Corwynn Maelstrom's page

This issue isn't resolved. I am still missing all of the above content. Posts made very recently have been answered while mine has been skipped.

Please help me out here. :)

Ironically, I just checked and I'm also missing all my pawn PDFs BUT Edgewatch. Age of Ashes, Bestiary 2, Extinction Curse, and Gamemastery Guide pawns (Order 33319868) are all missing from my downloads.

I am also missing Bestiary pawns, but I must have purchased that retail, as I can't find an order for them.

Order 36453092

Missing PDFs for everything but Edgewatch Pawns.

Thanks for looking into this! :D

"I am disappointed that you don't play the way I play so I had to weigh in on a thread about an adventure which is demonstrably miscategorized as a 'quest'..."

I think "get over yourself" was a pretty polite response to the need to chide others about how their fun is wrong and bad, really.

As a note, many people still roll behind the screen (physical or otherwise) so it's not really far-fetched to suggest being mindful of this particular element of low-level encounter design while playing and fudging accordingly.

Additionally, rolling damage after saves (when running a game) is the way I've always played. I don't know that it's particularly "the right way" or not RAW, but if dropping damage on a breath weapon a point or two is going to mean the difference between massive damage and merely abject terror, I'll always choose abject terror over outright killing a character.

Being VERY NEARLY INSTANTLY KILLED is much more adrenaline-inducing than being actually instantly killed, which just mainly feels both unpleasant and unfair when you're a new adventurer.

Death was always a part of my games in the old days, long before 3.x was a thing. But it wasn't generally something I was trying to inflict, so my encounters were routinely handled with more finesse than "rules say yer dead, so, yer dead" ... of course, back then I didn't play any organized play. No Living Greyhawk or whatever.

I also died 30+ times in one campaign, multiple times within minutes of arriving on the scene...so I've fairly low tolerance for anything that feels poorly run or poorly designed. I strongly suspect that Massive Damage wasn't intended to disproportionately affect low level characters. With a game as big as PF2, there's a lot of math there to work out when you're designing and developing the mechanics.

I have no qualms about turning a death into an almost death in an instance where I feel the players have done nothing to bring that death about. (They didn't intentionally trigger a trap or bait a big bad. If you do those things, well, the dice might very well make you pay.)

I also freely tell players that they're not going to want to spend a Hero Point to reroll trivial things and I will encourage them to do so at any time they're facing real, life-threatening danger. (I also tend to award them to newer players and more delicate characters at lower levels.)

Being a GM is about being the arbiter of the situation as a whole. I typically balance the scales by being rougher when the characters are in a good spot. Taking down their front line right before the decisive blow in a different encounter reminds them of how dangerous things are when they might otherwise feel the challenge wasn't there. If I fudged a few points of breath weapon to save a caster, fudging a few extra claw damage a half an hour later and putting the tank on their face is perfectly reasonable. They're forced to expend party resources (potions, spell slots, time, etc.) to deal with the same rough amount of damage but they get a more exciting game out of it.

This issue has been resolved.

I've now had items in my sidecart not ship multiple times. Can you please ensure that my entire sidecart is properly added to this month's subscription order (33319868)?

As was the case last month, my sidecart isn't being added to my shipment. Can you please make sure it gets added this month (even though I don't have shipping discount this month... :( )...

Would it be possible for my sidecart to be shipped with Order 30167842?

Thank you!

I think this needs a nudge after I updated the payment method. :)

This is moving now, but the payment method being messed up caused PFS 16, 17, 18, and 19 to not trigger.

I think this needs a nudge after I updated the payment method. :)

Thanks, Joan!

I prefer phone support for some issues. I am glad Paizo has it. I would rather see it continue.

Hi CS Folks!

So, I never got a March order spawn, which means I'm missing Extinction Curse 3. My Bestiary Cards were held up by a CC issue in Feb and need to be added to Order 22054779 as well.

And (I don't know because I can't see, the site 404s right now) if Pathfinder Society Scenarios beyond 15 have gone out, I didn't get them either.

Thanks!

-CM

Besides, secret rolls may be rolled by the players at GM discretion, so if you're REALLY concerned about having to roll those yourself, just have your players roll. That makes it basically no different than first edition play outside of the fact that you have to make up something when they botch a roll. The players will know the information is false, so it doesn't really matter how "good" a ruse it is—the characters are obligated to consider it real information.

Many changes will seem harder than the way it used to be because you're just not used to doing things the new way yet. Give it time.

As a general rule, scenarios like this are only made available after the convention. I would expect it to become available next week.

I got hold of Sam by phone today, so you can disregard this. She took care of everything for me in about 3 or 4 minutes. *all the thumbs up*

Orders 7942150 and 7962269 are pending and need to be merged so they will ship when everything is ready. Once they've been properly merged I can update the payment method so they're ready to go when everything is in stock. Thanks in advance!

The order in question is 7942150.

My latest order should have activated 4 subscriptions (it even says it did, and three are showing next to my name here), but I am missing the Pathfinder Accessories sub in my account. (As such I can't turn on the Pathfinder Society Scenarios free sub.) The products were listed in the pending order (Screen, Char Pack, Combat Pad, Cond Deck) so that should be fine...I hope. I just need my account to actually reflect that I have a Pathfinder Accessories sub.

Additionally, in spite of the fact that I selected the Lost Omens World Guide as my starting product, the system is telling me that I will be shipped the final P1 Campaign volume. Please adjust this so that I don't receive anything until the Lost Omens World Guide.

Thanks for your time.

What we've done (Talen and I on Fantasy Grounds) is run SFS games and then run the AP with a different set of characters so people can just do as they please with their SFS character while waiting on their AP character to finish off the three sessions.

And Cathulhu, as for the "yeah but all you need is one shot" thing, that's fine. The fact is that you suggested you could fire more than once. That's not the case.

I was just pointing out that there's a built-in response to being sniped at. (Ray of Light, pg 107 if you care.)

If you want to get to the point of being able to determine where fire is coming from, I'd submit that a bunch of computer, science, and combat experts with access to powerful computers and cameras will PROBABLY be able to figure out where shots are coming from pretty quickly. I'd make them roll, but it's not going to be even remotely close to impossible. The time it takes gives the Solarian time to become fully attuned and then they fire off the Zenith Revelation. Instant melee range, even if they've retreated a bit from where you land. (Stellar Rush as a standard action.)

Now, if the GM is designing enemies that not only snipe from a thousand feet away but also do a one-sided clean up in melee against the strongest melee class in the game, well that sounds more like an issue of managing expectations. I can make NPCs that the PCs can't kill, uh, because...I just choose not to.

Personally I think this is unlikely to be as usual a counter as those using spells (Dimension Door at 10th, Teleport at 13th, or Shadow Walk at 16th, which all allow passengers) except at very high levels (17+, as Solar Acceleration is pretty much too good to pass up at 9th) but it's notable because you can just do it on round 3 (which is plenty of time to make checks to determine sniper position) and arrive fully powered up...and at 17th+, with a friend in tow—so even if the GM is fudging a little, the odds are tilted by that much.

Sniping is really good, but it's not without counters outside of sniper rifles—particularly once characters hit mid-level and can rapidly move to mitigate a sniper's line of fire, or to engage them.

The scanning rules work well as far as I can tell. My players (who vary, as I run public Society games on Fantasy Grounds) tend to go for the scans immediately and switch to balancing shields later on as damage begins to fly. Once they have hull and shields I (semi) openly mark that on the same reference sheet as they use to track their own ship info.

The hand wave appears to be kind of like a lot of the other ones. Things work the way you want them to. (Drone flight is an example. It just kind of works through whatever method. Firing certain weapons in unusual environments as well...they just work.)

I personally explain it as the suits having basic repair tech which deals with suit integrity.

Yeah, and Technomancers who don't pick Magic Missile are dummies.

Every class has things which are awesome, things which are meh, and things which are highly useless except in very specific cases which will only come up in certain campaigns. (Which means your character will probably know they need those weird things by the time they have access.)

I don't see that as being some huge detraction from a given class.

Even as written, sniping with a sniper rifle is mechanically strong, if somewhat unrealistic. People just can't respond at those ranges unless they themselves carry sniper rifles.

Solarians.

"Oh, that Book Depository window...yeah, I go there. Instantly." ;)

Snipers can only be fired once a round, period. Like all other unwieldy weapons they can never benefit from any method of gaining multiple attacks. No full attacks. (Or triple/quad...) No haste effects.

Unwieldy weapons are very good at one thing. Hitting hard once per round.

Three sessions. One per part.

We run from 3:30 to 8:30, and only the last one was close to time, so I'd imagine 12 hours on average if you don;t go haring off in a weird direction.

A character which has sleight of hand and stealth and which does not have their weapon drawn at almost all times?

Ok, fine, so if you get ambushed you don't get trick attack...then again, you have perception so hopefully get an action to draw your weapon while making a move for cover in the surprise round...

But honestly, if there is going to be danger, you have your weapon drawn. If there's even a whiff of trouble in a situation where it's inappropriate to be armed, you have the skills to have your weapon drawn and concealed.

If you're not playing your operative as paranoid and ready to go off at a moment's notice, you might want to reconsider your choice of class. ;)

***

The rules say no. I run SFS, so I have to say no, but I'm also inclined to just say no anyway because it's pretty simple for operatives to work around these things. They use small arms, which are very much something you can conceal if you feel things are about to go badly. In any instance where you're in a true ambush, you should be able to get a single action (to move and draw a weapon), and in those very rare cases where you just flat out don't have your weapon out, you can still do a single attack after moving and only be missing out on your TA damage for a single round...

***

As an aside, your full speed while prone is 5' because the only move you can make is a crawl. I can see how you could interpret the rule differently, but I hope you can see how it's possible to also interpret the rules as limiting prone movement to a crawl.

I think that you may have passed into a weird space and might want to step back. You appear to be making things much more complicated than they need to be.

Bad is deliberately in quotes to indicate that it is a subjective assessment that some people could make to describe certain stat placement. Trick Attack working with skills with non-Dex attributes is a mechanical helping hand to all of those players who have an idea for their character which is not represented by the traditional key stat. (Which is usually seen as fairly important, if not the absolute most important...)

In short, we agree that characters being able to reflect the preferences of their players without being utter passed by (as would be the case were Trick Attack not usable with such a wide variety of skills) is important.

So I think the reason there are more than one check you can use is both flavor and the developers not wanting to pigeonhole anyone. From a power point of view having any stat higher than Dex seems less then stellar. I know there are people out there who are going to have OP with Max str, wis, int, chr and for those snowflakes they will still get to use trick attack well as anyone thanks to the options .

This right here is pretty much it. If you want to run an Operative which relies on a "non-optimal stat" (i.e. they are not a Dex monster) you can still have one which does the job with their Trick Attack. You can play a role which is "bad" mechanically and not totally screw up your combat ability.

Yes, if you are a "min-max, DPR, the party is relying on me to be perfect" type of player, it ONLY makes sense to take Ghost. But you are not the only person who plays RPGs. Your view is not the only one which matters.

For the same reason that people will play melee-specialized Vesk mystics of the god of strife, people will play Operatives that have extra high Charisma stats...and THOSE Operatives may very well take SPY, even though it's not mechanically as good. But they will still be able to do their jobs, because the designers actually bothered to give the Operative options.

Again, it's obvious that you can, with rolled stats, have whatever.

Hell, if your GM lets you, you can just have all 26s.

Point buy, however, is the ONLY legal method for playing Starfinder in Organized Play and—since a lot of people started gaming after rolling stats was the norm—it's the preferred method for the majority of tables. As such you will see a large number of people talking about point buy characters.

Even those of us who DO allow rolling. Because obviously if someone says x is impossible, it's not going to have anything to do with rolls.

Matches wrote:

Corwynn Maelstrom wrote:

Math. That's 1 more point than a human can have even if they take 10s in all four other stats.

Am I missing something that says you don't roll ability scores anymore?

It's the same place that says you don't wear bell bottoms anymore.

I can't think of any reason for the question in regards to rolled stats. You can start with six scores of 18. The only reason you would need to know if specific scores are possible is in reference to the point buy rules.

But if you are talking about rolling, I suppose that the answer is: because they didn't roll that high...

Math. That's 1 more point than a human can have even if they take 10s in all four other stats.

We have a Ysoki Operative in the group with something like a +13 to Stealth, and in our first session, when trying to trick attack a CR 1/2, he rolled 5 or less on his d20 FOUR TIMES IN A ROW. We were all breaking out in laughter by that point.

I missed all my checks at +18 against the final encounter in AP1. It can happen. (I also missed like crazy...)

Nothing in the overcharge text or explode property indicates that a heavy weapon would be eliminated from the benefits of an Engineer's various boosts. Supercharge Weapon will work with half value as well.

Benefit being the use of an AOE attack which is pretty much impossible to miss (targets AC5) that does a fairly massive amount of damage.

Shock casters and plasma cannons are viable for this build if you sub in heavy weapons proficiency and heavy weapons specialization at 7. You lose out on a single armor slot and improved initiative and gain a 4 to 40+ square AOE attack option.

Level 20 Plasma Cannon is 8d10 and affects 12 squares. That's 44 base average damage. Pretty much as soon as you drop a shot on 2+ targets without evasion you're ahead of the game.

Shock caster is 7d12. That 45.5 base average damage. It's going to be pretty easy to find two targets within 42 squares...

I'm not saying this is what it's best to go with. I'm just saying that it's an amusing alternative.

(Oh, as a bonus, take deadly aim. You're not missing anyway. Even at extreme ranges 5ac is incredibly easy to hit.)

Well, if you don't care about doing things out of combat it does nothing, anyway. :)

Level 4 character here (my other is level 3), as of tomorrow I will have run all content but Into the Unknown as a GM (have played the quests, but have not played the special)... am picking up 3 more (1-02/03/04) this weekend. (Will put me at having run 00, 01, 02x2, 03x2, 04x2 = 8 tables plus the AP, which can't be reported.) Not as many as you have run, but a fair number. I'm missing one piece of content as GM and one as a player.)

Ditch the evergreens and there are 7 weeks of dead space (har har) in there.

It's not the end of the world. I still wish that we had more scenarios. I think it would have been nice to have had 3 scenarios scheduled every 2 months and the changes to the APs. That would have been the right balance IMO.

I do not really want to do the AP again. I may feel differently in January, but for now (having finished it last week) I'm not keen on playing or running it. It was OK, but not OK enough to want to repeat it.

I'm eventually going to run Into the Unknown (I would have at the con, but multiple other GMs decided to), and I think I might be OK with running it again given I was OK with how it played. The evergreen scenario is OK. It makes me laugh because of the "oops" factor inherent in one of the sections.

And, finally, the content gets thinner the further out we get. The more the evergreens need to be repeated...which they do, shortly after your timeline stops. We'll see if we get more content as the season goes on, or if we're going to have more "dead space" to deal with...

(Note that the changes to the APs are, pricing and length issues aside, excellent. Being able to run every AP all the way through and do it in event or campaign mode is great. Probably the single best move they made with Organized Play in Starfinder.)

I see the exploit you're referencing now. In any case, Trick Attack is one of those things that will rarely fail with an Operative who is paying attention to their setup. Even if you don't take the exploit you're not going to have too difficult a time making your checks.

My point is that the BUILD IN QUESTION uses the mk2 to augment CON. I am saying that perhaps there is a better augment priority?

Full attacking is not worth doing if you narrow your window of possibility to hit to too great of an extent. Improving your full attack penalties is a good thing, as such. I certainly would not say there is "almost never" a time when you would not full attack.

Taking 10 on an in combat check? If you have a *really* lenient GM who hates the mechanic... can't take 10 if you're under pressure. Combat is generally stressful. Trick Attack is meant to be rolled.

Curious about the personal augment choices. Anyone else feel like CON is less than amazingly important? Feels like DEX/INT are better for mk2/mk1...

Feat selection doesn't work correctly as Quick Draw requires a BAB of +1.

Considering that there's a truly massive number of charges in a battery, the standard lines and notes field are going to be far better at tracking for, say, soldiers, than the old type of section which was mainly used for tracking the lower numbers present in Pathfinder.

A character who is running around with a variety of weapons (which, given the setting isn't entirely without merit) could potentially be tracking multiple weapons totaling hundreds of charges/ammo combined, not to mention the extra batteries/magazines they may be hauling around for their next reenactment of Rambo. Contrast with Pathfinder where mainly you were tracking 25 charge wands.

YMMV, but I'd prefer to track things inline (e.g. a weapon line might read "Laser pistol (azimuth) 17/20" after expending 3 shots in a scenario) rather than using tickboxes. (Of course, I'm personally REALLY fond of hash marks for tracking pretty much any reasonable quantity anyway.)

For our Starfinder Society games on Fantasy Grounds, GM Talwynor and I repurposed the Pathfinder Society Inventory Tracking Sheet. It's got a new logo, a bit of a different (slightly more "modern") font treatment, the elimination of charged items from tracking, and an additional notes field wherein anything interesting and relevant to the character's gear can be easily recorded. (And, of course, it is a form-fillable PDF.)

As characters begin to level up after 1st, this tracking becomes more relevant to our brave SFS pioneers. (My own Professor Zoom will be level 2 after Tuesday, so I needed to nail down his starting equipment!) I figured there's no sense in NOT sharing the work.

Please feel free to download the inventory tracker and pass it around. The sheet is available at the following shortlink:

fbt.li/sfsinvtracker

I feel like a bit of a dummy, but with the forums being so text-centric, it was not immediately obvious that the first line of the post was a download link.

The Core Rulebook specifies what can be added on without re-buying the item, so you have those rules available at least. (Fusions and whatever the portable fusions are called.)