RPG Superstar 8 Season Star Voter. Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber. Organized Play Member. 159 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 1 alias.
So the last year was a mess, but this project did not die. A local playtest happened during the year and is still going. Due to it the initial campaign setting book is getting a revision. My project partner who was working on art is actually going through some issues with his vision. With luck the new doctor will find the problem and restore enough for him to draw again.
In the mean time I've decided to do an artless initial release of the campaign setting primer. I haven't actually decided how to distribute this or if it'll even will even cost anything. Hints of it are posted in the ongoing obsidian portal campagin.
The first book for this setting, which is much like it's version of the inner sea primer, has a completed first draft. Without art it's 5300 words and 8 pages. It hasn't even been run by a copy-editor yet. Some of the people I've talked to about art have provided sketches of race entries, however I'm still waiting on drafts of other art needed.
How many would be interested in a very very advanced reader copy that would raise funds for art and publication?
This is not dead, but slow moving. Here's a minor update.
Some of the dates have been adjusted, but not in any way that would undo what little I've posted. The locations with the most focus are starting to develop into something detailed enough that you can feel real setting, but flexible enough for GMs to go where they wish.
Also, the star system itself is intentionally not as hyper developed as some other settings that have already appeared. This is intentional, it is a setting with some room for very open sandbox in some areas, and still have areas that are foundations for "themepark" games as well.
Your husband is spot on here. 5e does have an SRD by the way, but WOTC only made one of each 3rd level option open. Which is bummer, but does not make it unplayable.
Yah, I saw it, but it was soooo tiny, covered so little.. like, it doesn't seem to cover any of the newer books, whereas PF1's OGL stuff covers so much. 5e's SRD only covers the Life domain for Cleric, and High Elf subtype for elfies. That's good if I want to play that, but what if I wanted to be a dark elf or wood elf cleric of .. some other domain?
PF1's SRD has fallen behind the last few books, but the new materials (like Ultimate Wilderness) are still OGL. Paizo's just slacking on updating the web page. They'll show up there eventually.
Have you checked http://www.5esrd.com/ or www.d20pfsrd.com I don't know about their 5e stuff but the John and the team keep the pfsrd pretty complete and up to date.
When you design an enemy that's meant to last more than one turn how do you make sure they have enough.....
I will confess I am a lazy GM but... I don't design enemies to any specific combat goals.
I throw together their capabilities according to their theme and target CR and cut them loose to let the dice fall where they may.
I also refuse to spend more than half an hour prepping per session of gameplay.
I used to do this, and the only thing fun about it for players was when the fight went there way, which was not always what you'd expect.
When a "the party is supposed to win" CR target at APL-3 was risking a TPK because of bad dice rolls, things were bad.
When a CR APL+3 boss fight was won in the surprise round off a crit, things were bad, because the party were looking for something guarded by a great unknown monster, and their first response was to go back and check a room they nearly died in.
Now I spend lots of time preping for sessions, not just mechanically, but also world checking, 30min piffle, everyone's favorite game in town to play and simply watch is the mythic game I put 10hrs a week in for prep, when the sessions only meet every other week. (And everyone can tell when I'm slacking). Admittedly, only about 2hrs of that two week span is spent on mechanics.
What if we don't want to use shields? Can we trade out the 8th and 14th level abilities for other abilites?
Even levels are class feats, odd levels are fixed features. The blog was just describing when those feats become available- you'd only pick them if you wanted to focus on shields.
That's not what it reads like to me.
And another thing, why do we have to raise our shields every turn? In a real fight people have their shields raised at all times, they don't lower and raise them over and over again.
no in real life using a shield in a fight is normally an active activity that requires focus
Have you.... ever fought with a sword and shield? Because that's really not true. Holding a shield is about as intuitive as it gets. Almost immediately after picking one up and learning proper shield stance, it becomes more of a subconscious thing. It required more effort to drop the thing than it is to block with it.
i fought with several different kinds in my youth and i disagree with you its something you need to keep focus and pay attention to , certainly larger shields require less movement but you still need to actively fight with it
This is a combat style issue, not a hard one-way-or-the-other, I've fought with shields that you hold in a specific position (close to the body, and re-position whole body to adjust blocks) and ones that you move constantly. So both of you are right, or wrong, depending on your training, and shield.
Which is why I argue against an action to "raise your shield" in combat. If you're simplifying combat, you want to abstract something like this, not take the most penalizing, and most complicated route. In PF1 a shield was a flat bonus, now its dependent on an action, that isn't simplification, it also nerf's melee again.
Depends on the Compatibility License that comes with 2E, except that unless the parents request it themselves, we're not moving the family game. Getting the parents square with 1E was harder than any other new player I've dealt with.
What we have to get used to is how we break down actions. Listening to the Podcast it is a bit more clear. Casting a spell itself is not an action really. The action is what you are doing to cast the spell. The reason most spells cost two actions is because you are making a Verbal and a Somatic action for the casting. 1 action for the verbal component and 1 action for the somatic.
I'm actually all for this as it makes sense as to why some spells can be done quicker and others slower. If it only has a verbal component for example, it only costs one action.
That's makes no since, actions are doing something in a space of time, I can talk and wiggle my fingers at the same time, why would a verbal and a somatic require separate actions?
Something's still very sluggish moving between sections of the forums, or between the forums and other parts of the page.
Also, all paizo pages (including my account and purchasing pages) are loading http, not https. If you don't want chrome users freaking out over the big "Not secure" comment in their url bar, you need to get https encryption back and forced.
Okay, so some of the things I've noticed and complained about previously are actually not quite what I saw before, and possible related to Thebazilly's post:
Chrome browser, Ubuntu 64 there are two sets of navigation links, one is above the paizo logo, these are on a blue background with all caps text. These go no where useful. These links hide when the window is beyond 960px wide. The menu that works like a side navigation bar while under 960px wide then shows up under the paizo logo and works, but with the too-many-clicks-for-navigation behavior I mentioned earlier.
The menu that collapses to a nav button when under 960 should be a visible side navigation while above 960, not a top nav. The top nav above the logo while under 960 needs to just go away.
Also, it would be nice if the top-level forum was the default destination from the navigation header rather than listing all the sub-forums only. I already set my bookmark to the top level, but still.....
1000 times this, with the entire top level menu. If I click My Account, it should go to my account page, if I click forums, it should go to the forums, if I click store IT SHOULD GO TO THE STORE. Work towards less clicks, not more.
Also, I'm at work for this post. The time between clicking reply, and the quoted material in the text box was 8 seconds. Monday this was almost instantaneous.
The paizo.com front page. It shows "January February March". It didn't take much for figure out why, but those dates are without context. I am aware of the 2010+ style of "obfuscate the interface" but don't approve of it. There really should be a (even small) header saying something like "Products released in the month of" above/below/beside the months.
There was some wavering internally about this one. I'm leaning towards it having a header and possibly a call to action button underneath. What do you think of a title like "Newest Paizo Releases"?
That'd probably be a better choice, but I also agree with the comment of not approving of obfuscating interfaces.
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Also, I'd suggest "Digital Content" should probably say "Digital Content Downloads". I'm been an IT guy for a quarter century and even I wouldn't be looking for my digital content in a menu called digital content.
Part of this naming convention speaks to some down-the-road changes to how we show you items related to your account. We provide not only downloads, but software keys, e-tickets, and redemption codes. Knowing this, does this change your opinion on its name, or would you name it something different?
Nope, I'd still put downloads somewhere in the link description.
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Something weird. I primarily use Firefox (64-bit, Windows). I have an add-on, "Forecastfox". It's normally a tiny widget overlaid in the upper right corner, on top of whatever content I am viewing. So if I'm at Slashdot.org, there's this tiny box in the upper right, almost never interfering with their pages, but it always can if a site were to have something all the way up there. (Sometimes a site might have a Logoff button or something, but this is so small it's rare there's a total overlap.) Anyway, on any paizo.com site, Forecastfox is freaking out and producing a horizontal grey bar the usual height, but literally the entire right-hand...
Hm... I'm not certain what could cause such a behavior, but we typically don't test against browser addons (there's just too many and we got a lot of spinning plates). If it's truly an issue with how the header is formed, we would want...
The way to avoid breaking addons is to keep stuff simple. From the drastically decreased page load time, and menu breakage (Chrome, Linux, no addons) Simple is not what happened here.
I'm going to admit right now that I'm in the camp of "restore the backups". Here's why:
1) Was a redesign of the site needed to provide content in the future?
Based on everything I've seen from paizo, the answer to this is no. Digital Keys, and ticket management could be done in the same account/download page as users already had. Paizo's product line isn't going through a change that would require a different mechanism for distribution.
2) Did the redesign improve load speeds, or existing functionality.
This is already a huge NO. I'd say more below, but to be honest, I came here to double-check if there was a npc booklet for starfinder published or not because I have a game to prep for tomorrow. I needed to be here for 5 minutes to check, possibly buy, and download. It took me 10 to find my downloads page!
3) Did the redesign improve new visitor navigation?
This is a maybe, but not in it's current state of broken. And it is BROKEN, not some minor bugs, BROKEN. The Pathfinder and Starfinder links go to blank pages, the my account dropdown doesn't have anything that looks like a "here's how I sign in now" or any indication of if your signed in or not, and the text size on the downloads page is all out of whack. As someone who is also a network engineer, and project manager. THIS SITE IS NOT READY FOR LIVE PRODUCTION.
That is not to say that this work isn't good work, or that a redesign wasn't worth considering, it's just this totally isn't it. Not in it's current state, this is a state I'd expect the devs to load on cheap test server or vm and throw staff and friends at for a few weeks to find all the things that aren't working.
I got nothing else, except that I really would restore the old site, and tell web devs to pound on it for a few more weeks if it was my choice.
My largest issue with Starfinder at the moment is that the Core Rule Book was setting tied. PF's moving towards this with splats, fair... but your core having the equivalent of the Pact Worlds Primer?
There's nothing in these rules that are different to any of the table top space ship games I've seen.
Saganami Island Tactical Simulator (most detailed and an extreme), A Call To Arms (any of those), AeroTech (now the aerospace part of Battletech's Tactical Operations), all of these either in base rules or optional rules have stuff for movement being independent of facing.
Before anyone says "Don't apply real world physics to a fantasy setting!" I'm not even talking about vacuum of space vs atmospheric flight or ships, this is a rant about vessel movement without ground for friction.
Read the mechanics of combat. None of the pilot tricks take the idea that you don't have to apply thrust in a direction your already moving to keep going that direction. A wrecked engine is still functional enough the pilot can make a piloting check of some sort. Turn in place stops you dead in your tracks, flip and burn requires you to move back the other direction, slide only works forward-port and forward-starboard, and movement "is in a straight line in the direction the starship is facing."
Also, there's no accidental collisions if i read this correctly. Really? a RAW with no accidental collisions? Just rip a story bit out of the hands of a GM why don't ya?
Notsonoble's Gaming's campaign setting as a whole doesn't have a name. But the first snippets are from the Krenn Binary System if you want something to call it.
Also, I'll probably do a expanded character sheet like I do for pathfinder.
I thought I was getting some help, but it's back to just me doing the work. When you add getting married to that, this might be slower than I'd hoped. (But still coming).
Three Races of Jur'ruzuk (Dark Folk)
Hur'zuk
Rulzulkur
and the rulers Jur'zal
The creatures people of Krenna called Dark Folk for so long, and thought had been defeated when the last of the strange underground portals was closed, turned out to be part of the reason the scaled races fell so long ago. Krenna's climb to the stars woke them again, for their world was still hidden in Krenna's solar system.
In The Year of Freedom 3410, one of the two remaining nations on Krenna launched their first ship capable of traveling between the stars. It drew the attention of an ancient enemy hiding in their own star system. It drew the attention of races and federations from other systems. Many eager to see what this new member of the galactic playing field would bring. It even drew attention of the remaining gods of that world, for they new now that the mortal races of that world were nearing immortality and godhood. Unlike themselves, these people, who they'd shepherded and protected, were making it there the hard way.
Now the year is 3418 more ships from Krenna have left the system. They've started colonies on their sister-star's worlds. They've meet races, traded, started and joined wars.
Watch for it. We're currently taking a homerun setting that had two eras and making a third era appropriate for Starfinder. There's a lot of "what happened to who" questions we're working on answers for and polish work to do. Also, we're finally more than one guy fighting with character sheets, world details and resisting the urge to just run in golarion because it's awesome.
Okay, so I've built a single column legal page for the CL that I'll just stick in each pdf in the appropriate place. I think it's correctly updated to include horror adventures.
Balor turds section 15 is insanely long now. I haven't been putting the necormancer games stuff in either (been adding pathfinder hardbacks an not noticing they referenced them). So my existing stuff is out of compliance, and I was thinking of updating the character sheet for horror adventures.
How do we fit this all on one page now? Even Liz's document is 10 pages long.
A question for those who've used the new sheet. I, and a mixed number of the locals. Really hate the ability modifier format for skills in the new version. (I did before doing it, but it was the only way to fit a temp mod line in.) The person requesting the temp mod has seen what it's done to the sheet when printed as well. I'm seriously considering while also posting the version with a blank skill section, back tracking the skills to the old version.
I've created a blank line version of the feats/abilities/skills page, i'll update it soon to have one with that version.
I'm working on a "thing tracker" section, but really having trouble with placement. I can't see a good way to do it without making it an additional page. My local players have all grumbled at extra pages. (No internet comments yet...)
As said above, I no longer have access to a version of acrobat pro that lets me make fillable sheets. So the new revisions will have to be flat. I apologize for that and that's why both options will be in the download from here on (unless something other than Acrobat Pro eventually allows you to activate extended reader functions, and forums for pdfs stop being quite so clunky, and then I'll return to fillable revisions.)
I went back and forth with the loss of the notes section. When I asked for feedback most people said they take notes on scratch paper. So the notes section was removed for a better gear section.
That said, I can make the revision have a blank skill slot if you would like, and if enough people request it. I can extend the sheet to 5 or 6 pages. Would that be useful to you?
Major update added. Several things were rearranged for legibility. You'll also notice there are two files now. The last revision is kept because the new sheet is flat.
The reason for this is two fold.
1) I went through a major hardware upgrade on my computer a while back, as such winxp and Acrobat Pro 9 were in a VM for production of products. That VM is beyond use anymore, and I no longer have my Acrobat 9 disks. Lifecycle is now a enterprise license, that would cost more a month than this sheet makes in a year. I've wanted to move away from Adobe software for a while now, this is a perfect time to do so.
2) Of the people who provide feedback, very few (here or other places) have said anything about the savable function of the sheet. It also doesn't behave very well when passed from player to DM and back (personal experience). The file is large and likes to crash pdf readers of all types. (Including Adobe Reader). In short, I have had more complaints about inherent side effects of a fillable and savable file than praise over that ability.
So I'm making a move I've wanted to make for years, but held back on because I wanted to keep a single feature in a few products going. A feature that is bug-ridden, and frankly is handled better by other software.
So, the last revision of the fillable character sheet will ALWAYS be included as part of the product. The revised sheets will be flat however.
This shows quite a lot about how it didn't quite go the direction I was hoping for. The staff was originally designed for helping someone spy more than a burglar staff. I've posted it in the critique thread now along with the version I almost posted but went THIS IS OP at the last minute and nerfed.
That said, for a burglar staff your edit is definitely impressive, and gives me an idea of where to go next year. The sap option is a nice touch.
I had indeed missed the staff of stealth. Odd that, I'd been using PFSRD to make sure I wasn't duplicating when doing the final build. I'd probably pulled more of the illusion and left more of the divination had I seen it. I don't think it'd done much better that way, but at least it wouldn't have been as much of a clone.
Late I know, but here's mine
Staff of Infiltration (Submitted to RPGS) Aura moderate varied; CL 8th
Slot none; Price 104,700 gp; Weight 5 lbs.
Description
This tall, thick, polished black staff is capped at both ends with soft black leather, and makes no sound upon striking any surface. The staff allows use of the following spells:
While holding the staff, the wielder is also centered in the effect of a silent table spell. The staff can also be used as a +1/+1 quarterstaff. If the wielder hits a creature with the staff, the effects of the silent table spell are centered on the creature hit for one round. A creature struck by the staff can not be the center of the staff's silent table effect again for 24 hours.
Construction Requirements Craft Arms and Armor, Craft Staff; detect secret doors, detect thoughts, nondetection, greater invisibility; Cost 52,350 gp
Phloid has already done a little critiquing and an edit, and showing me that perhaps some of the spells I'd originally had on in and worried I'd people'd see them and so TO OVERPOWERED and pass on it. So while I'd like a critique of what I posted, I'd also like an opinion of whether or not the version I had before worrying about it being too much would have been a better choice.
Staff of Infiltration Aura moderate varied; CL 8th
Slot none; Price 115,900 gp; Weight 5 lbs.
Description
This tall, thick, polished black staff is capped at both ends with soft black leather, and makes no sound upon striking any surface. The staff allows use of the following spells:
While holding the staff, the wielder is also centered in the effect of a silent table spell. The staff can also be used as a +1/+1 quarterstaff. If the wielder hits a creature with the staff, the effects of the silent table spell are centered on the creature hit for one minute. A creature struck by the staff can not be the center of the staff's silent table effect again for 24 hours.
Construction Requirements Craft Arms and Armor, Craft Staff; detect secret doors, detect thoughts, disguise self,nondetection, greater invisibility, clairaudience/clairvoyance; Cost 57,950 gp
Description
This tall, thick, polished black staff is capped at both ends with soft black leather, and makes no sound upon striking any surface. The staff allows use of the following spells:
While holding the staff, the wielder is also centered in the effect of a silent table spell. The staff can also be used as a +1/+1 quarterstaff. If the wielder hits a creature with the staff, the effects of the silent table spell are centered on the creature hit for one round. A creature struck by the staff can not be the center of the staff's silent table effect again for 24 hours.
Construction Requirements Craft Arms and Armor, Craft Staff; detect secret doors, detect thoughts, nondetection, greater invisibility;Cost 52,350 gp
I realize silent table gave it a SIAK feel, but until trying to price the item and hunting spells, I hadn't seen silent table, and it went from modifying the silence spell to pretty much exactly the effect I wanted.
