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We've decided to switch things up and play some Starfinder. We've played two campaigns in the past which were ok but in both cases I found my characters under performed. I'm not sure if my expectations are out of whack or I'm missing things.

Hitting things is max str/dex (18 at level 1), weapon focus, and then stat augmentations as they become available. Assuming full BAB that's only +30 at level 20 or +26 otherwise. Are there any other bonuses? Otherwise it doesn't seem like the non full BAB classes are any more accurate at 20 than they were at 1.

I was looking at trying the Technomancer this time but I'm struggling to get my spells to be successful even 50% of the time. Max out your Int, take Spell focus and... Is there anything else to help with Spell DCs? Combat magic doesn't seem very viable if there's a save attached.

Are there items, spells or feats that provide combat buffs? All of the buffs and boosts that made specialists successful in Pathfinder seem to be missing in Starfinder. I'm used to low level characters missing frequently but at high levels if doesn't feel right.

Edit: Starting Devastation Ark in a couple weeks.

This is our first Starfinder campaign and overall we've been having a good time.

I feel I have a legitimate complaint about the go-go nature of the latter part of this AP that's prevented us from taking a proper break, selling stuff and getting better gear (most of us have weapons/armor that is 4+ levels behind).

What's really bugging me though is the overall plot. I know it's an adventure path, and they tend to be railroady by nature but usually the railroad makes logical sense and we just follow the thread and enjoy the ride. But on this AP we've wasted almost entire sessions because the railroad is pushing us down a stupid or nonsensical path.

I'm a player this time and have not read the books so it's possible that the DM has messed something up but usually he's really good so I'm thinking not. So we finally track down the location of the doomsday weapon. Instead of destroying the gateway so it can't re-enter our dimension, we're supposed to open the gateway and bring the stellar degenerator through.... Right, because that seems like a great idea.

Oh and suprise, surpise, as soon as we do, the Corpsefleet shows up with an entire armada. Rather than head for the emerging stellar degenerator and try and sabotage it before the corpse fleet can get it, we're suppose to infiltrate the Empire of Bones, (a super star destroyer) and try and fly that into the Stellar Degenerator (the Death Star). What?

After spending hours arguing about what to do about the corpse fleet armada, the DM finally told us what the adventure wants us to do because we had assumed he was just joking with the hints he was dropping. Trying to infiltrate and take over the Empire of Bones is Gonzo. Ridiculous. Preposterous. And yet here we are.

I admit there's an element of awesomeness to it. Trying to do what should not be done. But I feel that's more acceptable when it's our idiotic idea that will likely fail spectacularly and not the only option written into an AP.

Another lame element is the mag train. We stumble our way into the station but can't use the train because we don't know where to go. We have to recover some stupid security keys to access the security station because even a 41 computer check was not good enough to access the system. Instead, we have to roam around randomly checking rooms until we find the missing security keys so we can get the +25 circumstance bonus to computers (giving me a 65 check) and finally being able to figure out where to go. Oh, and again we can't rest because there's a massive space battle going on outside that's acting as a distraction. As soon as its over, the Corpsefleet will board the super weapon, and it's game over. That battle isn't going to last forever.

I haven't seen any other complaints about this so maybe it's just my group but we've played over a dozen APs, including 3.5 and pathfinder and this is probably the rail-roadiest of them all and the later parts are stretching the limits of my suspension of disbelief. The encounters are still interesting but the plot /eye-roll.

We're playing our first Starfinder campaign as we normally play Pathfinder. I still prefer the Pathfinder system but Starfinder is still fun to change things up.

I've been playing an android Exo-Cortex Mechanic that's 8th level. I play tested a Bio Hacker tonight. I kept the race, and the stat array the same and our GM allowed me to switch classes for tonight to see how it would play out.

I went with the Studious version because it seemed stronger. There's no good debuffer class in Starfinder and I thought it would be a nice addition to our group.

I focused on fighting with an injection pistol, whereas the mechanic uses a sniper rifle.

We had 4 encounters tonight - one starship and three regular. Our scientist was missing this evening so played the scientist role as well as my regular engineering role. I was rolling abysmally tonight (we counted, I rolled 11 "1s") but after an unusually tough starship battle we pulled off a win. The BioHacker gets no insight bonus to skills and while I did take Skill Synergy I assigned to bonuses to Life and physical science thinking that would be more useful (I was wrong). Anyway, I missed a ton of rolls during starship combat where as normally I think I have to roll a 3 to succeed.

I found the scanner to be pretty useless. The range is short and it takes a move action. We play that normally identifying creatures is a free action - you either know or you don't. It's not like you google it. We've never found anything in the rules that contradicts this. I tried to identify a creature using it once, failed and never bothered again.

The basic counteragents are solid but I never used any. Aside from the +2 skill bonus, the restoratives are weak sauce. The skill bonus could be usefull it it lasted longer but too many tasks take more than 2 rounds.

The spark of Ingenuity is nice for Studious. Unfortunately, I rolled a one
when trying to deliver it. /sadface The instinctive one is decent but we haven't seen that many status effects on this AP.

The fields of study are not very balanced. The counteragents range from barely useful (neurochemistry) to OP (pharmacology). The duration on restoratives is to short to be used anyway but as a reaction and they don't really do enough to be effective in that roll.

Most of the breakthroughs are pretty meh, and the few that I can see my self using a paired with fields that I wouldn't take. You get the breakthrough too late to suffer through a weak field. You don't get enough for that.

Theorums. Over all I thought these were pretty well done. There were quite a few I saw as useful. One beef is that everyone is going to take Quick Load at second level. If everyone is going to take an option, it shouldn't be an option. Just make it part of the class. Field Dressing is decent but doesn't scale at all at high levels - why not make it 4d8+level at 14?

Toxic skin is nice for ranged people that don't like getting swallowed whole. And I took Arms expert to up my damage a bit.

My damage was lower but still comparable to my over charged sniper rifle wielding mechanic. Level 8 seems to be sweet spot for BioHackers since the extra +1 from Weapon Focus and the extra +1 from Injection weapons both come into effect. I barely hit a few times tonight and those made a big difference.

One comment form my GM: The counteragent from Pharmacology is too strong. I locked down a boss tonight with confusion. There's no save and nothing that says it can't be reapplied, so I shot him with the counteragent every second round and in the five rounds it only got to attack us once, and it hit itself pretty hard one round. If I keep playing the Biohacker I have to pick a different power next time.

I also like the genetics power (vulnerability to element) and toxicology (sickness). Most of the other didn't impress me.

The first battle we fought a non-organic being and I have to admit I forgot that my basic counteragents would work. Then we fought some undead (sigh) and a human boss (yay). The last fight was against a god's avatar which I thoroughly dominated.

I looked at poisons and discovered Starfinder has the same problem with poisons that Pathfinder does. Poison is really deadly in Starfinder but the DCs are stupid low. PCs in starfinder tend to have one or more really crappy saves - unlike Pathfinder there's not much you can do to raise them. However, NPCs and monsters tend to have high saves. It's why our Mystic rarely bothers with his offensive spells anymore and why poison isn't worth it's high price. If a Biohacker could make it for cheap, then I wouldn't mind wasting it constantly but at 1400 credits a shot, no way. Missing is bad enough but when the save is trivial, it's pointless. Another reason why I don't like Starfinder's crafting rules.

I enjoyed playing the Biohacker. A good selection of options are available. I don't like the choice of field of study restoratives to be so narrow. Really, how often do you run across a bleed attack? We've yet to encounter it. The restoratives should last longer in my opinion.

I'd add an insight bonus to a couple skills, buff the restoratives and although it pains me to say so, nerf the confusion counteragent.

I'm glad to see you are working on more classes for Starfinder. The Biohacker looks good and with a few tweaks could be great. I like more options and I'm looking forward to getting them. Hopefully there are lots of new (useful) feats as well since the current list is a bit short in that regard.

As my current campaign is slowly moving towards its end, I have started looking ahead to what I may play next. I haven't played a full caster in a long time so I'm strongly considering that route. I don't like it when my spells fail so I've been looking at ways to get my spell DCs way up.

I put together an enchanter build. A Kitsune Fey-blooded enchanter can get an extra +7 to compulsion spell DCs by level 16. That's huge!

I would much prefer to focus on transmutation or necromancy spells, but I can't find anyway to really bump those school spells DCs up. I don't like specializing in enchantment or illusion since so many creatures are immune to them.

Aside from the obvious Spell Focus feats, or going Arcanist for Potent Magic (all of which can be applied to any school), are there any good tricks out there for boosting specific school DCs?

Hi,
I'd like to cancel my Adventure Path subscription. I hate to do it since I subscribed way back at Book 5 but our dollar is dropping and my job is vulnerable so I'm out.

We had a our bi-weekly game night and we had a couple replacement PCs show up since two of them had died to a Treant the session before. I was expecting to see a Bloodrager and a WarPriest but got a Bloodrager and a Cleric since player 2 didn't have the time required to get a good feel for the new class. Oh well. The PCs were all level 7.

The Bloodrager performed really well. He was out damaging the Anti-Paladin, made all of his saves (except a Reflex save that actually had him fall into a pit trap the party built) and could take lots of abuse. He didn't cast any spells but did put his spell list to good use by using the party Wand of Shield. I think he enjoyed playing the class and it contributed well.

One of the encounters of the night was a Lillend with 6 elven archer followers. I switched them to human rangers and changed up the Lillend's powers to be that of a Skald. In this particular encounter the only real difference was the rage song. Between the rage song and Good Hope, the Rangers, despite being only level 2, were actually somewhat scary combatants able to hit well and deal decent damage. They still had lowish HP and the Anti-paladin and Bloodrager could one shot them on most hits. They didn't last long. The Lillend would return to haunt the party, this time with two Moondogs. In this situation her Rage song was next to useless and she went down quickly. Even though this wasn't really a Skald it still showed that the Rage song is much too circumstantial, although in the right situation it works very well.

For some reason my shipping costs have doubled up to $13. I fiddled with my subscription and I got them to go back down to under $7 but the current order is locked at $12.50.

Can I get the shipping changed for my pending order?
Why did my shipping costs get doubled? (I have not changed anything before today)?

Thanks!

Hello,
I am wondering why my ROTRL Anniversary Edition did not ship with my two AP volumes? The first email said the two orders had been combined but the actual shipping email said that the ROTRLAE did not ship.

I'd like to keep shipping costs down so I'm curious why it didn't ship with the other two books?

Please cancel my Pathfinder Battles subscription. I got dinged hard on Customs fees and shipping charges last time and I've found a local place where I can pick them up cheaper even without the subscriber discount.

Hello,
My order finally arrived today and I was happy to find that my case contained a full set of minis but I didn't get my dragon booster.

I went back through all of the packaging thinking I may have missed it but it is no where to be found. Can I please get my Dragon?

After killing off half the party last game session (see Obits thread), the adventurers were very cautious as they reached the summit of Castle Caromarc and the final two towers. They opted to by bypass the cluster of 4 towers and fly directly to the bridge of the final tower. They struggled greatly against the Golem guarding the tower. They scouted out the second floor and encountered Waxwood.

I was seriously worried about a TPK in this adventure and Waxwood is a great tool to help lower the risk by providing lots of hints to the PCs about what's going on, dangers especially.

They failed to decipher the writing on the wall and also failed to get the Bondslave device fully activated. They quickly realized that the Abomination was not to be trifled with and fled. After resting they came up with a plan to lure the abomination out of the room holding Caromarc and seal him on the floor below between the two Adamantine trap doors. I thought the plan was very clever and it went off without any serious problems. They used Stoneshape to free caromarc and then retreated to the living area part of the castle in case the golem was able to free itself.

Caromarc was greatful to be freed and the adventure continued as if the Abomination was destroyed. The party had no desire to return to town so he pointed the party in the right direction of the cultists and provided them with the invite for the hunting lodge.

Next stop Broken Moon.

Wow. I actually want to play a monk.

Looks like this one will end at around 15th level.

There is a bit of a disagreement for my group exactly how these boots work.

Lets say the ranger buys Boots for Mountains which he does not have a favored terrain. On plains however he has a favored bonus of +6.

Do these boots allow him to treat mountains as plains and get the big bonus or do they just bestow +2 as if the ranger had the basic bonus for plains?

Thanks.

I am in the process of Pathfinderizing CotCT. We rotate DM spots and I know that at least one of my players has read it so I was going to rewrite some of the characters.

I was looking at prestige classes and realized that I had not even considered the Shadowdancer. Then I realized why I had forgotten about this class. What is it for? Most classes/prestige classes have some sort of niche that they fill but I really don't see the point here. They are pretty much weak sauce in every way except flavor. As much as I like flavor, it's no good when you are dead.

Has anyone actually played a shadowdancer? How did it go?

If you guys can please introduce your characters I'll set the stage and we'll begin.

I'm just wondering if the Duelist's Precise strike damage is multiplied on a critical hit?

The old version did not and I find that precision damage in general does not, but its is now a static, non variable bonus so it should be multiplied on crits.

If it does and the duelist is using a keen rapier, the duelist could put out some decent damage I imagine.

I just want to let you guys know that the PRD is great and that I'm sure everyone appreciates all the hard work that has been done to get everything ready.

Long live Pathfinder!
Long live Paizo!

Now if you'll excuse me I have a 600 page book I have to go back to reading.

Here you can find my adventure blog written from the point of view of my PC.

We've just finished the fourth book and I usually update the blog soon after our session which we play ever weekend or two for about 5 hours.

Hope you enjoy!

We finished LoF yesterday after a mammoth 8 hour session. My character was the only one to survive from beginning to end and kept a journal of his exploits. It could still use a bit of editing and contains tons of spoilers of course.

If you are interested in our version of events check it out.

My apologies if there is already another thread on this but I searched and couldn't find it.

The level requirement (12) for the Craft Ring feat is stupid. I realize that it is a relic of 3.5 but it should be done away with. The required caster level for the item already keeps low level characters from creating creating epic level items so why have the super high level requirement for the feat?

I should be lowered to a more reasonable level, maybe 5-8, where PCs start to have the resources to start crafting their own gear. Why should rings be so different from other wondrous items?