It's looking like my group I meet face-to-face won't go for Starfinder - it lacks that verisimilitude and isn't as simple to use as some other Scifi RPGs. It falls into an awkward gap in that sense.
At least I now know where to look to find out how those damn snipers were able to ignore cover - soldier, sharpshooting combat style.
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That's a bummer, avr. I was lucky - we're primarily doing Starfinder as an offshoot of our local Pathfinder Society chapter, so we had a troupe of players with the Pathfinder rules knowledge, but a hankering for some sci-fantasy hijinx. I'm running the AP and the occasional repeat scenario, and another GM is running the SFS scenarios, so neither of us gets too burnt out on GM prep.
That said, if you ever make your way to southern New Hampshire, I know a table you could sit in on...
I'm getting the rules for chases posted up (it's a bit more than what I remember reading), but your group has a decision to make: you can each have your own vehicle, or you can have one group vehicle (just pick one of those two options please, as it'll make it a bit easier to run). Let me know which option you'd prefer and I'll get the stats posted for the appropriate vehicle (barring class features someone in the group might have, the statblocks for the individual vehicles will all be the same, and obviously the group vehicle will be one statblock).
Let's split the party! Or... not. My vote is for one vehicle.
Thanks Jelloarm, I'll keep that in mind if I'm in the NE USA some time. It's a long way from New Zealand though.
Xera is optimized for piloting, but aside from Wraith I don't think anyone else is. So one vehicle is probably the best idea.
The piloting DCs for chases are not as bad as the starship ones. Most of the maneuver checks have a DC of 10-17 + vehicle level, which caps out at 7 for the vehicles in the book. That means the worst DC you'd have would be a 24 (or 28 if you were double maneuvering).
Really? I can make a 24 Piloting DC on a natural 1.
Maybe we should assume the existence of level 10 vehicles? Or do you plan on ramping them up at all?
Kibbens and Rax have no ranks in Piloting, Loram has +10, I have +17. Since I'd rather not catch up to the enemy without our front line lets all squeeze into a hover pod or something.
Seems like if we take two vehicles - one piloted by Xera and another by Deneth - we can better our chances of catching up if something happens to one or the other.
Please see my notes above Loram.
Ah! Apologies, let's just do the one vehicle then.
Okay, good deal. I'll get the vehicle stats up tonight and the first post of the chase. Figure out who your vehicle pilot is going to be and we'll get going!
I can't imagine anyone could or would steal that job from Xera.
Yeah, as long as Piloting is the required skill, I'm your android.
Reading up on the 'Vehicle Chase' rules, I have one intriguing option, but I need to know something about the enemy vehicle first.
Does it provide total cover to its occupants? If it does, then I believe we can only target the vehicle itself with our attacks, correct?
If we are able to target individuals on that vehicle (even if they have some amount of cover other than total), I'm thinking of using my Adaptive Fighting feat to allow me to use the Lunge feat, which I believe will allow me to use my sword as a reach weapon for the next 10 rounds - and so I can attack those on the vehicle we are engaged with using melee weapons without having to risk boarding their vessel.
If the occupants have total cover though, I'll just use my rifle on the vehicle itself, since the weapon has Penetrating (ignoring 7 hardness).
The section where it talks about shooting at occupants mentions "some degree of cover"; to handle this, I think we'll do it like this: attacks targeting passengers in the same zone or the zone behind yours only have cover to deal with. Attacks on passengers in vehicles that are in the zone ahead of yours have total cover.
As far as making melee attacks goes, you can attack anyone in the trail car, as they are currently engaged with you (and you can make melee attacks on passengers in vehicles you are currently engaged with).
Also worth noting is that most vehicles give a penalty for making attacks while riding them (for your vehicle, it's a -3 to hit, or -6 for full speed); for the enemy vehicle, it's a -2/4.
Sorry about the delay guys. I've been struggling with the flu the last week and a half or so, and I've been getting coughing fits if I sit up too long. I will do my best to get a piecemealed post up as soon as I can.
Okay, so quick update: I'm finally well enough to head back to work, so expect an update tomorrow.
I'm still here.
Kibbens joins in with Raxsortun to attack driver.
[dice=Attack]1d20+15 [dice=Damage]4d6
Kibbens will keep trying to lay on the pain, and take another swing with his hammer.
[dice=Attack]1d20+15 [dice=Damage]4d6
Kibbens moves to a space where he can get the most enemies combatants next to him (in a 15 ft radius) while avoiding any allies in that space. His glowing body starts to glow brighter and streaks of orange and red seem to flare before his entire body shines in an incredible blast of energy.
[dice=Fire Damage]11d6
As Stellar Revelation has this line in it:
At the start of each subsequent turn of combat, you must choose to either stay in your current stellar mode or to become unattuned. If you choose to stay in your mode, you gain another attunement point for that mode. As long as you have 1 or 2 attunement points in a mode, you are attuned to that mode. Once you reach 3 attunement points in a mode, you become fully attuned to that mode.I thought I was doing this right. Could you help me understand where I went wrong?
For Solarian Modes I have found it becomes important to keep track of rounds. Your attunement points will continue to go up at the start of each of your turns until you:
1: Get fully attuned at 3 points (or 4 if your revelations are not balanced), or
2: Chose to re-attune to a different mode (in which case you start at 1 again) or,
3: Leave combat.
Supernova resets your attunement to 0, but at the start of your next turn you can go to 1 again.
The best thing to do is to post how much attunement you have at the start of each of your actions, so you can look back on your previous action if you lose track.
Okay, so this ends the chase portion of the test. What are people's thoughts about how things could be handled differently or better? What works and what doesn't?
The combat part isn't that different. The attack penalties and possible difficulties moving around mean that it goes slower though. Xera was the only one to interact much with the chase rules themselves, ask her about that.
It might have been interesting for all of us to have had our own vehicles, but we'd have had to plan that from the start with piloting skill for all.
I agree with Deneth, seemed like a regular combat (albeit with nasty attack roll penalties for all involved!), and using multiple vehicles might have made it more interesting.
Was also difficult to know how far we were from each other using text. Perhaps a 'hidden' combat map of sorts would have been useful. Wouldn't even need to be a map per se, just something that gives us an idea of how far our relative ranges at the top of each round.
The distances in a chase are intentionally vague. I had it posted in the gameplay info with the rest of the chase rules, under relative positioning, but I probably should have made it stand out more.
For future reference, vehicles in the same zone are about 50' apart, and vehicles one zone apart are about 200' apart.
Yep, it was just a pain to have to click the tab and reference the books - and at work I don't have easy reference to them. Anyway, just a suggestion for a way to give players pertinent information where it can be seen and utilized more easily.
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I think that we also derailed a 'typical' chase via the excellent use of character abilities - the use of the wormhole brought our boarding party straight in, which was flavorful and awesome and also devolved nearly everything into a melee combat with our casters playing keep-up and dropping some control spells. I think they're arguably going to be closer to what we saw - set piece fight scenes - especially at the higher levels
I might be a bit biased, but I loved the boarding aspect that combined a normal combat and vehicle stuff. That said, I also agree with Jelloarm as the added physical combat probably made things much easier for us.
That's true. I am always on the side of cool use of abilities. You can have +1 Internets Kibbens!
I think the vehicle rolls were a bit dull overall. Having a fixed DC meant that we just kept rolling over and over waiting for the other to fail. It seems to me that opposed piloting checks would have made a lot more sense.
That's a fair point. It would make the whole chase sequence more interesting too.
What are your thoughts on having the vehicles apply the attack penalty to the opposed piloting checks?
If they're opposed it wouldn't make much difference, would it? A point or two sure, but there's not a huge range in the vehicles attack penalties.
I love the idea of opposed Piloting checks, and I'm surprised Starfinder didn't incorporate the idea beyond simple initiative rolls.
Okay, for this next part I'm going to be kitbashing a monster. I wanted you guys to have to fight something like a purple worm, but Starfinder doesn't have anything like that in the alien archive, which was my hope. I'll get the first post of the combat up on Monday, and then we'll plow through it. Once that is done, we'll go right to the last fight with Haarlock and then I'll get your feedback on the combat system and your character choices.
Guys, I've been getting over a throat infection that slowed me down a lot more than I expected. Hopefully I will get things back to normal this weekend.
Not sure if the Penetrating [7] ability of Loram's Tactical Reaction Cannon might have had an effect in more damage getting through, but wanted to mention it.
Can we do a Knowledge check on this thing, to see if we might be able to figure out something about it?
You certainly can. It would be Life Sciences.
Maybe Kibbens can go leaping into its maw and go Nova without affecting any of us? Gotta admit, that'd look cool... :)
I should have a post up tonight, btw.
Uh...Kibbens doesn't want to be wurm quite yet.
Tis well. Though American ISPs seem to include a lot of bad ones. I've heard many more reports of problems from people I'm in contact with online than from people I know in NZ. What's up with that?
Okay, I am back now. That being said, I will get a post up tomorrow. I apologize, and thank you for your patience folks!