Hello all,
I'm a fairly new GM to Starfinder (and not really played/GM'ed Pathfinder either, so no personal context from that either).
In my last session my group were having some pretty bad rolls (as were I), and but after hitting a creature for over half it's health, it used healing abilities to bring it up to maximum again. At which point after a few rounds of not hitting each other we had to call the session there as it was going to go on too long.
Now I've been doing some digging into the rules, to make suggestions to the players for the next session.
Such as:
Bluff(CHA) - Feint, to allow you to have the creature you feinted to have the flat-footed condition. But from it's wording (and my understanding), it only grants the bonus to the character who made the feint.
Harrying fire, hit an AC 15, next ally to attack gets +2 circumstance bonus to their next attack as long as it's before your next round.
Finally Intimidate(CHA) - Demoralize, to attempt to impose the shaken condition on an enemy.
Is there any thing else common or otherwise that the characters can do to try to swing the fight into their favour?
Equipment suggestions, while useful for future reference, are a little hit and miss at the moment, as they've kinda started on their journey and won't be back in civilisation for a few weeks yet to re-supply.
Strategic movement to negate or reduce cover (you didn't mention ranged/melee.)
Envoys can give a bonus to hit with an improvisation.
Using energy weapons to target the slightly lower EAC numbers.
See if your players built their characters relatively well.
Speaking of, what kind of characters are we talking here? Is there non full-BAB 'I fight the thing!' character? Or were/was that person/those people also just rolling really low the whole time?
Pantshandshake wrote: Strategic movement to negate or reduce cover (you didn't mention ranged/melee.)
Envoys can give a bonus to hit with an improvisation.
Using energy weapons to target the slightly lower EAC numbers.
See if your players built their characters relatively well.
Speaking of, what kind of characters are we talking here? Is there non full-BAB 'I fight the thing!' character? Or were/was that person/those people also just rolling really low the whole time?
It was mainly poor rolls, for example the operative, would be getting their trick shots setup, with a 15-16 on the die, but then getting a 4-5 on the die to-hit, but still adding up to a near miss.
Their builds to this point haven't been an issue. Mainly ranged attackers, the soldier is melee but takes point and does alot terrain/obstacle blocking, and so when this creature torn through most of his stamina he started going Total Defense, that stopped me from progressing the fight, cause I was also rolling poorly and with Total Defense couldn't get past his KAC.
I think it's a bit of a cross between inexperienced players not knowing what options they have at their disposal, hence the nature of this thread. And it getting late into the evening, and no one wanting to start trawling the rule book on possible actions.
The session ended with them scaring it off for the time being, it's starving and "will fight to the death" so they'll encounter it again soon after it stalks them for a while. Hopefully they'll do their research as well on options they can come back with, but as an inexperienced group/GM, I'd like to offer some suggestions for future encounters on how to tip the balance.
Such as, one laying down harrying fire, and the operative going for the feints would put a 4 point swing on the to-hit, along with Demoralize, hopfully allowing the Soldier to come back off the defense and start hitting thing again.
They've not overall a 'I fight the thing!' group, so far they have incorporated into their crew a Goblin that surrendered, and a cultist who was just in it for the money.
Android Solider - Melee, defense and protector is his style.
Human Operative - Ranged.
Human Technomancer - Ranged.
Human Mystic - Ranged.
Well, if its just bad rolls, then there really isn't anything to be done about it. Maybe you all need new dice, or an appropriate sacrifice to re-energize your existing dice.
As far as harrying fire goes, the best ranged character in the party probably has... what, like a +3 to their attack roll? I suppose it could be as high as +5, but I doubt it. But even at +5, you're looking at a 50% chance to give someone else a 10% better chance of landing a shot, which may or may not be worthwhile.
Also, if the soldier is standing between the monster and the party, I guess teach him to not do that in a way that grants the monster cover.
That party is 50% caster. If the Soldier is specced more for defense rather than offense in melee (High Dex/Lower Strength Guard build?), that is a fairly low damage output party when just using guns and swinging weapons. The operative class does OK damage on his own, but can't carry a party like a 18 Str melee Soldier or Solarian can.
Assuming the Technomancer has Magic Missile and the Mystic has Mind Thrust, they should be spamming those in combat against really difficult foes. Presumably the 1st level Technomancer can cast that 4 times as a full round action, dealing 12d4+12 (42 avg) damage in 4 rounds. Similarly the Mystic is throwing out 2d10 three times, save for half, or 16.5 even if they save every time, or 33 if they fail all three saves.
If the Technomancer and Mystic want to have guns be a significant portion of their damage output, they'll probably want to have at least 14 Dexterity, Weapon Proficiency: Long Arms, and Weapon Focus: Longarms. Then grab Versatile Weapon Specialization at 3rd.
If the casters only have only a +2 to hit, the odds of succeeding at Harrying fire are pretty bad to be honest (needing to roll a 13 is 40% chance of success to improve the operative's chance of success by 2). And yes, it only helps the next attack against that creature. Is the enemy EAC/KAC higher than 15?
As you note, basic feint only makes a target flat footed for the next attack you make. The Greater Feint feat applies flat-footed for the entire round. However, feinting won't help the Operative because he's already making the target flat footed for his trick attack (at least with better odds than the DC 16 feint check vs a CR 1 enemy).
Unless your caster characters have really bad odds to-hit, rolling twice to hit at 16 or higher on the die to hit with their gun is better than trying to roll 50/50 odds to give themselves +2 on the next turn for 14 or higher. 20% twice is better odds than 50/50 odds of 30% or 20% once. 40% > 30%.
If their odds of hitting are worse than that, they really should be slinging spells and spell gems.
Demoralize won't help your odds of hitting, but will reduce your incoming damage. Again, its a fairly hard DC to hit unless you're specialized in intimidate.
Thank you both.
I'm going over characters, builds and things. I didn't know about the trick-shot granting flat-footed, that would of turned at least one miss into a hit.
Ah well, hopefully all involved will be better prepared for the next session.
Also yes, the EAC to hit was higher than the AC 15 for harrying fire. Yeah the DC for demoralise is fairly high, but it's an options, can't say fairer than that at this stage. Hope if it does take it encourages the Soldier to drop Total Defense and start hitting.
Finally, also trying to get the spell lists to review. But Mind Thrust, great... unless it's a plant and has plant immunities. So maybe that's not going in their favour :-)
Starfinder Superscriber
Hiruma Kai wrote:
Assuming the Technomancer has Magic Missile and the Mystic has Mind Thrust, they should be spamming those in combat against really difficult foes. Presumably the 1st level Technomancer can cast that 4 times as a full round action, dealing 12d4+12 (42 avg) damage in 4 rounds....
Just curious how a 1st level Technomancer can cast a 1st level spell four times (if level 1 character). I understand they get 2 known spells as 1st level, plus they can use the spell cache ability to cast it a third time. Not sure what else would allow a 4th to come into play?? Can you explain?
Table 4-11, page 120, Technomancer bonus spells.
You get a bonus 1st level spell per day for having an Int between 12 and 19. At Int 20, you get 2 bonus spells and so on.
Table 4-10, page 119
2 Spells per day for 1st level
Spell cache, page 119. Any spell you can cast once per day.
Starfinder Superscriber
My original book might be a misprint. I don't have any bonus 1st level spells listed on the table. They only start to show up for level 2 and beyond. I wonder if this was an errata that I missed.
Zaric wrote: My original book might be a misprint. I don't have any bonus 1st level spells listed on the table. They only start to show up for level 2 and beyond. I wonder if this was an errata that I missed. Are there two columns of no bonus spells? One for 0th level spells and one for 1st level spells? That does sound like a misprint.
My PDF shows one column of dashes for spell level 0, then actual spell bonuses for 1st and onwards.
Starfinder Superscriber
I misread. Yes, 1st column lists 0 level spells. I misread that as 1st level spells. Thanks for clarifying, I totally missed that one.
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