spoiler omitted **

Anyways, closer on topic; anyone else hoping one of these magic hacks is basically access to a digital familiar? Like... Digimon?

Okay, maybe not that awesome, but still; the dualistic nature of the relationship between wizard and familiar has always fascinated me. It's like a reflection of the self given physical form. Carrying that over to digital space has always felt like a natural next step.

... That, and digital space entering meat space. The overlapping and fusion (in not just a metaphorical sense) of digital and material spaces feels like a natural outcome once you're able to bend space enough to create demi-planes and the like. Since at that point you can basically create a demi-plane that exists purely to act as a computer, with altered physics that replace needing it to be a mechanical computer, with it being a computer made entirely of reality hacks.

Or... Alternatively, one doesn't even need to go that far to pull it off. Digimon Tamers used an explanation that the transfer is more that the digital information is being re-synthesised into physical information using synthetic proteins created on site of transfer. Basically creating a pseudo "meat" body for them to use; except its closer to nanites I guess.

I'm sure someone is going to say they might have summoning, or remind me I've talked about how they might do summoning... But I should say, summoning isn't quite as intimate as a familiar is. It's missing that almost avatar or soul-link like quality.

Stone Dog wrote:

Cuttlefist wrote:

I was familiar with that explanation, and while it is definitely an explanation it's not really a satisfying one for me. Why is it technology interferes with your life force? What is the level of technology that does not interfere? Is a peg leg or similar replacement for a missing limb sufficient to diminish your essence? It raises more questions for me than it answers, still feels like a "because we need it to work this way" reason.

I always thought of it as the spiritual/astral version of transplant rejection. In universe, an astral form is a real thing. Everybody has one. Merely losing a body part doesn't damage your astral form, nor does wearing things like prosthetic. Which means that phantom limb syndrome in Shadowrun it more literal than it is in reality. Your body is missing an arm, but your soul isn't.

Once you try to implant something into your body on the level of cyberware (and bioware too), then it starts interfering with your astral form. So from what I understand, your soul is trying to attach itself to a new part of you and failing. This static chokes off your ability to connect with magic.

This can be mitigated though. High grade gear is less intrusive on an astral level. So technology doesn't interfere with magic unless you try and implant it, but even then the more advanced the technology is the less it interferes. The analogy could be extended to how your body would react to a kidney from a poor donor vs a kidney from a close relative vs a kidney vat grown from your own cells.

That's a good breakdown of essence loss. It's worth pointing out that it's not just cyberware that causes essence loss- bioware implants do as well. The thematic stab is that transhumanism literally makes you less of a metahuman. It works pretty well.

Nice summary... But personally, I always hated the implications. Not of being less human mind you, but that it implies that your personhood is contingent on remaining so; though not nessacarily in a legal sense... If that makes sense.

It's like a weird double standard; at once saying the "soul" being intangible has nothing to do with the physical, only to turn around and say it has everything to do with the physical.

Hmm... Obvious use for the Fabricate arms is that its a cheaper alternative to carrying around 8 different types of energy rifles. Rather than the Soldier having to invest their hard earned cash into those rifles, the Technomancer can just identify the weakness and immunities of their current enemy, and fabricate a weapon for the Soldier on the cheap for the circumstance.

Also, interesting choice with being able to cast a 9th level spell by fusing smaller spell slots. If this applies to spells other than just Wish, that could make Technomancers able to be on par with a 9 spell level class without actually needing to possess 9 spell levels.

Sounding like broken record, but sweet jeebus did I like that her backstory was not super dramatic and that her ladylove is still alive, not killed, abjucted or vanished. And it is kinda weird that this seems to be like a exception in backgrounds.

Hmm... I'm not sure if that word means the same thing it used to, but with the meaning I'm used to, meaning "girlfriend"... I've got to point one thing out.

Danese offered to resign his commission, but Raia refused.

Its easy to miss, but its there. A pronoun usage. It's only used once, but its still there.

I actually went back and checked because I read your comment, since for a second I thought Danese's gender wasn't mentioned at all and needed to be sure you weren't just making assumptions.

Remy P Gilbeau wrote:

Uret Jet wrote:

IonutRO wrote:

Uret Jet wrote:

Michael Monn wrote:

I want to know how FTL communications work. =(

Magic.

Drift beacons, actually.

Close enough.

Not exactly. In the reveal stream, they mentioned that the nearest thing they had to mechanical FTL communication, was essentially strapping a message to a guided missile with a Drift drive and launching that in the direction of wherever it was you want the message to go. They receive it, and send a message back the same way. Hardly instant communication between planets, especially across the Vast when you'd be looking at 10d6 days roundtrip.

The spell Sending, if it hasn't been given a planetary range in Starfinder, is still probably your best way of getting communication across the Galaxy.

If you're sending a message from somewhere in the Vast to somewhere else in the Vast, it would take 10d6 days roundtrip. If you're sending a message to Absalom Station, it only takes 1d6 days, no matter where you're sending it from, for a roundtrip of 6d6 days.

Hmm... I feel like from the sounds of it, your best bet for relatively quick communication, is for you to send a communication to a central mailing box on Absolom Station, and forward it to wherever else you need it.

... Or... If you are have a weirdly specific circumstance where you don't need them to get the message quickly, but you need to get the reply quickly, you can send a message to them with the message "come meet me at Absolom station", or "send your reply to this mailing box at Absolom station", and pick up your reply there.

If you've got some manner of agreement to meet every so often, you can exchange information on a regular basis, only waiting up to 1d6 from each of you only needing that 1d6 to meet there, rather than having to wait for them to get the meetup message.

That last one kind of implies a lot of offworlders probably meet up on Absolom for no other reason than to discuss business on a regular basis. Like, a multi-stellar corp having its yearly branch meetup and review on Absolom so they only miss a month at most of business.

James Sutter wrote:

Richard Edwards wrote:

I hope this illustration isn't supposed to be to scale or the physics are apparently not expected to be realistic in this game.

Fact: Drawing the map to scale would have made it super boring to look at. :P

But it would really emphasize the bright red YOU ARE HERE arrow... for those with electron microscopes.

Reminds me of an often mentioned case in the Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy.

A from memory quote:

Perspective is a dangerous thing, in a bet with his wife who told him he never had any perspective, a man built a machine that showed a person the entire scope of the universe, and then showed them a bright red "you are here" sign. Everyone who ever used the machine has suffered total mental shutdown and death, including the inventor's wife.

Hmm... Maybe Solarions are like Newtypes.

Not that anybody, not even those in Gundam know what a Newtype is, and nobody knows what a Solarion really is. But they know their abilities and philosophies.

... And both have some connection to the expanse of space, and often there's a lot of talk in Gundam about how people's souls are pulled by gravity, while others are compelled to live beyond it, and their consciousness expands into the vastness of space.

The abilities are the odd fit, it doesn't work as well.

So yeah... I'm gonna go with "Solarions are Newtypes with Jedi powers".

6 words, close enough.

Kiln Norn wrote:

Hey guys I figured out the graviton recruitment slogan.

"Come to the graviton side, we're attractive."

Feros the Light Solarian wrote:

"Come to the solar side, we're radiant."

"Come to both sides, we actually understand what a 'cycle' is."

Well, a wax and wane of only one half of the balance is still a cycle. It's just a cycle of progression. Like a wax and wane of brightness in the sun in a cycle of solar flares, but doesn't have to crunch back down into a new star or a black hole after the burst, as it doesn't expend itself entirely with the solar flare.

... True cycles in nature are not always a continuous ring; sometimes its many interconnected loops, in a sort of Spirograph. Sometimes its a spiral. Sometimes its a double helix.

Even a true cycle of opposites doesn't require that the same entity play both sides. Imagine a binary system, where one star is doing all the light emitting, and another is doing all the gravitational legwork. The brighter star benefits from the fuel that the bigger star pulls in, and the larger star benefits from the extra heat from the brighter one, giving it an increased heat it could not obtain on its own since its heavier elements might not be able to fuse as easily.

... Which brings us to a point actually relevant to Solarions. If you pair two of them up, one using light, while the other uses dark, it seems like a very effective strategy. The Dark Side one pulls in the mooks, and the Light side one can stay relatively still and benefit from the gravitational abilities of their partner by basically doing full round attacks every round.

Or something like that. Heck, the light one could flame orbit around the Graviton one, and then the graviton one could forcefully pull everyone THROUGH the flames with their final Graviton thing. And then, they're in perfect positioning for the Light one to do their final burst on all the enemies that were just drawn in.

... Granted, doing that last one perfectly probably requires two doing radiant, and one doing graviton. But it does make one wonder what a whole team of Solarions can pull off with teamwork like that while splitting the roles.

Luna Protege wrote:

Side note: Weird how Goblins have gone from "writing is forbidden" to "let's hack computers, who's code is composed entirely of written language". Given programing languages are still a written language, even though some of them can be quite cryptic.

Well, writing steals the words from your head, but code is just 1s and 0s, and goblins don't think in numbers anyway (just "that," "a few," and "lots").

Assuming that "writing steals the words from their heads" is what they believe... Then saying it doesn't apply to binary doesn't make sense.

A written language is still written regardless of form, and in fact, "ones and zeros" as we're using them in code is just an abstraction of the language mechanics at play, as it would be just as valid if it was written as A/B instead of 0/1. Or even "Empty Box" and "Full Box".

Meanwhile, even if they coded in pure binary, the sum of those bits still have to relate to a conceptual function in order for the code to work. Its just that in place of a rather succinct bunch of symbols, the "word" is now comprised of hundreds of individual bits.

Its functionally impossible to be able to "read" such a word and not recognise it as a word; and one cannot code a program, or otherwise do anything functional with such a language without being able to recognize or at least mentally construct and then transcribe the concepts it details in its program.

This is like... Semiotics 101 here.

In any case, I was originally just making the statement of "its remarkable how much a creature's culture can change over the course of 4000 years". Not a question of what kind of mental gymnastics goblins would be going through if they were still working off of that.

For the playtest, I ran "Ryza of the Starlords" from Book 1 through some of Book 3, as a scene by scene scifi version of Rise of the Runelords, starting when goblin envoys hacked the music at the Founder's Festival on the outpost planet Ryza and then goblins attacked the festival. I didn't really have much setting info yet, so I just made stuff up as a pastiche of sci-fi and pop culture tropes (for instance, Mayor Grobaras became Grobar the Hutt, the President of Magmar-5 The Lava and Monument Planet and a giant orange blob creature).

I'm suddenly imagining like, some kind of Daft Punk DJ Goblins covered in glowing headphones and Video Goggle, while trying to do a terrible rap of how great they are, like actors chewing the scenery. Kind of like a Pink-Mohawk style Cyberpunk version of Team Skull from Pokémon.

... Then suddenly, explosions.

Side note: Weird how Goblins have gone from "writing is forbidden" to "let's hack computers, who's code is composed entirely of written language". Given programing languages are still a written language, even though some of them can be quite cryptic.

Sounds like a good idea, though I imagine a lot may need to be changed, depending on how certain factors such as "supply shipments" are carried out. Given that a Drift capable space-freighter will get there a lot quicker than a caravan of horse and cart will. (If Kingmaker does supply drops using Teleport spells then... Never mind).

Also keep in mind the difference in scale of the base with such different levels of technology. It's reasonable, albeit a bit extreme, note that a space shipped "collapsible city kit" is something that far future tech can accomplish, and even without folding, a colony ship itself if used as the core could be as large as a city on its own; and just need to be sat down in a flat bit of land and structurally secured to the earth for stability.

Beyond that, it brings to mind a scenario like in Xenoblade Chronicles X. At which point you could bring in some inspiration. Building up Arms Manufacturers, salvage, scouting and survey, trying to find scattered and off target supply drops and pieces of the ship you came in that got ripped off by atmospheric entry. Xenobiology surveys to catalogue the plants, animals and otherwise for food, animal labour, and various natives.

I imagine mining and gathering of native resources may not need that much changing. Assuming Kingmaker has them, which I think is a fair guess.

Skull and Shackles is much more straightforward... Save for maybe the whole "Shanghai" part... I get the feeling that part was only in the main Skulls and Shackles to give the players motivation to overthrow the captain and thus claim your own ship. However, given you start with your own ship anyways in most cases, this is almost completely unnecessary.

Otherwise, the main differences just become that space and water aren't the same. Or rather, space is not like being "on top" of the water; its more comparable to being in a submarine. As such, anything in S&S that asks you to "get out of the boat" and treats the swim and breath stuff as an aspect of difficulty is either going to be harder (no surface to rush to for air if you're far from the "dingy") or otherwise without difficulty (has a long supply of oxygen in the suit). Granted, the movement itself is probably going to still be just as easy or hard.

Having played a tiny bit of S&S, some of the island stuff might be a bit hard to translate if we're going with an Island to Asteroid or Deep Space Station comparison. Partly because Space Stations are too small for the long trek to what was essentially a lookout post, and an Asteroid would have issues if you're scuttling along the outside in that you'd have to worry about factors you didn't have to worry about in the original (Swimming there, or worrying about oxygen). And if you're inside instead, then some of the "natural" elements of being in the wild in some of these locations had is going to be undermined; since its quite unnatural to find a huge hollowed out asteroid with large island sized caverns, that is somehow, not only air tight, but has air in it to begin with.

... That latter one could be lessened with a hand wave though... That the big rock is full of crystals are constantly generating enough air to keep a stable atmosphere, and there's a stream of air coming out through the entry points not unlike the lapping of waves against the shore.

At any points where you would have been getting beached, that would be an issue, partly because 3 dimensions, and because decompression is an entirely different beast to being in shallow water with a hole in the bottom of your boat. The latter is an inconvenience, the ship can't sink any more than it has because its already stuck on the rocks. With a Space ship, again, submarine comparisons, you are in a situation not unlike being completely underwater, your only option is close the breach or loose all your air... Though, one solution for that is the security bulkhead style stuff, just close off the decompressed areas.

Well... Stuff to think about anyways. Hard to tell what's truly going to be a mechanical difference, and what's just going to be a re-skin.

I think one part and parcel of Besmara's alignment is probably her opinion of doing "Evil" acts that AREN'T such brash and bold acts typical of piracy, and a general disregard for motive as to WHY one might be committing Piracy. As opposed to actually having an end goal of ruining something like the Evil gods have, such as Rovagug destroying the world. In which case, really its just her planting a flag as embodying a "pure chaotic" concept wholly, as much as it leans towards one end; rather than desiring to embody only its negative aspects.

By choosing not to relinquish the good or evil aspects of piracy, she gains neither. Meanwhile, Evil Gods of assassination relinquish the positive aspects to other gods; namely gods of good who DO permit assassination, but do not openly advertise that fact my listing it in their portfolio.

But besides that, and a more solid argument would be to consider the fact that for the most part, the moral boundary line between Good, Neutral, and Evil... All seem to be more pronounced for gods than they are mortals. Rovagug wants to destroy everything, and basically every CE god amounts to that too, as do half the NE gods... While mortal Evil mortals rarely reach those extremes, even CE mortals, often only doing as bad as a Neutral God would do on a "bad day".

Meanwhile, I think in terms of "Bold plays" that Besmara might approve of, the Starfinder era equivalent is probably closer to breaking into a corporate building's window, grabbing info, and then flying away with a getaway vehicle.

As for the case of Desna or Weydan... First, Weydan is practically one of those "peace and love" gods who disapprove of unneeded conflict; stealing things from corporations isn't their style. While Desna? She's practically the Goddess of Knights Errant in their traditional depictions; riding around the galaxy looking for new places and solving peoples problems. She's basically the goddess of the (Star Trek) Enterprise. And I imagine she'd be just as displeased as the other Good gods at wasting time acting as an "upright pirate" rather than... You know, actually trying to be a "proper" adventurer and explorer.

In any case, Besmara is probably looking at where she's staking her alignment claim by considering it as a choice of followers; looking at them all like they're prospective crew on her ship and thinking like "yar, I donna' car' why'a wanna' plunder, all I wan' is for yer to raise the sails and weigh the anchor!"

... Even if that makes her evil by human standards, as a human being that pragmatic would be evil, that fact alone makes her neutral by godlike standards; as gods are practically beings that embody alignment, unable to accept the worship of Evil if Good, and Good if Evil. If she cannot embody that evil, she's unable to truly "be" evil while being a god.

...Probably anyways.

Mashallah wrote:

Owen K. C. Stephens wrote:

Sure. androids are true AIs. That's a core race.

The mechanic has a class feature called "Artificial Intelligence"
We mention there are robots on Aballon that are self-aware.

But no, the equipment section does not let you buy or sell self-aware creatures, for what I think are fairly obvious reasons.

I thought androids explicitly aren't AI in the first place?

Instead, they get normal souls granting them sapience just like any other living creature.

What about that makes them not AI?

An android has a constructed brain which is able to support a soul. That makes it self-aware. The fact it is an AI with a soul doesn't mean it's not an AI.

Well, once we've reached this point, we begin to require making distinctions between various aspects of a conscious person's "being" in order to make any headway on the question of if something is, or is not, intelligent due to artificial means, or through natural means.

Which means we have to break it down into component parts:
1) Does the soul automatically grant intelligence to any normally intellectually inert object it inhabits?
2) Are souls attracted to intelligent beings who do not yet possess a soul?
3) Is it possible to be artificially intelligent without a soul?
4) Do creatures with non-zero intelligence but not self aware possess a soul?
5) In what order does Intelligence, a Soul, and Knowledge, occur in a forming Android?
6) To what extent does artificial knowledge and memories apply in the creation of an AI?
7) Are Mind and Soul even separate entities in this setting to begin with?
8) Is the intelligence of a living brain in the setting a function of physical properties as it is in the real world? Or the result of magical properties?
9) Does the formation of the soul begin within the living/intelligent entity? Or is it already partially formed when the energy that makes it up leaves its source to enter a body?
10) Can souls form in a part of the universe unlikely to receive energy directly from the plane of positive energy, such as in "Deep Space"?
11) Is there any notable difference in properties between the soul of an android and a living being? And if so, is it any more significant than the difference between the souls of different living beings?
12) Does the "Artificial Intelligence" label also apply to synthetic Biological brains such as ones grown in vats?
13) Are "Artificial Souls" a possibility?

I'm fairly sure I'm not equipped to answer these questions... Save maybe the last question, as we've mentioned it a couple of times; the existence of the "Awaken Construct" Spell. Which mentions that it "changes" the energies involved into ones resembling a soul, rather than infuses one.

I figure we need more time for these questions in order to formulate a proper answer. Not to mention I probably missed a few connecting questions that would lead us to a final answer.

Owen K. C. Stephens wrote:

But no, the equipment section does not let you buy or sell self-aware creatures, for what I think are fairly obvious reasons.

This is a problem I ran into while designing a playable construct race for Starjammer. Some of the mechanics (healing/repair) are dependent on the construct's cost. So a playable construct has a defined cost. So now I'm wrestling with how *I* want the subject handled in my products before I proceed. New repair mechanic? Self-aware playable constructs are as rare as intelligent magic items and thus have special societal conventions for handling one upon creation? Do they only happen as the result of an Awake Construct spell? Do we introduce the concept of slavery and all that entails? Something else I've not thought of yet?

Such concepts aren't exactly new. Maybe not for "the good guys", but in fantasy settings, slavery has been a key point for about as long as the genre has been around. Usually as a tell of who the bad guys are. The idea is also common in science-fiction.

For pragmatic reasons, I think that for the sake of fleshing out interactions with the bad guys, there should eventually be some listing as to how such things are handled. In part, because of (yet more) intrigue campaigns where a player might want to bluff their way through "selling" one of their teammates as part of an infiltration. And such a deal does imply a nessacarily getting some Gold as a side effect... At which point the GM is left holding the ball of "how much do they actually get?"

On the opposite end, some players will gleefully start "anti-hero" campaigns... Or outright evil ones. Either one of which could involve buying slaves, either to set them free, or to act as conscripts in some war (justified or not).

Side note:

Mashallah wrote:

The "beat DC by 20 to stop making checks" feels very superfluous and pointless to be honest.

To be even theoretically able to beat DC by 20, you need to be able to pass the DC at a roll of 1.
And, at that point, you autosucceed every check anyway, so you wouldn't likely have to roll in the first place.

I would expect it to be possible to get large a large bonus based on preparation and intell gained ahead of time.

"It is the latest model of Abbadar Corp's Xilene series, with an artificial personality based an old holo-vid star filled with a database of popular culture. We've a complete bio on the owner and I'm working on a personality profile to help anticipate the most likely counter-measures. I'm going to try and hack his receiving records to see if I can't get more information.

Give me a bit more time and I should be ready!"

Something like that could give a bonus where you paid time ahead of time to customize the rig you bring in.

Why am I suddenly picturing things like small single use external drives that exist only to give a boosted performance for only one hour before burning out due to being Overclocked about 1000%?

Actually, something like that probably isn't too different in effect as a potion would be. I get the feeling if we played intrigue games more often, we'd be using potions for a similar purpose on specific skills. Probably to disable traps or to pick locks. Or... More likely given the need to get it right the first time... For fast talking your way out of, or into, a situation.

... Weirdly enough, I somehow imagine that drinking a potion of Charisma right before bluffing is probably going to raise a few eyebrows... But that's neither here nor there.

Mashallah wrote:

The "beat DC by 20 to stop making checks" feels very superfluous and pointless to be honest.

To be even theoretically able to beat DC by 20, you need to be able to pass the DC at a roll of 1.
And, at that point, you autosucceed every check anyway, so you wouldn't likely have to roll in the first place.

Don't forget one-time bonuses and the like, though, not to mention the possibility of special effects that lower this threshold. In most cases, you're probably right, but this does leave room open for a lucky roll using limited resources to make things even easier on you later.

Funny how "make things easier on you later" basically amounts to giving you the keys to straight up turn the whole complex the computer runs against its owner.

Assuming its the computer running the BBEG's base; At that point, you've hit the giant "I win" button on anything that's not a complete boss, or a counter-hacking operative. Assuming the computer isn't a glorified library that is. You can basically lock down all doors, set the turrets to fire at anything, and erase the tapes.

Then again, I'm probably not giving security experts the proper credit. They aren't likely to purposefully have ALL systems running off the same computer, or all sectors of a base doing so. That's like ASKING to be hacked. A BBEG's base should in theory have at least three separate computer systems for the turrets, another for physical access doors and personnel access, two separate grade computers for high and low grade information, and 2-4 counter-hacking operatives. Meanwhile, the "Rootfile" should be reconfigured to reset any possible "pre-meditated" intrusion attempts, AT LEAST once a week. Twice a week if they're cautious.

If the computer is archiving information or security that COULD change the fate of an entire planet... It also needs to be guarded by one very devoted "True AI". Preferably one created by Triune themselves if possible, like some kind of child gifted by the gods like something out of Wonder Woman.

All characters use their character level for their caster level for spell-like abilities, phrenic adept included.

Phrenic adept does NOT let you add your operative class levels to your caster level when multi classing into a spell casting class, which is what this thread is about, and thus the context of the question.

An operative 8 (phrenic adept)/mystic 2 using a phrenic adept spell-like ability has a caster level of 10th for that ability, since spell-like abilities are based on character level unless they say otherwise. Its caster level for mystic spells is 2nd. So the archetype does not let you use for operative level as part of your caster level for *spells* (which you only gain through multi classing), though they would count for the phrenic adept archetype.

Cool, that clears up my confusion. I had no idea that spell-like abilities work like that now. That actually seems like a more "unified caster level" than the actual unified caster level of casters.

Weirdly enough, this sounds to me like something that makes dips into classes with spell-like abilities at low levels even more attractive than dips into Classes with Spells as a caster.

Or conversely that dipping into literally any class while having Phrenic Adept on your main class is going to be more attractive. Like in the example you just showed.

It makes you adept with phrenics!

It's a class that adds spell-like mental powers, better access to some Psychic Power feats, and gives you some unique mental abilities.

If it adds "Spell-like mental powers", wouldn't the caster level for those abilities be that of the class the archetype its attached to?

Unless this is just a case of the new rules making a distinction between classes with Spell-like abilities and "Caster Classes".

Either way... I suddenly find myself remembering that Arcane Trickster was a thing in Pathfinder and wishing it was a thing here. I don't recall Prestige classes for Starfinder being discussed yet though. But that question could take up a thread of its own.

Damanta wrote:

Trees:

basic melee -> advanced melee
small arms -> long arms -> heavy weapon

Not sure if sniper weapons are in the tree somewhere though.

They are not. Owen mentioned that Sniper Rifles don't have a prerequisite. Also, there are Grenades as well that you can be proficient with.

Well, good to know. Sounds like my Technomancer shouldn't have a problem with going Sniper, the way I played Spellslinger.

... That is... If I wasn't already thinking of dipping or just straight multi-classing into Operative anyways for certain... Stealth Benefits. Or really, just a broader set of skills in general. Sort of a futuristic Arcane Trickster Build.

Now if only there was a way to make Operative levels count for Caster levels... Like.. Say... An Archtype. I wonder if that's what Phrenic Adept does. (Probably too much to hope.)

Funny how this became "Lets talk about the gap" time. To contradict David, if we're going by the "the gap exists to cover up the outcome of APs"; I have to say, wouldn't it stretch not from APs you've already played, but APs you've YET to play? For example, if you're a group of players who keep up with new APs, if should stretch from "whatever AP is currently out" to "last night during a universe wide bender on pangalactic gargleblasters".

I'm going to try and bring this back to Gods now... I find it nice that the "God of Evolution" Oras is CN. Nice; fits a lot of the stuff I'd like in a character that would embody my unrestrained ego. Though I imagine that probably may end up more Gurren Lagann than anything. Nice to see a god that values self improvement that ISN'T lawful for once. (Or if I'm forgetting a neutral one, then a Chaotic god.)

On the other hand, I have to wonder what alignment a god not of biological evolution, but societal evolution would be like. Granted, knowing some of the Pathfinder gods, its probably LN, but I want to poke at this question.

I've kind of figured, in the sort of "cycles" that govern the change of society; how it works tends to be one set of values is in charge (Law), a new set of values comes into being that conflicts with them (Chaos), which if they're better, they supplant the old values and become the new order (Law).

I've kind of imagined in a flight of fancy that an outsider that embodies such a process would possess both lawful and Chaos subtypes.

(... And... Somehow in trying to bring this back to core topic I pass straight through it and into another tangent.)

I feel like this new definition of Archetypes is probably one way to implement something similar to what I was hoping could be ported from Pathfinder: Bloodlines.
Archetype ability trades have the same number of abilities that can be traded out or in as how many Bloodline Powers per bloodline there are after all. Six abilities.

Will it happen like that? I don't know, but I've really been hoping that there'd be a way to add some of the more iconic bloodlines into Starfinder. But thinking this over, it might be a case that it's just something to homebrew up.

... That said, it seems like a ridiculously easy thing to homebrew. I imagine the first thing I'd do is Homebrew up a "Draconic" Archetype to allow me to play a Draconic Technomancer.... Or a Draconic Operative... Or even a Draconic Solarion.

Not sure what kind of book this would show up in if they actually did that though... the equivalent to Ultimate Magic? Advanced Player Guide? Ultimate Combat? Advanced Race Guide?

... Actually, I think that last one would probably get called "Xenology Unchained" for Starfinder... No idea why... But either way that's one tangent too far.

I am pleased by these reptilian space-warriors.

Cliches are cliches for a reason, and I can't wait to see what these guys make of kobolds (snacks, most likely).

At this point, I see the mere existence of humans and near humans in a fantasy story despite how unlikely that is, to be a cliché in itself. So I'd say you've got a point there.

Granted, I think the reason clichés are clichés like this, is mostly because it serves as a starting point. A point, usually intended to be quickly diverged from.

From a pen and paper game design standpoint, its practical to write cliché races, because players already have a habit of taking "normal" races, and then creating characters from them that go against type. (At least when they're not intentionally building from a stats perspective.)

As for Kobolds... There's a distinct lack of mention of "operatives" in the Vesk's description; while literally every other Class was mentioned. In light of that, they may see Kobolds as good hands to leave that job in... Assuming they're not the kind to dismiss it altogether. Which I'm fairly sure they wouldn't: combat infiltration is just as valuable a part in a military society as a warrior is, and just as likely to be involved in fights as a soldier is.

I can't say the Vesk won't see Soldiers as more honourable, or superior to operatives; since their society may favour honourable combat over pragmatic combat. But we already have historical examples of "honourable warrior cultures" employing the use of spies liberally, even while looking down on them. Most notably, japan. Heck, ninjas became the royal guard at some point.

---

As for my opinion on the Vesk themselves... I have no strong feelings. Kobolds were a unique take on a "reptilian race", and judging the Vesk by that standard is unfair. I also can't hold them to my own creative standards, since that would likely be unpractical (in the case of any "quadruped" races I could come up with, regardless of if its centaur like or not.)

Really, they're basically "Orcs on a Plane". Which honestly is probably a good baseline flavour for a race when your game is "Fantasy IN SPACE".

Luna Protege wrote:

As for Paizo inclusiveness, from the way they phrase it it strikes me as a largely PR move

So I think its a good decision, but I figure the reasons they're claiming it are mostly a bluff roll

Has it occurred to you that the people--especially the women/LGBT people--who make Starfinder and Pathfinder might care about inclusion because we've experienced being made to feel unwelcome in the very games we make because of our gender and/or orientation, and we want to make sure that it doesn't continue to happen to A) us, B) people like us, and C) people on other axes of marginalization?

I mean, we're not going to turn down good PR, certainly, but the idea that it's some sort of "bluff" to care about stopping things that have harmed many of us is strange.

I may have been reading too much into intention. I hadn't considered it from a personal angle, mostly just a pragmatic angle.

To expand on Jessica's excellent response above:

Luna Protege wrote:

As for Paizo inclusiveness, from the way they phrase it it strikes me as a largely PR move; a company inviting diversity has a minimal effect on the actual diversity of the community. The two major ways people get into the game are either because a friend invited them to play, or they were already interested and joined a random group. Thus its more important to make sure its a game people will be interested in and will recommend to their friends than it is to appeal to demographics at all.

Those might be two common (but not exhaustive) ways in which people first try the game, but diversity in the setting and iconic characters communicates which people then feel welcome once they do give the game a try. If a player doesn't see [m]any inspiring, heroic characters with whom she identifies, it's really easy to come away with the impression that the game isn't for her; it's for those people who do look like the heroes. It gets even worse if the game portrays people like her—in appearance, gender, ethnicity, mental faculties, etc.—as villains or uncivilized, conveying that people like her aren't there to be heroes; people like her instead represent negative foils to be laid low in the heroes' pursuit of glory and gold.

Paizo doesn't create diversity by waving a magic wand; it supports it by providing positive and diverse depictions of people from all walks of life so that everyone can have that moment of seeing Seelah, Reiko, Kyra, or Kess and say, "Wow, she's amazing—and I can be too." And if that helps people appreciate Pathfinder and Starfinder as games they "will be interested in and will recommend to their friends," diversity continues to grow. I and many of my coworkers have dealt with exclusion in one context or another, and we're committed to ensuring our games convey as welcoming and empowering experience as possible through our setting, our rules, and our artwork.

When you put it that way, it makes sense. However, a counterpoint is that when it comes to psychological and social influences, typically the more overt influences trump subtlety. The artistic representation of characters is something I'd consider "subtlety" in that regard.

I'm not claiming it has zero effect, just that shouting it from the rooftops makes it sound forced. Subtlety works best when its subtle.

Man I just wanted to talk about art, but we keep coming back to this so here I go.

Early last year, I got a game started with a bunch of cooks I work with. None of them have ever played D&D and only one person really had any fantasy experience, which was sleeping during The Hobbit.

This started because on a random day, while me and my sautee cook Condo were playing some Tekken, his son was looking through all of my D&D books and stuff. He's like REALLY into it and focuses, which is nice because I swear the kid is ADHD. Both him and his son are Haitian and his son has cornrows. This is important.

So while we are playing, suddenly, his son comes running in with my copy of D&D 5e (it was a gift Paizo, I swear! ;) ) and is getting all excited and s$!#. So he shows his dad the picture of 5e's fighter, pictured here, who looks like an older and more buff version of the son. And he's just hyper active, yelling about how it's him over and over again. So we get to talk about it, and the next day, Condo got his son and some of the other line cooks into our first D&D game.

The majority of the cooks were your typical South Floridians. Haitian, Cuban, Jamaican, one Mexican guy, and one white guy. And me, the Puerto Rican. And to all of them, they though it was nerdy white guy s@%+. But, they all played along, had fun, and we ended up running a bunch of adventures before I had to move. So at least for me, it worked out.

See, we are adults and are too busy being all cynical and grouchy, complaining about taxes and politics and comparing fiber amounts in different cereals. So we don't really feel that identification with characters and artwork. At least I don't, but I'm a crotchety prep cook that drinks too much. But the mind of a kid is different. They haven't been beat down and crushed by adulthood yet, so they approach things differently and attach themselves to art. I've run D&D for kids under 12, and it's always the same. The kids always attach themselves to artwork that reminds them of themselves. They don't really care about classes and feats and s~@% like that. Condo's kid wanted to play a fighter because he saw the art that reminded him of him. Same with my girl friend's friend's daughter, that wanted to play the Pathfinder cleric. She didn't give a f#~~ about spells and gods. She just wanted to play her because "she had pretty clothes."

And with my other coworkers, they thought that D&D was for "nerdy white guys." I know that not to be true. I've found plenty of people in the roleplaying game community that were cool and love bringing in everyone and anyone into their game. And in South Florida and here in Central Florida, there are gamers of all types. But sadly, there is that perception, usually from newer people that don't know much about RPGs or geekdom. It's a hard stereotype to shake and an unfair bad rap. So I feel any way to shake that preconception and bring in more people is fine by me.

I mean hell, I got a 60 year old dishwasher to play D&D thanks to that fighter. And she had absolutely zero experience with roleplaying. Anything is possible.

As anecdotal evidence goes, that's quite a good example of circumstances where it works... However, there's a key phrase used here that complicates everything here.

"Nerdy White Guy"

There are two things to break down in that phrase, one controversial, one less so... So let's start with the less controversial: Nerdy.

The word Nerdy is something that's impossible to get away from with any hobby; and if you consider the possibility of the people stating just that as their aversion to playing games like this, then its slightly easier to parse what their actual problem with trying it is. Given that current social trends actually facilitate nerdy pursuits, that leaves us with the most charitable reading of "I don't have time for hobbies"; either because they have other social engagements, or they have responsibilities that keep them from it.

Now for the other half: "White Guys". Or given how cliché it is to say that together, perhaps "White" and "Guys".

In the latter case of "Guys", I want you to consider the question of who's making the assumption that its a "game for guys"; anyone who's played a game like this for long with usually have played with at least one girl during that time, so they already know its not true. It's people who don't play the game who are assuming that, and since a man would have no reason to make that distinction... It has to be girls who don't play. Though even then, they have to be at least peripherally aware that girls play it too, to at least some degree of frequency.

The LEAST charitable reading of that would be "Eww, there are boys playing games? I don't want to play with boys, they have cooties". Though more charitable cases exist in manners such as Odraude laid out; visually minded, usually younger, who are quicker to try new things if they see themselves in it, rather than people in their mid teens to mid 20s or older who may be more prone to experiment for no other reason than because they can.

The remaining fragment: "White", largely has the same argument, just replace "boys" with "white". Though with the least charitable interpretation being even worse due to the currently politicised nature of that distinction. I'll leave that up to the imagination, its too soon to go down that rabbit hole.

I could be reading the whole situation wrong though, but I do want to make it known that somebody has to make a case against what would have been accusations of irresponsibility on creator's parts if they weren't taking the artistically diverse approach, and somebody has to make a case against accusations of malice or discrimination on the player community's part when no evidence exists and the accusations have largely come from those with no interaction with the community.

A really weird position to take, I'm sure. And I'm sure I'm not the best at making that case, but its better than not having one at all.

Now excuse me, I feel dirty from having muddied the discussion. Maybe this is why I should keep cynicism out of discussing anything I enjoy.