Celestial GM's page

If I'm using a magic sling with the Sling Flail feat (from Ultimate Combat), does it count as a magic flail? Would a +1 flaming burst sling get treated as a +1 flaming burst flail?

If a sling is loaded with adamantine (or cold iron or alchemical silver or whatever) shot, does the Sling Flail feat allow it to be used as an adamantine (or cold iron or alchemical silver or whatever) flail?

Doktor Archeville wrote:

(Amusing observation: if a Mechanic with an Exocortex spent all their Exocortex Mods on Armor Slots, and all their 14th+ level Mechanic Tricks on Extra Mods (Armor Slots), they'd end up with EIGHT Armor Slots in their body. Nine if they're also an Android.)

pg. 77 wrote:

Your drone gains an armor upgrade slot for an armor upgrade (see page 204). If you do not already have an armor upgrade to install, you must purchase one separately. You can install the armor upgrade only if your drone has enough open upgrade slots to meet the upgrade’s requirements. You can select this mod up to four times, each time adding an additional slot.

Currrses....

(But I totally get there being some limit.)

A related question: if a Mechanic with an Exocortex takes Armor Slot as one (or more) of their Exocortex Mods, is there a limit on the type of Armor Upgrades they can take? I could see not allowing Power Armor-only Armor Upgrades.

(Amusing observation: if a Mechanic with an Exocortex spent all their Exocortex Mods on Armor Slots, and all their 14th+ level Mechanic Tricks on Extra Mods [Armor Slots], they'd end up with EIGHT Armor Slots in their body. Nine if they're also an Android.)

I just redid a shirren exocortex mechanic (I was trying to do too many things) into a... combat medic(!). Scholar theme with Life Science/xenobiology; Skill Focus (Medicine) from the exocortex; ranks in Computer, Culture, Life Science, Medicine, Perception, Physical Science, and Survival*; Medical Expert at 1st and probably Skill Synergy (Medicine and Survival) at 3rd; will probably get a lot of use out of a needler rifle delivering doses of analgesic (to make creatures flat-footed) and/or sedative (extra, granted non-lethal, damage).

*- a mechanic with no ranks in Engineering? Heresy! (j/k)

This is pretty much what my first Mechanic character is (heavily inspired by characters from James White's SECTOR GENERAL series), except mine's a Damaya Lashunta with the Xenoseeker Theme, and had Diplomacy instead of Survival. Bypassing power relays and coronary bypasses aren't _that_ different, right? The combat tracker originally started as a cluster of sensors to track the vital signs of the patient they were working on. I'm toying with the idea of making them averse to magical healing, seeing it as "cheating" ("I had to spend eight cycles in medical school and another five in residency, but you just woke up one day knowing how to heal people with a wave of your primary manipulators and some mumbled words?! Well, la dee dah!") or untrustworthy ("Do you even know where that power’s coming from? The long-term side effects?").

My second Mechanic's going to be a Scholar (or maybe another Xenoseeker) Shirren with a Hover Drone, inspired by characters from Dave Schroeder's XENOTECH SUPPORT series. The drone started out as their smartphone/personal comm unit, but they kept upgrading it. First some custom smart searches and idiom interpreters, later some autonomy features so it could take initiative on some things (ex.: accesses local net for any publicly available blueprints and maps when entering a building, or looks up restaurants similar to ones they've liked when visiting a new city, all without being instructed to do so). Later they realized the system'd evolved into a true (weak) AI in it, when the phone began to express its own opinions and ask for things, like mobility and manipulators. So they started building a drone body around it.

According to the RAW, it seems both Basic and Advanced Medkits are unlimited use items, since no Capacity or Charge is listed. Obviously you wouldn't be using up the instruments (you'd just need to clean/disinfect the forceps and probes and scalpels and whatnot after each use), but what about the bandages and antiseptics and other chems/meds?

In PATHFINDER, a Healer's Kit is exhausted after 10 uses. Was a similar limit meant to apply to STARFINDER's medkits? Or is the Science!/technology in STARFINDER such that the medkits can rebuild/regenerate their stores of consumables (antiseptic, bandages, etc.) over time?

What would be a good guideline for allowing a Mechanic's Custom Rig to allow you to always count as having the appropriate tool or basic kit for any Medicine skill check you attempt (i.e., to act as a Basic Medkit)? Pay 110% the price of a Basic Medkit, like adding the function of some other device/scanner to a Personal Comm Unit?

(Character concept: a medic whose personal custom cybernetic upgrades intended for medical use turn out to have some non-medical functions [Mechanic w/ Exocortex]. The scanners used to track patient vitals can also track a target in combat. Memory module contains xenobiological info on dozens of alien species. And, really, is bypassing a power relay that different from a coronary bypass? It's Bones AND Scotty! Or Bashir AND O'Brien.)

A Mechanic's Custom Rig "can be configured to take up an upgrade slot on your armor or can be installed as a cybernetic augmentation system in your brain (though it can be combined with a datajack for the same price as installing a datajack normally), your eyes, or an arm" or you can "configure it to be a handheld device, meaning that you must retrieve it and hold it to use it effectively," and "while using this rig, you always count as having the appropriate tool or basic kit for any Computers or Engineering skill check you attempt."

If it’s a handheld device, I imagine it's either a small pouch (or utility belt) of custom tools, or something like The Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver. If it's a cybernetic augmentation in the arm, I'd picture it as an Inspector Gadget-esque bionic limb that has built-in tools that can emerge as needed. If it's an armor upgrade slot, I'd see it as some combination of those, like when some random tool pop out of Iron Man's armor.

But what about when it's a cybernetic augmentation in the brain or eye? Connecting via the USB port in your neck or a line-of-sight wireless access is good for hacking, sure, but repairing and building items, for disabling technological traps or mechanical locks?

I usually get that message when the download fails to complete. The current size of that Pregens file is slightly over 90 MB. If your file is smaller than that, you might not have it all.

That seems to be it -- I just tried downloading it again, and the download cut off at around 35 MB.

Switched to a different browser -- was using Opera, switched to Firefox -- download worked fine there. Huzzah!

Doktor Archeville wrote:

I'm using WinZip. I just tried again with a fresh download, it's still giving me the "these files cannot be unzipped" message.

What OS?

Windows 7.

This is the first time I've ever had any problems with a Paizo download. And it's just this product: I got the Starfinder Society RP Guide today, too, and it unzipped without any problems.

Doktor Archeville wrote:

I can't get any of these to open. I've tried downloading this three times over the past hour and a half, none work.

What are you using to try to open the file? I've been able to unzip the file and open all of the PDFs in Acrobat.

I can confirm mussary's report though that the individual files for each level of mystic actually contain the mechanic's character sheets.

I'm using WinZip. I just tried again with a fresh download, it's still giving me the "these files cannot be unzipped" message.

I can't get any of these to open. I've tried downloading this three times over the past hour and a half, none work.

Flair for the Flair Throne!
Bling for the Bling God!

I assume it's because there will probably be vehicle-grade and ship-grade weapons that are super unbalanced in non-vehicle/ship combat and you know there are gonna be those players that use the most obscure combination of spells and abilities to summon orbital cannons and one-shot every major encounter because 'the rules don't say I can't!'

I thought that might be the case, but then I thought that vehicle-grade weapons would probably be in the Bulk 15-20 range (if not much bigger), and by the time you're level 15-20, vehicle-mounted weapons won't be that different from what you can wield as a personal weapon (like the Mach III Swoop Hammer which does 14d10 bludgeoning & fire + knockdown on a crit, or the Dimensional Slice Curve Blade which does 12d10 slashing + 6d6 bleed on a crit, both 20th level weapons).

This is the first I can recall seeing "bulk," which I'm guessing will be used in the encumbrance system instead of pounds/kilograms, taking an items size as well as weight into accounts. I can dig it.

So on the Fabricate Arms ability, why is it a flat 10 on the limit of the item's bulk, and not tied to the character's level (so higher level = bulkier items created)? You can't take this until level 5, so the minimum bulk for any item you make would be 5 -- would there be that many weapons or suits of armor with a bulk between 5 and 10, or a bulk of 11+, that would make this ability unbalanced?

"Well, if it was up to me, I'd let ya go, but I gotta consult my partner here."

"01001001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 01010011 01100011 01101111 01110101 01110100 00101110"

"Welp, ya heard 'em, it's off to the acid mines with ya."

So this gets me thinking: will transhumanism (transmortalism?) be a thing in Starfinder?

BLOB RACE BLOB RACE BLOB RACE! Bring back Dralasites/Plasmoids.

Kaiju, Mogaru (p. 170)

Shouldn't he have the Amphibious special quality? From the write-up, it appears that he sleeps underwater (Water sub-type), but wrecks cities on the surface (needs to breathe air).

I don't believe so: "Creatures with the water subtype always have swim speeds and can move in water without making Swim checks. A water creature can breathe underwater and can usually breathe air as well."

Two suggested rules changes for Lycanthropes:

1) For lycanthropes where the base animal is an aquatic creature, the hybrid form has the aquatic subtype and the amphibious special quality.

2) Lycanthropes in Hybrid form get the Speed and movement types of both the base creature and the base animal.
Ex.: a human wereshark has a Speed of 30 ft., Swim 60 ft.
(This already sorta seems the case, since werebats in hybrid form have a Fly speed, and werecrocodiles in hybrid form have a Swim speed. Was omitting the Swim speed from weresharks in hybrid form a typo?)

Lycanthropes

Lycanthropes in hybrid form have the Speed of the base creature (that is, the base humanoid).

The wereshark does not have a Swim speed in hybrid form, since the base creature (human) does not have a Swim speed.

But the werebat in hybrid form does have a Fly speed, and the werecrocodile in hybrid form has a Swim speed.

Either werebats and werecrocodiles should lose their Flight and Swim speeds in hybrid form, or the wereshark should gain a Swim speed in hybrid form, and the template changed so that lycanthropes in hybrid form have the speeds of both the base creature and base animal.

Ah, my mistake, I apologize.

A divisor is just a multiplier that is less than 1. You should be able to apply the exact same rule:

PRD wrote:

When you multiply damage more than once, each multiplier works off the original, unmultiplied damage. So if you are asked to double the damage twice, the end result is three times the normal damage.

So if you're applying two x1/2 multipliers the final multiplier is:

0.5 + (0.5 - 1) = 0

I don't think that would be the case, because that would mean you multiply the DC by 0, which means my Ninja could make infinitely high vertical leaps (well, limited by her movement rate).

So when you apply two or more multipliers to a roll, the multipliers are not multiplied by one another. Instead, you combine them into a single multiplier, with each extra multiple adding 1 less than its value to the first multiple. For example, if you are asked to apply a x2 multiplier twice, the result would be x3, not x4.

I would assume the same applies to divisors.

So if a 10th level Ninja with at least 1 point in her Ki pool (which reduces the DC of all Acrobatics rolls to jump by 1/2, and she's treated as always having a running start for jumps) also has the High Jump Ninja Trick (which reduces the DC for all high jumps by half), the end result is that the DC for a high jump is reduced to 1/3rd normal, not 1/4 normal. (So a 15 foot vertical leap would be DC 20.)

Correct?

I am aware, which is why I'm not using Combat Trick twice, I'm using Style Master and Combat Trick for those feats.

What action is it to use the Forgotten Trick Ninja Trick? Is it a swift action, like the base uses for the Ki Pool?

Can the Forgotten Trick trick be used multiple times? Or can it only be activated one at a time?
For example, could -- Ki Pool permitting -- a Ninja (with 5 ranks in Acrobatics & Perform/Dance) use Forgotten Trick for Unarmed Combat Training (to gain Improved Unarmed Strike), use Forgotten Trick the next round for Style Master (to gain Janni Style), then use Forgotten Trick the next round for Combat Trick (to gain Janni Tempest)?

The TV Tropes Pathfinder page has this which may give an idea of which language to use for assorted cultures:

Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Absalom is Jerusalem. Amanandar is Hong Kong. Andoran is the early United States. Brevoy and Iobaria are medieval Russia. Dtang Ma is Thailand. The Erutaki are Inuit. The Forest of Spirits is ancient Japan, by way of Princess Mononoke. Galt is revolutionary France. Hongal is Mongolia. Hwanggot is Korea. Iblydos is ancient Greece. Irrisen is the fairy tale version of Russia (complete with Baba Yaga!). Katapesh is Arabia. Kelesh is Persia. The Lands of the Linnorm Kings are Scandinavia. Lung Wa and its many Successor States are China. Minata is Indonesia and the Philippines. Minkai is Japan and so is Shokuro. The Mwangi Expanse is Darkest Africa. Ninshabur is Babylon. Osirion is Egypt. Qadira is also Arabia (with some Persian influences). The Arcadians are Native Americans, and so are the Shoanti (though the Shoanti are also influenced by Robert E. Howard's Picts). Sarusan is Australia. Taldor is the Byzantine Empire. Ustalav is fantasy Transylvania. The Varisians are the Roma (Gypsies). The Varki are Sami (native Finnish). Vudra is India. The Wall of Heaven is Nepal. Xa Hoi is Vietnam. Zi Ha is Tibet.

I looked into the Alchemist, but it seems rather unsatisfactory how you need to jump through hoops to produce things that do stuff to things which are not you. It also breaks my suspension of disbelief a little to have a daily limit for that sort of thing, which Alchemists do with their extracts.

The tiny devices have delicate clockwork mechanisms that cannot (easily) be rewound in the field, or are powered by batteries/crystals that run out quickly and require a lengthy recharge time?

Anyone?

(And, yes, my first sentence in my original post should be "long-time lurker, first-time poster".)

On a related note, Metamagic feats cannot be applied to Alchemist Extracts, can they?

I would think that at the very least they could take Craft Construct (for Homunculi and Alchemical Golems). And, if not that, the RAW does have the Master Craftsman feat, so they could use their ranks in Craft (Alchemy) as their caster level for Craft Magic Arms & Armor and Craft Wondrous Item.

(I'm also playing a Vivisectionist -- Vivisectionist/Beast Form, actually -- and have been wondering this same thing!)

Long-time lurker, long-time poster, finally playing my first Pathfinder game tonight. Planning on making a human Alchemist (Beast Form or Vivisectionist variant; I think I could actually do both), and I have a question.

Is there a way to make it so the Discoveries an Alchemist has -- specifically, form-altering ones, like Mummification, Preserve Organs, Tentacle, Vestigial Arm, and Wings -- only manifest when your Mutagen is active? Perhaps it's the remake of SPIDER-MAN coming out, but I'm hung up on the image of a one-armed human Alchemist who, when using his Mutagen, gains Vestigial Arm (effectively replacing the lost limb) and Tentacle (acting as a prehensile tail)...

(I was also thinking of pursuing the Master Chymist PrC, but I've seen posts here indicating it has some problems synergizing with Alchemist levels for Discoveries learned and Mutagen duration.)