Starfinder: Dead Suns

Game Master GM-Gathrix

Apologies, enjoyed a long weekend. Posting soon.

I will be out of town until Monday. I will post when I can, Happy Thanksgiving all.

Happy Thanksgiving. :)

I think we previous worked out Ehron as pilot, but he is actually okay at most roles.

Pilot +9 Piloting
Captain +6 Diplomacy, +8 Intimidate
Science Officer +6 Computer
Engineering +5 Engineering
Gunnery +5 to hit.

Diplomacy +8, Intimidate +7

Piloting +6

Computer +5

Gunner +3 to hit

Engineering is untrained.

I think Garland is best suited for Captain.

Diplomacy and Intimidate -1
Piloting +7
Computers +9
Engineering +9
Gunnery +4

Duanimon would be a good Science Officer or Engineer, but I think their personality leans more towards Science Officer, so they’ll do that unless anyone objects.

Computers +9
Diplomacy +3
Engineering +8
Intimidate +1
Life Science +8
Medicine +8
Physical Science +9
Piloting +3

And definitely not a gunner.

I believe we determined that Kov'i is definitely a gunner.

Okay, Here's the quick breakdown on starship combat:

*There are three phases in starship combat: Engineering, Helm, and Gunnery. These three phases are conducted in order by all parties of the combat, and once all sides have finished with the phase, the combat advances to the next phase.

*The PCs each take a role, which has a key skill and a phase of combat in which they act. The roles (with their key skill and phase) are:

1) Captain (Any Phase; Any of the other skills or diplomacy; limit One)
2) Pilot (Helm Phase; Piloting; limit one)
3) Engineer (Engineering Phase; Engineering)
4) Science Officer (Helm Phase; Computers)
5) Gunner (Gunnery Phase; BAB or Piloting)

The Captain can act in any phase, because their actions are primarily support based (they can encourage someone who is going to act, primarily through using aid another).

You can change your roll before the engineering phase, but no one can take the pilot or captain's chair unless it's empty.

The actions for each role start on page 322 of the rulebook. Keep in mind that some of them require minimum ranks in the key skill for that role (or diplomacy, in the case of the captain).

A typical round goes something like this:
The engineer boosts a system or repairs shields; The science officer scans, redistributes shields, or improves gunnery; the pilots roll opposed piloting initiative checks (each round, as it becomes important) then the slow ship moves first, allowing the ship with the better initiative to attempt to position themselves in such a way that it puts their biggest guns where in a place to fire on the enemy; finally, the gunners fire and the process begins over again.

That's the nickel tour. If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask.

My Skills:
Diplomacy +7
Life Sciences +7
Medicine +6
Mysticism +9
Perception +10
Profession (courtesan) +7
Sense Motive +10

Also, in regards to starship combat, note that the FAQ revised most of the action DCs.

BTW, as an addendum to the above, according the RAW, class features that add to skill bonuses do not apply to ship combat, unless they specifically mention they do.

Also, to calculate your gunnery bonus, you add either your BAB or your ranks in piloting to your Dex mod to determine your bonus (in Kov'i's case, his bonus is 3).

Actually, this FAQ says that class features which grant skill bonuses or rerolls are an exception to that rule.

Wow that's a lot of FAQs. Ship combat is my least favorite aspect of Starfinder and it just got worse. To keep things simple lets say anything that gives you a skill bonus works across the board for ship combat or what have you.

Here is the link to the slides we were using for the Into the unknown Starfinder quests. You may wish to avoid them for mild spoilers but the 6th slide is the crew location one for combat.

Slides

That was how I was GMing it too and it seems to work out okay.

Duanimon, that FAQ is stupid (note that I'm not saying you are for pointing it out, just that it's a silly rule to begin with). It basically says that now the rule is you don't apply item bonuses to your starship action rolls. They should just get rid of the rule entirely, cause it feels weird and corner-caseish.

Ehron, if you have a copy of that module, there are some handouts for each of the roles that are pretty handy (even if the DCs on the checks are not correct now).

Yeah, that rule doesn’t make very much sense. I’m fine with ignoring it.