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Drift Hackers Players Guide

Wedneday, November 30, 2022

A Light in the Dark is set to release and welcome in the start of the 3-volume Drift Hackers Adventure Path for Starfinder. Drift Hackers is part of the ongoing Drift Crisis event, as well as an indirect sequel to the recently completed Drift Crashers Adventure Path. In this Adventure Path, a group of heroes works to undo the cause of the Drift Crisis and restore balance to the Starfinder setting. This blog reveals the free Starfinder Drift Hackers Players Guide, in which you’ll learn about all the different paths that can lead you right into the action!


Starfinder Iconics battle a large floating alien with many appendages

Illustration by Ionnis Fiore


From corporate researchers to faithful pilgrims, this guide provides a variety of different party backgrounds to start your campaign off right. These backgrounds each provide a unique mechanical benefit, from new spell-like abilities to bonuses in combat that persist throughout the Adventure Path. Along with these backgrounds, there are also direct tie-ins for parties coming out of the Against the Aeon Throne and Drift Crashers Adventure Paths, as well as parties who’ve just completed the Liberation of Locus-1 adventure. Like the backgrounds, these tie-ins provide unique perks for your parties to reward their prior accomplishments.

New gear derived from the aftermath of the Drift Crash fills the rest of this free product. From new armor upgrades suitable for starship operations to new weapons devised from the mysterious outsiders known as spectra, the Players Guide has you covered!

Download the Drift Hacker's Players Guide Here

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Always with the cool art!
Grand Lodge
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Spectra blades are entirely my aesthetic. Thank you Paizo!
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The Environmental Field armor upgrade is mind boggling. It is 1% as effective as level 1 armor environmental protections, but is level 8 and costs you extra money and a slot. How did this get published?

It gives you a 1" shell of breathable atmosphere, it can't help someone you're giving first aid to, unlike the flavor text.
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Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber

The ability gives you the armor wearer the ability to grant a 1-inch field of breathable atmosphere and environmental protections to someone else who may very well be dying without such protections.

Looks like the duration of each granting is at least 1 day. So one person with this upgrade could potentially protect a party of 10 others for a day.

Actually, viewing it as 8th level gear, it is possible to interpret the benefit to include the level of the item, meaning each charge may protect up to 8 individuals, and last 8 days. Which might mean you might be able to protect up to potentially 80 people the first day, with charges refreshing each day and potentially lasting 8 days, which could get you up to potentially640 people. Which that seems likely a bit over what was intended.

If it provides that ability to do one bubble for 1 charge per round. That would limit you to it only functioning for about a minute. That seems like it might have been potentially what was intended, but seems rather short lived, unless it is intended to be able to support up to 8 individuals within 30' of one another, based on the item level. (and it still seems short, from a time standpoint given the 1st level spell lasts a day)

A lower level item that any such emergency staff might have along with them on recovery missions would be an Portable Emergency Environmental Protection, aka Mobile Hotelier Tent.
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Loreguard wrote:

The ability gives you the armor wearer the ability to grant a 1-inch field of breathable atmosphere and environmental protections to someone else who may very well be dying without such protections.

Looks like the duration of each granting is at least 1 day. So one person with this upgrade could potentially protect a party of 10 others for a day.

Read it again.

"You gain the benefits of a life bubble" until the charges run out. You. The wearer of the armor. It has ten charges and uses one per round, so it's a max of one minute of protection for you per day. It's less protection than you get from your environmental protections, which function for 24x60xarmor level minutes per day (and also help against radiation).

If you want to cast life bubble, which is about 1000x times as useful as this item, you only need to be a 1st level caster, a 5th level anything else with the appropriate feat, or have a 4th level weapon with a spellthrower fusion and a 1st level spell gem.

This item would be garbage and terrible in every way if it were 1st level. If it were 1st level and let you cast the 10 round life bubble on someone you touch and maintain contact with then it would at least be trying to do what the flavor description claims. They probably thought it had some respectable area of effect rather than being effectively a personal spell.
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Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber
Environmental Field(Magic) Item Description wrote:

You can activate an environmental field as a swift action to gain the benefits of a life bubble spell until you spend another

swift action to deactivate it or it runs out of charges.

Note the Environmental Field is the name of the device/upgrade.

You activate the upgrade and get the benefit of the Spell. Which allows you to create at least one (often more) life bubble around someone within 100+ feet of you. When you can do multiple bubbles, all bubbles have to be within 30' of one another.

You get the benefit of the spell... when you activate the upgrade, which is called an Environmental Field.

You clearly by the text of the usage example, use it to project environmental fields (which is what the spell does) to other individuals. The only question I have have, is how many people can you affect with a single charge, and how long does it last. Not that it can or can't do what the flavor text says it can do.

Good to have some free Drift Hackers Players Guide stuff out there for Starfinder, Paizo. ;)
Paizo Employee
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Sasha Laranoa Harving wrote:
Spectra blades are entirely my aesthetic. Thank you Paizo!

I came here to say something along these lines and I'm glad so many people agree!

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