For what its worth, my using abbreviated phrases is meant to be fast talking. Best I could figure out with typing
I think my attack missed, unfortunately.
When I make a trick attack, I make two rolls. The first (survival in my case) determines if the opponent is flatfooted or not.
If he IS flatfooted THEN I get the additional 1d4 damage.
So, my survival roll of 15 definitely does NOT succeed (DC is 20 + CR). So, opponent not flat footed.
So, if my 14 hits his KAC Trellik STILL hits but for less damage. If (as you stated) the 14 is below his KAC then, alas, no hit at all.
Aha, totally missed that DC being so I high! I though it was DC 15 plus CR.
In that case you didn't hit it. It's KAC is 16 in cover. Thanks for pointing that out.
It will make no real difference to the overall outcome for the round, but I'm very glad we got that sorted.
Also, I have no problems with foul mouthed characters. I'm writing descriptions where heads a vaporised by rifle shots and greasy smoke roils of the still screaming enemies you've just set alight. If we can live with that level of violence, then I think we can live with the odd expletive being dropped during his stress situations.
Of course Paizo will moderate language any way :) but feel free to hint at it as you see fit.
A note on the maps. I'm using an x to represent dead opponents.
Some of the descriptions are probably confusing folks. I'll do better at ooc summaries after I write the round summary.
So far k1 k2 and k3 have all been killed. Only k4 is left and it's been wounded.
I'll do an update a little later, just wanted to check why how the mapping is working out.
We've had some confusion issues already.
Normally I'd have a grid system in place but that's pretty difficult in how I'm able to do maps at the moment.
Its not so bad. I think my only complaint would be all the T names, haha.
I see the problem. I moved Twitch instead of Tuk'Yik in my last update. Duh.
Think I'll need a better letter code system for all you T names.
Gorn is fine.
Any preferences for a letter code to represent yourselves on the map? A single letter works better than two.
Eg M for TukYik to mean mystic, keep T for Twitch and put in O for Trellik to represent operative?
I would not mind a Y as mine. Either that or the M for mystic.
Y works well actually.
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Y works well actually.
Yeah I figure tuk'Yik and mYstic. That should help a bit.
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tRellik, so
R please
Quick question: Are we doing XP? Or will you just tell us when to level?
I'm tracking xp. When you've got high enough I'll let you know you can level. For interest sake You've accrued 450xp each so far (assuming you defeat these enemies)
I retconned Twitchs action and out it down as confusion of battle. One of the Baghra is wounded slightly. Twitch can move and shoot if he wishes still, since your action to close the door has not actually happened.
From that fight you now have
- two hunting rifles with 20 shots left. There's not enough Baghra to use these anymore.
- 4 spur rifles. These are the guns used by the guards. They shoot solid rounds of bony material. Seemingly they reload by the creature itself growing and ejecting new spurs down the tube that grafts the weapon to them. These guns have twenty shots, and do d6 damage. After you use up that ammo, you have no way to reload it without finding some way of harvesting bone spurs.
We can now go back to free posting, with no restrictions on order of action.
I think the fact that heal spells do NOT heal stamina damage is a very deliberate design decision. If nothing else, it makes the Envoy ability far more powerful. Personally, I wouldn't change it in a home game until I had more experience with how the existing system works
I think the fact that heal spells do NOT heal stamina damage is a very deliberate design decision. If nothing else, it makes the Envoy ability far more powerful. Personally, I wouldn't change it in a home game until I had more experience with how the existing system works
Oh I get that this was by design but I would have done it differently I think although I have little to no design experience.
It's just the it's difficult to 'narrate' stamina damage. Is is a scratch? Is it a miss?
If it's a scratch then why doesn't something that heals hitpoints heal it?
If it's miss that 'shakes you up' then why doesn't it go away? You can have stamina damage in the morning and go through a whole day of normal, peaceful activity and it won't go away.
I think the only change I would make is saying that whatever heals hit points can instead heal stamina points (player's choice) or something like that.
Hit points have never made ANY in world sense (yeah, I've seen the justifications. But the justifications fall apart VERY quickly if you look at them at ANY level of detail). But, over the years, I've managed to internalize them enough that I just completely ignore how silly they are in world and treat them as a total abstraction that makes games easier (and better than most of the other abstractions come up with).
I just treat Stamina/Hit points more or less the same way. A gaming abstraction that absolutely does NOT make any in world sense if you look at them closely.
In reality, somebody shoots you in the chest and you are severely injured for months or die. That doesn't make for good heroic fantasy and both Pathfinder and Starfinder are heroic fantasy.
As a point of interest, NPCs and monsters only have HP, no stamina score at all. So Mystic healing works really well for them.
Stamina is a nice little carry over from 4th and 5th edition where you could spend a short rest and recover some damage. This allows the expenditure of resolve points to heal between battles as you pretty much draw on inner reserves of toughness to keep fighting. Or whatever.
So Mystic healing is powerful because it can recover damage for PCs that they themsleves can't heal without buying serums.
Resolve is a nice mechanic to self heal a bit between fights by building back your stamina.
Note that once you level, you'll basically double your stamina and hit points. It's going to take a lot more fighting to put you in it trouble when that happens.
Trellik has brought up a very good point about ammunition. In the core book, solid slugs and energy packs work for all weapons. In this setting there's a whole new array of gear and weapons that likely operate completely separately to how your Pact world weapons do.
I'm not going to be enforcing that concept though. I think it's enough story wise to understand you're in foreign territory here with no idea of what's happening for the most part. I don't want to have you worried about ammo running out for weapons you're trained in or have named.
So let's assume you guys manage to juryrig a way for the bone weapons ammo to also work in your own guns.
Basically taking the bone slugs and loading them into your ammo clips is enough. After all, kinetic weapons are not likely firing gunpowder based cartridges given they need to be able to operate in space as well as in an atmosphere. There's obviously some other form of kinetic propulsion working here.
In short, any ammo you find can assume to work in your guns just like it would in the Pact worlds.
Excellent. Thanks
AMMO
I also appreciate the ammo break; no need to complicate things unless it's for story purposes.
We have only found 'bullets' so far, right? We have not found any batteries (battery pack), which is what my laser rifle uses.
I just want to make sure I understood.
As long as we have bullets I'll be using my pistol (mostly). So I essentially have an extra battery for when its needed.
Just mentioning it now in case I completely forget later :-)
Folks are going to,have to make a climbing check no matter which order they go in. Please go ahead and roll them.
I'm assuming Gorn is going first. After that the order doesn't really matter so I'll randomise it if anyone fails.
A note in failing a check. Generally it's considered you fail halfway up a climb speed. This is how Pathfinder used to handle it when I still,played that system.
The drop to the elevator roof is onlyntwenty feet. This means you'll likely only drop 10 to 15 feet at most for very little damage.
Of course, going up the elevator changes that, but the scenario gives you multiple Athletics attempts to save yourself if you do fall.
If any of you have rope or cable, you could rig up a system to lower yourselves without risk. That would mean at least two folks staying on the current level though. Given you've recruited three NPCs that shouldn't be an issue.
Huh, so I just went a reread the athletics section of the skills. Since this climb is generally not under any real threat or urgency, nothing stops you just taking ten. Which means none of you can fail.
Which is pretty lucky since tow of you did.
On further reading, you only fall if you fail by five or more. Which only one of you did.
When climbing you move at half speed which means TukYik would have made it 7 feet before dropping, for a total fall of 13 feet and only d6 damage.
All of wh h is irrelevant because I'm going to retcon the need for rolls and allow you take ten since the rule set specifically states it's possible. The only thing you can't ever do,is take 20 on a climb check, which I misremembered as not being able to take ten or twenty.
Will update game thread a little later
Ah, makes sense. Learning! Out of curiosity you mention me, but I got an 18. Was it an example, or did I fail?
Pretty sure it was Twitch (5) and myself (6) who failed at the DC 10 climb check
Yeah it was Twitch, second time if mixed you two up. Sigh
I believe one of you took Stamina damage in our fight (Twitch if I'm not mistaken)
Enough time was spent completing the careful exploration of the first level that you can consider a short rest to have occurred. This means you spend a resolve point to recover stamina damage if you'd like.
Traveling today so I won't be able to post until later this evening/night.
A couple of things:
Yes, to Twitch using resolve to recover stamina.
Modus operandi should be (says the guy in the least amount of danger :)):
Trellik check for traps while Twitch and others have their guns/weapons ready
Gorn goes in
We all go in
Thoughts?
I am ok with that arangment. Gorn can lead. I don't mind either being in the very back or near the back of a group. I am going to be mostly ranged anyway. But I won't mind taking a hit if needed.
Well there are not shields, but there are shields..
Star Trek > Lord of the Rings
As we do this more we will hopefully figure out how to spread the wealth.
Please be careful of the words being used when presenting a case for character changes.
Asshat is not one that most people are going to feel happy with being thrown their way.
The sentiment is noted however, and I am recommending you and Gorns player open a private dialogue to see if you can come to an amicable agreement.
I will state openly right now that not everything you come across in this place is going to be an enemy. I will let you know if dialogue is an option in situations. It may not come to be useful dialogue in the end, but there are times when it is an option for you rather than open hostilities from the get go.
The Baghra are not evil, nor good. They are also indifferent to you as a group. This means it only takes one step to make them helpful, but also only one step to make them aggressive.
Andretta is neither human, nor from your part of the galaxy. Her culture is going to be completely different to what any of you have experienced before. Tuk'Yik has already discovered this. She is also pretty much neutral to all of you, and the dog men. Her personal beliefs are talk before violence, but st the moment she is not a friend. You're all just folks working together to maybe get out of this prison alive.
The bone men are definitely the bad guys. They're genetically modified and emotionally mind scrubbed to be subservient yes men to whatever is in charge. They think of all of you as prisoners and as such, they'll happily just kill you where you stand. Expect nothing less than open aggression from them from this point onwards.
The Taslek Matriarch is also a pure enemy in the traditional sense of alien predator movies. You're all just food to it, but it's very clever. Think alien queen form the Alien movies.
Hopefully those insights will help all of you develop a way to interact with things that makes all of you happy but still allows for your characters to be played as you imagine them.
Incendiary grenade I (Explode (1d6 F, 1d4 burn, 5 ft.)
So how does it work?
Is the burn on a critical hit?
What's the explosion radius? 5' or is 5' for the critical effect?
I believe it's s fivr foot radius explosion with s reflex for half. You have to target an intersection of squares. If you score a crit, it also sets you on fire for d4 damage. After that you have to try and out yourself out or take more burping damage.
Burn damage took out one of the characters in the home group I ran not long ago. It's pretty nasty.
Other grenade weirdnesses -
1) Need to be proficient
2) You use Strength to throw it. But, since the DC to hit the intersection is only 5 it rarely matters that much
3) The DC for the save is based on the users Dex.
Well....since I decided to give this a shot, we lost one player through sudden and unexplained absence while posting elsewhere. I stepped in on that rapidly because I've watched games die from that behaviour.
I've had to modify the mapping system due to compatability issues. I figured that might happen and was hoping to try more theatre of the mind, but the game and complexity of the scenario really needs maps. Even so, it is confusing players and GM alike.
Now, I've been caught up in a conflict between players that doesn't look like it's going to resolve well. This is stuff I have to deal with as a teacher on a daily basis and not what I want in my gaming time.
I am not enjoying this process, and I'm old enough and weary enough to understand that is the death knell for the game.
Thanks for trying it out with me, and apologies if I've wasted your time, but I'm pulling the pin on this. My home group has no interest in pursuing Starfinder, and it seems PbP still has stuff that makes running one more work than I can put the energy into. Looks like I'll be doing 5e for the foreseeable future.
Cheers
Thanks for giving this a try.
I would try to talk you out of it if the issue was the two players not 'playing nice'. This is easily fixed. It really is.
However, I think you have other reasons for not wanting to continue which you explain in your post.
Anyhow, thanks and happy gaming.
Aww. Dang. I really appreciate you giving it a go.
For what it's worth I am having a great time. I have really enjoyed jumping on and playing. It's been a great learning experience.
I understand your frustrations. Personally, I think the player conflict, would sort itself out. I was never too worried about it, but you have the total right to call it.
Just know that I have really enjoyed your GMing, the module has been great, Starfinder has worked out so far, your maps have been totally fine, and my fellow players have been fun to play with.
You also got me very curious about this Adventure Path. I might have to run it. Or just run my own Starfinder game. How to convince my players at home... (really its more, how do I convince my wife who is not a fan of Starfinder)
Thanks again. Cheers and happy gaming, everyone!