The interesting thing about CSS is that even without shipbuilding rules, we can have all kinds of statship encounters, even combat. There's nothing stopping someone from adding mechs to the game using CCS. You could even make a CCS where the PCs in a starship have to fight a mech to make a safe landing. All you have to do is make the mech a threat, and make crew actions for strafing and bombing. The same goes for starship vs. vehicles and PC-sized creatures. You could even do it the opposite way, PCs vs starships or mechs as threats, call it a Cinematic-Combat-Scene. I only see 3 things missing.
2: Tactical movement rules. Once we have tactical rules for the starship, I don't see any reason why they couldn't be used with CSS 3: Pre-made starships with stats that can be dropped into a CSS stat block. I think one of the problems with the perception that there are no starships in SF2e is that there are starships with stat blocks, but you have to extract them from the CSS examples. In an organized play scenario, I've already used a starship stat block extracted from a CSS in Guilt of the Grave Worlds. Even though there was no ship combat in the scenario, giving the players the stat blocks with guns included made a simple encounter more interesting, because seeing their ship had guns made it feel that there was the possibility of danger. It also gave the soldier something to do during the trip, using the guns for practice.
Paizo has been completely transparent about what would be in the Player Core and GM Core for well over a year. I'm happy with both books; they are exactly what I expected, because Paizo told us what would be in them. I think the Cinematic-Starship-Scene is better than what we had in SF1e. I just copied a starship statblock out of the GM Core to use in one of my games, worked just fine for me. https://paizo.com/threads/rzs70x5d?Cinematic-Starship-Scene-Success
Guilt of the Grave Worlds has 4 starship encounters using the rules from the GM Core. I love the new shipbuilding rules for Cinematic-Starship-Scene; they use a lot of rules from creature building for balance and leveling, so the math has already been tested. Murder in Metal City even has an example of PC vs Starship combat. Other than moving a ship mini on a map, I can't think of anything that Cinematic-Starship-Scene can't do, but it is a tool and not a list of options.
I think one reason we don't have PF2e classes in SF2e organized play yet is that the devs want to give Starfinder a chance to be Starfinder first. To that end, it's likely only a few PF2e classes at a time would be added in. For one, I think the investigator makes more sense in SF2e than PF2e. Although it could use some updated features to fit the flavor more. I think the fighter would be great for Vesk Doshko honor guard. I like the idea of PF2e rouges in SF2e, so we have a rogue that is not also a hacker, at least not as a class feature. For organized play, I think the biggest issue is not access to PF2e classes or ancestries; it's that the organized play rules are not compatible between SF2e and PF2e. I have lots of interesting ideas for characters with just the classes we have now, and I never even got around to playing all the classes in SF1e. So I'm in no hurry for more classes than I can play. But anytime you have a new game, there are fewer options, so I try to build characters that we have not wanted. I wish we had, and I'm never disappointed. I still like getting new options, but I'm not in a rush for them.
I do think one thing that might be compounding it a bit is that the SF2 classes are somewhat narrower than their SF1 counterparts. I think you are right, but it might be a good thing too. With PF2e being compatible with SF2e, that's a lot of classes. To have any design room left for more classes, it helps to make them more narrowly focused. It's also easy to add more features to or add new subclasses. I'm also guessing that, over time, we will see some PF2e classes allowed in SF2e organized play. There's a big difference between allowing a PF2e character in SF2e and making an SF2e character with a PF2e class.
I don't have a s!+*post in mind, but I do have a conspiracy theory. The "Guilt" in Guilt of the Grave worlds is that the leaders of Eox feel bad about not scantaining adventurers on Eox. In the final chapter of the AP, the PCs have to convince the leaders of Eox to sanction the AP.
I just want to get into Starfinder 2e and no one in my local group is playing it. Change of plans, I think I can handle one more game. I'm running Mystery on the Frozen Moon in a live game Saturday. I still need to do some prep for it tomorrow. Give me a few days, and I'll start recruiting to run it on the forums here. It'll be under the GM name GRIM*! Gaming Network. I'll need some time to prep it for Play by Post. The earliest start date would be the end of next week, but it may be longer depending on how recruiting goes.
The listing for Starfinder Galactic Ancestries is now up on the Paizo store. It says it has "a host of stellar options for familiar ancestries, including Starfinder favorites like reptilian vesk and insectoid shirrens," not sure if that's the complete list of core ancestries getting new options, but I'd be surprised if it's just those two. I suspect the book you are hoping for is the Compleat Guide to Ysoki Cheekpouch, a 400-page book with a fold-out poster-sized map showing everything you can fit in a cheekpouch. I'm also hoping for the Complete Guide to pizza topping from around the galaxy for shirren, so many options... so many choices... I think the Vesk book would just be the Alien Core, renamed Things You Can Hit With A Doshko, with the end of the book having more types of doshko.
This is the Cantina feel you often hear the developers talking about.
Vesk were way more common in SF1e. I've been to a lot of parties with a vesk. It was one of the most commonly played species. I never once was in a game with a Dragonkin. That may have been because dragonkin came later in SF1e. Something no one has mentioned is that vesk are medium and draginkin are large. Being large has its drawbacks. Large creatures have to squeeze through 5-foot-wide corridors; in a 10-foot-wide corridor, it's easy to block your own party. More opponents can engage you in melee at one time, and more opponents can flank you at one time; you're a big target. Partner Bond is really hard to use in organized play unless you have a friend who plays your Bonded Partner that you know will be at every game with you. Easier to do in a home game, but it's an option that still takes 2 players to make it work; it's a powerful benefit, but it has a cost that playing a vesk or almost any other species doesn't have. Also, lots of species in Starfinder have limited telepathy that doesn't require bonding. Vesk have a lot of lore, most of the book Near Space is about their home star system. They are involved in a major war with the Azlanti. Vesk have deep and varied history wiht the Pact Worlds. Dragonkin lore is mostly focused around planet the Triaxus. Meanwhile, I know players who only play humans because they don't want to give up getting an extra general skill feat.
I think how people play might have a big factor on how they prep. In play-by-post, I'm used to having to convert all stat blocks into a usable format for dice expressions in the forums, but the pace of play is so slow that it doesn't matter to have it all done before starting the game. I have no VTT experience. My first live game GMing SFS was 2 weeks ago. I printed out the scenario, and I made a note card for each encounter or skill challenge (most of the skill challenges listed 6 or 7 options.) I practiced a few times, reading through the scenario. Then, at the last minute decided to use my Chromebook instead, although I brought the printout as a backup. I think I could have run the game fine without most of my note cards using the printout, since I could see 2 full pages at a time, and flipping a page was easy and showed more. Using the Chromebook book I could only see about 2/3 of a page at a time; it was easy to get lost scrolling, so I would have had a really hard time without the note cards. So, as a new live play GM, I think having to do the prep helped me out a lot. Having the new shorter 2-3 hour-long scenario helped too. I also like having time to add things to a scenario to make it longer if there is time. I would be horrible at trying to time manage a scenario to fit a tight time schedule, which scares me away from GMing more than prep time does. So if I'm playing from a printout, I'd want the stat blocks in the scenario as they happen. If I'm using my Chromebook, I'd rather have them in the back if they are included, so they are easy to print out, so it's easier to follow the text and have the stat blocks on separate note cards or printouts. So it's hard for me to say which is best. For one scenario, I have plenty of time to prep one scenario, but 2 of the other Starfinder GMs are too busy with work or college to GM right now, so I'm not trying to prep 4 scenarios at one time, while also playing a live character in PFS2 and 2 other SFS characters online. Maybe I shouldn't count as a new live GM for this conversation, in the sense that I had already played PF2e, SF1e, and SF2e for 3 years, already use AON, already am familiar with organized play rules, and GM a couple of play-by-post. Even with that experience, moving to GM Live felt like a big step. For someone who doesn't know the OP rules, or has used AON, and or is new to the game. Adding having to find and prep stat blocks is a lot to deal with. But even if time were not an issue, there are a lot of what-ifs that could happen if stat blocks are not included. 1. Oops, I forgot my note cards
People continuing to undervalue Lore categories is even more disheartening. Especially when a lot of the time, using a lore skill reduces the DC of a skill check. All that's needed to add more science to the game is for the writers or GM to include more skill checks with Life Science Lore, Physical Science Lore, and or the players using them.
At this point, the best we can do is adapt to the changes. My headcanon fix are. Lore = Profession
It's a retcon from SF1e using lore over Profession, but I justify the change because the Lore Spire has always been one of the centers of knowledge in Starfinder. Another reason for out-of-date sounding terms could be the Gap. Perhaps the Gap causes people to go back to using older pre-Gap terms due to all the lost records and memories. One thing I found interesting is that there is no engineering lore in the Player Core looks like it might have been replaced with Technology Lore.
Since the skill names are already set, I think a better way to add more science back into the game is through background and archetypes.
I totally get that it must have been frustrating to drive that far and then not have a copy of the scenario you expected to get. I'm not blaming anyone. I was just trying to say it's much harder to try to fix something an hour before the game starts. If anything, the Venture Officer should have let the volunteers know what they needed to bring. Everyone's human and makes mistakes; I'm all about how to make it better for next time.
Kishmo, you could spend a hero point to reroll your diplomacy check. No one thought you were being rude. I was just hoping a reroll might have gotten a different answer from Paizo. (I had no expectations that it would have worked, but I'm overly hopeful.)
I appreciate your split reaction to my split reaction ;-)
It's a mix of complex hazards, vector points, and uses creatures building rules for balance and leveling. Very easy to make every SCC feel different. But it's very much a GM tool and not a pick from a list of options system that SF1e Starships were. So I don't think some people see how powerful it is. I think once more people see it in use in adventures, opinions will change. I think how complex a CSS can reasonably get will come down to how hard it is to track everything going on in it.
If the only reason to own something for organized play is for character options, then I'll just wait until I need those options and only get the PDF from now on. Murder in Metal City takes up too much space on my bookshelf for just a few character options. Sad to see it go to the used books store. Meanwhile, Dawn of the Frogs is sanctioned.
The original comment now has 52 likes and over 40 comments, all supporting her idea. How often do people (engaged customers) on the internet all agree on something...
Here's a middle-of-the-night, I can't sleep suggestion. If Paizo does stick to the idea of removing statblocks, here's a compromise. 1. Keep stat blocks in multi-table specials as Hmm suggested. 2. Write the seasons' intros for new GMs, the way that Junkers Delight was written, and include stat blocks. Make it a true repeatable like Acts of Associations, since a local organized play group might have multiple new GMs per season. 3. Include at least 1 first contact scenario each season, with all creatures in it unique to the scenario, so all the stat blocks are included. Makes for another scenario that's good for new GMs, and is a good backup scenario to run on 5 minutes' notice if you need to run another table for new players.
I play in Starfinder Society, so I haven't had a chance to make my own cinematic starship scenes. I did play a character in Battle for Nova Rush. Although it doesn't use the cinematic starship scene stat block from the GM Core, you can tell it was based on the concept. I think cinematic starship scenes are highly underrated. It's a very good role-playing way to deal with ship encounters. I love that ships can get persistent damage; that's easy to homebrew damage into an ongoing hazard the crew has to deal with. Or when the ship takes x amount of damage, hazards appear at random stations around the ship, which can damage the PCs. Best crew action for healers: healing injured crew members. Allowing a mechanic to mount their turret to the outside of the ship. Not sure how quantum fields react in space, but it's an interesting place to look for ideas. Thanks for posting this, great to see people using it. I hope more people post examples.
Those statblocks, though...that remains a deal-killer, especially since I have yet to see any plausible explanation other than cost-cutting. A couple of reasons why I think cutting stat blocks from scenarios is bad, and worse than having stat blocks missing from APs. A higher percentage of APs are likely to be run as home games, where you are more likely to have all your books or someone else nearby, or a computer. The other big advantage APs have is that there's no time pressure to get it finished in one session, most of the time. So if you have to stop to look something up, and you get behind you just pick up where you left off next week, instead of rushing to finish. A scenario with stat blocks makes it easy to run on short notice, and by short notice, I mean a GM called out because they were sick, and some steps in with 5 minutes notice to prep and run a scenario. It would likely be one they ran before, but without stat blocks in it, if they didn't bring the right books, they couldn't run it. Or if enough new players show up to start a 2nd or 3rd table, and one of the experienced players from one of the games drops out to GM for the new players, again, much easier to do if the scenario has stat blocks. Those are situations that could stop a game from happening. Having said all of that, the shorter scenarios, only covering 2 levels, are easier to prep. You don't have to pick between 2 tiers of creature stat blocks for each encounter, and there is normally only 1 or 2 combat encounters. So fewer creatures to prep as well. I tend to over-prepare and make notecards for all the stat blocks, so it doesn't matter to me where I get the stat block. So for me, the big issue is will not having stat blocks will prevent some games from happening on short notice. Or for GMs who don't have spare time to do extra prep.
Are you basing that on anything in particular? There was an organized play survey at the end of last year. Scenario length was one of the questions on it. I don't have time to go through 10 months of blog posts and Paizo live videos, but somewhere it was said that shorter scenarios are something that scored high on the survey. So the idea for shorter scenarios didn't come from Paizo trying to cut costs; it was from customer feedback. Cutting stat blocks, that's a different story; that one is on Paizo, and I think it's a bad idea for scenarios and organized play, much more so than it is for APs.
Nothing has been discarded. There's nothing saying you can't run longer scenarios or even run 2 back to back, assuming you are playing somewhere that allows time for it.
I think I met you briefly before I ran the Starfinder Scenario on Saturday. The newer Tempe SFS2/PFS2 group plays on Saturdays, so scenario length is really not an issue with the store being open from 10am to 10pm, there's even enough time to run 2 back to back. I don't organize the events, so I don't know if we have a scheduled time limit not related to the store closing. But the old Tempe/Mesa group played on Sundays and had to be done by 5pm, some games had to be handwaved and rushed a lot to finish on time. Not all groups play on weekends, and a lot of stores cut hours after the pandemic. Trying to run a scenario after work and being done by 9pm is hard.
Which is a good indication that the 2-3 hour long scenarios can still be fun. They're also easier to prep, which has been my experience from either side of the table.
Also, dropping the stat blocks may not neccessarily be shrinkflation. Have you considered that Society scenarios generally have an allocated number of pages to a scenario. What if you got more plot, encounters or fun skill challenges in exchange for those statblock pages? The shorter run time is not about cutting costs; it's about a lot of game stores not staying open as late as they used to on week nights. There's nothing fun about the GM having to hand handwave all the exploration to have enough time for combat. In Arizona, there is nothing fun about having to finish the game and filling out chronicles in a parking lot when it's 110 degrees outside. Paizo has had to deal with the pandemic, tariffs, and now the Diamond bankruptcy. Paizo also unionised, which I think is a good thing, but that had a cost too. All of that adds up in the cost of making the game. I'm not a fan of the idea of removing stat blocks, but I don't think it's to save space in a PDF. I think (a wild guess) it's more about simplifying the creation and editing process. The chance of making a mistake when referencing a stat block in a Bestary is very low compared to copying it into an adventure or scenario.
Just got home from running The Great Absalom Relay. The total runtime was 2:30 with one 5-minute break. The fake microphone was a big success with the players, especially when I got up and walked around the table doing interviews. I also went around the table with the mic either before or after a task, asking how things went or how they thought the teams would do in the challenge about to happen. The other thing I did was track how many credits the team made in donations each round. I made a chart with how much they get for each round based on how many points they got, with big bonuses for saving Nib and defeating the Cy-boars. I then had Rick Molburn announce the total. The PCs came in 2nd in the relay, but I had them be the top fundraiser. I hyped up the VR race at the Click Clack club by using one of my unfinished characters as the neighborhood champion. A space goblin who thinks they are the best pilot in the galaxy, but is all hype and not really a good pilot at all. I did a big introduction hyping up the neighborhood champion, and then both PCs rolled crit success in the first round. So I had the neighborhood champion sabotage his VR rig so he had an excuse why he lost. So the race ended in a crash, which led to some good interviews. I used the menu I made for Acts of Association, so it was nice to have that tie-in. I had a blast running this, I'm courious what others have done with it.
I'm really excited by the Order of the Eclipse. They seem to be in complete opposition to Zo!, which means that at some point, Zo! might need the help of the Starfinder Society to deal with the Order of the Eclipse. If not in organized play, maybe in Guilt of the Grave world. Also, having com units and the infosphere completely changes how Starfinder feels from Pathfinder. But having that kind of access to communication and information all the time can get in the way of telling some types of stories. Having the Order of the Eclipse show up and block communication could be a useful tool. If you call yourself hellknights, and wear cosplay armor to look the part, and you go around enforcing strict law and order at all costs, if people want it or not, why wouldn't actual Hell decide to influence, manipulate, help, and infiltrate your organization? At some point, that help comes with a contract, then it's too late to go back. I kind of see the average Hellknight like how some Americans are useful idiots for other countries, whether they know it or not. The Hellknight leadership likely knows what's going on and is likely under some kind of Hellish contract.
I just made a fake microphone to bring to the game to interview the PCs if the game is running too fast, or to give the players who are not doing the current task something to do. It's a silly prop, just a cardboard tube with black duct tape, but trying to read text out loud, holding the fake microphone, helped bring out my inner Rich Molburn. I'm hoping it does the same, handing it to the players when doing interviews or introductions.
After using hell drives for 300+ years, why wouldn't Hell Knights have a closer relationship with hell? Helldrives run on fuel condensed from damned souls, and some planar scientists speculate that the very act of operating a Helldrive is akin to signing an infernal contract, with the user’s soul pledged to become fuel for the next generation of Helldrives. Era of the Eclipse also shows an early relationship with devils right after the Gap, especially devil lawyers drawing up contracts. I had no interest in Hell Knights in SF1e, and no idea what they do in PF2e, but they seem much more interesting after reading Era of the Eclipse and the Galaxy Guide.
Here are a few quick suggestions. Page 8: https://paizo.com/products/btq069xe?Starfinder-FlipMat-Basic-Terrain Page 18: https://paizo.com/products/btq0dqg6?Starfinder-FlipMat-Garage-Warehouse or https://cdn.paizo.com/image/content/Secondary/PZO7313-Sample_500.jpeg Page 19 and 22: Any blank dry-erasable map, and draw your own. page 29: https://paizo.com/products/btq08526?Starfinder-FlipMat-Planetary-Terrain-Mu ltiPack or https://paizo.com/products/btq01zob?Starfinder-FlipMat-Ice-World or https://paizo.com/products/btq02edz?Pathfinder-FlipMat-Classics-Winter-Fore st
If you need to vote on what would annoy you more, you likely will be annoyed no matter what. I'm glad to wait for tactical starship combat. Meanwhile, we have the cinematic starship scenes, which I think a lot of people are writing off without really seeing their potential. People on Reddit were saying there are no starships in the GM Core, but here's a list of ships that have stat blocks, despite that. RC-HPR is known as a rock hopper
If you look at just the starship part of the Cinematic Starship Scenes examples, the ship part of the stat block is longer than the stat block of most vehicle stat blocks. Adventurally, we might get ships with separate stat blocks that can be plugged into a cinematic starship scene stat block. The ship-building rules keep referencing the Building Creatures rules; the ships have saving throws, resistances, and weaknesses. Ships can take persistent damage, can have more than one pilot. This is all huge news coming from SF1e Cinematic starship scenes, and ship building are combining complex hazards, victory point system, and the creatures building rules for scaling and balance. There's nothing to playtest here; it's all well-tested subsystems being used. If tactical starship combat uses the same scaling and balance as Cinematic starship scenes and creature building, then most of the math is done. I suspect the tactical and Cinematic rules might even work together. That just leaves ship-building, character options, and moving and maneuvering rules for starships to play test for tactical rules. You could easily use the Cinematic starship scenes to play the Death Star trench run from Star Wars. I think that Cinematic starship scenes could have covered 70% to 90% of the starship battles I was in in SF1e. My guess is that Cinematic starship scenes start to not work well if the PCs have more than one ship. So I think the playtest for tactical rules started now, by trying to find what you can't do with Cinematic starship scenes.
Trying to keep this game related... This is what happens when a government is run by someone with.
Starfinder 1e used EAC and KAC. Kac was almost always better than EAC, which encouraged the use of energy weapons vs kinetic weapons. I don't mind going to just AC, but I was hoping some armor would have resistance to some types of energy, or have upgrade options for that. The Tech Core is not out, so there's still time.
That video also shows it's not just Paizo having problems. For some of the other games I play, I have to buy things from out of the country, and some places are simply refusing to even ship the the US anymore. Another video I don't have saved, unfortunately, was about several small manufacturers trying to source all of their parts from the US, and they couldn't do it.
Saw this on Reddit about the price difference. As to the price relative to the Player Core, I'm afraid it's because the Player Core's retail price is heavily subsidized at this point. Our normal pricing matrix would have that 460-page book's appropriate price at over $90, but since it's the main book for the game we wanted to keep the book closer in price to the rest of the rulebooks in the line. So it's not so much a situation of the GM Core being highly priced, but the Player Core being priced much much lower than it "should" be, which admittedly makes for a challenging comparison here. Orginal comment. Scroll down to find the comment. For me, the price of books has gotten so high that I'm mostly buying PDFs now. Also, I'm out of bookshelf room. But I do see how, looking at the book side by side, the pricing seems off if you don't know about the Player Core being heavily subsidized.
Got the Starfinder GM Core PDF Chapter 1 Running the Game
Chapter 2 Building the Game
Chapter 3
Chapter 4 (Subsystems)
Chapter 5
Index
Other than Chapter 5 the Starfinder GM Core has 24 more pages covering the same chapters as the Pathfinder GM Core. All the treasure in the PF GM Core is usable in Starfdiner; it would just be really old treasure. The other thing that the SF GM Core has that the PF GM Core doesn't is tariffs.
Comparing the PF2e GM Core and SF2e GM Core makes more sense. I've only briefly paged through the GM Core at a game store, and I'm hoping to download it at 12:01 am tonight. But I'm willing to make a wild guess that the 70 missing pages are the Treasure Trove section of the PF2e GM Core, which takes up 108 pages. Starfinder is not a treasure-finding game, but it does have a ton more high-tech equipment that the players can buy, which way SF1e had an entire book of equipment. I suspect the Tech Core will be that + the 2 tech-related classes.I would love to hear where you suspect the 70 pages were trimmed from when your pdf arrives. I can arrange that, but once I read it, I won't be able to make wild guesses anymore. But if I were a betting skittermaner, I'd be willing to bet all 6 arms that the Anachronistic Adventures chapter is shorter than the PF2e Treasure Trove chapter.
I agree, from the start, the Starfinder developers have stated several times that they want to take time to get starship combat right. And from my own experience with starship combat think it's not an easy thing to do I also agree, I can't see Paizo skipping the play test. I do hope we get some news as to when I might be. When SF2e was first announced, I started looking at other games with starship combat. Despite half the Starfinder community seeming not to like the Starship combat in the game, I was surprised to see other games talking about how they wish the other game played more like Starfinder's starship combat. I also started playing Star Wars Armada and X-wing, and I still play X-wing. My big takeaway from all of that is it's not easy to make a good TTRPG space combat that plays like a TTRPG. It's all so hard to make a TTRPG that can tactically compete with X-wing. There's a huge difference between single play vs single player and a team of PCs vs NPCs. From playing both Armada and X-wing, my big takeaway was, Starfinder might be better off picking a scale of ships to use that makes sense for a party of 4 to 6 PCS to be using for tactical combat. The larger ships in the Armada that don't overlap with the ships in X-wing are like flying cities. Fighting a city-sized ship in a ship built for a crew of 6 isn't a tactical dog fight; it's either like a bomber run or siege warfare. Where that city-sized ship you are attacking is the map, and the PC's ship is a medium-sized pawn base size. No idea what Pizzo will decide to do in the end wiht tactical starship combat, but RPG-wise for everyone other than the pilot and maybe gunners, I really like what I experienced in Battle for Nova Rush and seen in the cinematic rules for feeling like you are the crew on a starship during a battle in a very TTRPG way. Regardless of what the tactical starship rules end up as, I'm looking forward to the ship-building rules. Paizo is great at making games with lots of options. I'm hoping to get lots of starship building options that are not just for tactical combat.
I had fun with the playtest, and I'm having fun with SF2e. I didn't take the time to compare the changes and see no reason to. I'm still playing SF1e and playing SF2e at the same time; I have fun with both; I don't even try to compare them, which is why I'm happy playing almost any edition of any game. As far as character options that didn't make the Player Core, I don't think the GM Core is the right place to add them back in. For anything ancestry-related realted the recently announced ancestry books would be the right place. I don't think it makes any sense to compare the size of the SF GM Core and Player Core. Comparing the PF2e GM Core and SF2e GM Core makes more sense. I've only briefly paged through the GM Core at a game store, and I'm hoping to download it at 12:01 am tonight. But I'm willing to make a wild guess that the 70 missing pages are the Treasure Trove section of the PF2e GM Core, which takes up 108 pages. Starfinder is not a treasure-finding game, but it does have a ton more high-tech equipment that the players can buy, which way SF1e had an entire book of equipment. I suspect the Tech Core will be that + the 2 tech-related classes.
After seeing the video you linked to, I looked up the number for northern giant seadevil anglerfish. Females are 60 times longer and 500,000 times heavier than males. Besides their size difference, their relationship is also orders of magnitude higher on the strangeness scale.
Another difference is the size of the setting. Starfinder covers an entire galaxy, and Pathfinder takes place for the most part on one planet, and sometimes on the other planets in the same star system that is the Pact Worlds in Starfinder. I don't know Pathfinder lore very well, if there are any exceptions to that, I'm guessing that it's very rare to travel beyond the Golarion star system. Note, I'm not counting planar travel in this. Question for Pathfinder players: Did all the planes from PF make it into SF? There's no Drift plane in Pathfinder. Besides being a mode of FTL travel, I also see it as a great GM or adventure writer tool that can be used to explain all kinds of crazy things happening. IT's also a great excuse to explain why a PC disappeared when a Player missed a game session, then have that PC reappear next week. Starfinder will likely never have a book like Pathfinder Lost Omens: Absalom, City of Lost Omens, because Absalom Station has hundreds of levels. The maps alone would fill the book. Starfinder needs to cover more locations but wiht less detail, largely because in Starfinder you don't have to connect the dots to travel by foot for 3 weeks to get to some place.
From what little I've seen so far of the cinematic starship rules, I think it's important to try them out before the tactical starship playtest, because I think there is a good chance they could be used together. The cinematic starship rules could be used to set up a mission and its objectives, and any non-combat complications, and then use the tactical rules for just the combat part. In theory, you could have an encounter using cinematic starship rules, tactical starship combat, and be fighting a boarding party with normal combat rules all at the same time. 1: Cinematic starship rules set up the encounter and mission. Do a scan of the system, looking for "something" you must complete this and get out before the star goes supernova or some other time limit. 2 PCs work on the scan. One of the PCs doing the scan may have to decide between helping with the scan and repairing battle damage to keep the ship going. 2: Tactical starship combat deals with the ship getting attacked during the mission. 2 PCs handle this as the pilot and a gunner. 3: Normal combat to deal with a small boarding party or stowaway. 2 PCs deal with this. One of the PCs doing the scan is a healer and may have to choose between helping with scans and healing other PCs. That's a lot going on, but it's not much more than just a combat with an active hazard going on at the same time. This could work out if the tactical starship rules also use the normal 3 action economy. The only new rules that might be needed here are how the pilot moves the ship and the pilot's initiative order, which might need to be rolled every turn, just for the pilots. The other part of the full starship rules we are still missing is the ship-building part. One big advantage of doing the Cinematic Starship rules first is that when we do get ship-building rules, they can be developed with both Cinematic and tactical considerations.
Just got the GM core and was a little disappointed to see how little content there was about starship combat. It was weird that vehicles were next in the book and that write-up felt more like I was hoping to see for starships. I'm still waiting for the GM Core PDF to come out, but I got a chance to page through it at a game store today. The Vehicle section of the SF2e GM Core isn't even remotely close to the size SF1e starship rules, which took 3 books to get to a good place, and combined took up 195 pages. That's not including the 4th book with the narrative rules. So there's a good reason it wasn't in the Player or GM Core; it's going to take up more room than either book could spare. Meanwhile, the cinematic starship rules may not seem like much, just looking at their page count, but like complex hazards that one stat block can do so many things, it's a really flexible system. I'm looking forward to seeing how far it can be pushed.
10) 3 new conditions: Glitching, Suppressed, and untethered. 11) In PF2e, if you meet the most famous Undead NPC, you run in fear; in SF2e, you hope you can get their autograph. 12) No one in PF2e ever used a grenade to blow their way out from the inside of a giant space shark, while streaming it live to the infophere. 13) Really cool treasure, like a Strawberry Machine Cake thermos. Even cooler if you have the lunchbox but lost the thermos. 14) And there you are. SF2e doesn't have or need detailed overland maps like PF2e has for the Inter Sea region. You just get on a ship and there you are. 15) Every object in SF2e that has an energy source could become a hazard.
Wait, wait, it does? I noticed that happening in the Galaxy Guide, but in the GM Core too?Yep: Hotshot envoy subclass, Fabricator feat, injection weapons. It's likely just a byproduct of having a very tight, very messy production schedule. I wouldn't be surprised if the authors were wrestling with Player Core's page count up until the very last second, well after its sister books had already gone to the printer. Things like a subclass or an entire grouping of weapons seem to me to be a space issue. The SF2e Player Core page count is the same as the PF2e Player Core, so I'm guessing the page count was set from the start of development.
Dawn of the Frogs isn't officially released yet, so it's not surprising sanctioning isn't available. Maya said it will be, though. If Dawn of the Frogs gets sanctioned, I see no reason Murder in Metal City shouldent. So lots of options for PFS and for SFS 2 scenarios per month. So locally, it looks like we got some players playing PFS every week, some play SFS when available and PFS the rest of the time, and a few that only play Statfinder.
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