D'Panthra's page

Hopefully, this week is when they announce the acceptance and integration of the Platyparians, with information about us in an upcoming publication!

I suspect Pharasma watched your party with great interest.

So last night, cinder rifles (From Fire Starters, Dawn of Flame Book 1, AP 13) unsurprisingly came up as a topic of discussion. Specifically the fact that Cinder Rifles are One-Handed Longarms. This of course opens up some interesting options when you factor in weapon specialization and they now become comparable to small arms for the purpose of free-hand utilization.

Some direct comparisons:
I am using base damage and damage type as the point of comparison to keep it as close to apples to apples as possible.

The base model cinder rifle is a 1d8 projectile longarm, the closest comparison in the CRB is the Hunting Rifle.

Hunting Rifle:
Lvl 1, 240 cr, 1d8 P, 90 ft, no crit, 6 rounds, 1 use, 1 bulk, analog

Truth-Sequence Cinder Rifle
Lvl 2, 700 cr, 1d8 P, 60 ft, Burn 1d4, 10 rounds, 1 use, 2 bulk, no special

So in this case, the two-handed rifle is one level lower, costs 66% less, shoots 50% farther, has the same base damage, holds 40% less ammo and has half the weight.

Comparitively, the one-handed rifle is one level higher, costs 190% more, has 33% less range, has the same base damage, holds 67% more ammo and weights twice as much.

The differences appear to be on a reasonable scale at this level, so the question in my mind becomes, how much of an advantage, if any, is there to wielding a longarm with one hand?

A couple of things stand out to me.
The most obvious being the ability to threaten a square with a melee weapon while wielding and firing a longarm rather than a small arm. This doesn't mean you maintain a position in melee, but you can reduce safe paths of travel for NPCs if you stay at ranged. You can also have a longarm at the ready if you do melee, but the NPC retreats. No move action to draw and free action to drop your melee weapon, just so that you can fire at it.

The second thing that comes to mind is grappling/pinning. Between NPCs that grab and PCs that specialize in grappling (yes, the vocal majority on the forums seems to think this is difficult, but that is not what I have observed in 94 tables of GMing) this can change things. The grappler/pinner does not gain the grappled/pinned condition and only requires one hand. When you grapple/pin somebody, your opponent has the grappled/pinned condition until the end of your next turn unless they reverse or break the grapple/pin. This means that they are still grappled/pinned when you start and act on your next turn. You can do this with a longarm in hand that you can fire directly at them. They can't take an AoO on you, they take minuses against your whole party for that round and now you get a sweet shot at them. If they are flanked, you can full round them with a -4 to their AC vs your -4 to attacks, not accounting for any possible harrying fire, get 'em, wisp apply are anything else that might make this even easier.

What are your thoughts on one-handed longarms?

Particle Dispersion Physicist specializing in entropic acceleration.

That’s probably going to be my profession as a Witchwarper.

There’s a void in my daughter and my routine on Wednesday nights now. She gets out of gymnastics 10 minutes before the show. We’d head over to Culver’s and grab a bite to eat. I’d unpack my laptop and we’d share earbuds between us and listen while we ate dinner together. Afterward we’d head home and put Pungeon Crawl on the TV in the living room to relax and listen to after she got ready for bed.

Our daddy-daughter Starfinder Wednesdays are now something of a void. So we’re spending the time talking about the good times on the show.

With season 2 of Pungeon Crawl ending as well, Wednesday just isn’t the same.

Fun facts about Platyparians:

- We have venom spurs on our webbed feet.
- We have relatively poor hearing and sight. In fact, we can actually seal off our eyes, ears and nostrils with folds of skin. This allows us to focus on electrical impulses and mechanical waves around us to hunt. We use our bill for this.
- Though we are mammals, we are unique in the fact that we lay eggs, rather than live birth.
- We walk on our knuckles, rather than the bottoms of our feet. We aren’t exactly known for our dexterity. In fact, walking takes about twice as much energy as swimming for this reason.
- Even though we don’t have teats, we do produce milk with some very powerful antibacterial and antiviral by essentially secreting it out through special patches of our skin, much like sweating.
- We don’t have a stomach. We don’t need a stomach.
- We scoop up food and gravel in our mouth, store them in cheek pouches and then eat later by using the gravel to grind our food up with our bill. Like improvised dentures!
- We use nails in our webbing to help us run as well as to burrow.
- Our females seal themselves in a chamber of the burrow to lay eggs. They stay there, sealed off with the newborn eggs until they hatch, about 10 days later.
- We can’t hold our breath very long
- We have a very high constitution and are incredibly cute!

As a Platyparian Witchwarper of high repute, I can assure you that these are not the Platyparians you are looking for. We are a benevolent and altruistic species not given to conspiracies and treachery.

If we see both Platyparian and Otterfolk as playable races I will fully embrace the need for an unofficial ambassador to liaise between the aquatic mammalian species. I can see Profession (Aquatic Mammilian Liaisons [CHA]) on my character sheet.

“Hey team! Sorry I’m late. The Platyparian/Otterfolk Weaponized Engagements Reduction Council (That’s POWER Council for short) got a little heated when one of the Platyparian delegates accidentally spilled a glass of sweat milk, drenching a nearby Otterfolk delegate’s raw fish fillet. Things got pretty tense and negotiations over the use of venom spurs in the Puddles district for food procurement should constitute discharging a weapon in public. Anyway, we still haven’t resolved the issue, but we’ve agreed to table the topic until after this mission.

Oh hi, Fitch?! How are the kids? I brought some sweat milk and donuts leftover from the meeting for them.”

You may see one or more of the things mentioned in this thread sooner than you think...

In eager anticipation of potential Platyparians (and Otterfolk), I have tentatively suspended use of my #IDemandPlatyparians username as well as created my -710, named in honor of Dan.

Allow me to reintroduce myself. I am D'Panthra; Witchwarper Platyparian, hopeful Second Seeker, champion of Platyparian admission into the Starfinder Society, friend of Otterfolk, champion of their inclusion as well.

*begins sweating a white liquid and collects it into a sport bottle*

May I offer you some milk? It's delicious and helpful for fighting off disease.