Harveyopolis's page

Okay awesome guys, I think I got it now :)

Your character usually acquires access to equipment from the society in 4 ways:

It's on a chronicle sheet. You were the one that brought the item in for study, so you can buy it back once they’re done studying it in between adventures.

It's on the always available list. The society will let any members, including their most junior, buy mundane and alchemical weapons, armor and gear made of normal and special materials (other than dragonhide), alchemical equipment, scrolls and potions of first level spells.

You can spend 1 or 2 pp to buy an item worth up to 150 or 750 gp. Many adventurers use their first two PP to purchase a wand of cure light wounds or infernal healing this way. Even if they can’t cast it themselves, they can hand it to someone who can. This way, you pay for your own healing, even if someone else is operating your wand.

And most importantly, Fame. You can buy any legal item from the society that you meet the fame score for. (See the chart in the guide.) As you adventure your fame grows, and the society is more willing to open their vaults or have their craftsmen make items just for you. This means that if you have a character concept that requires a flaming, shocking, mithril kusarigama you don’t need to pray that you find one on the chronicle, you can get it made. Your purchase limit USUALLY exceeds the amount of gold on hand. While chronicle sheet loot looks very important, in practice only rare items, partially charged wands, and items you can’t normally buy (like an elven cloak of resistance) really matter.

Thank you friend, but those are the rules in the Pathfinder Society Guild guide. The Starfinder Society Guild guide has slightly different wording (and possibly mechanics, which I am still confused about :P)

But it does bring up a point of reference. With Pathfinder Society you have two pools of items you can use your gold to buy from (again I'm not going to worry about how Prestige or Starfinder's Fame works into this because it's not really what I'm confused about). You can buy items from your Chronicle sheets, and then buy items that have a gold limit relative to your Pathfinder Fame (as a side note it's a little annoying they call Starfinder's equivalent of Prestige, Fame because that isn't confusing at all).

So I'll kind of reiterate the question again, does Starfinder only have the one pool items you can use credits to buy from (the Always Available item pool) or do your Chronicle Sheets count as a separate pool of items you can buy from (while factoring in that they contribute in a way to the Always Available item pool)

So if I understand correctly, Always Available items are the only available items? (Not counting Fame, which is I wasn't confused about hence why I left that part out of the OP)

Hello friends I am a bit confused, so perhaps you can help me out with this.

So in the guild guide it says for Always Available Items:

You may always purchase the following items or equipment as long

as you’re in an appropriate settlement (see above).

• All equipment listed in the Starfinder Core Rulebook with an
item level equal to your character level + 1.
• All equipment listed in sanctioned Starfinder content with an
item level equal to your character.
• Any equipment listed on your character’s Chronicle sheets
with an item level equal to your character level + 2.
• All items and services purchased with Fame.

but in the following paragraph it says:

Beyond the gear noted above, your character is restricted to

purchasing additional items either from his accumulated Chronicle
sheets

The use of beyond confuses me. So does that mean that the above items are Always Available, but in addition to that you can buy items from your chronicle sheet?

If so, does that mean you can buy items from your chronicle sheets regardless of item level and that simply items = to your character level + 2 that are on your chronicle sheet are Always Available? (hence you wouldn't have a limit of how many you can buy?)

** spoiler omitted **

Aww yeah! Bingo, I have all of thise! It's super helpful for us GMs when you guys post this.

A little off topic but I'm more interested in how Triaxus doesn't become a big ball of ice when it gets to the furthest end of its orbit from the sun. (And yes for the love of the gods I know this is Science-Fantasy)

Hello friends. I'd like to pose a question to the floor. Do you feel that the schedule for Season 1 appears to have too many Tier 3-6 scenarios?

I ask because I'm the primary organizer of SFS in my area and I'm finding myself running out of Tier 1-4 scenarios to run (without having to run the same scenario over) and have at the moment maybe 3 players in the area that actually are level 3. Granted I know that if EVERY player makes it to every game they'd be within the 3-6 tier by now but most players I run for generally don't make it to every game.

It looks to be pretty ambitious on Paizo's part to have as many 3-6 tier scenarios slated as they do in Season 1 but I honestly don't see the need to have so many in a system that is just starting out. Especially since some of the later ones are slated to be 5-8, so there's even less space for the 1-4 Tier.

So what do y'all think on this? Does Season 1 have too many 3-6 Tier scenarios?

I fall into the "normal parties aren't even really that morally good if you thinl about it so why does having a goblin in the party bother you so much when you have a half orc barbarian smashing everything and a rogue stealing everything that isn't nailed down camp."

I mean they're called murder hobos for gods' sakes. If a goblin isn't that then I don't know what is.

Leedwashere wrote:

eddv wrote:

And for like the third time I really need to object to the name Thievery for rogue skills. Just call it something else.

Yes. Please. Thievery has too much of a negative connotation. Those skills have perfectly legitimate uses, too. I don't want a black cloud hanging over the whole skill set unnecesarily.

Yes, we can't have your PCs, who have just killed 50+ people and robbed their dead bodies, accused of something as demeaning as... thievery!

By a class called the rogue no less.

The writers are KILLING IT on loyalty bonuses for those who've paid attention to the NPCs and lore breadcrumbs along the way. I'm so impressed and absolutely loving my time in SFS.

Agreed, I absolutely love how each scenario either calls back to an old one or helps set up a future one. I don't think I can count a single scenario (besides maybe the first one) that doesn't call back to at least one another scenario. I love it, it's great.

I admit I haven't played them but I keep seeing Legendary Planets and Redshirts as decently reviewed adventures on DriveThruRPG. The former seems to be a series of planet settings coupled with a tied-in adventure. Had I the time, I'd definitely check them out, but alas I'm hunkered in with my own homebrew campaign and SFS.

Definitely the modular character customization. One reason why I didn't convert to 5e was that every Fighter played the same. I've always liked Pathfinder's "here's a bunch of options, dig through them and build the character you want" approach. I want a simpler version of that where you don't have to have a billion feats to do one cool thing.

Jason Bulmahn wrote:

I want to point out one subtle point here that really changes the dynamic. In PF1 if you were at death's door, (16 Con fighter at -15) and you got healed to 5 hp by a spell, you would indeed get right back up and be in danger of going down again with almost any hit.

In PF2 that same healing effect would put you up to 20 (because we don't do negatives). Once you made the save to get up, you would stand a much better chance of staying up for at least a hit or two, giving you the time needed to get some more healing if needed. We want you to feel the pressure of being so close to death that it alters your actions and the actions of the other characters around you. When an ally is critically hurt, we want the narrative to respond.

Shouldn't a certain amount of healing also provide a "smelling salts" effect?

In most cases you can force someone back into consciousness, I would think that getting healed for a large amount would do this and not require another save a round later... Maybe a free save when the healing hits with a bonus on your roll for every 10hp healed??

Bam I'm down dying 1.. my cleric buddy hit me with HEAL and I'm full health with no conditional ailments but I can't regain consciousness because I keep rolling a 2.... Ludicrous.

I think at this point it'd be a good reminder to point out that each round is only six seconds. It's not really all that unreasonable to assume that one character might take 12 or even 30 seconds (though it'd really suck if you failed THAT many rolls) to come to after your body is literally just knitted back together from mortal wounds.

Harveyopolis wrote:

I'm not a huge fan of the +level to your modifier, but I think an easy fix could be had. Just make the amount your level contributes to your modifier based on your proficiency rank? For examples Trained would grant 1/4 of your level, Expert 1/3, Master 1/2 and then Legendary for the full level which at that point would be a reasonable thing. It makes the proficiency ranks matter a whole lot more, while still keeping more or less the same balance.

Let's say a character is lvl 12.

By your option, trained would grant you +3, expert +4, master +6, and legendary can't be an option at that level.

What did you achieve?

The spread between characters at the same level is roughly the same (only master gets an extra +1), but now a lvl 12 expert and a lvl 2 expert are almost the same.

Well I meant that it'd change your character's level portion of your proficiency bonus. So in the lvl 12 character example a lvl 12 character has a total of +12 to a skill that is trained. In my system that lvl 12 would have +3 to a skill that they are trained (1/4 of their level). That seems to be a far more reasonable bonus to a character that is only 'pretty familiar' with a skill (and then add their ability modifier on top of that). However if that lvl 12 character was an expert they would have +5 (+1 for being expert, +4 because of level). Master would be +8 (+2 for being master, +6 because of level). It just makes the proficiency rank matter the most, which makes sense.

With the current system: a trained lvl 12 character gets +12, an expert +13, a master +14. So there's only a +2 difference between a master and a trainee (which makes no sense). Now there's a +5 difference between that master and trainee. It may be a small difference but it makes investing in a skill matter just that much more. Also, depending how the DCs are designed, having general overall skill bonuses might be helpful because we might just run into the "it's impossible to fail" problem with 1e when everyone's getting a +12 to pretty much every skill.

I'm not a huge fan of the +level to your modifier, but I think an easy fix could be had. Just make the amount your level contributes to your modifier based on your proficiency rank? For examples Trained would grant 1/4 of your level, Expert 1/3, Master 1/2 and then Legendary for the full level which at that point would be a reasonable thing. It makes the proficiency ranks matter a whole lot more, while still keeping more or less the same balance.

This: Keep it backwards compatible.

Starfinder isn't. 2.0 won't be.

That: Done.

Off-topic Have you read the Starfinder Core Rulebook? There's literally a chapter about porting Pathfinder content to Starfinder rules. I do it all the time.

Coincidentally on topic:

Please: Make 1e Pathfinder content in some way compatible with 2e, like in Starfinder. There's a whole wealth of monsters that I would love to work with in a simpler streamlined system.

Please Don't: Remove character options or customizability. One thing I disliked about 5e was that every fighter played the same, and so on. I want to have the same depth of character customization just with a cleaner rule set.

What scenarios are you playing...?

In my experience Pathfinder Society / Starfinder Society is painfully easy. I mostly GM (10 games with PF and 8 with SF, so I'm not SUPER experienced) and I can still count on one hand the amount of players I've downed (with no where near a risk of death with the wealth of healing items at the players' disposal) and I had only one character death (due to a ridiculous set of rolls but the player was only playing a stand in pregen character for a group of 3 and didn't have a registered character).

I also might suggest that if you stuck with a character beyond level 1 or 2 you'll find yourself able to progress. I'm not trying to be factitious here but I think part of your problem is not committing to your characters.

I do agree that the lack of options can be really restrictive, but a good GM will improvise ways to allow for other options to work. As for the non-linear complaint, well, sadly Society scenarios aren't the place to go off the rails.

Finally with point 4, I think the point of a scenario is to have fun. If you or your group are looking at it as a way to farm experience or loot then I don't think you're going into Society play with the right mindset. The whole idea is to have a good time, not get the most loot.

I have a question about the Chronicle sheets. What's the purpose of having Mk 1 Healing Serums with a limit of 3 on the sheet when that is something a player can typically buy any amount of because they're Always Available? Is there something about items on Chronicle Sheets that I'm missing?

Mysterious Stranger wrote:

The Archeologist bard is a magical rogue. Their spell list has many utility spells that further boost their ability for trickery and deceit. Instead of combat spells they have illusion and enchantment, but that actually works better. Being able to go invisible, teleport and turn gaseous makes for an almost unstoppable thief. Combine Heroism with Archeologist Luck and lingering performance and they become the ultimate skill monkey.

Does he get sneak attack?

Im looking for a rogue mage like that the magus is a fighter mage, so I want a combat rogue mage who can also have other areas of expertise.

But all in all we are getting close to what seems like most character classes are covered

I do like the idea of a couple more steam punk like characters to go along with the gun slinger

Not Pathfinder, but IIRC correctly, D&D 3.5 had the Beguiler class, which was essentially a magic rogue. Porting that over shouldn't be too difficult.

More plants, more magical beasts, more dragon subtypes (especially lower CR Dragons, something similar to Spawn of Tiamat from D&D 3.5)

More template grafts. And also some alternate racial traits for some aliens just so you can customize some of the entries without having to build the whole damn thing yourself.

Also, if there's room, some more NPC load-outs.

Maybe Eoxians can be called "Skinnies" or "Gaunts" (since they're obviously rather skinny being undead and all)

Nuars could be "Hornies" (if you want to be crass :P) otherwise you could just call 'em "Rams" (they more or less look like 'em)