New Starfinder Playtest For 2020

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

At its core, Starfinder is a game about exploration and possibilities. Whether you’re excited to uncover new expressions of heroism through new character options in the Character Operations Manual, explore the Pact Worlds’ closest neighbors in Near Space, dramatically expand what’s possible in spaceflight with the upcoming Starship Operations Manual, meet extraordinary lifeforms in Alien Archive 4, or just blast into uncharted space with the Galaxy Exploration Manual, the past year and upcoming 12 months’ hardcover books keep bringing new reasons for excitement!

So forgive my Zo!-like theatrics in saying: “But wait, there’s more!”

That’s right! Why pine longingly for amazing 2021 content when you could playtest it this summer? Beginning in July 2020, Paizo is launching not one—but two—different Starfinder playtests, opening up new possibilities for your gaming experience and inviting you to become part of the creative process! Final versions of both playtests’ contents will appear in an upcoming, yet-to-be-announced book.

A New Class!

As a guiding philosophy when designing new classes, the Starfinder team is always pushing to expand innovative ideas and territory: the biohacker brings a new spin to the scientist trope, the vanguard weaponizes the multiverse’s fundamental energies to redirect damaging forces, and witchwarper takes a fresh approach to magic, superimposing alternate realities to create supernatural effects. Naturally, an additional class we’d make would want to meet or exceed those standards for conceptual novelty, visual wow-factor, and fun at the game table. It’s a high bar!

Enter the nanocyte.

The nanocyte’s body houses nanites in untold numbers, granting them impossible strength, transforming into tools, and coursing between obstacles to overwhelm their foes. The same nanites can reshape the nanocyte’s body to avoid harm as easily as they reconfigure features to conceal their presence or mask a lie, making the nanocyte an adept combatant and infiltrator able to manifest weaponry at a moment’s notice. Whether their powers stem from excruciating experiments, accidental infection, or voluntary symbiosis, the nanocyte’s nanites grow stronger by the day as the character evolves into a being more machine than mortal.

Ysoki, humanoid rat, leaning against mech

A New Way to Play!

Starfinder allows for so many stories and ways to play: infiltrating an embassy ball, trading shots across a shell-cratered battlefield, racing after villains in futuristic vehicles, soaring through space in elegant starships, and more! But since Starfinder’s debut in August 2017, the fans have echoed the same question: Where are the mechs? Sure, Starfinder provides powered armor that enhances a user’s natural abilities, and there are even a few larger powered armor suits that give that tower-over-the-opposition feel. Yet the game so far lacks the ability to pilot that giant robot, that titanic vehicle whose power far exceeds that of its pilot.

Not anymore! In July Starfinder will publicly playtest new mech rules, allowing PCs to jump into single-seat mechs or team up with friends in even larger behemoths to stomp, fly, and jump-jet around the battlefield! Mech combat is designed to use most of the familiar tactical rules and 5-foot squares you already use in your games, making mechs a feature you can as easily drop into a single encounter as you can build entire campaigns around them. And as you would expect, mechs represent a significant power boost, allowing PCs to take on far greater challenges than they might on their own—just what you’d expect from a system that lets you customize your mechs’ frames, limbs, armaments, power cores, and more!

Get excited and follow along for more updates! The action begins this July!

John Compton
Starfinder Senior Developer


More Paizo Blog.
Tags: Alien Archive Character Operations Manual Near Space Starfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game
101 to 150 of 197 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | next > last >>

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Ixal wrote:
Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:
The fact that you’re in a mech.

Which is different to power armor how?

You use the same movement and attack rules as with power armor.
You can chose different weapons like with power armor and can also add other defensive and utility item to it like with power armor (and heavy armor too).

How is that a new way of playing?

Same when you steer multi crewed mechs just that instead of "same as power armor" it becomes "same as starship combat". Its nothing new.

By those standards, sure; I don't think they're going to introduce a third type of battle map or resolve attacks with something other than a d20 roll adjusted by a modifier. It does need to fit within the system. (If you really want something different, grafting on a second game system, like Lancer, seems like a cool way to accomplish that.)

But we have powered armor, and folks were still interested in mechs. Stomping through a battlefield, fighting tanks instead of ground troops, not needing to monitor a battery- that's a different way to play for some people. A mech-based game is going to feel different than a space exploration game or a dystopian corporate espionage game.

Powered armor is restricted to characters who invest in that proficiency; it's hard for a caster to participate in that. Making a system for mechs probably lets every character participate on a more level playing field, and likely even allows for games where the characters' combat ability solely comes from the mechs and characters are built for out-of-combat utility and social encounters.

Second Seekers (Jadnura)

Quen Pah wrote:
Is that Mrs. Brisby?

There's a fair bit of college I don't remember....


Pathfinder LO Special Edition, Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, PF Special Edition Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber

Can a mech pick up a chicken egg without breaking the shell? Well designed powered armor can do that.


Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Nanocyte sounds perfect for a biomechanical horror, like an agent for the Dominion of the Black. Very exciting.


Ed Reppert wrote:
Can a mech pick up a chicken egg without breaking the shell? Well designed powered armor can do that.

or thread a needle :P

Hey, an excavator can XD
(Youtube link)

One question: aren't powered armors... already mechs? If anything, the only problem they have right now is that they aren't Huge or larger while being as low as lvl. 5 ^^;

Also, what's the official "release date" for mech rules, as in "in what book can we expect them" ?


JiCi wrote:
Ed Reppert wrote:
Can a mech pick up a chicken egg without breaking the shell? Well designed powered armor can do that.

or thread a needle :P

Hey, an excavator can XD
(Youtube link)

One question: aren't powered armors... already mechs? If anything, the only problem they have right now is that they aren't Huge or larger while being as low as lvl. 5 ^^;

Also, what's the official "release date" for mech rules, as in "in what book can we expect them" ?

On top of there not being a lot of big power armor, they're also a normal PC option.

As in, an operative with a pistol can gank someone wearing gargantuan powered armor.

The standard mech fantasy is that being in the mech is a massive power boost to the character piloting it, which can't really happen in the standard rules.

Creating mechs like vehicles can also work, but they're expensive. Also, level appropriate vehicles tend to be less resilient than your average character, not to mention the cost of arming such a vehicle on top of the PCs own needs.

So that's why it sounds like they're making a mech subsystem. You can't quite capture the mech fantasy with the current rules without a lot of GM finagling.

That said, I'm only lukewarm to mechs, but the nanocyte sounds like fun.


Garretmander wrote:

On top of there not being a lot of big power armor, they're also a normal PC option.

As in, an operative with a pistol can gank someone wearing gargantuan powered armor.

The standard mech fantasy is that being in the mech is a massive power boost to the character piloting it, which can't really happen in the standard rules.

Creating mechs like vehicles can also work, but they're expensive. Also, level appropriate vehicles tend to be less resilient than your average character, not to mention the cost of arming such a vehicle on top of the PCs own needs.

So that's why it sounds like they're making a mech subsystem. You can't quite capture the mech fantasy with the current rules without a lot of GM finagling.

That said, I'm only lukewarm to mechs, but the nanocyte sounds like fun.

Totally agree that the game "has to be dealt on 2 separate levels", like having a 5th character piloting a Tier 1 ship.


Alright, the Nanocyte looks cool. But through this playtest, it should end up to be balanced. Neat-o.


Quote:
The nanocyte’s body houses nanites in untold numbers, granting them impossible strength, transforming into tools, and coursing between obstacles to overwhelm their foes. The same nanites can reshape the nanocyte’s body to avoid harm as easily as they reconfigure features to conceal their presence or mask a lie, making the nanocyte an adept combatant and infiltrator able to manifest weaponry at a moment’s notice. Whether their powers stem from excruciating experiments, accidental infection, or voluntary symbiosis, the nanocyte’s nanites grow stronger by the day as the character evolves into a being more machine than mortal.

I'm curious to see how ranged weapons will be handled.

I mean, maybe a nanocyte can manifest ammo, but... I doubt that it can manifest it at will.


JiCi wrote:

I'm curious to see how ranged weapons will be handled.

I mean, maybe a nanocyte can manifest ammo, but... I doubt that it can manifest it at will.

Well, with their body being infested/symbiotically intertwined with nanites, perhaps they can just "absorb" the ammo into their gun?

Or they could just do what Gen Rex did, make a big shoulder-mounted canon that scoops up rocks then flings them like a high-tech slingshot. Maybe not the most scientifically sound approach but eh, we have technomagical hybrid items in the setting.


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Garretmander wrote:

On top of there not being a lot of big power armor, they're also a normal PC option.

As in, an operative with a pistol can gank someone wearing gargantuan powered armor.

The standard mech fantasy is that being in the mech is a massive power boost to the character piloting it, which can't really happen in the standard rules.

Creating mechs like vehicles can also work, but they're expensive. Also, level appropriate vehicles tend to be less resilient than your average character, not to mention the cost of arming such a vehicle on top of the PCs own needs.

So that's why it sounds like they're making a mech subsystem. You can't quite capture the mech fantasy with the current rules without a lot of GM finagling.

That said, I'm only lukewarm to mechs, but the nanocyte sounds like fun.

Which leads to several problems.

If mechs break the power curve to differentiate them from power armor then they can't be a normal part of combat as otherwise every future AP would need to have several versions of an encounter depending on how many mechs the party uses.
There is also logistics issues because if mechs are even larger than power armor they won't be able to fit in many dungeons and also other transportation becomes an issue.

So that means that there will be special mech encounters intermixed with the normal gamplay, just like how you have 1-2 spaceship combats per AP chapter. And as they are only needed for a few encounters and play no other role they do not fit into the SF economy, so you can't have a mech pilot class or spend resources to upgrade mechs as those would be wasted for the most part.
So it looks like mechs will end up with an alternate upgrade system just like starships and like starships everyone can use one and there is hardly a specialization with them.
The only difference is that instead of having their own combat system they mostly use the normal combat rules. Which raises the question if mech combat will even feel any different than normal combat.

Basically mechs will be the starships for parties that never leave the planet.


4 people marked this as a favorite.

Mecha being "starships for parties that never leave the planet" strikes me as an entirely valid and workable concept for mecha. It just would require an understanding that not every campaign, and not every adventure, should use mecha.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Metaphysician wrote:
Mecha being "starships for parties that never leave the planet" strikes me as an entirely valid and workable concept for mecha. It just would require an understanding that not every campaign, and not every adventure, should use mecha.

It is valid (for some groups), my main problem with it is that it is advertised as a "new way of playing" when, according to everything we know, its just a slight variation of what people have been doing in SF the whole time.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Metaphysician wrote:
Mecha being "starships for parties that never leave the planet" strikes me as an entirely valid and workable concept for mecha. It just would require an understanding that not every campaign, and not every adventure, should use mecha.

Exactly, to me it sounds like mechs are for mech campaigns. Not for your average AP.

Ixal wrote:
It is valid (for some groups), my main problem with it is that it is advertised as a "new way of playing" when, according to everything we know, its just a slight variation of what people have been doing in SF the whole time.

I think you're just over-hyping the phrase 'new way to play'.

Getting in a big mech to go fight a living apocalypse at level 10 instead of running away, leveling up, and coming back with black hole guns is new. It's just still a d20 grid combat system.


You guys know that mechs could feasibly be carried on starships with hanger bays... right?


Garretmander wrote:
I think you're just over-hyping the phrase 'new way to play'.

Rather I under-hype it and, based on what we heard so far, question the use of this phrase as mechs won't really add something new as they are just a slight variation of the current gameplay.

JiCi wrote:
You guys know that mechs could feasibly be carried on starships with hanger bays... right?

Depends on how big they are (and to be really different from power armor they need to be rather big). Some groups already have trouble carrying around some normal vehicles because they don't have many cargo spaces on their ship.


Or just take off into space by themselves, as most mechas do.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

Hey, Paizo?

MECH SIZED DROP PODS.


The Ragi wrote:
Or just take off into space by themselves, as most mechas do.

That's a bit much to say most.

Most of the mecha settings I'm familiar with need a ship to get to orbit, and there's quite a few where the mechs don't function in space at all.


Ixal wrote:
Depends on how big they are (and to be really different from power armor they need to be rather big). Some groups already have trouble carrying around some normal vehicles because they don't have many cargo spaces on their ship.

Isn't the size scale for starships not the same as the one for creatures? Your Tiny ship is probably Gargantuan (or bigger) in creature size.


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Ixal wrote:
Metaphysician wrote:
Mecha being "starships for parties that never leave the planet" strikes me as an entirely valid and workable concept for mecha. It just would require an understanding that not every campaign, and not every adventure, should use mecha.
It is valid (for some groups), my main problem with it is that it is advertised as a "new way of playing" when, according to everything we know, its just a slight variation of what people have been doing in SF the whole time.

You’re splitting hairs just for the sake of splitting hairs.

Having a new mode of combat similar to starship fighting in the form of mecha so you can fight ground units would indeed be a new way to play.

Are they going to ditch the dice and maps? Of course not.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
JiCi wrote:


Isn't the size scale for starships not the same as the one for creatures? Your Tiny ship is probably Gargantuan (or bigger) in creature size.

Yet there are rules for how much a ship can hold. For huge objects you need 4 cargo bays.

But I guess paizo will just say that there is a mech bay which can hold a huge mech in the same space than a single cargo bay only able to hold large items because reasons...

Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:

You’re splitting hairs just for the sake of splitting hairs.

Having a new mode of combat similar to starship fighting in the form of mecha so you can fight ground units would indeed be a new way to play.

Are they going to ditch the dice and maps? Of course not.

That is not a new way of playing, that is playing what you always played but for this one combat you exchange your character sheet with a different one while using the same rules for combat.

A real new way of playing would be something not done with the current SF rules like in depth hacking Shadowrun style (a example, not necessarily a good idea).


3 people marked this as a favorite.

Yeah you’re splitting hairs for the sake of splitting hairs and hyperfocusing on the “new” in “way to play”.

Having new mechanics to use a mech similar to how starships use different rules than on ground combat would indeed be a new way to play.


Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:

Yeah you’re splitting hairs for the sake of splitting hairs and hyperfocusing on the “new” in “way to play”.

Having new mechanics to use a mech similar to how starships use different rules than on ground combat would indeed be a new way to play.

They said mech combat will use the existing tactical rules and 5 ft. squares, so no radical new mechanics like starship combat.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Ixal wrote:
Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:

Yeah you’re splitting hairs for the sake of splitting hairs and hyperfocusing on the “new” in “way to play”.

Having new mechanics to use a mech similar to how starships use different rules than on ground combat would indeed be a new way to play.

They said mech combat will use the existing tactical rules and 5 ft. squares, so no radical new mechanics like starship combat.

It depends if they go western or eastern :P

Western mechs are essentially bulky tanks with legs, like Mech Warriors, and aren't as swift. Eastern mechs are often humanoids, like a Gundam, and more made for speed. Western mechs look like they would follow the starship mecanics, while the Eastern mechs look like they would follow the regular mecanics.

Here's a YT video of what I mean (by Gaijin Goomba).


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Yeah I agree with JiCi. When people hear "mechs", there's a group who picture stuff like Battletech and a group who picture stuff like Gundam. I wonder which one Paizo pictured...


FireclawDrake wrote:
Yeah I agree with JiCi. When people hear "mechs", there's a group who picture stuff like Battletech and a group who picture stuff like Gundam. I wonder which one Paizo pictured...

Funny thing is that we currently have walkers as vehicles and powered armors as armors.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

I'll be interested in seeing how easy it is to, by taking certain options, reflavor a nanocyte character as just having some very weird biological properties. I've got a character who had a cult run-in and ended up with something pretty unnatural taking up residence in his cardiovascular system. I don't really expect a class to specifically address that (although Vanguard did an excellent job), but it'll be interesting to see how it works.

Also, spathinae nanocyte sounds awesome! (http://aonsrd.com/Races.aspx?ItemName=Spathinae)


QuidEst wrote:

I'll be interested in seeing how easy it is to, by taking certain options, reflavor a nanocyte character as just having some very weird biological properties. I've got a character who had a cult run-in and ended up with something pretty unnatural taking up residence in his cardiovascular system. I don't really expect a class to specifically address that (although Vanguard did an excellent job), but it'll be interesting to see how it works.

Also, spathinae nanocyte sounds awesome! (http://aonsrd.com/Races.aspx?ItemName=Spathinae)

I feel like the Nanocyte might get the Solar Weapon's and Flare's damage progression. Believe me, you will save a LOT of time by stating that the Nanocyet can create any weapon it wishes, but all of them follow the same progression. At best, you can slap 1 special quality per 4 or 5 levels, chosen from a list of 20.

In fact, I feel like you might get 1 feature per ### levels, such as:
* 1 Melee special property per 5 levels.
* 1 Ranged special property per 5 levels.
* 1 weapon fusion per 6 levels.
* 1 armor upgrade per 5 levels (starts with Light, gets Heavy later).
* 1 weapon/shield/item per 2 levels.


5 people marked this as a favorite.
FireclawDrake wrote:
Yeah I agree with JiCi. When people hear "mechs", there's a group who picture stuff like Battletech and a group who picture stuff like Gundam. I wonder which one Paizo pictured...

I'm really hoping the answer is 'both' depending on which options you pick from the new rules.


Garretmander wrote:
FireclawDrake wrote:
Yeah I agree with JiCi. When people hear "mechs", there's a group who picture stuff like Battletech and a group who picture stuff like Gundam. I wonder which one Paizo pictured...
I'm really hoping the answer is 'both' depending on which options you pick from the new rules.

That was the general impression I got from the blurb about them, though I doubt they are going to be too anime. Grid based, d20 combat does not exactly lend itself to that.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
JiCi wrote:
Are we... getting a Nanocyte playtest? or only one for mechs?

The Nanocyte playtest is just watching Terminator 2 a couple of times in a row.


Are we... getting a Nanocyte playtest? or only one for mechs?


JiCi wrote:
Are we... getting a Nanocyte playtest? or only one for mechs?

The blog says both.


Garretmander wrote:
JiCi wrote:
Are we... getting a Nanocyte playtest? or only one for mechs?
The blog says both.

Guess confinement is affecting my vision... my bad ^^;


So, it’s July. Can you tell I’m anxious?!


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Drowlord007 wrote:
So, it’s July. Can you tell I’m anxious?!

And in 30 days it will still be July


1 person marked this as a favorite.

When do they usually announce playtests anyway? On Mondays? Middle of the week?

If it's supposed to be a month-long playtest, then it would be pointless to "waste one more day" :P

As much as I love mechs, I'm really eager to see the Nanocyte, because for some reasons, I always liked characters who can form objects from their bodies, like the Kineticist from Pathfinder :)

What I'm really hoping to get:
- The Nanocyte (NC for short) can create both a melee and a ranged weapon, but of only ONE single damage type.
- The NC then gains additional types, like 1 new type per 4 levels, including energy types.
- The NC only gains the abilities to mix and match types, drawing them faster, etc.
- The NC can create its own armor (platings, scales, etc), with an AC bonus equal to its level, then gains the ability to add armor upgrades, like 1 per 3 levels, and gains abilities to don them faster, in addition of gaining charges to power the upgrades.
- The NC can create items and tools, which in turn can create one more item per 2 levels.


Given the premise, I would presume that a Nanocyte should be able to learn powers that effect technology and living things. . . but that these are not universal. That is, the nanoswarm *can*, say, infect a computer to take it over, or repair the flesh of another person, but the Nanocyte has to learn these as specific abilities.

( I'm assuming that, functionally speaking, the Nanocyte will be another "magic warrior" class like the Solarian and Vanguard, combining physical fighting power with selection of special powers. Hopefully their options will be a little less combat-only than the other two. )


Metaphysician wrote:

Given the premise, I would presume that a Nanocyte should be able to learn powers that effect technology and living things. . . but that these are not universal. That is, the nanoswarm *can*, say, infect a computer to take it over, or repair the flesh of another person, but the Nanocyte has to learn these as specific abilities.

( I'm assuming that, functionally speaking, the Nanocyte will be another "magic warrior" class like the Solarian and Vanguard, combining physical fighting power with selection of special powers. Hopefully their options will be a little less combat-only than the other two. )

Oh, yeah, right, the other half of the class :P

How about 1 trick one level, 1 tool one other level and so on ;) ?


Drowlord007 wrote:
So, it’s July. Can you tell I’m anxious?!

I may not share your enthusiasm but I admit I am certainly curious. Especially since there are a lot of directions this can go given how nanotech is treated in science-fiction. It will be interesting to see which direction they go in.

JiCi wrote:

When do they usually announce playtests anyway? On Mondays? Middle of the week?

If it's supposed to be a month-long playtest, then it would be pointless to "waste one more day" :P

As much as I love mechs, I'm really eager to see the Nanocyte, because for some reasons, I always liked characters who can form objects from their bodies, like the Kineticist from Pathfinder :)

What I'm really hoping to get:
- The Nanocyte (NC for short) can create both a melee and a ranged weapon, but of only ONE single damage type.
- The NC then gains additional types, like 1 new type per 4 levels, including energy types.
- The NC only gains the abilities to mix and match types, drawing them faster, etc.
- The NC can create its own armor (platings, scales, etc), with an AC bonus equal to its level, then gains the ability to add armor upgrades, like 1 per 3 levels, and gains abilities to don them faster, in addition of gaining charges to power the upgrades.
- The NC can create items and tools, which in turn can create one more item per 2 levels.

I have no idea but at this point I would guess Monday though at the same time I hope they run the play test for a little longer then a month (especially since they are throwing two things at us at once and odds are both of them are for the Gencon 2021 release at the earliest.)

Mechs are meh for me but I admit that while I'm not excited for the nanocyte, I am at least curious. Because while I strongly dislike the Witchwarper (the only player who should be able to shape reality is the one sitting behind the GM's screen, giving that to anyone else is just an invitation for trouble in my experience) I like the idea of classes built around weird science concepts. And while I would have not approached nanotechnology like that... we will see what we will see.

My predictions based off the description and the more plausible ideas:
- We will have two branching paths, one focusing on combat and one focusing on disguise and espionage. While the choice will be fairly fixed, there may be room for one path to dip their toes into the other to customize playstyles.
- Even level abilities will be utility powers that don't fit into either path. These can include abilities like flight, machine telepathy, or the ability to turn your fingers/hands/forearms into the precise tool you need at that exact moment. That last one can be further broken down based on size and complexity.
- For balance purposes, the nanocyte will (hopefully) be limited by conservation of mass (meaning you can't make anything bigger then you are.)
- For the combat path, the player will likely start able to replicate basic melee weapons and eventually work their way up to armor plating and ranged weapons of some kind. This would represent the character mastering their abilities and learning to replicate more and more complex technology with their nanites.
- For the espionage path, there may be an emphasis on sensory technology, shaping your cyber-nanites to enhance your senses or allow you to perceive things you normally can't (like dark vision for a species that doesn't normally get it.) Gathering information through technology instead of social means.

Paizo Employee Starfinder Senior Developer

4 people marked this as a favorite.
Blog wrote:
Beginning in July 2020, Paizo is launching not one—but two—different Starfinder playtests.

I do want to point out that the blog doesn't say that the playtest lasts only the month of July; it says that the playtest begins in July.


John Compton wrote:
Blog wrote:
Beginning in July 2020, Paizo is launching not one—but two—different Starfinder playtests.
I do want to point out that the blog doesn't say that the playtest lasts only the month of July; it says that the playtest begins in July.

Fair enough, thanks for clearing that up.


The mention of Mechs brings me back... Palladium's old Robotech RPG, which had the concepts of SDC and MDC - different damage magnitudes for different size classes of mecha/ship. That seems to me to be a central problem for any such blending of combatants.

The real question is whether Paizo continues with its current madness of cranking up EAC/KAC and piling on tons of HP/SP for the mechs, or if they have a clever way to make it work. The first question to answer is, should a character using conventional weapons be capable of damaging a mech? Echoing prior comments about power armor, is a Mech just better power armor, like +50 to AC? Or are mechs easy to hit but they have hundreds of HP? Either way would be very, very lazy.

Honestly, I have low confidence the SF system can accommodate an elegant solution that makes combat between different "size classes," if you will, practical. Perhaps a new type of armor class, "MAC" or the like.


If they made damage magnitude type things, you'd screw over if only a portion of the group goes mech and you'd make all alien archives up to this point unable to be used in a game with mechs.


Milo v3 wrote:
If they made damage magnitude type things, you'd screw over if only a portion of the group goes mech and you'd make all alien archives up to this point unable to be used in a game with mechs.

Not only this, but high level PCs are toting around man portable weapons more powerful than the main guns on tanks.

There's not really a step in between PC scale and starship scale.

The PCs getting into mechs that add +5 effective levels to their APL? More reasonable.

Still, there is no way they can scratch every mech fantasy possible, that's just going to be impossible.


I feel like mechs are gonna be treated as both creatures AND ships, like they can range from Small to Colossal and then from Tiny Ship to Supercolossal Ship, similar to terrestrial vehicles and starships.


Milo v3 wrote:
If they made damage magnitude type things, you'd screw over if only a portion of the group goes mech and you'd make all alien archives up to this point unable to be used in a game with mechs.

This is inevitable. If one player has a mech and the others don't how do you think this game plays? Actually, it probably plays the same as it does now when one player is a Soldier and another is a Mystic. Damage magnitude did not preclude a player from taking a shot at a starship in Robotech, it just meant you had to do 100x the amount of damage, which actually makes sense, and is just a math problem here. It does not obsolete anything. I included the idea of MAC because I think it's a bad idea, not a good one. The whole insanity with AC has got to stop, but I don't see the inclusion of mechs into the SF system as helping.

Yes, it's exciting, but I'll keep my expectations low and hope to be pleasantly surprised.


If anything I'd assume mechs have a lot of hardness, and mech/anti-mech weapons bypass that hardness.


Chiaiese wrote:

This is inevitable. If one player has a mech and the others don't how do you think this game plays? Actually, it probably plays the same as it does now when one player is a Soldier and another is a Mystic. Damage magnitude did not preclude a player from taking a shot at a starship in Robotech, it just meant you had to do 100x the amount of damage, which actually makes sense, and is just a math problem here. It does not obsolete anything. I included the idea of MAC because I think it's a bad idea, not a good one. The whole insanity with AC has got to stop, but I don't see the inclusion of mechs into the SF system as helping.

Yes, it's exciting, but I'll keep my expectations low and hope to be pleasantly surprised.

No... it isn't inevitable that they Must make the new options incompatible with the whole rest of the game, you just want them to do that, that doesn't make it inevitable. Also Soldier and Mystic are not anything like that at all.... Having a soldier in your party doesn't give the enemy armour/defences so high that nothing of smaller tier can effectively damage it.

Things like "Mech combat is designed to use most of the familiar tactical rules and 5-foot squares you already use in your games, making mechs a feature you can as easily drop into a single encounter as you can build entire campaigns around them. " sorta make it unlikely that they're going to make mech combat work completely differently to the entire rest of the game, rather than removing the "whole insanity with AC" (which isn't really an issue in my experience it stays pretty consistent throughout all the levels).

101 to 150 of 197 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Starfinder / Starfinder General Discussion / Paizo Blog: New Starfinder Playtest For 2020 All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.