Azelator Ereus's page

Silly question, but what time scale is the campaign operating on? If the main ship is not using its Drift drive, it should take years to get to even the closest adjacent star system from its starting point. Does the crew spend intermittently long periods of time in stasis?

This is a great question. I'll have to ask the GM. He may have to come up with something to make this all make sense LOL.

I randomly came across a group of Starfinder players who have all become good friends. This could taint my impression. However, I've now played in three very different Starfinder games depending on the GM.

The first (who I played with) was experienced but sadistic, trained on old school deadly D&D style. He ran Dead Suns. Low levels of SF run by a exacting gm can be constantly deadly. Strictly run disease conditions, mold storms, etc can TPK a unprepared party without a single enemy arriving. All our levels, $$, successes felt very hard won.

The second, but the one my group had been playing till 7th level or so by the time I joined, was run by a much slacker story-oriented GM. He had secretly intended the game (run I think only a month or two after core came out) to interface with a planet he had made for Rifts campaign when he was a teenager, so the world was DEEP. I came in as a native of this planet (as he had talked to me about it when doing things to the PCs before I was in game), where the PC's are stuck for a while. This game is much more about doing stunts for social media profiles, discovering this world and its attendant intrigues, Shadowrun-esque magic augmented corporate espionage, and general wacky adventure than sweating over rules. The GM of this game feels SF gives him just enough to make enemies dangerous enough, and characters feel powerful enough at the appropriate level, to make his world make sense. YMMV.

The third, that I discuss in a thread here, is a Star Trek like troupe style play thing where we are part of crew on a mission of exploration, and each player makes a 3rd, 5th, and 7th level character. I'm having a lot of fun with it. The system could be better, and the complaints here totally have merit. But to be honest I fell in with a good table who kill it whether it's 5e or SF or M&M... So I'm biased.

I also just want to put a shout out to Paizo for making such a visually well designed product. Just had my neighbor (GM#2) get the SOM and just flipping through the art/design is so satisfying. They have really gone all out on this particular aspect. If you have any kind of nostalgia for the OG WH40K Rogue Traders glorious imaginal simulations of the futures' arsenal, then you can't miss checking out the Armory.

So lets say I have a character who is a Magnetic Orb-type Bantrid Vanguard. They are in a hallway with many enemies, with a desired target in the back of the line. Assuming I have a clear line to the sides of the wall/ceiling, could I use my magnet orb feature to full action charge around the mooks and get to the desired target? Does this satisfy the conditions for charge as long as I am just using diagonal motion to move toward the target in an otherwise direct manner?

"You must move at least 10 feet (2 squares), and all movement must be directly toward the designated opponent, though diagonal movement is allowed. You must have a clear path toward the opponent, and you must move to the space closest to your starting square from which you can attack the opponent. If this space is occupied or blocked, you can’t charge. If any line from your starting space to the ending space passes through a square that blocks movement, slows movement (such as difficult terrain), or contains a creature (even an ally), you can’t charge. You can still move through helpless creatures during a charge. If you don’t have line of sight (see page 271) to the opponent at the start of your turn, you can’t charge that opponent."

"Magnetic Orb
With proper diet and medication, bantrids can give their footorb a metallic, magnetic core. After sufficient practice, they can direct this magnetic force or even invert it so they can roll along metal walls or ceilings. They gain a climb speed of 30 feet that they can use only on metallic surfaces, and can move across metal surfaces at their land speed, even in zero gravity."

Is there any particular reason we think Paizo is committing to this hopelessly backward and pedantic structure? Why wouldn't the different domains of deities be spread among the beings they evolved in the noosphere of? Each would then hold their own connections to the planes. I always thought this was the strength of Starfinder. The most powerful LG deity in the pact worlds is an Insect Queen. This implies Celestial Mantis and Beetle -like Archangels and massive buzzing holy choirs of bees the size of ponys.

Did one of the creators really say they were committing to a reductive 20 part structure based on alignment? Because, if so, I think that's a bit of an insult to their audiences intelligence.

We are doing this in my group right now. The idea is that we are on a scientific expedition to explore the reasons for the Gap, and as a result we are not to operate the Drift drive on the main ship in order to provide consistent data. We are essentially moving out from Pact World space on 'impulse' systematically and seeing what happens, dropping drift beacons along the way. There is a very large crew aboard the ship, and the PCs are not in absolute command.

We are doing troupe-style play where every PC makes a 7th level, 5th level, and 3rd level character. Two are supposed to be crew members, while one can represent another interest that has found its way on board*. The groups can be mixed together, or used in parallel, depending on whats going on. So sometimes you are in command of the away team, and sometimes you are the red shirt. We have only done a few sessions with this configuration and its going well.

I think the issue we're running into immediately is that the original concept was each session plotline would be self-contained, like an TV episode, and pulling that off in a TTRPG setting is no easy task.

We had a pretty cool starship battle where a lot of the side characters with Piloting skills got pulled into smaller fighters as gunners, whether they were any good at it or not.... Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

*Mine is a Teifling Bureaucrat from Hell.

That is what I end up doing as a high level espionage based Technomancer, all the time. You can get Cloaking or Glass Skin augment so you dont end up using too many spell slots. I find in this kind of game you also might need Delay Countermeasure, Implant Data, or Manipulate Tech, even if you have a high-ranking hack focused exo-mechanic on your team...

I think Starfinder is a bit obsessed with all the ways that you can be or detect invisible creatures. We can have Blindsense/sight keyed to Vibration, Life, Thought, Computers(?), Heat, etc.. You can use a sonic weapon to tag creatures in a way that expands your Blindight to them. You may have to use a Silence type effect to counteract that. They seem pretty into complicating that area of the game.

License to access water of any kind.

Literally a future Nestle would love to see in our own time, at source of pure water near you.

There's little need to make 'evil empires' over-the-top. Simply try to occupy the perspective of any currently oppressed population, almost anywhere in the world, and you will find a wealth of material for this exercise.

This is actually key to how I'm conceptualizing. Webs of self-interest turn to pacts turn to obligations. The chaotic aspect comes in with an essentially cultural acceptance that the mouthpieces and signifiers of authority and genuine connection as regards the Great Old Ones are all Mad Prophets, broken by their knowledge as an unavoidable cost to entry. I am imagining a byzantine half-cybernetic, half-mutant office full of dutiful transcriptionists surrounding a tall throne with a emaciated prophet-CEO gibbering into the high galleries, each phoneme entered into room-sized autonomic translation and analysis devices. The lighting reminiscent of the movie Brazil.

So we are stuck inside and playing a lot of 5e in our other game worlds, but none of our Starfinder games are continuing yet, and I foolishly agreed to contemplate running a high-level evil game. I'm pretty sure our group is mature enough to handle it, for the most part. Vibe very influenced by reading through a pdf of Black Crusade, the 40k RPG where you play characters touched by Chaos. Probably not intended to have a long lifespan. Definitely intended to have a level of personal power, among the player characters, outsized of normal PC range (maybe 14th level?). I want to set them against terrifying Celestial forces that have a good shot at ruining their days. So I'm in a full on experimental mindset about the creation process.

This means:

I am letting players dedicate levels to being creatures not normally playable in Starfinder. So far I have someone wanting to be an old Golarion Vampire and a Shoggoth. The idea is to create a 'heist team', individually obligated to the bureaucracy of a particularly insane Archon in Aucturn, that can vacillate between a Grimdark and Legion of Doom style vibe. The players themselves (one is particular) have a good sense of game balance and a fair amount of experience in game design (they blow me out of the water... I'm the new DM here). Has anyone ever done something like this in Starfinder or any other game? Advice?

I am very interested in all the most terrifying goody two-shoes absolute lawful good bastards I can throw at them. I am thinking I'm going to be working a lot with the material around Hylax and the Forever Queen. Insect paladins. 'Angels' who exist more in the basic, purely 'life-preserving' realms of the higher planes where all mandibles twitch in unison to the glorious buzzing of the All-Light.

I think there is going to be one arc. It goes from "ooh looky all the things I can do without pesky morality and superhuman powers given by evil gods woopie!" to "no!!! return to the Hall of Doom". Maybe episodically. Anyone ever done anything like this? Advice?

In case this hasn't come across I'm not trying to make situations where players revel in repugnant acts, except maybe as comic asides. I'm trying to take the epic absurdity located in the grimdark setting and use it to explore the daily lives of the 'other side' of the pact worlds. I want to know how evil brushes its teeth.

The problem with mechanics is certain types are lackluster depending on the level. If you're going to multiclass at all Exocortex is the choice. Drones pretty much suck in combat until 5-6th level, unless you are trying to incorporate mount style bs, and a combat focused drone at these levels is actually often better built as a hover drone. I think they may have overcompensated for the effect an extra pewpew has on the action economy, Experimental armor sounds like it could be an excellent way to go power armor theme, but experimental weapon is just confusing to me.

pithica42 wrote:

thecursor wrote:

Dracomicron wrote:

WatersLethe wrote:

Ascalaphus wrote:

Kobolds.

Kobolds.

Kobolds.

So....Kobolds?

Yup, Kobolds.

Yay, kobolds! Smol dragon friends who are doing their best! :D

What if Kobolds took over Golarion and thats why the planet disappeared/gap happened?

While this depends on your GM and your own imaginative resourcefulness, I have gotten a LOT of use out of Aeons, both in and out of combat. The best flying combatant in my experience is the Protean. Three Proteans, even tiny, a fairly good chance of grabbing a mook and a sweet boost to the action economy.

Smurf?

edit: YAAAAS

Thanks for the link.

May have to homebrew a feat to extend my blindsight/sense, as being blind to anything more that 30ft away is proving difficult to conceptualize.

Really looking forward to playing the character, a polymorph focused (bio)Technomancer. Speciality: fungal computers, 'tamed' Assembly Oozes, 'living' ship weaponry, and so forth. I will be describing him as only using language when absolutely necessary (although he speaks several), mainly narrating the changing lights moving across the lantern, while telepathically projecting simple emotional effects in reaction to real time situations. An attempted imitation of how I imagine trees talk to each other via root systems, electronic fields, shared fungal subsystems, etc.

I have talked with GM, who seems to think it referenced in the rules somewhere, but I haven't found the reference. Obviously his decision will make or break it but he seemed to remember some text regarding this, and I can't find it.

And does this interfere with their other special sense abilities?

There is a spell for this in the COM. Mental Silence.

Certain variants of Lashunta get it as a racial feature.

Wish it was also a Mystic spell.

Looks to me like theres approx 20 million humans in Striving and about 10 in Arl, the respective megaplexes of Aballon and Akiton. That number struck me when I first read it and made me realize that, like with the Hykli*, there is a pretty big untold story here with those folks.

*Although you could, say, read 'Princess of Mars' which is pretty much where the story of Akiton begins.

I'm pretty sure the Bounty Hunter TV show with the cowboy outfits is canon on most tables.

Wei Ji the Learner wrote:

Variant transhuman races who've adapted/evolved to life in various environments!

I deeply bums me out that the Hykli never got any racial variance.

There is also plenty of ink that could be spilled on the humans living on Aballon.

It seems clear to me it gets Specialization at 3 but only with the solar weapon.

Yeah but think of the labor that magic must do.. if we are taking into consideration 'magical logic'.. the work of getting a little dodad to tell the trigger 'no' when it doesn't meet the condition (striking a target or otherwise accomplishing the goal aka harrying fire) seems quite trivial compared to teleporting them back into the clip of the gun.

So yeah in my world the hapless gunner would just be aiming, cursing, and continuing to have a red light or something similar flash indicating to anyone familiar with a conserving fusion what is going on.

The way the Conserving fusion ever made sense for me in a fluff sense is that it is in fact the installation of a 'precognitive sight' on the weapon in question. So unless the ammunition will affect something mechanically, by hitting a target (or engaging in harrying/covering fire), the weapon simply doesn't fire. So yes, if you succeeded in the harrying/covering fire attempt, you use ammo. If you don't the gun doesn't fire. This is the only way I have visualized Conserving to work in a way that doesn't seem ridiculously cartoonish and break immersion.

Or just allow PC's to make or buy the Spellthrower Fusion for their computers, by Tier.
You have to have a high enough tier of computer to run the spell chip.

And chips actually WOULD work out for me economy-wise because I have been running a homebrew Conjurer Mystic connection/archetype, and reading this thread has me thinking I should be doing most instances of Summon Creature via some kind of digital grimoire. Which will be crucial next level so I can save those 3rd slots for Slow, etc.

And your way can also be used by non casters.

If you had a computer, and a spell chip with an instance of summon creature, and you were a spell caster, you could indeed do exactly this. I have been experimenting with calling on Aeons (more traditionally ritualistically.. Z is a mystic..) as skill monkeys/historians of the akashic record, and as long as I keep it interesting as a player the GM has been using the instance to give up interesting information.

Hrm that homebrew seems rad, but my GM would probably require a feat or something to upgrade a spell like that. However I think the real power of this spell at higher levels is to use it to provide covering or harrying fire.

A single source? No. But as someone who has studied folklore and magical traditions extensively this reads true to me. In certain older magic traditions 'Turks' and 'devils' and 'place spirits' interact interchangably. Often the 'demon' is the ancestral spirit of an indigenous other displaced by the ancestors of the tale teller. Another reason the concept of alignment is garbage if we are trying to accurately explore a recreation of historical and/or speculative mentalities, but thats neither here nor there.

If you were really looking for a good source about this kind of thing though what immediately springs to mind is the work of Carlo Ginzburg; "The Night Battles" or "The Cheese and the Worms".

If Paizo can adapt & borrow so much from Lovecraft's work without leaning hard into that man's well documented racism, I think they can thread this needle.

If Reptoids are a undeniable signifier of a certain variety of antisemetism then surely Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep (in fact ALL eldritch horror... bye bye Garthulu...) signify frantic anglo-centric xenophobia. I can't follow that logic.

How would you roleplay a gray character in a party? The problem with grays as PCs is that I don't think we really know anything about them for certain. We don't know their culture, their social lives, what they do in their spare time, what they eat, their sex and gender structure... one of my acquaintances considered playing a (non-evil) gray almost as a sort of benevolent gremlin, that the crew doesn't really know about at first. The ship is running at peak performance, as are the party's weapons, and the crew reports small items going missing and no one can find them.

There is actually one significant thing we know about Greys vis a vis the setting.

There seems to be a conspiracy among the speakers of this language as among the four armed.

I'll be hitting 7th level Mystic soon, Mindbreaker connection changing to a homebrew Conjurer archetype.
But the purpose of this thread is your options on the Haste and Slow spells.

I've always been a fan of haste like effects in RPG spells but people on this forum seem to really talk up Slow.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each in SF?

It's kind of crazy that the Greys speak Aklo. What does that imply?

If there are mechs in Starfinder they should be like the ones in FLCL.

Carefully hatched in the brain-case of adolescents of whatever species during sexual maturity.

Look, I think we can all agree that what needs to happen is playable stats for the dirindi & sazarons.

As someone playing a Lashunta who grew up on Roselight and Arkanen and truly dislikes being in Castrovel (huge insects, intelligent fungi, psychic crowding), I know very little about my homeworld except that I speak its language. Is Bethedan a psychic only language as the Barathu mother tongue? How does that work for non psychics?

Well, ysoki get everywhere. And they've been migrating across the universe since before the Gap. It's not just power or controlling a single planet that qualifies you as a core race. It might even be a hindrance, races that are content to stay home make for poor core adventurer races.

This whole issue was made even more confusing when it was confirmed last wednesday that a vast proportion of the human population in the Pact Worlds is actually being warehoused on Aballon. I am really waiting for the hows and whys there.

My impression was that you couldn't use a Shadow Drive without being Velstrac or going insane

1) Since Aballon is the prime example can we talk about the wonky populations numbers in the Pact Worlds book? 13 million humans on Aballon vastly outnumbering their compatriots on any other planet hived in some bleak robotic warehouse? Really?

2) Are Anticite taboos about some of the areas where the First Ones ruins lie a 'belief' or an aspect of their 'programming'? When playing Anticite or SRO characters how much should the idea of programming affect their motivations? Are charm and enchantment effects on these characters to be interpreted in this light?

It makes a lot more sense in the post video game age, where the idea of new areas opening up as the game progresses provides the ongoing narrative thrust. But while there is the implied emphasis there that you are in a game, I think the way level and wealth scales in SF preserves both the 'game' and the ability to lose oneself in the narrative. For me at least.

*SMH* (ignores thread)

It's clear to me that how many people have guns, carry guns, and how publicly violence is wielded in Starfinder is a function of what subgenre of science fantasy you are trying to make. Is your campaign a segment of Heavy Metal or a subplot in the God Emperor of Dune? The flexibility of the setting to accomplish both is a feature not a flaw.

Playing a male Damaya Lashunta character who prefers male gendered humanoids has brought this whole topic up since I started playing SF. Since the Damaya were clearly correlated with gender in Castrovel's past, one can only imagine there was some kind of society-wide 'transition' on this topic. It is explicitly stated that one determines which subtype you enter at puberty, assumably regardless of biological sex or sexual preference.

It also affects my background in that the reason for his Outlaw status is that as an impressionable teenager he was seduced by an older (male human) mentor, and convinced to participate in an act of piracy. Taking off on the run with said person, who eventually ditched him in the Diaspora, taking the Thuamaugen they had hijacked from his mothers' technomagical gas mining station orbiting Liavara. So I'm screwed, meet this goblin, and do some debt collection work on a few stations before I find my way back to Absolom just in time to start Dead Suns.

I later barter with the Bone Sage to find out exactly how wanted I am and if my image from the news has managed to trigger a manhunt for me. He reveals that my mentor was in fact killed, on Eox, and is likely reanimated. So I'm going to have to encounter my manipulative ex in zombi (?) form at some point.

This is all just part of making characters that breathe, but being queer is kind of a central detail in the storyline as it unfolds. Also the relationship of the older man with much younger boy/man, where a young gifted person is groomed by a skilled but socially awkward adult and has to heal from the damage that causes is a story I know is part of many peoples lives, particularly gay ones. So I was inspired to tell it. I don't think I'd ever be interested in rping sexual situations or joining a group where that was a place it went, but I do think fleshing characters out as sexual beings gives them a depth which would be unavailable otherwise.

As for whether your sexual identity matters or should be a aspect of game is of course a matter of preference for how you want your games played. But as a gay man playing a character with a sexual trajectory similar to my own, I can say that rendering that detail has given a level of personal connection with the character which resulted in a lot more depth to my background story. Similar, I imagine, to the black men I game with whose human/nearhuman characters often have dark skin/hair, sometimes dreadlocks. Seems logical to me.

It also seems logical that any person of any gender would be well challenged to play a character without a conventional gender such as a Barathu, one of the handful of mollusk-like beings, or something that occasionally sprouts a bud or a seed. It brings all kinds of interesting questions about how we imagine ourselves in relation to others and the places we are in.

Sorry/not sorry for the necromancy.

I can think of a few reasons for this. Firstly the general content has to be appropriate for kids in order to still have the broad appeal that allows Starfinder to be such a success. Second the mechanic had to be balanced, and they chose to impose distinct mechanical advantages and disadvantages to the effects of individual drugs. It seems to adhere to the typical story arcs of typical drug users, in the typical ways stories are told about drug users. Does this allow you to accurately recreate the experience of several tech startups and take group bonuses to higher and higher Computer rolls towards the completion of a complex task as various physical and social side effects begin to creep up? No. Do we really need that? Not so much. Although it's fun to think about.

I would definitely read an 'adults only' Pact Worlds edition where all of the mutogenic hallucinogens of Aucturn and the Eyes Wide Shut Vampire parties on Eox are laid out in more detail. I suppose the Vestracs are already legitimately psychedelically horrifying. Like borgs that strap themselves into cenobite suits and scream in unison so they can boot up the Shadow Drive. They've got some heady gear.

But to be honest the space the setting leaves for the GM and players to co-create flavor to your groups individual taste is one thing that's so great about it. Want to make something that acts more like the drugs you know personally? Work it out.

Well its like having Ghost Killer as well, I suppose. But I am beginning to regret taking it. While I get into plenty of longarms combat with my fusioned plasma fork, I have never benefited in a way I otherwise could not, now that I know the mechanic.

My character was considering a side hustle injecting incorporeal undead with drugs they enjoyed in life in a safe environment and charging handsomely to become the Eoxian Dr. Feelgood. But there are so many variables to consider in that kind of scenario..

The real issue with drugs in Starfinder is how brutal the addiction/disease rules are. Any attempt to play a Hunter S. Thompson would quickly turn into a William S Burroughs. I'm trying to play a character who has a professional interest in the analysis, creation, and sales of black magic thaumaseuticals and we're coming up with fun homebrew drugs. Which I am terrified to actually take in game. I guess it's not so much an issue just an attitude.

Plus my GM LOVES the disease rules. Nothing inspires hatred for every new planet and space creature knowing you're just one fortitude save away from having to stop everything so one party member can avoid slow death.

This is actually a question I have. My character took the Mystic Strike feat, but then later found that any weapon fusion acts as magic for the purpose of bypassing DR/magic. Is their any other benefit to having this feat? Or is it that you can also strike incorporeal creatures?

This is just a thread about a character I'm playing. I started in a starfinder game recently and it is the first time I have played in an RPG since I was a teenager in the 90's. The setting is so well developed. Very inspiring for coming up with rich sets of backgrounds and motivations.

Zel is Damaya Lashunta, born in Roselight. His mother is a distinguished manager within the Ereus matriline, an influential Technomagical corporation (described in Armory) largely run through an extended family network. His childhood bedroom looked out on Hallas and the shifting mass of Liavara below, seeping into his dreams. He later spent time in corporate housing several places in Arkanen. The reason for the Ereus operation was a result of the presence and ongoing negotiations surrounding the mining of Thaumagen, a magical gas described in the CRB and then left unexplained in PW, which we have decided can be made both into a drug which can both increase your magical abilities at a cost, and also is the primary "plotanium" for the industrial creation of magical items. It can be taken in small (and then increasingly larger) doses by Technomancers to enhance their perceptions (think Navigators in Dune), and in larger more possibly deadly doses by various Mystics and lunatics which can cause release of the astral body into some other plane or similarly intense effects (think of the way the Bene Gesserit use the spice to create their Revered Mothers).

His only experience of Castrovel was as a teenager when he was sent to a series of boarding schools out in the wilds of Asana intended to keep the wild-eyed youngster in touch with his family heritage. Learning to ride the native beasts, eat the native food etc. Zel hated Castrovel. For a sensitive telepath who grew up in a stark space station environment bombarded from birth by strange radiations, entering a lush environment filled with all manner of beings (from houseplants onward) highly adapted to interact with the 'psychic plane' was alienating and overpowering. Not to mention being an offworlder in boarding school was totally weak. He couldn't wait to get back to Roselight, despite feeling depressed and disconnected from his life with his family.

When he returned, a youngling barely past puberty (I guess for Lashunta shortly after the age of deciding what subtype they will be) his mother had a new associate in her research team. An intriguing human with a dashingly handsome face and equally strikingly bizarre ideas.. regarding for instance the use of spirits in the research and development of hybrid tech. Not to mention, privately, an indulgence in the use of Thaumaugen. This was in fact his personal reason for employment in Ereus, although they were of the impression they had hired him due his precise skills in the purity analysis of several other magically reactive elements. When they met, although Zel was still a young one, there was undeniable chemical spark between them.. although the better man would simply smile to himself and disregard the interest of a teenager, Fredrick Bahchktin Ramakrshna was never very good at being the better man.

A lurid tryst developed. Freddy taking Zel under his wing and teaching him about some of the things he knows. Spirits were summoned in private occasions to share and participate in their pleasure. He gave him experience of many varieties of mind-altering substances. Leading, of course, to a larger then advertised dose of uncut Thaumagen. More then Freddy had ever had the nerve to take himself. This was Zel's Initiation.

Astral body tossed into the Maelstrum, the now-nameless consciousness which was Azelator Ereus floated adrift for an indeterminate eternity. At one point a memory emerged of a story. About an ancient spirit of the sea who became a great lady, honored by many. She sailed in a boat, which was then a spaceship, which was then later a world within its hull, which was also a constellation in the night sky. With the Thaumaugen still raging in his system his still-living soul appeared as a bright beacon in the seas of the maelstrum, and the Starwraith closed in, Besmara's crew curiously fished him out of the waves and hauled his sorry soul aboard. He remembers very little afterward, but as returned to his body he was marked by Lady Besmara and his fate was bound.

[Part One]