[SFS_Aerondor] 01-13 On the Trail of History (Inactive)

Game Master Aerondor

@GM Aerondor: could you add some things to the Pegasus spoiler, please (if possible)?

The ranges of the weaponry (if I got them right, here's what I'd say):
- light particle beam (medium ; 10 hexes)
- laser net (short ; 5 hexes)
- light laser cannon (short ; 5 hexes)
- light particle beam (medium ; 10 hexes)
it makes it easier for us/you to apply the -2 per further range increment

And, just if you use that spoiler, maybe add our Pilot's AC bonus (his ranks in piloting) to the AC, so we don't forget that?

Good idea. Done.

Piloting: 4 ranks

Just in case :)

Guys, I forgot that I had inserted Defender of the Fleet (Starship Boon) - Finest Computers. I can upgrade our computer from duonode to trinode (i.e. we get three +2 bonuses instead of two), or increase the bonuses by +1 (i.e. we get two +3 instead of +2). I'm leaning towards the 2nd option to give our gunners an edge.

My vote is for piloting getting another +2. We need to capitalize on our mobility advantages, but will have a hard time doing so if the pilot can't win initiative.

Ok let's go with that. So gunners each get +2, and pilot gets a +2 for initiative.

Honestly, I normally go with pilot.

I'm happy with you using it for initiative, but if so not for the pilot phase. It will help with a single combat check per node.

As of now for initiative Kasza rolls:

1d20+14+1+1+2 (Base Skill, +1 Pegasus, +1 Super Sci Off, +2 Trinode)

Correct?

That looks right.
Edit: Of course with your engines now glitching... you are down to +16 for piloting with the third node.

So Hudson changes nothing, correct? (Gunnery)

Yeap, Hudson just has to bribe the RNG a bit better. Maybe offer it some gum?

Anyone have any suggestions for Kasza to do anything other than he has been? Evade seemed the best option with the +2 to AC & TL.

Evade and pray :>

I don't see any way for the other stunts to help us here.

I'm good with Pilots getting the better bonuses, if we don't outmanuever it, it won't matter if we hit. If I'd known this was hard Starship combat ahead of time, I would have brought in a different character, one with lots of Starship boons where I'd have options.

But I bet the other character would not have the strangest-coolest Shirren-frog mini'.

You right there. Back then there was no sorting for Shirrens or Starfinder races. So I looked at animals and Frog was the closest thing I could find and I just kept it.

So, more experienced players, did I just get stuck in a rut, or should I have had Kasza do something else to help with that battle?

No. You did the right thing. This is a very one sided fight. It can be won, but you need a bit of luck (and winning the initiative a lot helps). You did well with two gunners actually.

When I played this we went down to the wire and *just* squeaked through.

Nah, that looked good to me Piloting wise! Maybe you could have managed to point our front arc at the enemy instead of the sides, but it wouldn't have mattered materially. The stats were stacked against us, and the dice didn't fall in our favor.

The Pegasus is a far less combat capable ship than the Drake. And with the Drake it would have been a coin flip - a slightly unfavorable coin flip as their stats would have still been a bit better than ours.

Aerondor, did you do it w/ the Drake or the Pegasus? The updated Drake from the v1.1 version of the Starfinder Society Guide has a LOT more firepower.

I did it with the Pegasus. I think that actually makes it easier as the extra manoeuvrability and speed really helps out. The Drake missiles are good, but if you don't have a lot of luck early on and you run out... then you are even worse off than the Pegasus.

I didn't think they changed the Drake between guides.

I did it with the Pegasus. I think that actually makes it easier as the extra manoeuvrability and speed really helps out. The Drake missiles are good, but if you don't have a lot of luck early on and you run out... then you are even worse off than the Pegasus.

I didn't think they changed the Drake between guides.

Oh wow, you're right. They only changed the Tier 2 version of the Drake between Revs. I'm stunned you managed it with the Pegasus! Seems impossible if you lose initiative more than a couple of times, and the low damage output of the Pegasus means you're in for quite a few rounds.

The Tier 4 Drake's got a potential 4d8+4d4+4d4+4d8 (Avg 56) damage output in Front+Turret arcs. Against the Pegasus' 3d6+3d6 (Avg 21) in the same arcs. Even without the missiles you're still in fine shape damage wise.

I'll go back and review the ship stats for the turns. I was trying to keep the un-shielded section of the ship away from their guns most of the time.

I know we had harder hitting weapons in the front arc, but we lost the front shields first and it took a bit to get them back.

Oh well, lessons learned :)

I can't help but to think we missed out on a good boon by losing the Starship combat. Did we only lose a Starship boon, or something else?
What's worse, not losing out on the boons, but all these hard starship combat scenarios not being repeatable, which means they are forever lost starship combats.

Hudson was a useless Hero of the Stars, now he's just a regular Joe.

Personally, I always vote for Pegasus vs. Drake because of speed & manoeuvrability (w. Maneuver you can bump down to 0 turn).

Well, I go for the Pegasus when I'm playing a pilot and Drake when I'm playing a gunner. ;)

While glad that didn't turn out to be a game ending combat, but I am quite stumped though over what tactic for a Pegasus would have worked in this combat. There are no arcs that Pegasus could have kept to using its good maneuverability and keeping the distance would not have helped much? The only thing I can think of is better coordination among the pilot, engineering officer and science officer to pump up the shields for the arc that is facing the enemy. And maybe swapping the captain role for an extra engineering officer.

I wonder what would have happened though if we had elected to simply fly away? With our significantly higher speed, it would never have kept up. We could have flown to the other side of the planet and landed. :)

Drake in this scenario would be interesting. We would simply be parking in front of each other blasting away!

When we did it, we were a little lucky in winning initiative a lot (that said, I was maxed out piloting and using the computer as well for it).

The other space ship has some very good long range weaponry for some parting shots. If you'd just run, I guess I would have hand-waved the encounter. But we got through it pretty quickly anyway.

If you really want to see how my combat played out (it took a while I seem to recall) you can do so here.

Edit: 2 weeks and 124 posts to get that combat done.

But you are on your honour not to read up from that post, or down after the end of the combat. Or maybe just wait and read it at the end of the scenario so you don't get any spoilers.

Bahh.. it looks like the maps have been removed. But you may get a feel for it from the text.

I just skimmed through out of curiosity and MAN what a nailbiter.

An eyewatering 14 (!!!) round starship combat! You guys won initiative 11 / 14 times, which is some serious good luck considering that your pilot's modifier was only 1 better than your opponent.

Meanwhile with just about the same bonuses, we won initiative 1/5 times. Ouch.

Dice rolls. It figures. LOL

I think you won initiative 2/5 actually, which is bang on average. But as I indicated, you need solid tactics and a bit of good luck to win that particular battle.

I didn't check really to see if I hit much or not, but I do know that in the end, I missed (by 1 point, even w. Encourage).
I blame the gum.

There aren't any rules blocking telepathy and androids are there?

Just wondering since it came up :)

Not that I am aware of.

Super fun, Fionne!
I didn't see that coming: the little LOUD lass with double SONIC attacks )))
Wonderful! I love it!

The Explode property is the intersection aiming DC 5 thingie...
Fionna will SHOUT it at you so I am whispering)))

Right, thus the reflex save for half. Makes sense.

This is a really neat first fight for Fionne. Big open area with line of sight on enemies, plenty of room for AoE blasting without catching allies, enemies are stuck in difficult terrain so we get extra time to go all artillery on them before they reach us. She really gets to show off her combat style!

Now if only they would move 5ft closer to one another... :>

And there was me cursing the difficult terrain as stopping Mr and Mrs Chomper from getting dinner.

Hey Guys, since the OUTPOST II games started I suddenly find myself in 4 games at once.

Forgive me if I mix my character's personalities up a bit. I am doing my best to keep up, but I think I found my limit in games at once :)

Kasza? This is eHarmony you're posting on, here.
What Outpost are you talking about?

This IS the dicussion tab right? I didn't get it mixed up with the Gameplay tab did I?

I'll be away on a hiking trip this weekend and will have little to no internet access. Please bot Speck as needed. For the rest of combat, he'll cast magic missiles while the air elemental will keep attacking.

Just curious how rolls vs KAC 19 result of 5 = hit?

Am I missing something?

Kasza's attack rolls are consistently lower than the KAC of the target and therefore misses, I get that.

I see the Dragonglaives in the Alien Archive book, and this one seems special (not unusual I am sure for scenarios).

I still don't understand the hits against targets on rolls of -2 and 5.

Not trying to be a rules lawyer, just trying to understand.

Enemies have unreasonably high + to hit in starfinder. As a GM I think I average around less then 10% of my attacks are misses. In a game I am currently GMing, I am running a CR 4 monster (I would guess that to be around what this guy is) who has a base of +12 to hit. It doesn't seem unrealistic that this guy has a +15.

It does make it feel really pointless to invest in big armor though, I am not going to lie.

Both of these enemies are CR5. You can tell the dragonkin is CR5 because its breath weapon dealt 5d6 damage (the guidance in monster building is to deal 1d6 per CR). You can tell the Spinjack is CR5 because they're dealing +5 damage with a ranged weapon.

Per the Monster creation rules, a CR5 combatant type enemy has between a +11 and +14 to hit.

So yeah, this is just a CR7 encounter! Very challenging for tier 3-4, to be sure!

(I'll also say that whoever wrote this adventure gave their CR5 enemies higher damage than the NPC creation rules would guide you towards. NPC creation says 1d6+5 for a ranged energy weapon, but this enemy is doing 2d6+5 before using overcharge. And the melee damage target in the book is 1d6+Str+5 and the highest stat mod allowed is +5 at this CR, so we should expect 1d6+10. Instead the dragonkin is swinging for 1d8+12. So the writer really went for deadly for this big boss encounter!)
----
To riff off Medrick's comment: Enemies in Starfinder with CR=Character level have higher attack rolls but worse AC such that they're actually JUST as accurate against a PC as PCs are vs. them. What's happening here is that these guys are above us in CR.

As far as armor is concerned, I'd say good armor is even more important than in Pathfinder - reducing an enemy's chance to hit from 75% to 60% is a big deal when that's your main survival mechanic.

OTOH, I think Aerondor made a mistake with the attack vs. the air elemental. Even with +15 to hit, the air elemental gives other airborne enemies a -1 to attack rolls to hit it, so the final result would have been 12 vs. its AC of 13.

As so with a +14 or +15 to hit, a 1d20 roll of 5 is 19 or 20, and thus a hit.

Got it.

I am just used to seeing the die roll + the to hit modifier all together in the roll statement.

Got it now.

Thanks!

I don't generally provide the enemies bonuses on rolls (apart from initiative, where it is immediately obvious), but I do try to put in situational modifier. So from a result of 5 hitting KAC of 19, you can guess the bonus is at least +14.

I guess this is just a principle I use so you don't immediately know which enemy is necessarily the BBEG, or the largest threat. You have to judge by the effects you can see (the damage you take for example).

Nice work on the back-checking of the encounter. They are indeed CR 5 for a CR7 encounter.

Good catch on the air elemental, I didn't notice that, so it is currently undamaged.

You are all having pretty rotten luck with your rolls, and my dice seem pretty hot this encounter. On the plus side, Farvenzi is starting to look quite ragged.

You run your game how you run your game, I just saw the rolls and the math didn't add up... at first.

As I said I am just used to seeing it differently from other GMs, and was confused.

My confusion has been resolved, though, thanks!

I normally don't open any GM spoilers for rolls. Some GMs prefer to roll behind the screen (me included) while others roll on the table and I will respect a GMs wishes to roll behind the screen. I only looked because for the one post, the rolls were on the table and Kasza asked about it.

Thanks for taking a moment to let us look behind the curtain. This is a pretty tricky fight. My mindset was attacking the dragon first always seems to be a better option. Plus I am hoping by taking down the non-dragon his ally will be more likely to surrender.

Yeah, we definitely want to down this dragon and his 15ft reach. That melee reach is super deadly against our ranged-heavy party. Especially before he gets his breath weapon recharged!

That said, I'm liking how this encounter is pretty challenging! SFS had quite a few scenarios with rather wimpy encounters.