Algarik's page

Hey Everyone!

Anyone ran a game in a modern setting? I’m planning on running my next E6 campaign in my homebrewed world but in a World War I era of technology.

I’m mostly looking for complete rules on modern firearms that aren’t too wonky, maybe even new spells that interact with technology.

I want regular melee to be mostly obsolete, as I think melee should be a bad idea in an era in which firearms are involved, so I really don’t mind if ranged options outshine nearly all melee options.

With that in mind, I thought that knights, paladin and nobles clinging to traditional era could have developed a way to keep their traditional form of peasant wacking in melee by developing magical power suits or mecha. (And not gonna lie, I just really want awesome medieval-style mecha.) Ideally, I’d like that option to be usable early on and while powerful enough to reach the melee, not so powerful that they can annihilate any opposition, I don’t want to turn my next campaign into a mecha campaign either. If nothing exists, i was thinking of maybe basing mechas on synthesist summoner or something like that.

I'm also looking for ways to incorporate tanks and other war-engine, but i'd like if tanks aren't just big CR Construct with big shooty cannon. I don't want tanks to be gunned down by rifles, but i don't want tanks to dominate the battlefield the way a dragon would. I'm thinking maybe having their main cannon actually be fairly imprecise might be a solution? It Might work, especially if tanks defense is more hardness based rather than AC based.

I’m willing to look into homebrew rules or 3rd party books if you have any suggestions.

I'm looking to incorporate some verbal duel from Ultimate Intrigue in my home game, and i was wondering if anyone had any experience with it. Any tips i should know or pitfall i should avoid?

I also noticed the determination pool seems very low for low level character. Since i'm playing E6 with 15 point buy(i know, i know, i'm evil...), i feel like that could become an issue. I wonder if i should make the pool based on something else than hit die or just boost the amount of determination to twice the number of hit die.

Hello everyone! I hope i posted this in the right section.

I'm preparing my next Pathfinder campaign at the moment. I like to use music and soundtracks to improve my campaign but most of the time i feel like i get bogged down by trying to find the perfect tracks for everything. So this time, i decided that i'd looking in advance.

In the past i've pretty much used a lot of variety of soundtracks from different origins, but This time i'd like to try to get them all from the same place. I like how some video games or movies have some underlying tune that gets reused in a few of their tracks as it creates a certain feel of consistency.

My campaign tone is mostly gonna be adventurous with a grittier side so i'd like to avoid overtly ''epic'' orchestras and such. It's also gonna involve a lot of travel to different area and so i'd like to find a game, or movie, that could deal with most places and would have music for different kind of scenes (Joyful, Stressful, Combat, Sadness, etc.).

Anyone have some suggestions for me? I'm willing to pay to get access to soundtracks as long as it's not too expansive and i can at least get a good sample beforehand.

Thank you in advance for your time!

Now first and foremost i'm not regretting my party's death as i think a game early ending is only an excuse to start another one. IMO death should happens in combat centric rpgs as it would get dull otherwise. That being said i don't recall having TPKed any party before in 12 years of DMing, i did kill some players, but never a whole party.

My party consisted of five level 4 properly optimized characters:
- Vesk Blitz Soldier
- Android Operative
- Ysoki Sharpshooter Soldier. He was mechanically the weakest character, but the guys had some good ideas from times to time, and some less good ideas, but we'll get to that later.
- Android Technomancer fighting with a sniper.
- Drow Envoy3/Blitz Soldier 1 (Npc)

So, now the interesting part. How did it happen?

After a 12 days treck throught the jungle, The party arrived at the Temple of the Twelves Suns. The first combat went without a sweat they totally exploded the fight against the mountain Eel with two critical hits one from the Vesk and one from the Sniper.

Then they climbed the remaining of the stairs and met Panneliar who kindly but firmly asked them to turn away. The Drow envoy asked him if he saw the cultist and he replied that they were in the temple thanks to the leader strong conviction and magic. The Drow tried to negotiate with him, telling him they could get rid of the cultist if he'd let them into the temple, but he refused, thanks to the mind control magic. So the vesk lost his patience and drew his sword and the fight started.

The Ysoki player had in mind that he guardian could not enter the temple, which is false, but imo it was still a good guess. So they asked the Vesk to try and grapple him so they could enter the temple. One the vesk saw the Solarian guardian set himself on fire he gave up that idea and so the party fought the guardian. But they rolled really poorly and the Solarian rolled above average and got the Vesk soldier down in two turn. Then it started to go downhill, players had rotten luck, but eventually with their resolve they could have gone throught it. But the Ysoki still believe the guardian couldn't set foot inside and so he threw a sticky grenade on the guardian to entangle him and to my great surprised it worked.

Then the operative went and opened the door just to meet with Avissa and her 3 cultist goons. So couple of checks later they are all down, they managed to get the guardian down, and only Avissa and an injured cultist are still up. 2 players couldn't stabilize because of the cultist bleeding effect and then the cultist started to Coup de Grace everybody once and they died of bleeding.

Guess it was a bit anti-climatic as they didn't even get to see Tahomen, but it happens. So all why i'm i telling you all of this? Just so you can take things into consideration when running the AP if you wanna avoid my party's fate.

- The Cultist are a bunch of chaotic evils lunatics workshipping the God of the end-times, they got nothing to lose and will fight dirty, take the opportunity to kill someones if they have it.
- The cultist bleeding effect is nastier than i originally thought and without any form of magical healing/Serum it can get nasty. Beside my party partly died because of this, as they couldn't get back up.
-Fighting Panneliar in melee is a bad idea, i tried to give them multiple cues but they didn't really listen.
- Althought the mystic wasn't necessary, i think it could have saved my party as the Envoy Stam healing can't keep a party member sustaining heavy damage.
-Bad luck in starfinder seems to be deadlier than it was in pathfinder.
- Crits are monstrous, the double damage on a 20 makes combat so shifty and that's generally to the player disadvantage, because they are bound to get critted someday.

Anyway, i wish you luck and fun in your AP, that's where mine stop.

I know players can basically skip this whole encounter with 4 hours of environmental protection, which is really cool because it rewards resource management. But lets say they don't have 4 hours of environmental protection left and they have to build shelter. I know they get a bonus to fortitude check equal to survival check -10, but how many checks do they actually need to roll?

I feel like one per hour(8 checks) feels right, as lower than that the storm doesn't really feel deadly, but more than that means it's 99% a TPK as they are bound to fail some checks.

I'm preparing my game session right now and i'm currently at the Yaruk's chase scene and i wanted to make sure i read right ''pc actions''

PC Actions: During a phase, each PC can perform one of the actions below to distract, dodge, or outthink the yaruks while scrambling for safety. A PC can attempt more than one of these actions during a phase, but doing so imposes a cumulative –3 penalty to each check he attempts during that phase. Failing a check does not harm the PCs, but it does prolong the chase. For some of the PC actions, if a PC succeeds at the check, the PCs earn a “success,” which contributes to the PCs escaping the rampaging yaruks (see Development below). A PC can also perform one reaction per phase[

So the text is rather clear, PCs can perform a list of actions to get successes to escape the Yaruks, so far so good. What i'm not sure is about the following: ''A PC can attempt more than one of these actions during a phase, but doing so impose a cumulative -3 penalty to each check he attempt during that Phase.'' Since there's no penalty for failing a check, well beside not accumulating any success, is there anything preventing PCs from trying to roll until they can't no longer achieve the roll?

If there's nothing won't that make the chase a bit too long gameplay wise?

Question is in the title. I'm wondering because next game my group is gonna get attacked by a ship that want them dead, so they won't be able to negotiate in anyway if they lose the battle. Because the enemy ship want them dead, it will use all it can to exterminate the party. So if my party fail and they try to use escape pods to survive what should happens?

1. Escape pods are too slow/unstealthy so everyone dies because the enemy ship get plenty of time to destroy them.
2. Escape pods are slower/somewhat stealthy than ship but fast enough for the five player to scatter in all direction, or to find a way to hide behind an asteroid, or some space debris, and each of them hope they won't be the ones that get destroyed.
3. Escape pods are an ''escape-button'' and are meant as a ''Deux-ex Machina'' to prevent players from dying in a space fight.

Hello everyone, i'm gonna run the first part of Deads Suns AP, next Monday. I finished reading the whole AP 1 and i think it's really good however I've got some problems with the ''scaling''and i think it ruins the narrative.This might just me, but here's some of the thing i got problems with.

So here's my problems so far:

I don't know, maybe it's just me.

The rest of the AP is great however!

Hello everyone,

I decided it could be fun to roll stats my next android character. (Yeah i know i'm an herectic!)

Using 4d6 drop the lowest, in order, i got the following stats:

Str: 15
Dex: 12+2
con: 12
int: 16+2
wis: 12
cha: 9-2

I have enough system mastery that i could make a very potent build, but i'm just out of ideas and i'm seeking for advice beyond the obvious Wizard, Witch, Magus, etc. I'm looking for normal level of optimization, i don't need to be overpowered, but i don't want something that can't pull it's own weight.

So before you start posting here's things to consider:
- Race is fixed.
- Stats are fixed.
- Any alignement are welcomed, but something that look incredibly evil probably won't make it for the other players.
- I start at level 1
- I'm playing Epic 8, so i don't really need to consider anything beyond level 8, but that also mean that feat starved build are welcomed as i can theoretically get an infinite amount after level 8.
- My current group consist of; A mesmerist, a Witch, a vrawler and a oracle of life.

Thank you for your time :)