Players and fear of taking damage in Starfinder


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IMO, I like the "swinginess" and effectiveness of even low-level enemies in Starfinder, and I find the Resolve Point system pretty forgiving as-is. If one makes it too forgiving (such as allowing regain of stamina points without any resource cost) it runs a risk of the players not evaluating group efficacy for their next fight. I have yet to see how higher-level Starfinder shakes out for combats, and whether PCs are as challenged as at low levels, but I am hopeful. Even the ultimate encounter in Book 1 of Dead Suns was winnable at level 2, though it did involve a character death and was a near thing, which is how I like my "ultimate encounters"...

It is true in our group games that we've had to house-rule multiple pages of "nerfs" to character abilities in order to make combats challenging to high-level PF characters, hopefully that trend won't continue with SF. We just finished Hell's Rebels, and the final combats, even with limitations, had to be buffed up beyond what was given in the A.P. to make it challenging for the group; It's still too early to tell with SF.


CeeJay wrote:

That's a good point, Azih.

Serisan, outside of the question of damage mechanics, how is that Legendary Planet stuff? Worth shelling out for?

Matthew Downie wrote:
CeeJay wrote:
I un-optimize NPC actions pretty frequently.
This sort of thing would make me more cautious, not less. It suggests a situation where the enemy will probably kill me if he ever gets his act together. I'm basically gambling my life on him being incompetent/suicidal.

Oh, I very much doubt the players actually notice I'm doing it. It's not like I have the bad guys doing obviously stupid things or engaging in pratfalls or something. Other times it's just statistical.

The AP is very good.


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I would guess your players are cautious for a bunch of reasons.

Chief amongst those is probably the new system. If you've played any edition of D&D, your first PF character is shiny and new, but more or less a known quantity. Likewise your opponents. A magic missile is a magic missile, since 1970, you know? Now it's not.

After that, I'd say the next biggest thing players are going to worry about is that we have 100% no idea what to expect from an enemy, mook or not. I'm in a homebrew game, I was playing a Solarian (not anymore, for reasons), we fought a room of ghouls with an NPC Solarian mini boss, whose solar weapon was a d8.

Now, I know, a d6 to a d8 is negligible. But, if even NPCs with class levels don't follow the class rules, there's no way to tell what we're against until it shoots us in the face. That laser rifle could be identical the one our mechanic has, or it could be doing 2d8 plus 1d10 burn on a crit.

Lastly, I think everyone that has played or spent some time on these boards knows that, every level, NPC's are going to hit you, pretty regularly. I play a ton of 2E AD&D, so I’m fairly used to my low level characters being… well, bad at everything. But give me 20 minutes and I can make a level 1 PF front line melee character that gets hit half as much as a level 1 SF character.

To sum it up ‘I don’t know what to expect, except that those guys are going to shoot me on an 11 or higher, and I can’t tell how bad it’s going to hurt until it hurts.’

If, as a DM, a person would like to mitigate that, I think the only answer is more SF. Or more cowbell.


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As long as there are those who equate dying with losing, this attitude is going to persist. In my experience(and mine alone perhaps), anything that leans towards sci fi is going to have far higher mortality rates than things that lean towards fantasy. In sci fi games the player characters tend to be a bit more cautious and attentive, and combat is often a last resort. Some take this to extremes.


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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Two relatively equal combatants probably should be hitting one another half the time, unless there are mitigating circumstances such as cover, concealment, positioning (whether or not you're prone, on the high ground, etc.), or whatever.


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Matthew Downie wrote:
Starfinder is a game where you often fight a bunch of enemies with guns. If they focus fire, there's not much a PC can do to make it through the battle, short of running away and hiding. And if they don't focus fire, they still have the potential to do so, which makes them scary.

Not sure if its been mentioned in the list of 100 comments before this but a small counterpoint is that cover seems to be a much bigger deal too. Adding that % miss chance might give the Players a bit more feeling of 'relative safety' or at least that they wont die instantly between their turns

So while you may get focus fired in a shootout hopefully the Players arent just standing out in the open. (never worked well in westerns either)


Cover doesn't provide a miss chance, concealment does.


Heh alternately if you want to be a little evil, as the GM you don't have to let them KNOW you're taking it easy on them. A combo of the 'not optimized mooks' scenario, you have large numbers facing the PC crew, and you roll gobs of dice but you roll em behind the screen and then even if they hit, if you've determined you weren't going to count this particular NPCs contribution to the combat round, the players get to stress on whether someone just got shot or not.

Of course, the downside is it does lead back to the original problem of cautious/skittish players :)


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Losobal wrote:

Heh alternately if you want to be a little evil, as the GM you don't have to let them KNOW you're taking it easy on them. A combo of the 'not optimized mooks' scenario, you have large numbers facing the PC crew, and you roll gobs of dice but you roll em behind the screen and then even if they hit, if you've determined you weren't going to count this particular NPCs contribution to the combat round, the players get to stress on whether someone just got shot or not.

Of course, the downside is it does lead back to the original problem of cautious/skittish players :)

head games like this lead to problems down the line. If you want the party to trust you real time, its best to be open and honest.


Interesting idea, Losobal, but I kind of have to go with Freehold on this one. I do generally roll "behind the screen," mind you -- on Roll20 it just makes for less clutter in the chat if I have to go back and revisit something for session summary purposes -- but I am resolutely a convert to the Matt Mercer "let the dice fall where they may" school of thought and I make a point of never fudging the rolls one way or the other. I would indeed be worried about the kind of scenario you describe increasing player skittishness.


Incidentally, I recently observed an angle on this phenomenon in a current game -- just two sessions in -- where I'm a player. One of my co-players took a chunk of damage from an opponent and funereally informed the group that he was "down." He wasn't. He had just lost the last of his SP and gone into HP.

This increases a suspicion I've had for a while that Pathfinder-trained players just instinctively view SP as their actual HP and think of HP damage in doom-related terms. This is particularly so because this is a group where we've repeatedly had to clarify that Pathfinder rules for certain things do not apply.

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