Boedullus's page

Empathize with the overwhelmingness of it. I had a very similar sense in Chimera Mystery, where I made myself read and re-read until I felt like I could close my eyes and walk through the ship, knowing what was hidden or stashed where, where each NPC was hanging out, etc.
Pw/oS is that and then some. Practically the only direction they're given is "maybe other directorate reptoids...?" and then cut them loose. I'm a little frustrated that the devs didn't even attempt to give real guidance as to what other individuals the non-Erem PCs might be cloned from. Seemed like if you make them all reptoids, that gives way too much away, but if you don't, you need to consider both what the grays might find useful in their anti-reptoid endeavors, what's going to be interesting/fun, and what's not going to distract overmuch from the narrative by making them fixate on things that don't wind up going anywhere significant.
Once you get past that... yeah, then you only need to memorize what dozens of NPCs know and don't know, their allegiances and enemies, the intel available at a number of sites (some of them improvised)... It's a humdinger. But we're most of the way through (about to identify the third reptoid directorate candidate, then on to the roundup), and we're having a blast doing it.

Heists, as we know them from movies, depend on everyone having a specific skillset and everything falling into place.

But in an RPG you can't guarantee that there is even a diverse skill set in the party nor that everything falls into place.

So the options are either to leave the entire heist up to the GM, but that is not how Paizo APs are usually written, or to default to something they can guarantee. And for Starfinder that is that the party is perfectly able to murder things and walk through gunfire.

I mean, but they've actually done good heist adventures already. Several times. I don't know why everybody's acting like Ocean's 11 perfect precision is the only way to heist, but ffs you can smash and grab, diplomance, sneak, bribe... there's a ton of different skill sets that can overcome a set of established challenges. Like, what's the difference between a heist and any other adventure where you have to get past locked doors, armed enemies, traps and surveillance? There's a little more emphasis on subtlety, but really a squad of commandos is just as effective at plundering as a group of cat burglars.

I hear you on the need for specifics, though I'd say several of the missions in Threefold Conspiracy do just that: setting up a scenario and letting players react. My beef here isn't excessive controls on a heist; is that there is no heist at all.
Players are told they're doing a heist, but then there's a bidding war instead. Then after frittering away a ton of time on that, they don't actually win but rather have to steal it anyway, except with no planning or finesse at all, just smash and grab.
It's written how my adventure would go if it went full worst case scenario. I introduce a heist, one player gets bored and goes a totally different way and decides to win the loot, so I set *that* up and they just kill their way to it anyway. Super disappointing.

***OODLES OF SPOILERS BELOW FOR WHITE GLOVE AFFAIR***

I do not get it. I think the implementation makes for interesting rolls and strategies, but it seems so... like, not related to any human psychology I know. The book opens: "heist of the century!" As players get excited for some Fireflyesque let's be bad guys action, instead they wind up having to... bid on a ship full of loot? Like it's an episode of Storage Wars for rich people? Except all the rich people are this close to backing down from the whole process? Except then once they do bid successfully then they have to steal it anyway? Except it's not a cool heist but rather a frantic smash and grab? And the ultimate prize is some BP and 6200 credits? (Which at level 9 gets one players an extremely under-leveled item?) WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE
I don't get it. This feels like it would drive players berserk confounding their expectations time and again, dangling nifty stuff in front of them and snatching it away to offer up something else, and when they resign themselves to that, repeat. Plus the whole concept seems so... weird. Like, I've never worked in shipping, but is this how it works? Someone cobbles together a trailer full of gold and auctions it off? Ugh, I'm back in questioning my sanity mode again. Really feel like the wheels are coming off on this one.

Wow. After Fly Free or Die 2 came out guns blazing with that awesome map pack add-on, FFoD 3 not only ditches that but doesn't even show up in My Downloads as downloadable as a single file. And all this after the debacle, which looks to never be getting resolution, in which the Devastation Ark pdfs were over 10x the size of the usual.
I don't know whose job it is over at Paizo to make the pdfs or if they just toss the responsibility to whoever's working on a project, but somebody needs to make a procedure/standards guide for pdf creation and somebody else in quality control needs to make sure it's followed. This is bizarre and disappointing as hell.

I haven't extracted them yet. How much improved is the resolution over the previous assets we normally used?

It's pretty significant. Barely pixelated even on a close zoom, and also lets you remove the grid if you like.

For a while, I've been thinking about unsubscribing from the SF APs and just buying them piecemeal when/if they looked really good, but man. The new map pack set for Fly Free or Die is SO FREAKING GOOD. Man, here's hoping they keep doing those. The resolution, being able to switch the grid off... it's a night and day difference in quality and usability for the virtual tabletop. So. FREAKING. Happy.

I subscribe to the SF APs and keep a copy of each book's PDF on my hard drive. Probably pretty common. They eat up some space, but it's not *so* bad.
Or at least it wasn't until the Devastation Ark series came along, each PDF over 20 times the usual size, a full Gb for the trio. Absolutely nothing different in them in terms of quality; I'm given to understand they just formatted the files differently.
Now we have Fly Free or Die, slashed to a mere 5x the usual size, BUT WITHOUT HIGHLIGHTABLE TEXT. Goodbye copy/pasting, hello tedious recopying manually.
What on earth is going on over at Paizo that something they seemed to have handled so easily is suddenly completely fubar?

Book 2 has the same dang problem. Good grief - these 2 files alone make up over a quarter of my whole SF pdf folder, including all the rule and setting books. If they keep this up, I'm going to wind up needing a new hard drive.

I just downloaded my copy of Waking the Worldseed. Very very excited that Paizo has finally created a high level AP. That said, the book, while around the usual length (68 pages), is a whopping 340 Mb. That's larger than the pdf of every book in Dead Suns, Attack of the Swarm and Dawn of Flame COMBINED. While it's not breaking my machine or anything, I don't have the biggest hard drive, so it's not great for me.
Anyone have any insights on why the thing is soooooooooo much bigger than its predecessors?

So at the onset, the PCs are given leave to investigate the front runners for the Directorate. The rules give guidance on treating this as a Diplomacy check to gather information. I'm sort of baffled. In a sci fi universe, and one in which the PCs are wanted criminals, AND one of them is a CLONE of one of the people they're asking about, it seems unthinkable that for basic information, they would ask around instead of exclusively using the infosphere. Like, if I wanted to know more about my Congressional candidate, who in the world would go to the pub and ask people instead of going to google?
It's not a big deal, but it seems really weird that they framed this in such a way, even put in a small rule system for conducting the research. Do not get it, and now I have to rewrite it all so it makes sense. Bleh.

Boedullus wrote:

Since one of the most common criticisms I see levied against Starfinder is that people don't enjoy the objectively cumbersome starship combat system, it seems mind-blowing to me that this book isn't overtly advertising that they're doing something to remedy it. Isn't this a bit tone-deaf? Sure, many people are fine with the slow pace of starship combat (I personally don't mind it), but many players just *hate* it. Would it have killed the dev team to include some alternate rules to speed things up or streamline things? This seems so obvious, it's kind of killing me that this wasn't addressed.

I don't know, perhaps the feedback Paizo collects beyond the forums (which tends to heavily tilt negative) is that starship combat is fun. Having played it and run it, it's been popular. It's not perfect but it's vastly superior to almost every other starship combat rpg system available.

As with others, I, too, am excited for the Starship Operations Manual.

I'm mostly referring to my own anecdotal experience with several disparate player groups, as well as basically every thread in the Starfinder FB group that pertains to starship combat. Like I said, I like it just fine, but it is objectively cumbersome, and it seemed like a good opportunity to propose an alternate system. One of the things I think Paizo's APs does really well is coming up with cool mini-games or alternate rule systems. A chase fleeing from dinosaurs in Dead Suns, the casino quest in Dawn of Flame, the horror afflictions from Signal of Screams. I really like when they're able to branch out and repurpose or tweak systems, and I was super hoping this would be a chance for them to shine on that score.

Since one of the most common criticisms I see levied against Starfinder is that people don't enjoy the objectively cumbersome starship combat system, it seems mind-blowing to me that this book isn't overtly advertising that they're doing something to remedy it. Isn't this a bit tone-deaf? Sure, many people are fine with the slow pace of starship combat (I personally don't mind it), but many players just *hate* it. Would it have killed the dev team to include some alternate rules to speed things up or streamline things? This seems so obvious, it's kind of killing me that this wasn't addressed.

I'm sorry, it sounded like someone said techs-mechs, and I have never been more excited for a game.

I am a little confused on the public knowledge of the Forever Reliquary. In the last 2 books, Xelanon believed that it was a metaphor until getting the info from the cave and Galchak was scouring records for the coordinates of the comet trying to get funding to support a research expedition. But in this book there is talk of semi-regular pilgrimages to the comet, so it couldn't be that much of a secret. Any thoughts on how to align this info into something that makes sense?

I had the same thought! This really had me twisted. I was just glad I wasn't running it live so I didn't have to suddenly retcon. "Uh, wait, so this professor, who has specifically devoted a significant portion of his intellect and time to researching the Forever Reliquary, didn't know that pilgrims routinely visit the place?"

Yeah, you are missing something. The basic biohacks are indeed rather basic, but the ones you get from your field of study are really strong. And you get SO MANY of them.

True, but even those... I definitely would not call them "really strong". For a random example: a pharmacologist can end the bleed condition (might come up 1 or 2 fights per adventure path, maybe) or encumber/entangle an enemy. It's not *nothing*, but since all of the fields of study are unranked, and thus accessible at any level, there's no capstone to be working towards. Just more mediocre balanced-for-low-level abilities.

Anyone else feel like the Biohacker is rather underwhelming? Most of their abilities are so weak I feel like I'd only bother to use them because I could. Remove/add dazzling? +1/-2 to attacks or ACs? Like, it's not nothing, but it feels like you could do an entire adventure path and only actually derive any benefit from these abilities a few times. Even the presentation - you get Minor and Basic Biohacks, but there's no Improved/Greater (etc.). I feel like they hit the nail on the head - the abilities are basic, and minor, and they basically never get upgraded to anything better.
The class isn't god-awful, but I feel like they're not The Best at literally anything. The envoy, for instance, as another class with lackluster raw offense/defense, actually gets some pretty significant combat abilities, with healing, extra actions, debuff removal, etc. This feels like that, only all those capabilities are lesser, with seemingly nothing out of combat to make up for it.
Am I missing something?

Just read through Firestarters, and I gotta say... what? This AP looks SO. BORING. It's just bubble after bubble, half of it with no concept of the real villain, who you don't even get to face in the end. (At least, it sounds like Malikah never actually makes an appearance.)
Exploring the sun is neat, but it hardly merits 6 entire adventures. Probably not 2. The plane of shadow got 1 in Signal of Screams, which seemed about right. But now we're locked in to five more months of finding and thwarting the BBEG's top minion. In sun bubbles, over and over.
Not impressed.

In Escape from the Prison Moon's alien archives, I noticed the radiation drake's atomic bolt dealt 3d10+3 (plus radiation exposure). For a CR 9 creature, I'd have expected a +9 modifier. Is that an error, a deliberate decision...? I even wondered if the damage from the radiation exposure would add up to 9 on a failed save, but medium radiation (DC 17) would be 7 damage, for a total of +10, so that doesn't seem quite it either. Wondering!