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** Starfinder Society GM. 1,253 posts (2,010 including aliases). 7 reviews. No lists. 1 wishlist. 12 Organized Play characters. 2 aliases.




25 people marked this as FAQ candidate.

I'm going to go ahead and start this by saying that I'm not trying to start a debate here, or advocate for or against any particular answer to these questions. If you want to do that, feel free, but I'm mostly hoping for a FAQ request here, because I think these situations are ambiguous enough in the actual text to warrant it. And I think over time these are likely to cause some of the same kinds of arguments that RoF caused (especially in SFS, where every GM can't just make up their own house rules and hope for the best).

If by some miracle the thread comes to a consensus, even if it's one I disagree with, I'm happy to play along with the general player base and not argue. But if you feel the need to come in here and act like I'm stupid for daring to ask the question or for not seeing your particular answer as the one true gospel, just leave, please. I don't have time for your weakness.

First my questions.

1. Does Soulfire (the fusion) allow a Solar Shield wielder to add their charisma to damage?

2. Does a Solar Shield using a Solarian Crystal that does energy damage target EAC or KAC?

3. Do racial or class features (like Vesk Natural Attack or Aesthetic Warrior) provide a 1.5x Specialization (or any other bonuses) to the Unarmed Strikes from Solar Shield?

So that we have all the relevant information, here are the rules for the various things involved in why I'm asking those questions. Sections may be bolded or italicized for emphasis so you can more easily see where confusion about the rules might arise.

Solar Shield:
You can coalesce your solar mote around one of your hands, creating a deflecting shield of out of stellar energy. This shield appears to be made of either glowing light or solid darkness, as determined by the appearance of your solar manifestation, but it can take any general shape you desire. Normal defensive implements such as bucklers and kite shields are popular shapes for solar shields, but it is not unheard of for a solarian to bear a solar shield in the form of a shining orrery orbiting their arm, a set of rapidly spinning helicopter blades across their forearm, or stranger barriers. Your solar shield’s general design has no impact on its function, and it doesn’t give the shield any special abilities. Once you’ve selected the general design, you can’t change it until you gain a new solarian level.
Your solar shield grants you a +1 shield bonus to AC (see Shields on page 124), and as a move action you can align the shield to grant you greater protection against one opponent you are observing (Core Rulebook 260), which increases your shield bonus to AC to +2 against attacks from that opponent until the beginning of your next turn. At 5th level and again every 5 levels thereafter, the shield bonus when aligned against one target increases by an additional +1.
You can make unarmed attacks with your solar shield; these attacks are not archaic, and you threaten squares within your reach while it is formed. You can add solarian weapon crystals to your solar shield as if it were a solar weapon, in which case their benefits apply to unarmed attacks you make with the shield. The damage type of these attacks is the same damage type as the type granted by the solarian weapon crystal, and if the solarian weapon crystal does not specify a damage type, it deals bludgeoning damage.
Forming or dismissing a solar shield is a move action that takes the same amount of effort as drawing or sheathing a weapon (and can be combined with a move as a single move action or used with the Quick Draw feat). Your solar shield is automatically dismissed if it ever leaves your hand.

Soulfire:
The soulfire fusion (and soulfire fusion seals) can only be applied to solarian weapon crystals. When you hit a target with a solar weapon augmented by a solarian weapon crystal with the soulfire fusion, you add your Charisma bonus to the damage done, in addition to your Strength bonus.

So, since you treat your Solar Shield 'as if it were a solar weapon' for the purposes of solarian crystals and there are no caveats (as with Solar Flare) about the types of fusions it can take. I think the answer to 1 is that Soulfire works with Solar Shield. Both Herolab and the Cookiemaker sheet (which I edit) currently do not work this way, and the text is ambiguous enough (and solar shield powerful enough) that I could see it getting argued over. But that's precisely why I'm asking the question.

Armor Class:
ENERGY ARMOR CLASS (EAC)
Your Energy Armor Class (EAC) represents the defenses you have against attacks that only deal damage as a result of some kind of energy (such as acid, cold, electricity, fire, or sonic damage). When an opponent’s attack would deal only energy damage (if he is using, for example, a laser pistol), his attack roll result is compared to your EAC to determine whether he hits you. Some weapons and effects that use magical or exotic untyped energies might also target your EAC; the description of the weapon or effect tells you if this is the case.

KINETIC ARMOR CLASS (KAC)
Your Kinetic Armor Class (KAC) represents the defenses you have against attacks that primarily deal damage as a result of a physical impact. This generally includes attacks that deal bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage (usually described as “kinetic attacks”), as well as impacts from falling and damage from crushing or constriction. When a foe’s attack would deal such damage (if he is using, for example, a starknife), even if it also deals energy damage, his attack roll result is compared to your KAC to determine whether he hits.

So, based on that, if an attack from a Solar Shield deals solely energy damage (which the Solar Shield with some crystals does) it should target EAC, and if it deals Bludgeoning or some other kinetic damage, it should be KAC and I think that should be the answer to 2. Most examples, though, of fusions (or the like) that change a damage type of a weapon include a line like the following: "This fusion never causes a weapon that normally targets KAC to target EAC." I can't think of an example that doesn't, and it's perfectly reasonable to assume this is a general rule. Unarmed Strikes normally do kinetic damage and it's perfectly reasonable to assume that this implied general rule applies and Solar Shield always targets KAC, regardless of the energy type. However, since that line is missing from Solar Shield, the wording of how damage assigned is different from other examples, and I cannot find a general rule that actually says this, I think it's ambiguous enough to warrant a FAQ, because I can totally see this being ruled either way at any given table.

Finally...

Vesk Natural Attack:
Vesk are always considered armed. They can deal 1d3 lethal damage with unarmed strikes and the attack doesn’t count as archaic. Vesk gain a unique weapon specialization with their natural weapons at 3rd level, allowing them to add 1–1/2 × their character level to their damage rolls for their natural weapons (instead of just adding their character level, as usual).

Aesthetic Warrior:
You study fighting styles thought lost to the Gap, often recorded only in the art of ancient civilizations or inferred from the shape of relic weapons and battle gear. You focus specifically ancient motions and techniques that rely on form and mobility rather than the harshness of attacks and resilience. You gain Improved Unarmed Strike as a bonus feat. You can deal lethal damage with your unarmed strikes, and the attack doesn’t count as archaic. At 3rd level, you gain a unique Weapon Specialization with your unarmed strikes, allowing you to add 1-1/2 times your character level to your damage rolls for your unarmed strikes (instead of just adding your character level, as usual). If you can already add 1-1/2 your character level to your unarmed attack rolls (such as due to the vesk natural attack racial trait), you instead can add the block, grapple, and stun weapon special properties to your unarmed strikes.
This replaces the soldier’s proficiency with heavy armor and heavy weapons.

Here's where I see a lot of arguments happening, same as they did with Ring of Fangs. See, I can freely admit that it doesn't make any sense for a racial ability that makes your fangs or teeth or tail (or whatever the heck Vesk use) to attack stronger (the 1.5x spec) not affecting a shield. That seems rational on the face of it. But there are a lot of other things where I've made that argument (like smelling through environmental protections) only to be talked to like I'm stupid for not accepting this is a game full of magic and it doesn't have to make sense. Moreover, the line in Aesthetic Warrior about the vesk natural attack racial trait implies that the 1.5x spec from the trait applies to all unarmed strikes (and not just the ones from your actual 'claws' or whatever). Solar Shield is an unarmed strike. Further, in the clarification of RoF from Joe Pasini other properties from Natural Attack get applied to the RoF attack, because it's an unarmed strike, so you can make the case that this might be how it's supposed to work. Now, personally I think that the answer to 3 is that something like Vesk Natural Attack does not work but Aesthetic Warrior does, but I can see valid arguments about Intent vs RAW vs Logic vs 'Don't take away my toy' vs 'his toy is better than mine and you should take it away' ruining a lot of fun at actual tables. So I think it warrants a FAQ.

I welcome anyone who wishes to to make their case for their own answer, but I have no plans on engaging in a debate about this. If you have clearly irrefutable rules text that answers these questions, or if everyone agrees that it should work a particular way, I welcome it. Otherwise I've made the case as I see it, and I'm mostly hoping that you agree it needs a FAQ and click the FAQ button.


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I've updated the cookiemaker autosheet with the missing books since August.

Full details of the update can be found on the Changes TAB and on reddit here.

Have fun out there, kids.


1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.

Can technomancers without the esotericist archetype take the two magic hacks listed on page 100?

I'm pretty sure that the intent is for them to be only available if you actually take the archetype. However...

A-I don't see any text that explicitly states this (unless I missed something, please correct). The closest is the title of the section, 'Technomancer Esotericist Magic Hacks' which very clearly suggests this. But it doesn't say, "Only technomancers with the Esotericist archetype are allowed to take these magic hacks."

B-All of an esotericists ACFs are optional regardless. So any technomancer could, technically, call themselves an Esotericist, take literally none of the ACF's and therefore qualify for the two magic hacks if this were the case.

Basically, the only people that would be prevented from taking them are TM's that are already past level 2, so it seems like a weird way to rule it.

While this question seems pedantic, I'm working on adding stuff from COM to the cookiemaker sheet and it's important that I get the limitations on availability correct, if they exist.


19 people marked this as FAQ candidate. 3 people marked this as a favorite.

There have been a couple of threads (here and here) already, but I don't recall seeing any official clarification, yet. In the past, this hasn't come up much because other than Directed Denial of Strength (a Technomancer spell in Pact Worlds) I'm not sure of any way for a PC to apply the encumbered condition to an NPC.

However, under Biohacker, the Pharmacology Inhibitor also automatically applies the Encumbered condition. Because of this, and because this is one of the (potentially) 'better' options for a Biohacker at level 1, I have a feeling it's going to start coming up far more often and really needs to be officially FAQ'd.

So the question is, since Dexterity modifier is supposed to have no affect on NPC AC, how does the part of the Encumbered condition that changes Max Dex to +2 affect NPCs? None at all? A flat rate (like Flat-footed)? Or are we expected to do the math on the fly for every NPC? What about the low level ones that often have a +3 dex mod but only an AC adjustment of +2 to begin with, because that's what their CR says?


6 people marked this as FAQ candidate.

I'm pretty sure that this isn't intentional, but, it looks like, if you want two solar manifestations (say, Sword + Shield), and have them both active, you don't have to wait until 9th level + full atunement.

A one level dip in Mystic can get you...

Quote:

You have forged a connection to the powers of the cosmos,

drawing upon a link to photons and gravity to forge a weapon
made from the primal stuff of the universe. You gain a solar
weapon, as the solar manifestation ability of a solarian with a
class level equal to your mystic level. If you have levels in both
classes, you add them together to determine the effectiveness
of your solar weapon. You do not gain any other solar-weapon
focused solarian abilities from mystic class levels.

It looks like, as long as your solarian manifestation from actual solarian levels is something other than weapon, you get both.

I don't think this is intentional. FAQ? or am I missing something in the RAW?


35 people marked this as FAQ candidate. 6 people marked this as a favorite.

Here are the rules in question, so that they are clear before we begin.

Soulfire wrote:
The soulfire fusion (and soulfire fusion seals) can only be applied to solarian weapon crystals. When you hit a target with a solar weapon augmented by a solarian weapon crystal with the soulfire fusion, you add your Charisma bonus to the damage done, in addition to your Strength bonus.
Solar Flare wrote:
Any solarian class features (including stellar revelations and zenith revelations) that specifically affect melee weapons (such as the flashing strikes class feature) function with your solar flare, even if they normally work only with melee attacks. Anything that specifically affects solar weapons (such as solarian weapon crystals) affects your solar flare in the same way, though it can’t gain any weapon special property, critical hit effect, or weapon fusion that can’t be applied to a small arm.

Some people are arguing that the intent is for Soulfire to work with Solar Flare. I think the RAW is pretty clear that it doesn't (and I generally assume the developers at least try to write what they intend). Solar Flare can only benefit from fusions that you can put on small arms, and Soulfire is a fusion you can only put on Weapon Crystals. Those two things are not equal, so they can't work. But a number of people are already assuming they do and before this turns into another Ring of Fangs, it would be nice to get dev clarification or a FAQ. Especially since I'd love to be wrong here and get Soulfire on my solar flare.


8 people marked this as FAQ candidate.

I just found out that there is a direct disagreement in the rules on what the term 'Caster Level' is defined as.

On page 330 (or here ) Caster Level is defined as...

Quote:
Your caster level (or CL) represents your aptitude for casting the spells you know, and it is equal to the total number of levels you have in spellcasting classes.

(emphasis added)

Not 5 pages later on page 335 (or here ) Caster Level is defined as...

Quote:
A spell’s power often depends on caster level, which is defined as the caster’s class level for the purpose of casting a particular spell.

I have always played/run the CL for everything as being the total of spellcasting levels per page 330 and wasn't even aware of this discrepancy until this morning. I tried checking the FAQ (not there), and doing a search here in the rules forum (didn't find anything).

I'm not here to argue for either of them, but these two things directly contradict one another and have a pretty big impact for any multi-class spellcasters, so can we get an official answer added to the FAQ?


13 people marked this as FAQ candidate.

And if so, how?

((I'm asking this, because I expected it to be explicitly stated somewhere in the mount rules, and I can't find it.))

I'm most interested in how this block of text may or may not apply to a Drone Mechanic riding their mount via the Riding Saddle drone mod.

Alien Archive 3 wrote:
Speed and Movement: While you’re riding your creature companion, your mount’s speeds replace your own speeds, and you use them in place of your own when moving your speed, including when using abilities that allow you to move your speed (such as the operative’s trick attack). When you use an action that includes movement, your mount uses the same action (even if it couldn’t normally take that action otherwise). This counts as granting your creature companion an action. If you can grant your mount additional actions (such as with a creature companion feat), it’s still limited to its maximum number of actions per turn (see Actions on page 138).

I'm mostly concerned specifically with the bolded phrases. I've always assumed that the intention for Drones with the riding saddle is for those two phrases to apply, but literally no one is playing them that way.

It'd be nice if after two years we could finally get a FAQ on that.

5/55/5

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I have had more arguments over this darn item than anything else in the game. Everything from, "It removes Archaic even though it doesn't say it does" to "It adds Archaic to Vesk unarmed strikes that take the 2x level specialization because the RoF biting isn't the same as the Vesk Natural Attack."

Every GM seems to have a different interpretation and every single time it comes up it devolves into a looped rules argument about what rule overrides what other rule. I think the RAW is very clear on how it works, but every other week I have a conversation with someone else that also thinks the RAW is very clear but entirely different. I'd really like to not have to spend the next 10 years re-hashing this.

EDIT: Just to be clear, here, I'm not going to argue for any particular interpretation, here. I just want an official one I can point to and say, "this is what it is." I honestly no longer care what that official rule looks like.


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New MASTER for the Cookiemaker Starfinder Auto-sheet. Includes all 1p (non-playtest) and SFS content I could find up to May 31st, including Races, Themes, Class Features, Feats, Spells, Gear, et al. Fixes a handful of annoying bugs I've been dealing with with my own characters/players. Adds a few minor new features.

If you see anything still missing or broken, feel free to hit me up.

Enjoy


Okay, so recently in a run of an AP, one of my players got cursed and failed their save. They're wanting to get it removed, but they're still in a really low level area, so there isn't anyone able to cast 'remove affliction' handy.

Looking at the curse in question, it does have a way to remove it built into the curse. However, I can't find in the CRB how this actually works. Does the victim of the curse automatically know this? Do they need to make a skill check (Mysticism = DC of Curse seems appropriate)? Does someone have to cast detect affliction? Once they know the cure, are there checks required for them to do the thing? Do they need to make another save when done?

It seems silly to me that they would automatically know this and could just do it, as most of the 'cures' amount to things that the PC can just say they do. "I sleep outside for the remainder of this week of downtime." Or, whatever. It feels like these are meant to hurt, and it seems silly to trivialize them.

I'm confident I can make something up that will work, but seems odd that the rules aren't there somewhere already. I'm hoping I just missed them. If not, FAQ?

5/55/5

I did some searching across the forums, additional resources, and the guide, and I don't see this brought up anywhere, but it looks to me like it may be legal to get unlimited (out of combat) healing as a Technomancer at level 11.

You do this by taking the Necromantic Revitalization Spell (which is legal), combine it with a Necrograft or Borais boon so that the spell works on you (which is legal), and the Eternal Spell Magic Hack (which let's you treat a 1st level spell like a 0th and is legal). You are then free to cast spam the first level spell all day long and refill your hitpoints between every fight.

I would argue that this is obviously unintentional and would normally be something limited to theory-crafting, since Eternal Spell explicitly states that it's a GM call on whether spells outside the CRB are allowed. And I would argue few sane GM's would ever allow this combo. But since this is a 'shared GM space' with shared house rules and there doesn't seem to be anything in the guide or the additional resources page that puts any limits that would prevent someone from using this trick.

All I can find are statements about how the spells in a given book are or are not 'legal for play'. If they're legal, it implies they're usable in all the ways a character can use a spell, and therefore could be paired with Eternal Spell. Some GM's might interpret that differently, and normally, I'd be fine with that, but in this case, this particular combat seems to destroy (admittedly high level, for society) encounter balance pretty hard.

I can't be the first person that's noticed this?

5/55/5

Does anyone know if they've announced whether or not the adventure in the Beginner Box will be sanctioned for Society Play? If so, is it going to be sanctioned in perpetuity the way that, say, Skitter Shot is? I wasn't around for the PF Beginner Box, so I'm not sure how it worked there. I'm debating buying the box, because I don't really need/want the toys, but if the adventure will be sanctioned, it may be worth it to go ahead and pre-order.

5/55/5

Okay, this isn't a 'what' question, it's more of a 'why' question. I tend to run/play a lot of PbP/PbD and also run/play AP games. These tend to take a long time to go through, and I know my player is 'locked' during that time and can't receive credit for more than one game at the same time.

When it comes to playing multiple multi-session games, even with pre-gens (like with APs in Campaign Mode), I can see why this rule exists. It seems pretty obvious why you can't play a character in more than one scenario at the same time. There are so many ways that's broken and unmanageable. Likewise, it seems obvious why you can't run scenarios for a character you're actively playing, or vice versa. Even if there weren't ways to 'break' that, the paperwork nightmare alone makes it obvious why you wouldn't want to allow that. (Even though this can bring up a weird problem if your first game happens to be Signal of Screams or 1-00 in a PbP and you would have no fame to clear out conditions on the pre-gen unless you were allowed to play/run some low tier scenarios to do so.)

What I can't seem to figure out, though, is why you can't GM multiple games for the same character (simultaneously). The only thing I can think of is that this is to prevent 'power leveling' or possibly to prevent a character from being stuck in a weird place where their 3-6 scenario ended (leveling them to 5) before their 1-4 and now they can't actually get credit for the 1-4.

Neither of those seem unmanageable, though. And since this only comes up for people running PbP or APs, which take a relatively long time compared to 'normal' scenario gaming, I don't see the power-leveling thing as being a valid reason not to allow it. And, honestly, as a GM I wouldn't allow myself to get into the situation where I couldn't get credit for something that I wanted credit for, so I think the corner case of leveling out of something can't be the reason to prevent it.

So, more out of curiosity than anything, and with a genuine interest in understanding, does anyone know why this isn't allowed? Is it just to make it 'fair' or 'simple'? Or is there something broken that I'm just not seeing?


7 people marked this as FAQ candidate. 1 person marked this as a favorite.

Just got copy of AA2 and was skimming through the new PC races. I came across this...

AA2 Spoiler:
Orcs have a racial feature that says the following, with emphasis added...

Conditioned Focus: Due to her conditioning, an orc can choose one skill that becomes a class skill for her. If the chosen skill is a class skill from the class she takes at 1st level, she instead gains a +1 bonus to checks with that skill. She also receives an adjustment of +1 to the ability score associated with the chosen skill. In addition, due to her confidence with that skill, once per day, before she attempts a check with the chosen skill, the orc can grant herself a +2 bonus to that check.

That makes it look like *spoiler* is an 11 point buy race, capable of ending up with all even abilities at level 1. They're already a really solid option for melee. Just curious if the above line was intentional or not.


17 people marked this as FAQ candidate.

When I got my hands on the armory a bit ago, one of the main things a lot of people were interested in spoilers on was the Power Armor upgrades. This led to a huge discussion on the starfinder discord about the cost of doing this. Because, frankly it's pretty insane.

Upgrading power armor is expensive. Buying a suit of, say, level 5 power armor and then upgrading it to level 6, then 7, and so on would cost something like 150% of buying the most expensive new heavy armor every level and selling your old stuff. What's worse, after a couple levels, you actually end up worse off on AC if you do it that way. If you were to upgrade Heavy Armor every 2-3 levels (which I suspect is more likely), the cost of upgrading Power Armor is well over double the cost of heavy armor.

I didn't think this could be correct, so after thinking about it some, I brought myself to a question, according to the Crafting Rules (CRB page 235), all you need to craft gear is:

Quote:

He must have a number of ranks

in the appropriate skill equal to the item level of the item to
be created. For weapons, armor, vehicles, and technological
equipment, the appropriate skill is Engineering.

And...

Quote:

Crafting items requires you to have access to tools and a

workshop or similar space.

And...

Quote:

To create an item, you must have UPBs with a total value

equal to the price of the item to be created. At the GM’s
discretion, you can scavenge similar items for parts, allowing
10% of the scavenged item’s value to count toward the UPBs
needed

So basically, if you have tools, time, UPBs, Skill ranks == item level, and an item with a level and a price, you should (I think), be able to craft it.

So, all that brings me to what my sort of question is, in that, I think we aren't intended as players (or GM's) to be buying a level 5 Power Armor, then upgrading it to 6, then 7 and so on. I think the intent may be for us to buy (or craft) new power armor at the appropriate upgraded level when we're ready to upgrade, and selling the old one same as we would for heavy armor. That would mean buying level 5 power armor (or making it), then around level 8 crafting a new 'upgraded' level 8 version of the same armor and selling the level 5 stuff, then repeating it at 10, and so on, replacing the old armor with a completely different level appropriate chassis when that makes sense to do so.

I know this isn't RAW, because the CRB also limits the crafting rules (explicitly) to the items in the CRB. But I also think that any GM that allows crafting and also allows other books is likely to ignore that, and probably most developers assume that people ignore that line as well. Crafting in SF is a lot less broken than it is in PF, so I suspect this may a fair assumption.

If you do the math on crafting new power armor this way (and selling the old stuff), it's still more expensive than doing the same thing with Heavy Armor, and upgraded power armor (at least for the ones I did the math on) were more expensive than even other power armors of the same level. So, I don't think you're giving away the goose by allowing this.

I'm mostly curious if other GM's are reading it this way, or ideally, if this was the intent of the upgrade rules by the developers? I haven't seen any of them speak to that in the twitch streams, but I'm nowhere near omnipresent or anything, so I may have missed it if they did.

Thoughts? Concerns? Insults to my general intelligence?


3 people marked this as a favorite.

Feel free to use and/or critique. I can't believe I'm having to do this. They should have been made playable to begin with.

Playable Corpsefolk
Corpsefolk are the animated corpses of sapient humanoids that have retained their intelligence and memories from life. They appear much as they did in life, though their skin is pale, cold to the touch, and they often have bits of themselves rotting off. A mild stench of decay usually follows them, though many wear heavy perfumes or other scents to cover this up.
Racial Traits
Ability Adjustments: +2 Dex, +2 Wis, -2 Con
Hit Points: 6
Size and Type: Corpsefolk maintain the size of the humanoid they were originally, but their type changes to undead.
Darkvision: Corpsefolk can see up to 60 feet in the dark.
Walking Dead: For effects targeting creatures by type, corpsefolk count as both humanoids and undead (whichever effect is worse). They are immune to negative energy damage and sleep effects, as well as diseases or poisons that do not explicitly affect undead creatures. They gain a +1 racial bonus to saving throws against exhaustion, fatigue, mind-affecting effects, paralysis, and stunning.
Endless Walk: Corpsefolk do not need to sleep, breath, eat, or drink and gain no benefit from any spell or effect that requires them to do so. Corpsefolk can only restore "per day" abilities like resolve and spell slots once every 24 hours and must 'relax' (doing minimal activity) for 8 hours prior in order to fully regain these resources.
Rotting Body: Unlike humanoids, a corpsefolk's constitution represents the integrity of their rotting corpse and not their overall health. This unnaturalness causes them to gain a -2 penalty to charisma-based checks with non-undead, but unintelligent undead ignore corpsefolk unless the corpsefolk attacks them first. Likewise, they cannot heal naturally or benefit from magical healing spells or effects, serums of healing, or medicine checks. They can gain back hit points through the use of spells or effects that explicitly heal undead, and they gain and lose stamina points normally. If their constitution is ever reduced to zero, their body rots away and they are dead. If they die or their body is destroyed, they can be brought back to their normal undead state by spells like raise dead or wish but not by mystic cure.
Old Body: Corpsefolk can use augmentations from cybernetic, magitech, or necrotech sources but cannot use biotech augmentations. The process of becoming undead destroys the biological processes of their old bodies and they lose any racial traits unrelated to appearance. This lack of biological processes makes them naturally resistant to physical damage. Corpsefolk gain DR 2/-.
Old Life: Corpsefolk retain the soul of their prior incarnation and any memories they had from their previous life. This includes languages, class levels, skills, feats, and other abilities. Their soul is forever bound to the negative material plane, though, and may be subject to punishment by Pharasma after death.
Resist Death's Grip: Corpsefolk take no penalties from energy drain effects, but they can still be destroyed if they accrue more negative levels than they have class levels. After 24 hours, any negative levels a corpsefolk has taken are removed without the need for an additional saving throw.


For anyone wanting to run Skitter Shot, I made audio for the announcements from the ship and the robots.

Skitter-Shot_Sounds.zip

(That's a drive link)

Enjoy.


Question is in the title. I've been doing searches on the forums and blogs internally here and google searches externally for the last half-hour and I can't find them. Apologize if I missed it. But I'd like to know how old/tall/heavy my Goblin PC is supposed to be without flubbing numbers from a different game.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

I can never have enough Spelljammer in my own games, so, in order to facilitate that, I sat down and wrote up a race entry for the Rube Goldbergs of my favorite setting and their annoyingly dangerous pets.

I present to you, Tinker Gnomes and Giant Space Hamsters.

Inside this google doc, you'll find a complete race write-up for the Tinker Gnome ethnicity, including some of their history, backstory, naming conventions, and other details needed to play one or allow them in your own games. In addition, you'll find monster entries with stats and descriptions for the four most common varieties of Giant Space Hamsters: the originals, carnivorous, fire-breathing, and the dreaded miniature giant space hamsters.

Much of this is blatantly stolen or modified from memory from other games/editions.

I hope you enjoy, and feel free to critique or use as you wish.

If I have time later this week, I hope to add some Tinker Gnome equipment and ship examples.


Someone on the SF Discord asked about the idea of using Telekinetic Projectile to perform the Covering/Harrying Fire actions in combat. Looking into it, I'm not sure whether or not this is allowed.

After digging through the magic and spells section, I was able to find this:

The SRD wrote:
Spells with Attack Rolls: Some spells require an attack roll to hit. For these spells, you don’t need line of sight to the target, but you still need line of effect. These spells can score a critical hit just as a weapon can, and deal double damage on a successful critical hit. If one of these spells has a duration, it refers to the duration of the effect that the attack causes, not the length of time that the attack itself persists.

Both the Covering and Harrying Fire actions only refer to 'Ranged Attacks', so I think this may be legal.

There's nothing explicit I can find (in that section or elsewhere) that would allow or disallow someone to use TP or Energy Ray or some other spell to do Covering/Harrying Fire. It makes sense to me that someone should be able to do so (I mean, an Energy Ray is basically a level 1 laser pistol, and I think a rock coming at you like a bullet would be pretty harrying), and I'd almost certainly rule that way at my table. But I'm hoping for something more conclusive.

So, in general, can Spells with ranged attack rolls be used with Covering/Harrying Fire?


Back when my group played 2nd ed AD&D, one of the many houserules we used from Dragon magazine was the Cantrip Proficiency from issue 221 The Little Wish, which let you cast 0th level spells in much the way that later editions of that game (and Pathfinder/Starfinder) did. This idea goes back further than that, I think it was originally in Unearthed Arcana for 1st ed, but that was before even my time.

Most of the 0th level effects got rolled into Prestidigitation, which was always sort of a 'catch all' spell for whatever the DM would let you get away with.

In order to put guard rails on that, and give the players ideas on what the spell could be used for, at some point in my 3rd/3.5 edition career as a DM, I created a list of various effects you could make with Prestidigitation and gave it to my group. Most of them were based off ones in the earlier edition, and some were based on research done by players in various games over the years.

For Starfinder, I've gone ahead and done the same thing with Token Spell. Basically, since 0th level spells are at will, I split Token Spell essentially into a bunch of smaller, like half spells, that can all be done as part of learning Token Spell.

I've put it in a google doc, here. If anyone wishes to use it (in whole or in part) feel free. If anyone has suggestions for updating it, or critiques, I'm all ears.

I got a lot of help with the formatting and a few rules issues from some people on the Starfinder Discord. I'd like to thank them, but don't know their handles on the forums. So if any of you guys want to chime in and claim credit, speak up. I really appreciate the help.


I just noticed that the summon creature spell has a line in it that none of the other variable level spells seem to have. The line seems to imply, to me, that you can't learn the spell more than twice.

quothe the SRD wrote:
You can gain summon creature a second time at the highest spell level you know, selecting four additional appropriate creatures at each level you can cast this spell.

With the other variable level spells that they'd want throughout levels, like mystic cure, I was recommending to my players that they take it as a first level spell, and then replace it at each and every new spell level as they go up in character level.

But that line about taking it a second time makes it seem like they intend for you to only learn the spell twice, say at 3rd and 6th spell level.

I don't want to rule it that way, because it makes the entire idea of playing a summoner impossible. I hope I'm just reading the wording too strictly and this wasn't what they meant, but I also want to make sure I'm not missing the reasoning if it was intentional.


According to the invoice in the box, this shipment was supposed to include (among other things), PZ07304 Starfinder Flip-Mat: Starship. What I got, instead was PZ07303 Starfinder Flip-Mat: Cantina. Everything else in the order is correct. I'm not sure what to do about it.


I've read the stuff in the CRB, APs, and AA books. I know it's a system with something like 8 planets. The first is named Vesk-Prime where the Vesk come from, and the rest are just numbered. I know that Skittermander are apparently from Vesk-3 and Vesk-6 has Catfolk on it. I remember that there were a couple other details in the CRB entry for it.

However, I'm wondering if there's been any (even non-official) lore I missed. We don't use any of the setting stuff from PF, but I know there was a book about the Pact Worlds system (Outer Worlds?) that contained lore about that system in pre-gap times. I'm wondering first, if there was any mention of the Veskarium in PF lore, and second if anyone's seen any further details (like in a blog post or answer to a question) from any official source.

Basically, since the Veskarium is the "nearest" other system and at least two playable races came from there, I'd like to have any lore I can available for my players when I start running my own campaign. I've done some googling and searched the boards, but I haven't found much beyond some homebrew and what I've already read.


I placed an order on Saturday (12/23) for a list of goods including two new subscriptions. Because I had the 'ship with subscriptions' button checked, rather than send it now with the subscription items available now, it put all the items in a side cart for shipping later in January with the next item in one of the subscriptions.

That generated order 4628939.

When I noticed the shipping date today (12/24), I tried going into my account and viewing the sidecart and clicking the 'ship as soon as possible' button. But when that came up, it tried adding the Pact Worlds book to the Shopping Cart and said it wouldn't ship until March. I tried clicking the 'save for later' button on that one item, but it wouldn't do anything. To get the order to go through, I clicked the Remove button.

That appears to have gotten the order to go through, and generated a new order 4617238.

But now, when I go to My Subscriptions page, the Pact Worlds book that should still be there for shipping in March is no longer listed. I had no intention of cancelling that, I just wanted this order shipped now (well, whenever you guys open/get to it next week).

I think I may be able to fix this myself, by going to the Pact Worlds book and re-ordering it (or re-ordering the Starfinder Roleplaying Game subscription), but I'm afraid that may get me two books when I only want/need one. If I look at the book or the subscription option in the store it says I already ordered it. What I wanted was for the 7 items I ordered Saturday to be shipped asap, but future subscriptions orders to be shipped monthly together.

Any help would be appreciated.


I'm reading through the Alien Archive and the monster creation rules, and I'm finding the whole Grafts thing a bit confusing. This is mostly in regards to how to determine final CR and how much XP to give for the encounter.

From my reading of the process, as part of step 0 (concept), you pick a CR for the creature, and (as far as I can tell) that CR never changes throughout the process no matter how many grafts you apply to it during the process. There's a line in step 9 about making sure the numbers aren't too far from the baseline. However, I'm finding it difficult to wrap my brain around the idea that a CR 10 humanoid (human) graft technomancer graft is just as difficult to fight (and rewards the same XP) as a CR 10 undead graft necrovite graft technomancer graft or as a CR 10 black dragon graft technomancer graft.

Even if you pick the exact same spells/gear/tactics for the monsters, the latter ones are just more difficult to fight because of their innate abilities and immunities.

I know that, as the GM I'm capable of making judgement calls. I do that sort of stuff all the time in other games. But since this is a new (and highly tuned for balance) system, I kind of expected better guidelines around this. I have a feeling I'm going to end up killing characters at some point in any non-module boss fight (APL+2 or +3) because I'm not going to catch a non-obvious bonus to a graft that really should have upped the CR by one or two on its own.

Am I just missing those guidelines? Or are these grafts a lot more balanced than they look?


I've been doing some searches in google and on the boards and haven't been able to find anything. I have been able to find a lot of "random system generators" that'll give me stars, planets, and their relative distances and such, but I haven't been able to find any mapping tools that will give me a good 2D/3D map of those systems. It doesn't have to generate the maps randomly. In fact, I'd rather just be able to input planets sizes/types/distances and star info and generate the map that way. Bonus points for one that can be set up to move.

I tend to prefer "show don't tell" when I'm running, and it would be nice to have a map of the Pact Worlds or other systems to put up on the screen whenever we're playing (especially early on or entering a new system). The map in the book is nice, and some of the random generators have stuff that help with new system, but nothing I've found does a good job to show the scale or how those bodies move over time.

I have people I can work with to build what I'm looking for, but I'd rather not re-invent the wheel if there is anything out there I just haven't found yet.