Voin_AFOL's page

1063: No, the Serpentfolk term for their barbarians raging not "throwing a hissy fit".

1064: Just b/c you put a wool cloak on the werewolf does not make them a "wolf in sheeps' clothing"

1065: No putting the kitsune on henhouse guard duty.

Having a spear that breaks down into 2 halves to be joined together before battle is not only practical, but historically accurate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarissa

"The sarissa or sarisa (Greek: σάρισα) was a long spear or pike about 4–6 metres (13–20 ft) in length.
...
The sarissa, made of tough and resilient cornel wood, was very heavy for a spear, weighing approximately 5.5 kg (12 lb) to 6.5 kg (14 lb).[3] It had a sharp iron head shaped like a leaf and a bronze butt-spike that would allow it to be anchored to the ground to stop charges by enemy soldiers.[4] The bronze material of the butt-spike prevented it from rusting. The spike also served to balance out the spear, making it easier for soldiers to wield, and could be used as a back-up point should the main one break.

The sheer bulk and size of the spear required the soldiers to wield it with both hands, allowing them to carry only a 60 cm (24 in) shield (pelta) suspended from the neck to cover the left shoulder.[5] Its great length was an asset against hoplites and other soldiers bearing shorter weapons, as they had to get past the sarissas to engage the phalangites. However, outside the tight formation of the phalanx the sarissa was of limited utility as a weapon and a hindrance on the march. As such, it was usually composed of two lengths and was joined by a central bronze tube only before a battle.[6]"

I would possible require the weapon (at its hottest point) to have to make a fortitude save if it inflicts damage (DC=damage done) to prevent from being damaged/broken condition ... Depending on the armor being penetrated.

As the situation reminds me of the forging process where the metal is beaten while red hot to shape it.

Which itself is a long, strenuous process, & not a few seconds of combat w/ magical heat effects.

Torches are on fire and still only deal 1 point of fire damage.

I'd say hot metal would, at most, do something like that.. but nothing more.

Torches are also not intended as weapons, & thus subject to the improvised weapons rules.

If you take a tempered sword and super heat it, it'll survive.

Now if you take a tempered sword, super heat it, and bang it against armor or some other hard surface...

You'll like warp your sword if not break it completely.

My 2cp.

Guys. You do not "bang your sword against armor or some other hard surface". Nobody (who uses swords) does that. That's a good way to turn your nice sword into an expensive crowbar, and yourself into a meat piniata.

Hammers & picks & sheit were used as anti-armor weapons (to crush the guy inside). Swords were not. Using a sword against a metal-armored opponent means (if you're trained), you're going for the un-armored bits (face, hands, legs, whatever is exposed), or the lighter-armored gaps (joints & such). Point is, you don't hack through a plate of metal w/ an arming sword, you go around it.

Darksmokepuncher wrote:

If you take a tempered sword and super heat it, it'll survive.

Now if you take a tempered sword, super heat it, and bang it against armor or some other hard surface...

You'll like warp your sword if not break it completely.

My 2cp.

So Heat Metal is a good way to sunder armor without actually using the sunder ability you say?

If you are going to make arguments against clever things, remember the repercussions that stem from those arguments.

This is true. If ppl's "counter" to player cleverness is "oh, it'll break your weapon (forget that nobody "hits swords against armor", see above), then it would equally make sense for enemies to have their swords sundered if they refused to drop them when this is cast on them

Quarterstaff -- probably among my favorite three or four weapons in D&D.

Unobtrusive, reasonable damage, and your can double your punch with 2-wpn fighting. BTW, it's my understanding that a well-trained staff wielder will beat an unarmored swordsman in a real-life duel.

Right until they cut your stick in half, followed quickly by you. :D

1054. No, the church-bank of Abadar will not let you start the game with "a small loan of a million gold pieces".

1053. The national anthem of Ustalav is not "Carrion, my wayward son".

1052. "Winter is coming" is NOT the official national motto of Irrisen.

Assume the Starfighter in this example is X-Wing size

GM: The enemy is trying to get away as they enter their Starfighter and start it up. They're about to take off!

Player: I shoot at their cockpit with my Missile Launcher!

GM:Yeah, that's nice... Anyway, they enemy takes off and flys out of sight.

Player: WTF was that?! *Looks through the Starfinder rulebook*

Starfinder: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe not to you, but this situation looks pretty weak, if you ask me.

I've literally had games where the (sorely inexperienced) GM pulled this sort of b.s. & I called him out for it, and... suffice to say that person & I are not friends anymore (for a number of reasons, but instances like that didn't help).

This. Is. Why. When. Players. Point. Out. Obvious. Holes. In. The. Rules. Those. Holes. Need. To. Be. Patched. Instead. Of. Telling. Those. Players. To. Shove. Off.

Ouch. Calling my defense of the RAW half baked is kinda rude don't you think?

...

So there. Until the official rules come out, you have the basis for a system. Could we please keep this civil?

I called the RAW "half baked" because I'm a longtime Paizo customer critiquing a product, and IMO, they are. There's no need for you to take it so personally, bub. What, a customer expressing an opinion on a product is "rude" now? I took a look at Starfinder, b/c the idea of "Pathfinder in space" intrigued me at first, but b/w how "video-gamey" it seems (equipment levels? O_^) and now how spaceships are essentially their own separate mini-game because arbitrary reasons, that's why, I'll probably pass on buying anything from this particular product line unless I see major revisions down the road.

Your defense of it (and similar arguments made by others, so I'm not singling you out) I called a "cop-out" which is, IMO, what it is, when your argument amounts to "the RAW is the RAW, and that's that, and if you don't like it, write your own material."

I mean, your argument (and again, similar arguments made by others) seem to hinge on the is-ought fallacy , that because things are a certain way, they should be that way.

I have been keeping this civil, I haven't personally attacked anyone, haven't (AFAIK) violated any community guidelines - I'm not interested in drama, I just poke my head in here every once in a while to chat about RPG stuff b/c I don't have that much time to do this sort of thing, and I see this website is still slow - so kindly don't try to involve me in any drama, thank you.

Basically, that's how I'd figure the nuclear missile goes (equating it to a lance anyway). Due to the intricacies of orbital mechanics, gravity, and unoptimized targeting computers (or whatever), the nuclear missile is more than likely off target by a fair degree to the point the plucky adventurers are either caught in the outer blast wave for managable damage or outside it entirely for whatever reason.

Or they manage to find a lead-lined space-fridge to duck into in time.

Also the weapons are often light speed or very fast missiles. Since max (but very poor accuracy) range is 50-150 hexes a single hex has to be huge.

Why do people keep assuming that starships must always be traveling at ludicrous speed? They're not airplanes, they don't need to maintain a minimum speed to stay aloft.

If I have a landing craft & I wanna circle "low & slow" while spraying the ground with autofire to clear a landing zone, I don't have be just zipping by everywhere - how exactly do you think spaceships land/dock? They have to slow down sometime.

I mean, if we look at an IRL analogue - the Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunship, for instance - it has a maximum speed of 335 km/h (208 mph, 180 kt) - but it obviously slows down when gunning down infantry.

Lol at this guy wilin out.

If it was meant to be a situation that comes up often it would have been address. I think you have been presented plenty of evidence that this is not something that should be happening so often that you need a specific set of parameters for how to handle it.

Perhaps not in your games and that's fine, but some of us are approaching this from a particular set of source material (Star Wars, Firefly, Guardians of the Galaxy, Stargate SG-1, etc), where these sort of situations happen often enough that it's a thing we'd like to have a fleshed out ruleset to model.

Again, if that's not a thing you want or will end up using in your games, that's okay - simply don't use that option. Heck, there are loads of optional & modular rules in Pathfinder that not everyone uses - not everyone wants psionics or firearms in their games - but it's not gonna hurt them if somewhere else, someone else is playing a psychic gunslinger, is it?

It's okay to let other people enjoy other things.

No, more a fairly consistent breakdown of the two most probable encounter scenarios.

Space craft hits, odds are high the target is either a pile of dust or a cloud of red mist thanks to the damage codes. If you're relying on the dice to not get instantly splattered any time someone decides to strafe you you have an untenable system. If the fighters can't accurately hurt boots on the ground because they take targeting penalties then the pendulum shifts the other way and fighters are screaming metal death traps that no one in the right mind would pilot in atmo because any moron with a rocket is at an enormous advantage.

Systems that try to balance vehicles and boots against each other never work. It never worked in any of the Star Wars systems. It never worked in any of the 40k RPG books. It never worked in several other niche systems that barely anyone's heard about. Thumbs up for Paizo for not wasting the effort honestly.

Then it's a failure of the mathematical system to adequately model (say nothing of "simulate") reality.

I mean how much appreciable difference (for the purposes of a tabletop RPG) is there between fighting a massive, fire-breathing dragon with thick, scaly hide, and fighting a massive armored attack-helicopter gunship that's shooting rockets and machine gun rounds at you?

i posted in another thread, but wanted to see maybe you guys had some input about players getting a second ship, say a racer,or fighter, and allow it to be docked with their main ship. the shuttle rules and the way ship to ship is pretty much means large ships only, which is a long way out of players particular at lower levels without a good gm intervention

Exactly - it's not like there isn't precedent for small adventuring groups having this very thing - look at the freighter Ghost & its mini-shuttle Phantom on Star Wars: Rebels.

The problem with all this is that balance breaks down pretty rapidly.

Lets say for example that there's a stinger missile equiv that can hypothetically hurt/destroy fighter sized starcraft. Okay. Cool. Running an actual combat with this generally only yields two results though:

1) the stinger (and your friend's stingers) frag the fighter before it can do anything)

2) the stinger fails to destroy the fighter (or the fighter goes first) and the AT guy(s) gets splattered across the landscape by the damage x 10 starship cannons.

The whole thing is another stripe of (literal) rocket tag and without gutting the system as written, there's not really a satisfactory way of balancing the matter.

Well that's a bit of a False Dichotomy, isn't it?

I mean, what if it ends up looking something like this, where the TIE makes several passes, firing at a vehicle the PCs are on, until they finally knock it out of the sky w/ a shoulder-fired missile-launcher.

There's really a multiplicity of things that could happen - either side could "hold off" the other one until reinforcements arrive (in the form of anti-air or ground-assault), the PCs could make a run for a bunker or cave where the TIE couldn't follow them, they could get in their own ship & engage it on equal terms, a magic-user could try to open up a wormhole to hell & throw the TIE in there (is that a thing you can do in Starfinder? Seems like a thing you should be able to do...), etc...

Randalfin wrote:

Because the scales are different. Starfinder did take into account a small bit of realism with their ships. They need to be big, heavily armored tanks to survive the rigors of outer space. You know, massive radiation pulses, extreme heat AND cold, a speck of space dust that hits your hull while you're going the speed of light, etc.

Okay, ignoring the fact that they're literally the same scale...

...no, I can't let that go. A foot is a foot. Like, understand that a Tiny starship is called Tiny because it's being compared to other starships, but if it's literally the same length as a dragon and you tell me "it's possible to target a 40 foot starship with this laser, but not a 40 foot dragon," we have a problem. And don't start with the "giant mass of metal" argument, I know dang well a starship can be made out of ironwood and panes of force, hell, it looks like a starship can be a space whale, so don't tell me all starships are so much denser than all space monsters that only starships can be targeted with starship weapons.

And as for radiation shielding, how hard do you think it is to protect a person from the hazards of space for days at a time? If you answered "such protection can be manufactured for under 100 credits and is ubiquitous on residents of space stations," you'd be exactly right!

Like, Pathfinder had some flaws, but do you know why incredibly large things didn't squash incredibly small things? Two reasons: first, it was very hard to hit them, with a large attack penalty and a large AC bonus (so maybe starships should have a quantified penalty when shooting at non-starships instead of a minus infinity): and second, actually, very small things DO get squashed by very large things. And maybe that's okay. Maybe PCs need to put getting shot by starship weapons up on the list of things like "falling off a cliff" and "getting thrown in the ocean while petrified" that will Kill You Dead, and they can deal with that. Because a number of discussions on the...

This. There are a lot of advantages that Tabletop RPGs traditionally have over video games & "not having immersion-breaking minigames that bizarrely don't interact with the rest of the setting" tends to be one of them - let's keep it that way.

McAllister wrote:

A 40 foot dragon is Gargantuan. A 40 foot starship is Tiny. A Gargantuan starship is about 10,000 feet. Why on Golarion would the Tiny starship be on the same scale as the second one and not the first one?

Because the scales are different. Starfinder did take into account a small bit of realism with their ships. They need to be big, heavily armored tanks to survive the rigors of outer space. You know, massive radiation pulses, extreme heat AND cold, a speck of space dust that hits your hull while you're going the speed of light, etc.

"It's different b/c it's different b/c the game designers didn't take the time to hammer out a properly interlocking system and now we have a bunch of people coming up with circular-reasoning apologia defending this half-baked half-arsery for some reason instead of allowing us to address the issue" :D

The rule tells you the basics of what you need to know. If you attack a ship with a standard weapon, you follow the rules for attacking a very large object. The Game Mastering chapter has rules for breaking objects, including statistics for damaging and breaking starship bulkhead walls. A colossal monster attacking a ship follows the same rules. It has no interaction with Hull Points because Hull Points are an abtraction. The rules make it clear that weapons are not effective against starships unless those weapons are specifically designed to attack starships. At the moment, no such weapons exist except for starship weapons.

Ok, and if and when, say, a monster tears a hole in your starship w/ the object breaking rules, how does that affect your starship stats? You see why we have so much frustration and dissatisfaction w/ these cop-outs excusing a half-baked system?

The rules make it clear that starships in Starfinder are really big, powerful, and heavily armored. More armored than in Star Wars and Star Trek. Even the strongest of infantry weapons aren't going to affect them.

Where do you get that idea from? I'd really like to see where it is in the rules that characters can fight a colossal dragon, but somehow, the tiniest, least-armored spaceship is apparently more sturdy.

The smallest starships (tiny size) are 20–60 ft., comparable to IRL military fighters.

I'm looking at page 307, and it says
"DEATH’S HEAD NECROGLIDER
Tiny fighters made to resemble bone sarcophagi, Necrogliders are each just large enough for one undead pilot. These notorious pilots jack their brains directly into their ships’ sensors and controls, allowing them to recline in eerie repose as they direct the ships by thought alone."

The accompanying art shows the fighter itself to be roughly a little over twice the length of the undead pilot.

I don't know about everybody else, but this tells me nothing whatsoever. Other than the fact that it assumes players are just going to attack it with regular laser rifles, what about high level missile launchers? What about if a colossal monster attacks it? What about the damage it takes if we treat it as an object, how does that interact with its Hull Points?

Assuming that players see the Bad Guy's getaway ship in the hangar and decide to attack it with one of the least effective weapons for the job is just insulting to our intelligence as players. Heck, dropping a loading crane on it would probably more effective than a "laser rifle" (depending on the level). Did Paizo have a brain fart for a moment there & forget who their customer base is, what kind of fiction we consume (and create) and, oh, that we live in a world where we pretty regularly see people fire off shoulder-launched rockets & missiles on the news? This isn't exactly a new, alien, or unorthodox concept we're dealing with here.

Their design choice was to make it so you can't cheese games by using your starship to handle encounters instead of the individuals, right? There has to be a reason why they don't want starships mixed with PCs too much. What I encourage would help alleviate that problem, by having a player's (or anyone else's) starship be vulnerable. Rocket launchers, other portable artillery, giant creatures, certain spells etc. should be damaging to a starship so could encourage people to NOT use their starships.

Well, I don't think starships should be made of tissue paper, or no one would take them into battle, but I'm guessing that's not what you meant by "vulnerable".

Again, I think one limitation to consider is that any starship weaponry capable of punching a hole through duramantium (or w/e) armor is gonna completely slag any valuable loot, so there's that opportunity cost.

Also, let's consider the "rock/paper/scissors way it's handled in something like Star Wars, since that's been the trope codifier for 40 years now.

So, roughly speaking, you've got:

Infantry can use shoulder-fired, tripod/turret-mounted, etc heavy weapons to take down fighter-class starships (including bombers, interceptors, etc) or punch big holes in light transports, can't typically hurt bigger (capital) ships (to say nothing of the fact that most capital ships don't usually even make planetside stops, sending shuttlecraft/landers instead.

Fighters can gun down exposed infantry & other fighter-class ships. Bombers fill an important niche b/c they pack heavy enough ordnance to damage (and even destroy) capital ships (and ground targets like military bases and cities), but are small enough to generally avoid being effectively targeted by the large cannons of their prey. Interceptors are fast, heavily-armed fighters that quickly close the distance w/ bombers & shoot them down.

Mid-size ships (frigates, corvettes, etc) can fill a variety of functions, but in battle, most often act to "screen" the large capital "motherships" from fighters & bombers using their smaller guns, and use their bigger weaponry to take shots of opportunity at larger enemy ships.

Larger ships (battleships, dreadnaughts, carriers, etc) pound each other with massive broadside cannons while often also unleashing flights of fighter-class ships from their holds. Can easily take out any smaller ship if they can get a hit, but smaller ships are generally more maneuverable (less mass to stop & change direction of).
Many capital ships can also initiate planetary bombardment simply by angling their weaponry downward (remember, there is no "up" in space, so even if your cannon is a fixed-forward-firing weapon, you can just aim it at the planet). Unless the ship has weaponry specifically designed for this, more often than not, it's clumsy & ineffective from space (physical projectiles burn up in atmosphere, energy beams diffuse, etc), so it's more of a "show of force". And of course, those on the ground can seek cover or GTFO the area.

Now yeah, I don't think anyone is saying "Space Conan with a plasma-axe should be able to chop a battlecruiser in half". But knocking a starfighter out of the air with a shoulder-fired heat-seeking missile? Heck, we can do that with today's technology - like this scene in the pilot episode of the phenomenal sci-fi series Stargate SG-1.

They also mentioned that creatures and ships were never meant to interact. That's why the monsters can't damage ships effectively, and also why you can't target a creature directly using ship weaponry.

I'm not sure what the problem is here.

The problem is that is a cop-out excuse in a game where you have space dragons that are described as "tearing vessels apart" and "wreaking havoc on entire fleets" and smacks of a rushed, half-baked, poorly-thought-out game-system design that shouldn't have even happened in the first place, because we know damn well that the people at Paizo worked in association w/ WotC, and Starfinder's spiritual predecessor d20 Future (AFAIK) didn't have this problem (though the base d20 Modern did have enough problems of it's own being a half-baked system, & should have been a cautionary tale to the whole industry).

It feels like handwaving to me because I have no concrete ruling that states what happens if I bring this scenario up in play. It's all just assumptions. I can guarantee that if most GMs set up a scenario where a landed starship gets attacked by a big monster before take off, the GM would react to the situation like:

"Okay, well it attacks your ship... I'm not sure if how much damage it takes. Hmm... The game doesn't seem to say"

*Proceeds by making up his own damage value*

Sorry, but that's bad game design. I don't know about most people, but having some ruling about damage from non starship sources should be a part of the game.

Agreed. I don't mind doing the number-crunching, but I need a little more than just some half-arsed paragraph to go on.

The rules we are given reflect their vision for the game. That vision minimizes character v starship combat. That's okay. If you wish to explore that area of gameplay, the rules we have are quite serviceable for stating out challenges and adjudicating interactions.

Maybe focus on figuring out how you can use the rules to achieve your goals?

Why do you seem so puritanically dead-set against other people getting to enjoy options they want? If there's a sufficient customer demand for it, why would Paizo not meet it with a supply? Nobody is forcing you to use those options if you don't like them.

Sauce987654321 wrote:

What about when someone fires a missile launcher at a tiny sized racer that's flying over head?

Treat the missile launcher as a weak starship weapon. Generally, the rules say that only starship weapons can deal any notable amount of damage to starships. This actually mimics modern real-world warfare as infantry weapons are generally ineffective against armored vehicles.

Yeah, if you're talking rifles, sure, b/c those are meant to be sued by infantry against other infantry. Yeah, shooting itty-bitty bullets or pew-pew lazors at the side of a spacecraft is just wizzing ammo into the wind - that's why the Millennium Falcon takes no damage from random stromtrooper/snowtrooper rifle blasts, but is lucky to get out in one piece when snowtroopers set up an E-Web blaster (equivalent of a squad-support heavy machine gun).

Plus, we've had man-portable anti-armor weapons since at least WWI.

Later, with advancement of miniaturization & tracking technology, we've been able to develop even shoulder-fired anti-air weapons like the FIM-92 Stinger

In a sci-fi universe, destroying a starfighter w/ an infantry-portable anti-air/anti-armor weapon would look something like this.

I made a topic talking about exactly this that I'm sure you would have had a field day in.

I have the same problem with the game essentially not acknowledging the possibility of certain situations, such as what you wrote.

Thanks! :) Looking through it now.

Voin_AFOL wrote:

I'm actually getting really sick of seeing the "just solve it ad hoc" cop-out, b/c I shouldn't have to tell anyone by now that if we take that argument to its logical conclusion, the end result is "just write your own game system"

That's less logical conclusion and more logical fallacy. There's a pretty wide gap between handwaving a specific rule for a specific scenario and inventing a new game system.

And which fallacy would that be?

One can handwave whatever one would like, there's no one stopping them. If, say, what's fun for someone & their game group is pure in-character voice-acting storytelling, one can just toss the entire combat system out the window and say "you tussle a bit with the unsavory scallywag at the bridge until you both wear each other out and decide to parlay". That is perfectly a-okay.

And if other people desire more detailed combat rules b/c that's what's more fun for them, that's perfectly a-okay too.

And then people play with the parts of the system that are more fun for them, leave the parts that are less useful aside, and the world is a happier place for it. :)

My initial comment was in regards to seeing this type of lazy "well, just hand-wave it" argument come up when people request a more detailed resolution mechanism for X situation, like, firearms in a swords-&-sorcery setting, for example is one I noticed ppl get their jimmies rustled over for some reason (despite the historicity of early firearms being used in Europe in the Late Middle Ages, coexisting with heavy cavalry).

I never understood the antipathy toward allowing other people to have nice things that you don't have to use if you don't like them. I mean, why does it seem to be such a problem to some people that they have to take such a puritanical stand against it? If you don't want a certain option in your game, then just don't have it in your game, seems pretty simple to me (i.e. if you don't want firearms in your swords-&-sorcery setting, then just don't have firearms - some other game group somewhere else playing as swashbucklers & musketeers won't hurt you in the slightest). What other game groups do at the privacy of their game tables is their business. :D

That's the beauty of these types of games - it's a buffet, not a force-feed tube.

Voin_AFOL wrote:

All the people saying "oh, you're not gonna hit comparatively itty-bitty characters w/ massive starship weapons" yeah, ok, you're not gonna hit little comparatively tiny snubfighters w/ massive broadside guns either (exactly what happened in the Death Star Run) - that's why we have size modifiers to attack rolls.

Just one small note, we don't even seem to have size modifiers to attack rolls anymore.

Wait, what, we don't?

~looks at rules~

huh. Well, I'm still getting a handle on Starfinder, & I must admit my assumption of "Pathfinder IN SPAAACE! except where told otherwise", lol

I really don't see a reason why there can't be some character/starship scale overlap at the smaller scales of starships and the larger ends of character weaponry.

The Fighter and Interceptor are both size "Tiny" (20–60 ft.) - that's comparable to various IRL military fighter planes, which is what they are meant to parallel, but in space.

Now why can't I use one of the massive cannons in the heavy weapons section to deal damage to (even a grounded) fighter? You know, like we have man-portable anti-armor/anti-air/anti-materiel weapons to do exactly that IRL right now?

As for starship weapons targeting characters, why not have a way to assign area-of-effect & Reflex Save DCs?

IMO, saying "if starship weapons are ever brought to bear against buildings or people, they deal Hit Point damage equal to 10 × their listed amount of damage. " but neglecting to include rules for how that might be done was kinda half-arsing it.

I'm actually getting really sick of seeing the "just solve it ad hoc" cop-out, b/c I shouldn't have to tell anyone by now that if we take that argument to its logical conclusion, the end result is "just write your own game system", and if we all do that, then why would we be here?

Yeah, I enjoy houseruling the crap out of my game-systems, but I think it's a fair assessment to say most of us are here on this forum b/c we generally like Paizo's products as systems of conflict-resolution for tabletop RPGs.

What exactly would be the harm in not half-arsing it and, oh, I dunno, providing, say, splash-damage radii & Reflex DCs for starship weapons?

Let's say the PCs wanna be wise-guys, take a shortcut, and try firing their shiny new lazor-phazor-mazor-tazor-cannonnator at the tower of the evil space wizard. Ok, say they penetrate the shields and just obliterate every living thing in a quarter-mile radius. Well done, now good luck scrapping any salvageable loot from the crater of irradiated dust you've created.

I mean yes, there's all sorts of reasons you as the GM could present to the PCs as to "why not use starship weaponry as a "press to win" button for every single encounter", and I think "incinerating anything worth looting" is gonna make even the most amoral parties think twice.

But again, why not have the rules to play around with for when it's... *fun!*? I see all these just... puritanical justifications for "separations of charater & starship scale, and ne'er' twain the two shall meet!" ... but then I think of that scene from Serenity with the warship locked onto the pulse-tracker.

Nobody's saying you have to use such rules if you don't want to, but why not have them in there for those of us that do want them? How will that hurt you in the slightest?

All the people saying "oh, you're not gonna hit comparatively itty-bitty characters w/ massive starship weapons" yeah, ok, you're not gonna hit little comparatively tiny snubfighters w/ massive broadside guns either (exactly what happened in the Death Star Run) - that's why we have size modifiers to attack rolls.

And I don't think anyone's suggesting that starship-on-character combat take place at starship-vs-starship speeds, heavens no. These aren't airplanes, they don't need to maintain a minimum speed to remain aloft. Hasn't anyone here ever watched the excellent Star Wars Rebels? Starship vs. character scale combat happens quite a bit - though usually not to lethal effect, it's more of "cover fire to escape" and the characters dodge the actual damage. Here's a scene where a TIE Fighter targets the main characters (a group roughly the size of your average adventuring party) and a character takes it out with a shoulder-mounted rocket-launcher.

Meanwhile in Stargate SG-1, we are shown that Death Gliders (the Goa'uld starfighters) can be taken down by, again, a shoulder-launched missile. Later, Teal'c takes to wielding a cannon from a downed Death Glider as a heavy weapon.

And then of course we have this magnificent scene from Galaxy vol.2 showing starship-on-character combat in all it's glory - why wouldn't I want scenes like that playing out at my game session?

1027. You Treant sapling companion don't know talkin' good like me and you, so his vocabulistics is limited to "I" and "am" and "Groot," exclusively in that order.

Found it

http://pathfinderwiki.com/mediawiki/images/2/22/Map_of_Brevoy_and_its_neigh bors.jpg

B/w the Stetven River & the Valley of fire.

1015) When paying a Halfling to rub his head for good luck, make sure to specify which head... ;)

1011: The anthem of Darklands peoples is not "I come from a Land Down Under, where mushrooms grow and Drow plunder..."

We did it! :D

...now what?

Though I doubt a single hardcover would be enough to do the entire Inner Sea justice. Really, a new softcover line of books seems more appropriate and functional to me. Especially, so that it can make suggestions for spaces where there's room for a starting PC kingdom.

The old 2nd edition AD&D Birthright setting (a spiritual precursor to Kingmaker) had something like this: the "Player's Secrets of [Nation] series - I recall having several of the old softcovers long ago, that detailed the various kingdoms players could rule: culture, history, settlements, fortresses, who's who (w/ statblocks of important figures), geography, holdings, politics, advice etc - excellent resources. And it was all told from the POV of an advisor to a newly crowned ruler.

The paperbacks are obviously harder to come by these days, but you might be able to find pdfs floating around.

So what happens when we hit 1,001? (we're so close!)

What happens if we exceed it?

In all of the movies and episodes of Star Trek (not counting Enterprise) , how many times did we see a bathroom, or even the sonic shower? You know the answer, and you should realize why...because at best, they are distractions from the storytelling.

And if you are limited to X amount of hours at a sitting, do you really want to spend that much time with the bathroom habits of each monster you encounter?

I hear that Myfarog is the game to go if you're looking for obsession on those kinds of details.

Well, that's the thing: ST is about diplomats, scientists, & explorers who maintain an air of dignity about them.

TTRPG adventurers won't hesitate to turn a privy into a tactical advantage (it's where even the toughest badass lets down their guard for obvious physical reasons). When the guard squats over a bucket & drops their pants to take care of business, they're a flat-footed target & can't move at more than 1/2 speed unless they take a move action to pull their pants back up. The GM just needs to hold up their end of the deal & send the guards on a potty break once in a while. If you're feeling particularly nasty, you can cast some sort of trap spell on the toilet itself to really catch your foes w/ their pants down.

898. This song is not appropriate background music for Reign Of Winter.

How have I not heard this ridiculous awesomeness before? Thank you! :D

958. Do NOT touch a self playing piano.

Why did I misread that as "Do NOT touch self playing piano."?

984a. The first rule of Norgorber Club is: You do not talk about Norgorber Club.

984b. The second rule of Norgorber Club is: You do not talk about Norgorber Club.

985. Osirian chariots do not have the motto "so let it be written so let it be done" written on the back.

986. Don't go bringing 10 Plagues onto Osirion until you've at least talked to the Ruby Prince first, mkay?

987. There is no Keleshite Spring uprising.

988. "Sarenrae Akbar!" is not a thing anyone in Golarion yells.

989. The church of Iomedae does not look kindly upon selling indulgences.

990a. The church of Iomedae does not have a Pope.

990b. Not allowed to create the position of Pope, nor try to entice clergy into creating said position w/ promises of a Popemobile.

991. Clerics of Sarenrae do not issue Fatwas or call to Jihad.

992. Clerics of Iomedae are not prohibited from marrying... they do call for Crusades, however.

993. It's not cool to refer to every half-orc & half-elf you meet as a "bastard". That's their word.

994. Not allowed to Hashtag anything.

995. I don't care if you are playing "Hell's Vengeance", the motto of your Chellish sex-slave-brothel shall not be "Slip into something more comfortable".

996. You are not Lawrence of Katapesh.

In pit traps, on pointy sticks. Hope you don't get filth fever.

Careful if your group by some chance happens to include a 'Nam vet...

Punji stick

One thing I think would be important to remember is a difference b/w "standing army" and "how many levies a nation can muster in a short time" (say, if they go to war).

Throughout most of our world's history (up until fairly recently, actually - around the last industrial revolution), for most civilizations, having a large, standing army at the ready during peacetime was rare. It was uneconomical (most of those soldiers were farmers & artisans, so if they're standing around in armor, they're consuming resources & not producing stuff), and typically seen as an open declaration of immediate intent on aggressive action by one's neighbors. Typically the rulers would have a small, full-time guard, regular folk would be conscripted as the need arose, and go back to being turnip-farmers or cartwrights at the end of the conflict.

The few militaristic civilizations that did have large standing militaries (Sparta & Rome are notable examples - and both of their economies strongly depended on slaves) were the exceptions that proved the rule.

It stands to reason that if the world of Golarion is not constantly embroiled in global wars, and if it makes any sort of economic or geo-political sense, then they too, having mostly agrarian/feudal/pre-industrial societies, would follow suit.

In cultures that necessitate badassery like the Ulfen or the Kellid, there's an important distinction that should be made between "anyone is ready to fight at a moment's notice" (which is more or less true) and "a bunch of people are full-time warriors, and do nothing else" (which is neither true in the cultures they are based on, nor would make any sense in the setting).

The presence of dangerous monsters does little to challenge this precedent. You don't send an army of CR 1 warriors to take out a dragon (that's how you end up with a roasted ex-army), you send a small band of highly-skilled adventurers (essentially a commando raid instead of an invasion force).

@ Jason Nelson:

That sounds amazing, and pretty close to what I'm looking for.

I haven't read all the APs yet, but...

- Reign of Winter seems like it would have a unique opportunity for some "our world" WWI/Russian Civil War battles.
Euphemistic Name Idea: "Red on White" (a double-entendre of the Communist Bolsheviks (Reds) vs the Czar's White Army, and blood on snow).

- Wrath of the Righteous looks like you could have the righteous host of crusaders driving back the demon horde
Euphemistic Name Idea: Heav'n's Rage

- Giantslayer looks like the whole AP is one big war against the giants ;)

In the meantime, for anyone looking to expand on the Kingdom rules, I'd highly recommend Legendary Games'
Ultimate Rulership, Ultimate Battle, & Ultimate War.

But my fellow Pathfinders bring up some good points.

Perhaps put in some class options that specifically interact w/ mass combat - Commanders, Spymasters, Battle-Priests, War-mages, that sort of thing.

But again, I'd want more of the focus to be on the nations & factions and their territorial holdings, defenses, & forces. The Eagle Knights of Andoran, the Dragon-prowed fleets of the Ulfen vikingrs, the Pure Legion of Rahadoum, etc.

How badass would it be to participate in a massive siege of Absalom (on either side)?

Okay, I just looked at the text of the resurrection spell in the d20pfsrd.

Components V, S, M (diamond worth 10,000 gp), DF

It just says "diamond", not "a diamond". Diamond is a substance, and can come in a big chunk, smaller pieces, powder, etc - it's all "diamond".

It's like if it asked for a material component that was "pie worth 10,000 gp" - is that one big pie, or a bunch of smaller ones?

mmmm... I wanna get rezzed to a 10,000 gp pie... :P

Where do "used up" diamonds...go?

What about opening up planar trade from the Elemental Plane of Earth? BOOM! Infinite minable resources!

How many GP worth of diamonds do I need to build a killer SPACE-LAZOR? :P

zainale wrote:

well good luck ever finding one of that size

Size isn't an issue.

if they want to do it in the field

Uhm... phrasing? O_o :P

Okay, seriously now:

Diamonds are objectively worthless in our world.

Prior to the 20th century, engagement rings were strictly luxury items, and they rarely contained diamonds. But in 1939, the De Beers diamond company changed all of that when it hired ad agency N.W. Ayer & Son. The industry had taken a nosedive in the 1870s, after massive diamond deposits were discovered in South Africa. But the ad agency came to the rescue by introducing the diamond engagement ring and quietly spreading the trend through fashion magazines. The rings didn't become de rigueur for marriage proposals until 1948, when the company launched the crafty "A Diamond is Forever" campaign. By sentimentalizing the gems, De Beers ensured that people wouldn't resell them, allowing the company to retain control of the market. In 1999, De Beers chairman Nicky Oppenheimer confessed, "Diamonds are intrinsically worthless, except for the deep psychological need they fill."

In addition to diamond engagement rings, De Beers also promoted surprise proposals. The company learned that when women were involved in the selection process, they picked cheaper rings. By encouraging surprise proposals, De Beers shifted the purchasing power to men, the less-cautious spenders.

Diamonds are not particularly rare in our world. Unfortunately what drives the price up to a ludicrous markup is that one diamond cartel (De Beers) has muscled its way into a monopoly, and sits on the supply, creating an artificial shortage by only allowing a small percentage to be sold each year (again for absolutely no reason other than to unethically increase their profits).

So knowing this, we must ask ourselves - is there equivalent anticompetitive dickery going on in Golarion (*cough* Aspis Consortium), and if so, how does these diamond robber-barons artificially manipulating prices affect the return of souls to the mortal plane?

Lemme start by saying that I heartily appreciate the new elements of gameplay strategy that Downtime & Kingdom-Building rules bring to the table, and I want to thank everyone involved in that (and the excellent "Kingmaker" AP that prototyped it) for all their time and effort.

What I'd like to propose is a "Worldbook" of sorts, that would go through the nations and factions of Golarion (or perhaps just the Inner Sea) and stat them out using Kingdom, Downtime, and Faction-prestige rules.

The introduction set forth in Kingmaker is wonderful, but to those of us aspiring to take our characters or parties on the path to rulership, we hunger for more. What happens if our Stolen Lands kingdom wants to carry out an invas- er, sorry, "intervention" in Galt? Or what if the GM decides Technic League of Numeria invades the Stolen Lands? What if an Alkenstar-Andoran Alliance (with PC heroes at the helm, of course) is at war with a Chelliax client state? How about a grand campaign of conquest all across the Inner Sea - the kind which has made Alexander, the Caesars, and the Khans (in)famous in our world's history?

Basically, what I would like (and would pay good money for) is a "Bestiary of Nations" (and factions), with each statblocks of each one's territorial holdings, troop strength, and wealth - just like a player's Kingdom or Downtime stats. When my players (or I as a player) go up against a rival Kingdom or guild, I want to know their stats, just like when taking down a monster.

To my knowledge, as of this post, there isn't a product out there like this already - but if I missed such a thing already being published (there are a lot of PF books to keep up with, I'd appreciate someone letting me know.

Don't hesitate to post replies if you'd like to throw your support behind such a project, &/or if there is something you'd like to see in such a book that I forgot to mention.

What I don't want to see is people wasting my time the weak, shoot-down "counter-argument" of: "oh, but you/your GM can just make something up for those nations" - well, if we follow that rabbit-hole to it's logical conclusion, I could just pull all the stats for monsters, magic, classes, heck, a whole game system of my own out of my rear, but then we wouldn't be playing Pathfinder anymore, would we? Such arguments bring nothing to the discussion and are only lazy attempts to shut it down.

Also, I (obviously) would love to hear from the good folks at Paizo themselves regarding their thoughts on this idea.

Might I recommend using the Unchained consolidated skill list?

I was actually considering that until I saw they included no Craft skills, which is an unjustifiable travesty. Henceforth, I prefer to use the Background Skills optional rule.

It's like running a Star Wars game. Just say "from the start of the campaign, forward, it's all my own continuity that isn't expected to match official cannon".