Dan of Hats's page

While flicking through the Armoury book looking for some potential fun toys for my current character (Osharo Akashic Mystic), I spotted the Shield Projector and got pretty exciteded - a perfect weapon for my support-heavy caster! Sadly after doing a bit of reading up on them, they appear to be far removed from the image I had in mind of them, but now I have an itch that nothing in the books can scratch. So, I figured I'd try to brainstorm a fun but reasonable suggestion to pitch to my GM as an alternative.

So, first things first, needing an attack roll (which seems to be the consensus on how they function) to give your allies a buff is harsh, but I appreciate why they didn't want it to be an automatic success. My thought is to make it essentially a 5ft "blast", targeting a square rather than a specific individual which you target much as you do for other area effect weapons. That means you still need to make a roll to hit, but it's going to be far less punishing that trying to hit your heavily-armoured fellow adventurer when the whole point you took a Shield Projector is because you can't hit anything for toffee.

This also opens the door to make the Shield Projector much more of a utility tool. It states that it doesn't hinder the actions or movements of anyone the Shield effects, but what if it counted as difficult terrain for anyone trying to enter from an adjacent square into it, potentially slowing an opponent down a little? Or better yet, acting as a 5ft cube obstacle that requires it to be destroyed before it can be passed, meaning you could bottleneck enemies or deny certain squares unless the GM is willing to bust it, which is one less attack coming in at you and your allies? It might require a little coordination with your allies to ensure you don't wind up hindering each other, but I think it would make the Shield Projector more interesting to use in combat without being overpowered. Any thoughts, critique or suggestions on what other people have done to try and spice up Shield Projectors?

I've been playing a single-class Solarian for coming up 8 levels now, went for Solar Weapon and Heavy Armour, and have focused on Photon powers. My latest purchase was a suit of Pinion Skyfire Armour and a Mobility Enhancer Mk3 upgrade to mitigate the movement penalty, but it got me thinking what the natural end-state of my armour would be. I don't intend to go into Power Armour, and my Dexterity is going to cap at 20, so Vesk Monolith Mk3 is almost certainly what I'm going to be aiming for, but with seven upgrade slots, what should I put in it? My thoughts so far have been;

Deflective Reinforcement - IL 7: DR 5/- isn't a whole lot, but the cybernetic skin option caps at DR 7/- and I already intend to take the Biotech option that provides Resistance for Acid (covering one of the energy types I'm otherwise lacking), so right now I don't see a lot of reason to remove it. Five less kinetic damage is five less kinetic damage after all.

Electrostatic Shield Mk3 - IL 12: Electrical Resistance 15 is pretty worthwhile by itself, but the little jolt of Electrical damage is a nice benefit, especially since I'd technically be getting +4 to it by level 20 due to Photon Attunement in almost every situation. Combined with the Corona Stellar Revelation providing Cold Resistance 20 and 4D6(+4) Fire damage, it'll give anyone hitting me a nasty sting.

Life Shield - IL 14: From what I've seen, a lot of level drain stuff is up close or touch based, so being in close combat a lot, this seemed like a good idea. Bonus points for feeling pretty thematic for a Sun-worshipping crusader.

Magic Resistor Mk3 - IL 17: This is the one I pondered over the most I think. It's two slots for Spell Resistance equal to Level [20 for this assumption] + CHA [capping at 6 with my current build, which is fine since that's the maximum it allows anyway] + 2, for a total of 28. The MK4 version isn't really worth it since I'd only end up at 29 for a lot more money. The problem is since I've never really used SR before or seen it used, I'm not sure how worth it having a score of 28 is at that high a level over, say, a force field.

Mobility Enhancer Mk3 - IL 3: Keeps me from slowing down the party and getting into combat that little bit quicker

Phase Shield - IL 6: The +1 EAC will bring it equal to my KAC, both reaching 42 [Base 10, Dex +5, Armour 26/27 respectively, +1 to EAC]. It has limited usage, but most combats rarely seem to go much longer than a few rounds anyway, and that extra point can mean the difference between escaping death or taking a ton of damage at higher levels.

That's my current goals - quite a few lower IL upgrades, but ones I really feel work with my role as party tank and melee specialist. With Feats like Enhanced Resistance: Fire, Step Up and Step Up And Strike, I'm hoping to make myself as big a pain as possible to disengage from so they're forced to focus on me.

My question now is, am I missing anything? Since the Armoury book came out with a new Stellar Revelation that gives you a 25 HP shield with Fast Heal 4/6, I'm not sure if going for Force Field over the Spell Resistance is worth it. Is Life Shield too situational to be worth a slot? Let me know if I'm making any obvious errors here.

OK, so I've been playing Starfinder for a few months now, and been enjoying it thoroughly - the group has a good dynamic, none of us are really feeling out of place or useless (even our Kasatha Ghost Operative Outlaw, who has a less than 50% average for actually hitting her targets in combat and takes it in good humour), and we're a few hundred XP from reaching 6th level. This prompted me to go back to looking over my Theme (I'm a Half-Elf Solarian Priest), which in turn got me thinking about future levels, and specifically about the nature of the Summon Creature spell.

Y'see, I've been playing a Knight of Sarenrae, which is basically a Solarian picking all Photon, all the time. I didn't even put Black Hole down on my character sheet, or how Graviton Attunement works. This is purely for character and flavour, just to nip any arguments in the bud there. Now I still wanted some stuff to reflect that this guy is pretty spiritual and favoured by Sarenrae (so glad they added a Feat for that in Pact Worlds), so I set my stat spread so that he'd hit WIS 15 by 5th level, meaning I could pick up Connection Inkling. Detect Affliction and Stabilise are my Cantrips, Mystic Cure is my Level 1 spell; we've got no dedicated healer in the group, so it's nice to have even a little HP boost. Nothing too out of the ordinary so far.

Now by 12th Level, the Priest Theme gives me access to another 1st Level Mystic spell, once per day. None of the other spells really leap out at me, and taking Mystic Cure again effectively just gives me one more use per day. Looking through the other books, I started reading up on Summon Creature spell, which would let me summon a single CR 1/3 Tiny Angel (amongst other things). By 12th Level, that's not the biggest deal ever - its application in combat is minimal, and short of using it as a trap tripper or recreating Pokemon battles (neither of which I feel my character would support) it doesn't seem terribly functional. But it did make me think of potential applications out of combat, namely the fact that it could possibly be a means of contact with Sarenrae (or any relevant deity for those also capable of summoning).

So communication in Starfinder is slow, comparative to many similar sci-fi settings, and intentionally so. However, the core rulebook mentions that some organisations use supernatural means of communication, such as summoning angels or devils to convey messages. Typically I'd envisioned that as some form of Planar Binding, but I'm curious whether people think it would be plausible to attempt a similar feat with Summon Creature. If so, it'd make the spell useful as a means, once per day, to reach out to my Goddess, either conveying news or warning if something majorly bad transpires. Nothing in the power says that creatures you summon, once returning to their own Plane, can't act on any instructions you might have given them, though certainly they would not be under the compulsion of your spell to do so.

In the case of the Level 1 version of the spell, there's certainly some issues - provided you can summon a creature from the desired Plane (in this case, an Angel), it still has a -3 INT, meaning complex instructions or details will likely pass it by. Even then, such an entity could still convey that bad juju is going down and maybe Sarenrae would like to send a few of her hench-Angels along to find out what's going down? There's also an argument that a low-tier Angelic being might struggle overcoming any form of hierarchy to ensure it reached an entity that could act on the conveyed information. This might be less of an impact for more Chaotic Gods, although equally trying to find any of those might prove more troublesome.

The main advantage is that, as a priest of their governing deity, I expect most Angels (especially low level ones) would consider a Level 12 Player Character to be a big enough deal to take seriously and try to help out however they can. Even if they can't reach Sarenrae herself, they might well be able to communicate to a suitably important Angel who in turn could send a vision to/manifest before an important member of the Church, thus conveying the intended message far quicker than conventional technology in the setting could accomplish.

What do you guys think? Do you think it could be used as a means of sending messages to the Plane of your chosen deity, and if so do you feel it would be a decent spell to take for that purpose, even as a once per day freebie?