Michael J. Card's page

Michael J. Card wrote:

The player focused boon is great! Any news on whether Summon Monster will be SFS legal?

This blog wasn't the place to announce the specific Additional Resources update for Alien Archive. But rest assured that it's coming, along with sanctioning for Dead Suns #2, which I've sent off for final checks and to be posted. As for summoning, I guess you'll have to wait and see (and maybe be pleasantly surprised?)

I'm always pleasantly surprised :). Thanks for the reply!

The player focused boon is great! Any news on whether Summon Monster will be SFS legal?

Please also add it to the scheduling tool.

Yes, please. Especially since I just got my shipment notice for part 2 of Dead Suns...

That's a lot of table credit I won't be getting and sessions for players that won't be reported.

Freedom Snake wrote:

By mid October, our local players will have three tables waiting to be reported. Can we have some clarification as to wether or not this will be reportable by the time the next volume is released?

Make that 4

Make that 6.

If Warhorn is already on-board, all 6 parts of the adventure path are now offered as global scenarios, could Paizo please catch up?

So, all of the ways to deal nonlethal seem pretty superfluous if we only take into consideration the last damage dealt to a target.

We also have the Owen K.C. Stevens post from June which states we are not to track lethal and non-lethal damage separately.

So, if this is the intent of the way nonlethal damage works, why bother with it at all? The example of a 100hp character taking 99pts of nonlethal, and then dying to a single point of lethal seems counterintuitive to me.

So, I am going to stick with my interpretation, for now... if a character takes any amount of nonlethal damage (to hit points) then they are knocked unconscious instead of dying. If they take lethal damage after they are knocked out, then, sure, they are dying, but the last shot only rule seems way, way, way too arbitrary to me.

Also, from a game play standing, I really don't want to see Starfinder have to be murder hobos like many Pathfinder's were/are.

So many interpretations, hope we get a clarification.

There is one point where it seems a little ridiculous to say that if any amount of damage is non-lethal, they are unconscious but not dying.

That would be someone abusing the system, and saying, I'm going to deliberately jump off this 400 foot high cliff. He has +14 to acrobatics, and obviously passes the DC 15 check. So, that's 20d6 damage, but 1d6 is non-lethal. I'm sorry, but as a GM, I will always rule that someone jumping 400 feet down is dying. And probably completely dead due to the massive damage rule.

There are some environmental effects that deal lethal and non-lethal at the same time. This is one place where I see the idea of tracking the non-lethal, because for some of them, they impose a condition, and there is a rule stating that once the non-lethal amount of damage has been healed, the condition ends.

Other than that, in combat I agree with one of my players yesterday, who was saying, so what if someone knocks the her/him/it down to 1 hp with a pulsecaster pistol. If at that point I choose to stab him in the heart, they are dying. Or the reverse is true, if someone's been blasting him for lethal damage with a semi-auto pistol, and he/she/it is now at 2 hp, a taser shock with a pulsecaster for 4 is going to just knock them unconscious, but not dying.

StarSunrider wrote:

Michael J. Card wrote:

And for falling, should one jump, the first d6 is considered non-lethal, and if you do an Acrobatics check, you may be able to further reduce damage. So, if you were to jump a 40 drop and succeed at the Acrobatics check, you could say 0 for the first 10 feet 1d6 non-lethal for the next 10, but 2d6 lethal for the final twenty. If that reduces a character to less than 0 up, there was no point in adding the non-lethal damage to the rules.

So going to this specific example, and hopefully this will help-

If Rex the Half-Orc Barbarian goes beast mode and decides to jump onto a dragon's back- lets say the dragon is 10-feet below him. He jumps- but the dragon moves and now his fall is 50 feet.

The "first 10 feet" rule for jumping is generally assuming the character isn't crazy enough to jump further- but still handles the issue of "if things go awry" as in the dragon example.

10-ft non-lethal for the jump. 1d6
^- so the first 10 of 50 is non-lethal. BUT its 50 feet total, so its cumulative.
5d6

Those first ten feet being non-lethal don't really matter in the end. It's not so much the ratio, but the order.

If a 20 foot fall ended up reducing to zero, it would still be the same. That one lethal 1d6 is the character hitting the ground.

Or rather go to a real world example. I jump ten feet- I won't die but I'll be hurt. I jump 50 feet and it doesn't matter that I could survive those first ten feet, those last 40 are what will do me in.

So in short- yes, you are correct. There is no real point in considering those first 10 as non-lethal if the fall is more than 10 feet. The non-lethal falling rule is strictly for 10 foot falls, or instances where a fall can be considered as a 10 foot jump.

But fall damage is not dealt over time, it all occurs at the same time. If you have enough lethal damage to bring you to zero then yeah, counting the non lethal damage doesn't really matter. However, in a situation where the...

That ruling implies a character could choose to deliberately jump 400 feet down, and if they pass the DC 15 acrobatics check some of it is non-lethal, so they don't die. Or rather, that you are tracking both non-lethal and lethal at the same time and comparing both to the HP available and saying there was enough lethal to destroy the character on a 400 foot jump.

When I said tracking non-lethal was unnecessary the jumping example wasn't the best to choose. It seems to me that in the case of a deliberate jump, if one is only jumping 20 feet, they have a good chance of only taking non-lethal damage, but beyond that, they are risking death via the massive damage rule.

I'm more worried about some of the environmental effects that deal both lethal and non-lethal at the same time. In those cases, how does one determine which damage brought you to 0...

It's late and I'm enjoying this thread, but I'll have to surf through the rules tomorrow for a good example.

Katina,

Once again thanks so much. Great game, great customer service!

Kudos!

Just want to point out that my basic Core Rulebook is also damaged and I have now sent a second email with photos. I feel like a bit of a dullard for not noticing until this week's launch of the Edmonton Starfinder Society, as for my reading the rules I had only ever opened the Limited Edition. But I brought both to the first game so players could reference it as needed, and a player immediately pointed out the damage. It looks in perfect condition while closed, but once open, the damage is obvious.

Thanks!

Michael J. Card wrote:

Two sessions from now, I have some very experienced Pathfinder players at my Starfinder table so I want to be very rules prepared for that session.

You may want to warn them that Starfinder changes some of the base assumptions and mathematics of the game. If they treat it like PF, they may run into some issues and it may hinder their enjoyment of the game.

It's best to approach this as its own game, rather than Pathfinder in Space.

Absolutely. That was my first bit of administrative talk with players, that my fears that this would just be cut and paste Pathfinder with comma Space after everything, ended up totally unjustified. This is a new system, and I introduced myself as being as new to it as they were. No one cared, because fun was the ultimate goal.

My apologies if I came across as hostile, that was not my intent. :-)

No worries. My initial post was somewhat hostile, and I've never posted on these boards and had such a barrage of replies, and felt the general tone was hostile. I really didn't appreciate the person in the store interrupting me as I tried to immerse my players by describing the setting, introducing the Pact Worlds, Absalom Station, the concept of the Drift, etc, with a bunch of technicalities, because I knew my table was full of role players, not metagamers. So, yes, I probably came across as angry, because I was.

All the posts have made me change my mind as to my initial ruling, and in the end it didn't apply, since no one chose more than one profession. However, if they did that because of my incorrect ruling, I'll be giving them a mulligan next week on skill choices.

Two sessions from now, I have some very experienced Pathfinder players at my Starfinder table so I want to be very rules prepared for that session.

Once again, thanks for everyone's comments, I will apply the new rule as soon as we start again next week.

Michael J. Card wrote:

The hostility aside, I thank you all for your input, and will be changing my interpretation to what seems to be the correct one.

Any profession with a rank gets +3.

Don't take this the wrong way, but your initial post came across with some hostility in it due to your usage of "rules lawyer" and general tone.

It's pretty natural to meet hostility with hostility, though that doesn't make it right. It is however very human.

Very true. And once again, regardless of whether I misinterpreted your posts as hostile, I prefer my new interpretation of the rules. In the end, all I care about is did my players have fun. Yes, from Facebook feedback they sure as heck did. I only asked because if my interpretation of the rules was wrong, and ends up penalizing them, I want to change it ASAP.

If I misinterpreted the responses as hostile, I apologize. However, calling it a clear-cut issue when every player at my table asked for a ruling made me feel like I was being told I was an idiot. It is not clear-cut if everyone at the table can't find text stating a rule. For such rules heavy games, both Pathfinder and Starfinder, there is no official text about Profession as a class skill, other than the class descriptions saying that you get Profession (your choice) as a class skill.

That said, I am entirely about Society play. I play Pathfinder and GM Starfinder. I have no desire to short change my players due to a misinterpretation on my part, so everyone will be be informed of my mistake, and will go back through my PFS characters and add +3 where I short changed myself.

The hostility aside, I thank you all for your input, and will be changing my interpretation to what seems to be the correct one.

Any profession with a rank gets +3.

I see no rule in either Starfinder, the Starfinder FAQ, Pathfinder or Pathfinder FAQ that relates to the following issue that came up in our first Starfinder Society game tonight.

A few people arrived early to create characters, and selected an initial profession. Profession being a class skill, my interpretation has always been the +3 bonus only applies to your first profession, should you choose to have others.

However, a rules lawyer not involved in the game yelled from across the room that all professions are class skills. Seems a little overpowered to me. After getting home tonight and reviewing the rulebooks and FAQ's, I will be ruling next week that it's only your first choice that is a class skill. Unless someone posts to clear this up.

Thanks.

And so, we see several different GM interpretations of non-lethal damage. That's why I posted. The rules as written seem very clear that if the damage that reduces a character to 0 hp is non-lethal, they are stable and unconscious, but not dying.

Then the book, as written, includes environmental effects that deal lethal and non-lethal at the same time, and has checks associated with among others, the falling damage rules discussed above, it gets muddy as far as tracking damage or stability.

I prefer the interpretation that only the last damage dealt makes any difference, but this seems to be a situation where every GM is going to rule differently.

Any retailer may use the retail incentive program.

Registered retailers get free scenarios, base sets of the Adventure Card Game, and access to promotional materials.

Many thanks, Tonya!

Tomorrow is the first night of Starfinder here, and myself and my players are incredibly excited!

I just noticed that Incident at Absalom Station doesn't show up in the event reporting page on paizo.com. All the SFS adventures and quests are there, but there's no Starfinder Adventure Path that I can find, even though it's supposed to be legal and there are equivalent entries there for the PFS legal Pathfinder Adventure Paths.

Am I missing something? Are plays of the adventure path just not supposed to be reported, or is it just an oversight and it'll show up eventually?

Also, I'm sure it's on Paizo's to-do list to get the scenario listed for scheduling/reporting, but hopefully they will also notice that with the rules package for running Dead Suns 1 in SFS, there is a Chronicle Sheet, but no Reporting Sheet.

Easy enough to grab one from any other adventure and cross out the name, but still wanted to mention the oversight.

An area coordinator for the ACG originally told us that only retailers listed at http://paizo.com/paizo/about/retailers qualify for retailer incentive boons. As I have been made the area coordinator for Starfinder, and am running at two stores, one listed and one not, is his ruling correct? Reading the post it doesn't seem necessary to be listed, just that they are kind enough to offer us tables, and thus I encourage players to purchase Paizo products at said store. That said it's already on my to-do list to suggest that the second store join your list of retailers.

Thanks

For the SFS reporting sheets, what is supposed to be tracked in the Faction Boons box?

When reporting an event, there is no corresponding field to enter, and I want to be sure I don't have to backtrack months later to try and determine what should have been in that box.

Thanks

Your interpretation would almost infer that if any damage a character has taken is non-lethal, they are stable if reduced to 0 hp.

The rule simply states, when non-lethal damage would reduce you to 0 or fewer hit points, you are reduced to exactly 0 hp and fall unconscious, but you are stable instead of dying.

So my tracking of your example would be:

First 10 feet, 0 damage, 7 SP, 11 HP.
Second 10 feet, 6 non-lethal, 1 SP, 11 HP.
Final 20 feet, 12 lethal, 0 SP, 0 HP.
The damage that reduced him to 0 was lethal, he is not stable, he is unconscious and dying.

If he started a 20 foot jump with 0 SP, and 4 HP, and rolled a 6 for the second 10 feet of damage, this would be non-lethal damage reducing him to 0, thus he is stable at 0 hp.

My Limited Edition Core Rulebook arrived August 11th, and I noticed the spine damage right away. I've sent 3 emails to customer service (the first August 12th with photos of the faulty binding), and have received no acknowledgement whatsoever.

Seems that posting in this forum gets quick responses, so hopefully someone can check into this.

Thanks.

Thurston Hillman wrote:

So a person completing all 5 quests should receive: 720 credits, 1 XP, 2 Fame/Reputation, Starfinder Insignia, and Hero of the Stars.

Yes, that seems easy enough, and I've done the math. However, the scenario specifally says no boons can be slotted. If no faction boon is in the faction slot, no players receive Fame/Reputation for the quest.

My players will be gaining faction and reputation. I hope that Paizo clears this up.

The 5 part quest, Into the Unknown, gives Fame/Reputation for completing each quest. However, the Adventure says you do not get to slot any boons for for these quests.

Without a faction boon, available on character creation, you shouldn't gain any Fame/Reputation.

For my SFS games, I will be allowing people to gain fame and reputation for their initial Faction.

Is this correct?

There must be a point to tracking non-lethal damage in game. Could anyone point out what it is?

I understand that if damage that is dealt to you that reduces you below 0 hit points is non-lethal, you are unconscious and stable. However, my concerns arise from the following:

Many environmental effects deal both lethal and non-lethal damage. In such a case, since even non-lethal damage subtracts from the same pools of SP and HP, how should one determine whether the final damage has a PC dying or stable?

And for falling, should one jump, the first d6 is considered non-lethal, and if you do an Acrobatics check, you may be able to further reduce damage. So, if you were to jump a 40 drop and succeed at the Acrobatics check, you could say 0 for the first 10 feet 1d6 non-lethal for the next 10, but 2d6 lethal for the final twenty. If that reduces a character to less than 0 up, there was no point in adding the non-lethal damage to the rules.

I feel I'm missing something...

Starfinder is upon us, and the Edmonton Starfinder Society is blasting off... Starting Friday, August 25th, we will be hosting a get together to discuss the new rules system and roll characters. This will be held at The Adventurers Guild at 153rd and Stony Plain Road from 5:30-10:30 pm.

Following this, weekly tables are scheduled at TAG every Friday evening, and more will be added at Mission Fun & Games in St. Albert, as well as Sundays at Warp 1 Comics & Games on Whyte Avenue.

Please register on Warhorn if interested:
https://warhorn.net/events/yeg-sfs

Email me at SFS.YEG@gmail.com with any questions...

Thanks for the responses, figured using any Cleric name would be fine, but my event organizer wanted me to check.

The deck is really not ideal for Drelm (I had in fact thought there were no Abadars), but I think he'll be interesting.

For our upcoming Mummy's Mask Season I am thinking of adding Drelm to my Cleric deck. Registering a Cleric character only gives the 4 names from the class deck. What is considered proper protocol in this situation?