Dawn of Legends (A Legacy of Failure) (Inactive)

Game Master JamZilla

1 - Stamina and Resolve.

Also, a lot of the powers in SF key off resolve and we wouldn't have access to those so it would only really be used for recharging stamina.

That's true, I had not thought of that.

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3 - Scaling Weapons

I think another thing to consider is how DR and scaling weapons versus iterative attacks interact. 3 attacks of 2d6 damage versus 1 of 6d6.

Would Craft Alchemy be under Life Science or Physical Science?

Dealers' choice. Personally I would say physical science.

SKILL RECALLED: KNOWLEDGE TOPICS(p.134)

Culture: A culture's customs, laws, government, leaders, prominent inhabitants, legends, religion, history, and related topics

Life Science: Bioengineering, biology, botany, ecology, genetics, xenobiology, zoology, and other fields of biological science

Mysticism: Alchemical theory, arcane symbols, deities, magic traditions, the planes, religious traditions and symbols, and related topics

Physical Science: Astronomy, chemistry, climatology, geography, geology, hyperspace, meteorology, oceanography, physics, and other fields of natural science

1 Stamina and Resolve - I could take it or leave it since we aren't getting the full benefit of it maybe we just leave that?

2 Skills - I'm ok with that, as you said it will be a little bit of a pain but you can add them in on hero labs and work around it just fine. (I'm also not really a skills guy so..)

3 Scaling Weapons - everything I've thought has been brought up with signal attacks vs iterative attacks. That could get really out of hand, and I already get there so kinda takes a little away from me.

BUT if it helps you keep the challenge up I'm sure you'll find a way to make it less insane that it seems it could be now.

4 Armor - Shield and Mage Armor don't work together in this game anyway, right? So you could just swap it out for that SF spell.

Cool, any more thoughts before I put my proposal to you guys for what we introduce?

Midnight, Spore?

Hmmm. The big things I'm worried about have already been mentioned (DR, iteratives/flurry, mage armor) so I'd say propose something and let's take a look. I haven't seen much of the SF rules yet so I'm pretty open minded.

Napalm: RE Exploring the rest of the compound.
I interpreted from JZ's description that he was wrapping the rest of the exploration up into that narration/story post.

I am interested to hear from DD though.

That was my intention :)

If you feel like you're stuck maybe reflect back what you think you've learned. And of course get in touch with DD

Please correct me on any of this and/or add anything:

1) We started off investigating people disappearing across the city. This led us to MetroCab.

2) At MetroCab, there was definitely some sketchy stuff going on. We found holding cells and a truck used to transport prisoners, most likely the kidnapped people. The truck's GPS gave us the Staten Island address. Also, we learned that all of the abducted were from the poorest parts of the city and have extensive criminal records.

3) The Staten Island address is where we currently are. It is ACTIVA PHARMACEUTICALS, a company for which Vanessa Fisk is/was the CEO. We also found operatives of the Hand. It seems reasonable that Fisk is in bed with them and that they were experimenting on, or doing other sketchy medical stuff on the abductees(forced organ transplants?).

Just to add some stuff;

-Daredevil informed you that the Punisher killed Vanessa Fisk,

-A sniper launched an assault on the Staten Island facility, targeting medical personel

In Gameplay, it's up to you guys now where you go and what you do. We can handle the obligatory interviews with the police 'off camera' if you'd like or we can play it out.

Ok here is what I propose for the integration of Starfinder rules:

Skills

This is a practical lift-and-shift for me and probably means a general upgrade for everyone because of the consolidated lists.

Starfinder Skills

In terms of which of these new or consolidated skills you have as your classes, since we are playing classes outside of the SF game, I think it's better just to select them based on whether your character would have them. For example, I would not expect Ebon to have Engineering or Life Science as a class skill. But then nor would I think Napalm would have Mysticism. So I'm happy to just discuss with each of you to make these things fit your characters.

In answer to an earlier question, yes I would just expect Piloting to cover any vehicle but maybe with appropriate penalties - again Midnight wouldn't take any penalties when piloting a spacecraft but might if she wanted to drive a car. Again, Napalm would be the other way round.

Happy to discuss!

Stamina and resolve

Still not sure what to do with this one. I am happy to introduce Stamina as a secondary pool of hp = to half your total hp maybe? - that cannot be healed by healing magic - it can only be recovered with a 10 minute rest once per day.

We won't make much use of Resolve as a mechanic because we won't have the powers to be fuelled by it so hence the once a day thing.

It's a big power boost for sure - but some enemies will get it too and so it might make these combats longer so these are the things to think about

I want you guys to feel heroic though and this seems like a way to do it. Take hits and keep coming.

Scaling weapons

Similar to skills, I think it's more appropriate to assign weapon proficiency based on character, not class.

I can imagine Trystt and Napalm having proficiency in basic melee weapons and small arms because of their life hovering around the underground and basic SHIELD training respectively.

Midnight might be proficient in advanced melee OR longarms as well since she is an intergalactic peacekeeper.

Ebon might be proficient with advanced melee but not firearms at all.

And poor Spore maybe none of the above.

But happy to discuss this approach and your thoughts on it.

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At the level you are, in SF, you would get Weapon Specialisation. This means you add half your level to damage with small arms and basic melee but your full level to damage with advanced melee and longarms/heavy weapons.

Honestly, I think this is actually a power boost for enemies more than heroes because not many of you use weapons. But I think that's fine because I don't think you've been hugely challenged thus far and would become even more necessary if we were to introduce Stamina.

To keep things from getting out of hand though with the scaling damage, I was going to have weapons and items appear at their level -2.

For example, a typical level 4 heavy weapon like a Squad Machinegun would deal 1d10 damage (which isn't a big deal anyway). But level 4 enemies might be found with their level -2 weapons. I.e. something like an Autotarget Rifle that deals 1d6.

I think this only really becomes relevant later.

I.e. a level 10 heavy weapon like an Artillery Autobeam deals 2d8 damage and 1d8 burn (per round). But would become a Scattergun that deals 1d12.

Armour

I'd like to implement KAC and EAC as written in Starfinder. It's a nice, streamlined system that does what we need it to.

I would probably look to remove Mage Armour/Shield in exchange for the scaling spell Trystt mentioned earlier.

But because there are lots of AC spells, I'm happy to leave things unchanged for simplicity sake and just see how it plays. So in that instance Mage Armour and Shield would only count as KAC (since it doesn't affect touch AC).

Or we could split it.

Or you could choose upon casting.

All up for discussion, whatever you prefer.

Hi all, apologies for the extended radio silence, with no notice had to fly up to Auckland last week to cover for a colleague and ended up with zero time to myself >.<

Back now and normal service will be resumed shortly!

Glad to have you back Midnight!

Ive read throughr everything you said Jam. I have a few thoughts.

Skills - I like the idea of them, it works for me. My class skills would look something like - Acrobatics, Athletics, Mysticism, Sense Motive, Stealth, Survival.

Stamina - Seems a little complicated, just adding another level to it when you could just give us max go per level.

Scaling weapons - Don’t have a lot to say about that since it won’t affect, but I don’t see a problem.

I'm not sure the Stamina rules will gain us anything, but everything else sounds good. I'm interested how the scaling weapons would work with the Automatic Bonus Progression, or will we be removing that part in favor of scaling weapons?

Napalm's class skills might be: Acrobatics, Computers, Culture, Engineering, Intimidate, Life Science, Medicine, Perception, Physical Science, Stealth, Meta

I've been relying on herolab's gestat settings, so I'll have to play around with things to see how the bonuses calculate.

Yeah I'm thinking stamina without resolve is probably not really worth it.

I would also keep ABP. So if you did pick up a higher level weapon, you can still apply your bonuses

Glad to be back and have some time on my hands for a change Ebon!

So my 2 cents:

We're already gestalt, so adding stamina/resolve I'm not too fussed about, unless anyone makes a strong case for it!

Skills, no problem at all, makes sense :) Presume we'd still keep the knowledge (metahuman) though?

Whilst kinetic strike's damage does scale with level, Midnight doesn't get iterative attacks with it, so that does balance things out a bit being a once per round standard action. Unless kinetic strike itself counts as a weapon, but don't think it does unless you're going the kinetic fist/whip route, which Midnight currently isn't.

Changes to the AC seem ok, but I think would make guns less scary unless I'm misunderstanding how the ACs are calculated? No drama there anyway :)

Would agree with JZ around Peacekeeper training so advanced melee or longarms, but can't decide which route to go there, will go see what I can dig up as to whether having a backup melee or alternate ranged attack would be beneficial!

Working on wrapping my head around the rules, and I've got a few questions/comments:

-Sooooo.... are you intending on giving us the SF Weapon Specialization feat?

-Scaling weapons AND flurry of blows together seem over overpowered, especially with the iterative changes otherwise limiting accuracy, but choosing either-or is probably fine. A lot of this depends on if Ebon plans to keep using his hands, or if he wants a weapon.

-I'd like to remove the 'archaic' quality from Spore's unarmed strike (probably Ebon's, too) and keep the brawler/monk rule that it deals lethal damage at the user's discretion. Without this, it's a huge nerf to unarmed damage.

-If damage still seems low, or to make up for not getting any weapon proficiency, we could add more to Spore's Weapon Specialization STR amount, akin to the Vesk racial trait for their natural weapons.

-Splitting mage armor & ACs might mess with my build a bit, but I think it's probably gonna be fine.

-Skills: no problems here!

Spore

-If you get the SF Weapon spec feat is it going to make you guys insanely powerful with iteratives and gestalt? Maybe. but yes I was tentatively going with that.

-I get the concern over scaling and iteratives which is why I was thinking about keeping it at level -2 as a balancer and seeing how it went.

-Yeah, honestly I was going to keep that aspect the same. Lethal or non-lethal at the user's discretion

-If you feel like your damage is low with the Weapon Spec we'll discuss what we can do.

-If splitting ACs is a problem then we'll stick with it as it is but I would have thought splitting them would help you diversify your defences a little?

-Skills for the win

At the end of the day I want you guys to feel like powerful superheroes but equally still have that relief and joy of overcoming a tough encounter

Midnight

-Yep, I think we'll drop stamina. If the adjusted damage people get proves problematic I might max out HP as per Ebon's suggestion.

-Yes, I'd like to keep knowledge meta

-I would consider kinetic blast as a weapon, same for Napalm's bombs. If you want to add your ABP +1s to those then go ahead. Even happy for you to add weapon special abilities to them if they seem thematically appropriate - why not

-AC I think should be ok, especially if we switch to armour from the SF equipment lists which spell out the KAC and EAC bonuses. The way to determine armour class is just armour bonus + dexterity + misc bonuses.

-The armour list is HERE

Hrm, I was mostly not wearing armor to avoid spell failure chances, but it looks like SF got rid of them? If that's the case, I'd happily reskin some SF armor for Spore and be on board with the Mage Armor changes.

Would you need any armour at all? In the same way as you don't wear armour now, if we implemented it that you could choose Mage Armor to split to KAC and EAC then you could still get +4 to your normal AC you do now or have the option to have a slightly lower normal AC in exchange for a slightly better EAC (which is more or less the same as touch AC anyway)

I didn't think the AC changes would really affect you Spore but perhaps I'm just being dim and missing something? :/

For example, if you cast Mage Armour, you could have:

KAC = 15
EAC = 11
Same as now

Or

KAC=13
EAC=13
Lower on one to improve the other

Stamina: I like just maxing HP as a suggestion.
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Weapons: This mostly won't matter, but what category should my bladed scarf fall under?
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Armor: Are we just using SF armor as is, and refluffing if need be? For example, my silken robe is probably just a Stationwear, flight suit.
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Armor 2: Since KAC protects against projectiles(p.203), are you getting the differentiation that you originally wanted, GM-JZ?
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Mage Armor: Just use the SF scaling spell? It has the option built-in. But in SF, the spell levels are 3,4,6. Can we make that 2,4,6?
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Skills: For Trystt, between rogue, magus, and witch, I had every skill other than Religion and Survival as class skills. Since skills are her thing(it's even her boon), I'd like to keep that going, and even use her boon to open Survival. Is that cool with you, GM-JZ?
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Stamina: I like just maxing HP as a suggestion.

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Weapons: This mostly won't matter, but what category should my bladed scarf fall under?
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Armor: Are we just using SF armor as is, and refluffing if need be? For example, my silken robe is probably just a Stationwear, flight suit.
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Armor 2: Since KAC protects against projectiles(p.203), are you getting the differentiation that you originally wanted, GM-JZ?
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Mage Armor: Just use the SF scaling spell? It has the option built-in. But in SF, the spell levels are 3,4,6. Can we make that 2,4,6?
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Skills: For Trystt, between rogue, magus, and witch, I had every skill other than Religion and Survival as class skills. Since skills are her thing(it's even her boon), I'd like to keep that going, and even use her boon to open Survival. Is that cool with you, GM-JZ?
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** spoiler omitted **...

1 - I also like max HP and if we feel we need it we will go with that instead of stamina

2 - I am happy for you to do either. If you want to buy a Stationwear flight suit then that's fine. If you prefer a skimpy spandex onesie that remarkably provides the same mechanical level of protection, that's fine too.

3 - Yes I think I'm getting the differentiation I wanted. My original gripe was that a dragon who has hide 5 inches thick would still take damage from a measly .22 calibre round and in fact would be extremely easy to hit due to touch AC. But KAC takes account of lots of things and if projectiles target that then the dragon's natural tough hide, or the nimble monk's dexterity, both protect them but in different ways.

4 - Mage Armour users - shall we just use the scaling spell in SF? I am actually happy either way so your call

5 - Yeah skills wise that's fine by me.

Oh I missed out the bladed scarf. I would say basic melee. Strictly speaking in SF terms I think it would be an Operative weapon that you'd get proficiency in but I think that's just needlessly complex for this.

Ah, right, no touch AC for guns. Makes sense to me.

Edit: a little more weirdness... melee/ranged touch attacks.

Exactly. But to balance that, guns do more damage and there is no need for people to use Deadly Aim to boost damage and therefore are inherently more accurate

Hey guys I wanted to add one more thing - my real life bro who I play a few games with online is going to join this as a replacement for Shift.

He's got a really interesting concept that will help drive the plot at the start of Book 2 so expect to see him show up in the next few days or week depending on how well we progress.

(Midnight and Ebon - you know him as Elleros from our Reign of Winter game)

Hi everyone, I've been following the game for a while and I'm really looking forward to joining.
You guys are doing a great job with this game and it seems like a lot of fun with some very cool character concepts.
I'm trying out some classes I've never used before so he will take some getting used to but I hope he works out ok :)

Welcome! Great to have you. Are you going to be playing a medical doctor?

Welcome welcome! Looking forward to your intro.

Welcome, Dr Sterne. It will be interesting to see what you've got for us.

medical doctor no, criminal Psychologist.
With some strange psychic powers :) I will be able to offer some limited healing and hopefully a lot of buffs as time goes on

Dr Will- Cool, Mez/Bard is a nasty combo.

RE: Spore
I've leveled him, and purchased armor. I think with that, he and Ebon at least should have some level of parity. (I like comparing them since they're in similar roles, I think, and I've felt a little under-powered. Let me know if I've over-compensated.)

Offense:
Ebon's got better melee damage output per hit, and slightly better accuracy as compared to Spore (related: Ebon, don't forget to add in your ABP bonus to hit and damage.) Ebon's flurry works as an extra attack, while mine works as TWF, so -2/-2 to hit, so Ebon's putting out slighly more hurt than Spore over time. To compensate, I've got more options with Martial Flexibility, and I'm investing in Sunder, so I think that sets us apart.

Defense:
Ebon's got Evasion, but his AC is only slightly better than Spore's now that I've got some armor on, and with his Fast Healing, that should keep it competitive....unless Fire Damage, in which case, SPORE RUNS AWAY.

(My AC was really bad before and only barely serviceable with Mage Armor; 15 AC for a front line combatant at lvl 3 is too low, I think. Not wearing any armor was a relic of when I had built Spore as a monk initially. In retrospect, I should have just eaten the arcane spell failure chance and worn some wooden armor as soon as I swapped to Brawler, but oh well :D)

--Spore

Nice, all sounds good to me Spore. My baseline for a frontliner is my level + 20 in AC for a good, if not optimised, level of defence fwiw

Yeah, same, more or less. I generally tend to shoot for 15-20 depending on things. Spore regenerating hp between fights, having a few resistances, and some immunity to a few conditions makes me feel better about being on the lower side.

Is your Ac 18/18 or 19/19? Looks like there's a slight mismatch between your stat line and the profile

Fixed. 19/19 is correct.
I try to put the math for things like that in the profile. At times like this, even there's a bunch of small bonuses, it really helps. Nice catch!

@Spore Thanks for the reminder.

I need to update my profile with all the new skills. I suppose I should really break everything down myself(more to help me than anything else)

The spells you'll get access to will balance us out in the end.

@William

I'm looking forward to seeing a Mesmerist in play, never played with one or played in a game with one.

Welcome, Doc. I also do not know much about mesmerists, but I'm a big fan of bards. And it's always nice when the party has both a buffer and debuffer. =)

I converted my skills over. I did not use background skills for now because it seems like only Profession and Sleight of Hand would qualify, maybe Piloting.

Also, the name of Book 2 is a bit unnerving, like a portent of bad things to come.

Oh I don't know, I think it's catchy

Funny how the GM always thinks that. ;)

Hey! This is a collaborative story.

But yeah I'm hoping to advance the wider plot through this book now that you are kind of established

It's great, lots of fun. And Trystt is definitely one of my favorite characters that I've played.

Yeah she's great, everyone is actually. This is a fun game for me to stretch my creative muscles

Haven't heard from Midnight though, I'm wondering if she had to take another short notice work trip

I know very little about mesmerists and I've never played either of my classes before :)
They can do some pretty cool stuff though so it should be fun combination.
I'm looking forward to testing him out.

I'll need to read up on them too