David Ignaszak's page

Thurston Hillman has been testing the first 2e iteration of The Perplexity Trials, so we'll need a version of the glyph system at some point to support them.

But as to how and when to implement them... I can understand why people on the administrative side would like to change the way the system is implemented, when I try to think of ways to alter the system myself most options that come to mind seem worse than the existing one. Staggering the evaluations and glyph scenario requirements across the tiers seems more likely to turn casual GMs off. Gamifying the process feels like it could increase the burn-out they're worried about!

On a personal note, I do feel like the lack of GM incentives is starting to feel noticeable, at least when I compare GMing PF2 to SF2. I do feel excited to work towards my 3rd glyph and to accumulate ACP toward an expensive character concept. With SF2... I see an accumulating pile of GM Babies and a pile of ACP I have nothing to spend it on. It's kind of disheartening, honestly. So I'd encourage the Starfinder OP team to move quickly.

I would assume that it would increase the bulk of the creature since it changes you from flesh (various relatively non-dense materials) to solid stone (relatively high density)

Since only tiny PCs are relevant here, the question is wether petrification increases mass enough to increase bulk. By the time we're dealing with skittermander statues, sure, but is a petrified sprite two bulk? Depends on the rock and how much gear the sprite was petrified with.

I don't see anything that would indicate the soldier loses their strength bonus. Everything I see indicates you should use your normal melee damage.

I would welcome a sequel to Iron Gods, Lost Omens: Numeria, or a planet hopping adventure path about the pre-gap Golarion System. SF2e is still in its infancy, though, so I think we need to wait for a few books beyond Tech Core before full blown crossovers are planned.

The few surviving Androffan Androids on Golarion in 4725 AR are very different from the androids of 325 AG. Most of the starfinder heritages are completely inappropriate (Only Renowned Android kind of works) and many of the feats represent technological breakthroughs that won't be made until Androids are reverse engineered during the gap.

Indeed. If anyone who feels the same hasn't already, please check out HMM's plea for more sanctioned Starfinder Society content!

The Paizo website is a dinosaur from a bygone era of the web* that's been tinkered with many times over the years to try and do a lot of different things. But the old dinosaur is being put out to pasture soon with a new store rolling out any day now.

*I say this with some degree of affectionate nostalgia since I still recognize things I saw two decades ago when Dragon and Dungeon were cancelled.

AceofMoxen wrote:

The guide claims this is the 'Final' Runelords story. Let's check back in five years.

Remember that (unless something happens to her in this AP), Belimarius is still alive and kicking and unreformed . . . and while she was one of the weaker Runelords, seeing the success of a reformed Sorshen would give a great amount of ENVY -- just what she needs to power her up. And Belimarius didn't survive this long by being stupid, even if a significant amount of luck was involved -- expect her to engage in not an outright attack, but clandestine asymmetric warfare.

Everyone in Xin-Edasseril spent 10,000 years reliving the same week over and over precisely because Belimarius is an idiot who trusted Karzoug's instructions on how to build a runewell and failed to spot his sabotage.

They seem to have some differences but dragon blooded vs Iruxi ancestry feats also look pretty similar too.

If you're only looking at the traits and dice

-The Claws from Draconic Aspect are only as good as your base claws. Iruxi armaments gives your claws an increased damage die size and Versatile P
-Draconic Aspect's Jaws are a lower die size but have the forceful trait. Iruxi armaments comes out ahead in my opinion.
-The tail attack from Draconic aspect has one extra trait (and a good one at that) compared to Iruxi Armaments.

However, Iruxi Armaments leads to 3 different feats that offer ways to use your new appendage, while Draconic Aspect has a follow up feat that gives your unarmed attack deadly d8. Lost Omens: Draconic Codex will add more Dragonblood feats when it comes out in early November, and its possible there might be more feats that follow up on Draconic Aspect.

One other thing to note is Draconic Aspect can only be taken at 1st level and can't be retrained, but Iruxi aspect allows you to take it at later levels, so you might be able to take both if you want, and a lenient GM might allow you to apply one of the iruxi feats that modify a natural attack to your Draconic Aspect if applicable (E.G. Take Draconic Aspect for a tail at level 1, use ancestral paragon to take Iruxi Aspect for claws at level 3, then take Shed Tail at level 5). But that's an edge case you should definitely ask your GM about. I don't consider it overpowered, but it is an exploit.

LeJerque wrote:

This is the first adventure where the absence of a Player's Guide really does feel conspicuous, given the advice for GMs up front. The introduction contains a lot of useful information, but it's all laid out in a way that I really don't want to share with my players. Tips like ** spoiler omitted ** more or less spell out the main story beats, don't you think?

So you are saying you would prefer a more traditional player's guide than this approach?

Very much so! I went so far as to put a huide of my own in the style of your guides when we ran Mask of the Grey Death in my OP group. They are quite helpful!

David Ignaszak wrote:

Jim Butler wrote:

Moon_Goddess wrote:

So what happens to preorders we've already made, I ordered Starfinder Alien Core retailer cover back in May, Subscriptions don't have the option for the retailer cover, so that isn't an option there.

Also have Monster Match out there preordered,

Preorders will not be carried over to the new store, so you'll need to preorder on the new store after it launches.

-Jim

I don't know the pre-order process well, and I'd like to make sure I get this right when I share this news with other communities. Will pre-orders that are canceled will be refunded, or does the system not charge pre-orders until the product ships?

We don't charge for preorders until the product ships, so you won't have to worry about any refunds or prepayment issues.

-Jim

Thank you. This should let me explain to others what they need to do if they have outstanding preorders. I appreciate the quik response!

I really don't understand what timber sentinel is power creeping. Power creep is when an older option is rendered obsolete by a newer option which is stronger.

Timber sentinel being a stronger guardian tree isn't power creep, because nobody in their right mind is going to take a kineticist dedication just for timber sentinel because it's stronger protector tree.

Same with numbing tonic. What's that completely replacing?

As yuriP said. Something being above baseline =/= power creep. There's above baseline options in the legacy PHB.

I don't know about numbing tonic, but multiclass kineticist for Timber Sentinel is very much a thing. The main reason it isn't widespread is because outside of games where you control an entire party (e.g. Dawnsbury Days), it's *boring*.

No. Critical Hits are exclusive to Strikes. Critical Successes of other forms are not critical hits (pg. 275 of the Player Core).

I'm not sure I consider a flying PC ferrying party members across a gorge game breaking, to be honest. Given PFS scenarios are by necessity somewhat on rails, the party skipping an obstacle that represented at most 5 minutes of gameplay isn't a big deal. And if a scenario hinges on the PCs taking a long time in game or out of game to cross a gap, I'd just tell the Dragonkin's player that this was an old module written without knowledge that there would be large flying PCs who could bypass a huge portion of the module if they carried people across, and ask them how they want me to invent a reason they can't/won't do that

One issue Contemplatives, Dragonkin, and Skittermanders (of the scrabbler heritage) do introduce is the ability to stay indefinitely out of reach of a melee only enemy while still maintaining use of a set of arms with witch to use ranged weapons, but unless the entire party can do that, most combats will be fine.

You can't normally act as a mount for a fellow PC unless they're two sizes smaller than you (Most Dragonkin are large). There is a 5th level feat that lets them have a rider one size smaller than them, but unless you take a specific heritage you can only do that for a single PFS character you designated at character creation. Outside of combat, It's up to the GM whether you can carry someone in a non-mounted fashion, but there's no rule against Dragonkin and Contemplatives flying while encumbered, so I can see some players arguing that if they can carry a dead body of a PC, they should be able to carry a living one as well

The chapter on system compatibility in the SF2 GM Core does say GMs can mkve ancestral flight and climb speeds to feats in home games, though, as well as potentially making feats tied to special senses higher level.

So ultimately it's down to GM discretion outside of PFS.

So, 7-09 and 7-10, the first of these scaled back adventures, were just revealed on the store page, and both are $5.99, in line with Stsrfinder 2e scenarios and the series 2 quests. So some concerns about shrinkflation are mitigated at least.

Since the GM Incentive Program was eliminated for SF2, would it be possible to either:

1. Give credit for SF2 tables towards the SF1 Novas, the way that SF2 Playtest tables counted, so we can continue working on our Novas while running the new content players want.

OR

2. Give credit for the SF2 tables towards the PF2 Glyphs, since the rules of the systems are the same and both reflect essentially an understanding and equal effort towards that same rule set.

It would be nice if running games for SFS2 actually counted towards something, instead of, you know, telling us that running the SFS2 content isn't worth anything.

It wasn't eliminated (You're still getting double ACP, after all). But as for Novas/Stars/Glyphs, they've been clear from the first anouncement they hope to bring a recognition system back in the future. But they're not happy with it's past implementations, so they haven't established it yet while options to change it are considered.

1) Should SF2 classes becompared to PF2 classes? When it comes to the basic math, yes, because creature design uses the same numbers. If a class is failing to meet previously established benchmarks, it needs to make up for that elsewhere.

As for why I picked Fighter, Barbarian, and Guardian? I did so because their core class features largely don't do things besides fight. Rangers can get pets and hunt prey has out of combat utility, Champions can get a heal, rogues are skill monkeys, etc. The Base solarion also does nothing but hit things, so I compared like to like.

I don't factor class feats into this analysis because they should be of equal value given that archetypes exist, so a fighter feat should be worth as much to a fighter as a solarion feat of the same level is to a solarion, or an operative feat of the same level to an operative. In practice that's not entirely true, and some classes like Psychic and Wizard have notriously poor feats, but a class having most of its power in its feats is dangerous given multiclass archetypes exist.

I also don't think Solarion is intended to be weaker in melee than PF2 classes because if that were the case they'd mention as much in the compatibility chapter of GM Core. For that matter, the high end melee weapons in SF2 are actually somewhat above the curve (Boost on the Fangblade and Pain Glaive is amazing, and PF2 has never allowed the parry trait onto a d10 weapon, much less a d12, so the Doshko is also ahead of the curve). And my experiences with a whirling swipe soldier suggest they'd fit nicely into a Pathfinder 2e party, so the issue seems to specifically be with the Solarion.

Giving the solar weapon keyword soup isn't the answer. It won't adress the numbers issue, and would probably just lead to every solar weapon having reach.

Honestly I'd prefer if they just let Solarions choose any martial melee weapon they have access to as a solar weapon, and let them choose advanced weapons with a feat (Probably with the caveat that thr appearance of your solar weapon doesn't have to perfectly match your chosen weapon's stats. Let the Gnomish Flickmace Solar Weapon be an actual yo-yo of death, for example). Let a Vesk Solarion's Doshko solar weapon actually be a Doshko. That would save page space for more interesting attunement effects for the solar weapon.

Yeah, I wouldn't allow it to be an instant win, but I do think the GM should reward careful and clever use of a powerful spell. Although people could notice the spell being cast, and I'd expect the controlling player to have to work to sell the deception. I'd also expect word to start getting around if the parry keeps using the same trick, so you'd see enemies get wise to it if the caster got lazy.

Starfinder Player Core pg. 172

The wirchwarper feat Twisted Dark Zone inflicts the confused condition but lacks the incapacitation trait. Is this intentional? Its very unusual for an effect that inflicts such a powerful status effect to lack the trait, especially since the save seems to repeat every round. I'm not saying for certain this is too strong, but it definitely deserves a second look.

This mught be a bit rambly because I'm going to be working out my thoughts here, but the issue I see is that solar manifestations take up a lot of page space while not actually doing a lot. Let's use Guardian, Barbarian, and Fighter as points of comparison at 1st level. Aside from standard martial abilities like two good saves, proficiency with martial weapons, medium armor, and a 1st level class feat

-Guardian gets 2 extra HP, heavy armor, Reistance to damage, Shield block, two abilities to protect allies, and ever-ready to ensure those abilities are always available.
-Fighter gets expert in perception and weapons, heavy armor proficiency, reaxtivr strike. and shield block.
-Barbarian is expert in perception, gets Rage (A damage boost and source of temporary HP with a generally negligible drawback), and their subclass ability (increasing the damage further or providing a different benefit like an unarmed artack that's better than any one-handed weapon)

A Solarion gets one additional skill, is expert in perception, and gets their solar manifestations. What do they do? Well... not a lot individually

-Solar Weapon: A solar weapon is marginally better than a martial weapon one handed, but it's not great as an advanced weapon equivalent because they don't let you get damage boosts like deadly, fatal, or even just forceful. You can get the mediocre twin ability with a feat, but as someone playing a Red Mantis Assassin believe me when I say Twin very rarely goes off at low levels. Things die in one hit or you miss one of your attacks. The attunement abilities are... situational. Photon's damage bonus is very weak early on. While it reaches an exemplar's damage bonus by level 7 and keeps up afterwords, at the levels many people are playing SF2 at right now, it's a joke. Graviton is better, but situational- It's great for protecting your backline or bullying ranged enemies in combination with solar flare, but doesn't do anything visible if the enemy stays and fights you or if your party is the type to stay bogged down in a melee.

-Solar Flare: It's... an acceptable thrown weapon. One that doesn't take a hand and has an alternative critical effect, but that's it. You could carry around a javelin and a trident and get more or less the same effect.

-Solar Nimbus: A weird reactive strike. But the powerful ability to disrupt spells and reloading is replaced with a saving throw against a condition (which your critical specialization might just give the enemy anyway after 5th level if you made your solar weapon a spear).

That's a page and a half to be essentially a weaker fighter with a weird returning trident. Now, you can point to class feats to try and make up for this, but the thing is all martials get class feats, and Solarion's feats aren't really any better than other class's feats.

The class is still performing somewhat at low levels because Strenght Martials are arguably overpowered at the lowest levels where the extra damage they do allows them to kill enemies before they get a turn, but if you allow PF2 classes into Starfinder, or Vanguard returns and is in line with Fighter or Barbarian... Solarion's flaws are going to be very obvious.

I do feel like maybe they should have given you an extra class feat with cycle at the levels arraignments used to be at.

Squark wrote:

It also has some use with athletics maneuvers against weak enemies since it bypasses MAP.

If the enemies are weak, why are you extending their time on the board by not just killing them?

I should have elaborated instead of just mentioning ignoring MAP. I was specifically referring to using assurance on an atheltics action when you have maximum MAP. A 7th level Monk with maxed athletics could have a +18 bonus and get a 21 when they use assurance. That 21 will succeed against the expected Terrible save for a 7th level enemy, against a low save for a level 5 enemy (still high enough level to be a nuisance) and a moderate save for a level 3 (might show up as a summon or a support piece).

Does that make assurance (athletics) one of the best skill feats? No, of course not. But it's not uselss either.

It also has some use with athletics manuevers against weak enemies since it bypasses MAP.

Squark wrote:

Area Attack/Auto-Fire have the [Attack]Trait, so they increase your MAP even though you didn't make a strike. So your strike with Punishing Salvo is -5 (Because the primary target atrike didn't count).

oof. I didn't notice.

This opens a different can of worms. If I Strike with an automatic rifle and then Auto-Fire with it, does the MAP apply to the Auto-Fire DC? RAI, it should; RAW, it doesn't because they plainly forgot to update the wording from pathfinder and exclusively mention "checks" and never "DCs".

No, and there's no indication that it's unintended to since this has always been possible since the original soldier playtest teaser.

The devlopers definitely did not want to make fighter/rogue/cleric/wizard in space, and on the whole, I think they did a decent job of that.

As far as class difficulty goes, I feel Mystic, Operative, and Envoy are pretty straightforward, Solarion and Soldier are a bit more complex, and witchwarpers are challenging on par with witch or wizard. I do think it's helpful to think of soldier less like a fighter and more like the Guardian or Champion- You're not a primary damage dealer, you're a tank.

Yeah, Supercharge weapon and Shifting Surge are both hot garbage. Comparing those spells to the various spellstrike knock-offs is just sad. I'm not certain enough people looked at the spells during the playtest

As someone who runs a lot of PFS the change to remove stat blocks is a complete retrograde step. Making it more difficult to run PFS scenarios makes no sense. Making it harder for newer GMs to run games is rubbish. Claiming it is to save space on products which are only ever produced in PDF smacks of being an outright fabrication.

The issue is one of time spent editing stat blocks and trying to ensure formats are correct, as it's been explained to me.

That is correct. Characters do not receive a free lore skill in SFS 2e.

I think you're mixing up some numbers.
A) The earn income table on Lorespire for SFS is not the one you use for crafting. In Society play, you usually attempt to earn income using a task 2 levels lower than your level (It's possible boons to change this up may later become available like how faction boons can in Pathfinder Society). When crafting, you use your a job of your level to reduce the cost of the item even if it's a low level item. You also have 6-7 days to work at reducing the coat of said item, since it only takes 1-2 days before you get to make the check.

Let's use an example.

A 3rd level Mechanic in SFS who is an expert in crafting is deciding whether to buy 4 basic medpatches with cash they earn from earn income or craft them. They have a +4 Intelligence, so their bonus to crafting is +11.

If they use crafting to earn income, they attempt a level 1 task per PFS rules. Our Mechanic has a 5% chance to critically fail and earn 0 credits, a 10% chance to fail and earn 8 credits, a 50% to succed and earn 16 credits, and a 35% chance to critically succeed and earn 24 credits. A weighted average gives us 17.2 credits earned.

If our mechanic attempts to craft the medpatches, it conveniently has the same odds since they afe trying to craft a level 1 item. Let's assume they do not have the formula for medpatches because they are not sure they'll craft enough to justify the cost. So, if they succeed, they reduce the cost to complete the medpatches by 30 credits, and if they critically succeeds, they reduce the cost to complete them by 48 credits. If they fail, due to SFS rules they can't try again, but they can still use the remaining 6 days of downtime to earn income, averaging 12.9 credits. If they critically fail, they'll have to buy 1.5 credits worth of supplies per medpatch in the batch if they want to try again after the next adventure, but they can still use the last 6 days of downtime to try to earn income for that same 12.9 credits.

I got a chance to play Shipyard Sabotage, Disaster at Dreamlink Labs, and The Great Absalom Relay Race at GenConand heartily endorse all of them!

(This is not a subtle dig at the season 7 intro, I just couldn't get into any games of it at GenCon)

I believe there was a statement that tactical space combat will be the next playtest, but they didn't give an ETA.

Generic Chronicle Proposal wrote:

I have seen posts in the past from developers about the challenge of writing chronicles for Sanctioned Adventures. In order to create such a chronicle, the dev needed to:

◈ Read the adventure from beginning to end (a chore for Adventure Paths)!
◈ Find fun and unique equipment to list
◈ Come up with an enticing boon.

I just realized that there is one other thing that sanctioned chronicles include that likely required some Dev cognitive energy: summing up the adventure played on the chronicle.

For the record, I'm okay with also ditching that summary for longer sanctioned content in order to make generic chronicles easier and faster to produce. I want to make it as easy as possible for these sanctioning documents to happen.

Leaving that space blank for the GM to write their own summary seems like a great way to personalize these things, actually!

Put me down for this as well. My local lodge has begun a tradition of "Module Month," and I worry a lack of chronicles for longer adventures would make this difficult to port to SF2- If you want a concrete example, it's why I haven't proposed using Murder in Metal City as a launch event to give scenarios more time to be released for those who prefer "double features"

So jotunborn are freely available to every society player with the book, no boon necessary; yet so many other ancestries that are more common and have a decent presence in the world are still locked behind boons. I am confused why and also is that how things will be going forward for new ancestries.

There are 3 reasons, I suspect-

1) They didn't want to lock an Ancestry used by a pregenerated character behind 160 AcP.
2) The society's current mission of collecting warshards and keeping them out of the hands of those who want to use them for ill aligns with the reason the Jotunborn seems to have come to Golarion, so allying with the society is a natural fit.
3) The Jotunborn are at least in part an answer to the popularity of Goliaths in Dungeons and Dragons, so letting new players make Jotunborn characters makes it easier for people to port characters over

After rereading some of the Galaxy Guide recently, I am very excited about this one.

If the developers don't provide guidance on such an issue when writing the rules, like they've done in this case, they're leaving it up to you and your table. Be creative, but do be mindful of the tone of the adventure you're playing. A solar weapon shaped like a sword ia fine in most places. One shaped like a cane or parasol could work for a refined gentleperson. But one shaped like a giant foam finger is only appropriate in a suitably light hearted game.

99% of all deities were reprinted in the Divine Mysteries web enhancement, which you can download for free, so access isn't an issue there.

It says to make a strike, so you do all the usual strike things. If there was no damage involved, it would just ask for an attack roll. (see the commander and rogue's Reactive Interference feat for an example)

If I had to guess, Starfinder Orcs may be getting a reflavor and/or substantial new options in Galactic Ancestries. Their absence is... odd, to be sure.

Tactics that jump out to me for PFS use

-Strike hard! is straightforward, but I think it's particularly useful in PFS where scrolls of runic weapon and oils of potency are easily available.

-Gather to me! is excellent and should be in most commanders' folios

-Naval Training is not a tactic that you prepare every session, but when you need it, you need it. Aquatic scenarios are infamously deadly, after all.

-Passage of Lines is nice for fixing awkward positions that can happen due to initiative order. Notably, responding to Passage of Lines is a free action, unlike Gather to me!

-Pincer Attack is a very good way to make enemies off guard to your casters and ranged friends if you are fine in melee.

There are a couple of other tactics that might be worth considering depending on your build, as you can respond to one of your own tactics each round, so you cam get value out of them as long as one of your party members would also benefit (whereas if these manuevers aren't good for you, I'd hesitate to prepare them unless I had two allies who'd benefit)

-If you have a good athletics skill, Double team is an interesting alternative to Strike hard!

-Reload! and Shields up! are good if you use a reloading weapon or shield.

Hmm, one of the items released in the starfinder society scenarios might be what you're looking for, or at least a good stopgap.

Minor spoilers for one of the launch scenarios for Starfinder Society

It weighs 1 Bulk more than Full Plate, so there's the drawback. While that's minor, so is its advantage.

Best would be a wood heavy armor since the Reduction doesn't stack, but of course there are none. An argument could be made for trading 1 AC to get medium wood armor for its crit effect (and getting some Dex, maybe to throw?); a dubious trade for every other class, but trades in some of a Guardian's immense defense for a little bite.

ET fix term.

Guardians don't get armor specialization. You'd have to go out of your way to get it by taking archetypea that are largely redundant.

Laminar is so niche (I think there are two feats you can buold around breaking armor) that an additional Bulk almost feels excessive, frankly.

Bow and Shuriken, as it would answer a few questions for me.

That's what a shuriken drone is, no?

I wasn't aware the Animist was significantly more powerful than classic powerhouses like the cleric or sorcerer. If you want us to suggest adjustments, yoy should outline your complaints.

It really ought to be 1 trait, yeah. Or two-hand d12, like a bastard sword.

Reach as your only trait on a 1h weapon is solid, though. Ever since the flickmace nerf, there hasn't been a 1h d8 reach weapon.

We might see another fusion of classes like what happened with the Precog and Witchwarper. Alternatively, some of the 1e Pathfinder classes like Cavalier and Vigilante became archetypes in 2e (And others like Arcanist, Slayer, Bloodrager, and Inquisitor became class archetypes)- We might see that happen in future 2e releases.

I'd love to see the bequethal boon return. Letting you send a boon from an adventure to a character who can make better use of it seems like a good way to avoid burn out from replaying things and "optimal paths"

Barathu have hover as an adjective for their land speed, but I bet that is for their flying speed.

Trooper is an uncommon background, but there doesn’t seem anything particularly special about it. However, right next to it is Timelost, where you come from a different timeline and it has various of special things about it, and it is common. My guess is that trooper should be common, and Timelost should be uncommon.

Trooper is uncommon because it gives a general feat instead of a skill feat, I think. Timelost doesn't do anything mechanically unusual and is very on brand for a witchwarper.