Debra attempts to identify the potions each morning.
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The warehouse thoroughly searches, Debra's shoulders slump and she sighs heavily. She looks up at Greg and gives him a half-hearted smile. "Well, that was fun, eh? Let's go get a drink and a steak, and then I'm going to sleep for a week."
"I'll meet you guys there. I'm going to spend a few minutes looking around here first."
Debra looks up at Greg, shakes her head, and stands up. ”We need to get one of these others conscious so we can get some answers.” She goes from apprentice to apprentice, trying to determine which one looks closest to consciousness.
”Ogar, would you help me? I’m going to give a potion to one of these other apprentices but I can’t tell which one is the best bet.”
Debra, satisfied that Ogar is taking care of patching everyone up, walks over to Gellion and sits down next to him, cross-legged. She looks at him with pity. "Hello, Gellion. This is quite a mess you've gotten yourself into, isn't it? Your parents are worried sick about you, and from what I can see, they have good reason to be. And you've gotten your friends mixed up in all this too! Shame. The good news is that we were not too late and my friend Ogar here is nursing everyone back to health. None of your friends has died, and you are young. We have been commissioned by the mayor herself to look into the mess you've created, so I am in a good position to argue on your behalf for leniency." She pauses. "But that depends on what you do right now. You must tell me everything and you must not leave anything out." "So let's start with what you were just mumbling about. What are the 'demon worms' and what is their 'home'?"
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Seeing how close Peter is to death, and knowing that she has very little chance of hitting a small flying creature surrounded by her allies, Debra rushes to Peter's side. She pulls out a potion and prepares to pour it down his throat.
Debra moves closer to the swarm and tosses her acid flask at it.
"Killiss! Have Peter move so I don't hurt him!"
Debra is too far away to make an effective attack on the swarm, so she pulls a potion from her belt and drinks it.
Debra moves back away from the swarm and pulls the acid flask off of her belt.
Debra moves as far as she can towards the swarm and throws the vial with a determined scream.
Completely grossed out by everything happening, Debra's aim is way off.
"Killiss! We have more alchemist's fires in the bag!"
Debra grits her teeth against the pain of her bleeding wound, moves 20 feet to the east, and pulls the alchemist's fire off of her belt. "Killiss, get Peter away from the swarm so I don't burn him!"
Debra doesn't feel too good, so she gets the hell out of dodge.
Debra takes a short step to the northwest and fires at the annoying fly again.
Debra peeks out from behind the crate, aims her crossbow at the terrifying flying creature, and fires.
She then reloads her crossbow and ducks back behind the crate.
Debra moves into the room at a full run, finding cover behind some crates.
Debra stands next to Greg and peeks around the corner. Laughing, she calls out, "Greg is as big as a house! Are you blind? You're going to have to do better than that, you tottering dizzy-eyed canker-blossom!"
Debra examines the crates to the west, then checks the door for traps.
"Ogar! Please smash this thing! Quickly!"
Debra enters the warehouse and checks on her companions. She sees the huge amount of demon's bile and her eyes widen. She asks Ogar to destroy it with his morningstar while she examines the egg. "We might need to destroy this thing, but let me look at it first."
Debra knows she'd just be in the way if she tried to enter that room now. The others seem to have it handled so she'll hang out outside the warehouse for now.
Debra knows better than to enter that room of death. She pulls an alchemist's fire off her belt and says, "Hey guys, look! It's Tubby, Flubby, and Chubby!"
While Ogar destroys the demon's bile, Debra invites the others to help her take a look around the immediate area, specifically looking for traps, tracks, and any windows they can peek through.
"GREG!" Debra grabs Greg's hand and looks at him incredulously. "Seriously?" Shaking her head, she leads Greg away from the demon's bile. "Ogar, if you please," she says, gesturing towards his morningstar.
Debra offers a hand to Greg to "help" him up. Once he's on his feet, she looks up at him, smiles, and says, "I was beginning to think you really are invincible. It's good to see that you're as mortal as the rest of us." She looks down at the bisected creature on the ground. "Not that it mattered to this poor guy. Good gravy, Greg. What did he say before he died pathetically? 'They will reward' him? I think that means we are getting close to answers and someone doesn't want us to have them." She briefly checks if the creature had anything worth taking on him.
Debra calls Ogar over to Greg. "I think that thing poisoned Greg. Can you help him? I'll do what I can."
Debra moves 20 feet south to get a clear shot at the creature. She aims her crossbow with her slightly trembling hand and fires.
She then reloads her crossbow and prepares for another attack.
"Keep track of it! It can go invisible whenever it wants!" Feeling a little freaked out by this little thing, Debra moves away from it and closer to her friends. Looking to inspire a little courage in the face of this creature's terrifying visage, Debra yells at it: "Hero? More like a zero!"
Debra liked Killiss's idea and decides to give it a try.
Debra, trusting that whatever is there won't want to attack her and give away its advantage, steps to the south 15 feet.
Debra follows 10 feet behind Greg, crossbow at the ready, alert for any unseen threats.
Debra readies her crossbow and speaks in an almost involuntary whisper. "I know the mayor cleared the streets, but it still seems way too quiet. Be on your guard. Help me take a look around."
Debra smiles and says, "Hello, mayor! We are in a bit of a rush following a lead but we can summarize for you."
Debra smiles at her brother and puts her hand on his shoulder. "This is a good find, Greg. Let's get going right away." She returns to the other room to find the others. She doesn't want to alarm Gellion's parents, so she tries to keep the urgency out of her voice as she says, "I think we've found all we're going to find here. We should head to the warehouse."
Debra, having done everything she knows to do for the sick couple, leaves the room in search of Greg. She finds him in the other bedroom, puzzling over a book. "Whatcha got there, Greg?"
"We don't have any way of curing the poison, but perhaps we can help them fight it off themselves. Greg, give me your waterskin, please."
Debra gives them both some water from the skin and helps them into the bed. "Now we wait."
"These three are healing potions but I can't tell what these other two are. I can do a little research tonight and try again tomorrow."
"Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Vezarro. We will return soon with news of your son."
"Ogar, can I borrow your morningstar?" "We got a lot of nice stuff here, guys. Mr. and Mrs. Vezarro, do you mind if we take these? They would help us greatly in tracking down your son and getting to the bottom of what's going on here."
While Ogar is talking to the people, Debra checks out the piece of metal on the floor.
Debra sees the spider bisected and rushes past Greg to the people in the webs, patting him on the shoulder and saying "Nice job, Greg" as she passes. She kneels next to them and quickly tries to free them from the webbing, checking if they are alive.
"Greg! Come help me free these people! And Ogar! I can't tell if they are breathing!" There is a near panicked desperation in her voice.
Debra takes a peek through the door and, seeing that it is just a single creature, decides that there is no need for her to enter the room. She steps to the east 10 feet so she can see the spider and yells at it. "Hey Greg! This puny ill-breeding codpiece said you look stupid!"
Debra is not going in there with that thing.
Debra waves everyone along and quietly walks down the hall. She stops just short of the southern door and detects magic.
Debra raises a finger to her lips and looks meaningfully at the group. Crossbow at the ready, she creeps up to the first corner and peers down the hallway.
I want Nyrissa to be foreshadowed better in Hardcover update, but its better not be super obvious she is main villain before the final book That's actually one of my main criticisms of the CRPG in terms of storytelling: It is outright revealed that Nyrissa is the big bad very early on.
Have not purchased or read any of the other parts of this adventure path, does this conflict with anything? Thank you for the help in advance For whatever reason, none of the books even touch upon ranks. If I can get a hold of proper maps so I can run this game, I was planning to make my own, loosely based on real-life ones, with one player being the assigned squad-leader (with a rank of Lance Corporal) and another one being communication's officer - with other potential roles being decided on by the squad, but I'm going to suggest medic and engineer. I was thinking that the squad leader would get the "Get 'Em" Envoy Improvisation (and likely a ceremonial pistol of some kind), the communication's officer'd get the "Skilled Linguist" Envoy Expertise Talent as well as a custom "Eidetic Memory" (which does nothing except as a narrative excuse for perfect recall) feat (as well as the luxury of having to carry a heavy backpack eadiocommunications device), a potential medic would get either the "Inspired Medic" Envoy Expertise Talent or the "Field Dressing" Biohacker Theorem (as well as a handful of stimms and medkits and probably some combat drugs), and a potential Engineer would get a Mechanic Trick or Gear Boost (and a set of tools).
Has it been said who we'll be involved with? I'm still nourishing a faint hope that the assumption will be to be part of the Azlanti Empire in a major confrontation with the Swarm, with the Veskarium and the Pact Worlds as worried onlookers. It also has the benefit of having something resembling a unified military structure, most likely.
believable futuristic cities with all that entails (weapon laws, competent law enforcement, etc) We have very different experiences and ideas of law enforcement both in real life and in sci-fi, I see. :^)
Dwarf. I'm hoping for dwarf.
Yeah, I don't agree on schools being antiquated (they serve both thematic and mechanical purpose) but as far as explenations go, I think the points regarding goal/method/inheritance are good, and could explain a fair bit of the misclassifications. Really, though, to gets to me because there should be a design document clarifying this to writers, and it should've been caught in proofreading in the first place. Instead, it just continues.
I'm sorry, I originally missed this, but saw it as I was reviewing the thread in order to create a bit of an errata list. But yeah, these are good points. Adding to it, I want to point out that Psychokinetic Hand also appears to be a form of telekinesis (let's ignore the fact that Starfinder is inconsistent or unclear in it's usage here; it would be preferable if it consistently referred to either telekinesis or psychokinesis, or clarified the difference if any), and Psychokinetic Hand is also transmutation. And whether all three should be transmutation or evocation comes down to the relatively simple question as ro whether we're changing the properties of the object moved, or if we're manipulating raw magic to exert a direct force. I'm inclined to say the latter, so I submit that all three should be evocation spells. This would leave us with this simple errata so far: • Corrosive Haze is Conjuration (Not Evocation).
I've been working on some homebrew stuff lately, and it was suggested that I post it here. When first examining Starfinder, there were things I felt were missing, including a way to make what felt like a classic paladin, as well as a way to realize the usual raging combatant. I wasn't missing the barbarian as a savage wilds type of thing as much as I was missing a way to create that krogan or klingon rage, but ultimately it felt like the distinction was moot (although it's the reason I avoided nature-oriented/totemic stuff). Anyway, here they are:
I'd love any feedback, but I'm especially interested in actual performance compared to others, issues with wording, and, more than anything, actual playtesting. So if you use this, please share. I have another homebrew to share, concerning a mystic connection that uses classic domains and has a much more pronounced religious flavor, but I need to (re)write some spells for it, before I can share.
Honestly, the argument that "it doesn't matter (yet)" only makes it more annoying to me, not less, because it just makes it harder for me to understand why you'd misclassify them to begin with. If it would purely be a matter of fluff window-dressing (which I reject and I hope it will become less of as time goes on, and it certainly will not be in my homebrewed material that will frequently reference schools, expecting them to be consistent) then there'd be no reason to create an inconsistency at all. And assuming that we're not going to see DC boosters or extra spells known is a pretty big assumption. I'd be surprised if that doesn't happen in the future, in various ways, whether it's things like charging items with specific forms of magic or putting DC boosting behind resolve expenditure, etc. Playing to a specific school is an extremely common trope, and it'd be depressing if Starfinder never get anything like that. I personally love playing characters focused on Enchantment and/or Illusion, for example, and I think a potential Greater Spell Focus should absolutely be school-based in order to facilitate that. I think school specializations is definitely something the technomancer should get, even if it's just via a unique spell hack per bracket, with a prereq. of the preceding spell hack "specialization" in the same school; I'll probably end up doing that myself, of nothing else. And yes, that's homebrewing, but I think that not being able to trust the narrative-mechanical connectivity of the game is quite frustrating. Ezec makes some great points, too, and it would seem like they may be hesitant to inflate the number of transmutation spells, but man, misclassifying things is not the right way to go, and if you want Explosive Blast to be Evocation, there's no reason to conceptualize it as a Transmutation spell, just let it be a regular ol' Fireball.
I found yet another one. Explosive Blast is a level 3 evocation spell, and it has the following description: "You magically transform a used battery into a powerful explosive device". Despite expressly transforming A to B, it's classified as evocation instead of transmutation. The explosion doesn't even have anything to do with magic, the spell is just hou turning a battery into a grenade! (Which also begs the question how this works if you do not have a battery, nevermind that a battery isn't listed as a spell component!) Who wrote this stuff? Once is a mistake, twice is a problem, but six is a pattern of carelessness and indifference. Edit: It's extra weird that it has a a crazy, crazy range of 100 ft + 10 ft per level, and talks about hitting narrow openings at a mere 10-15 AC. A regular grenade has range increments of 20 ft, for crying out loud. That battery-turned-explosives better have some rockets and crazy targeting equipment on it.
I'd argue that since you're converting key particles of your blood(life force?) into nanobots(mindless unliving things...) that it isn't too much of a stretch to be categorized as Necromancy. That's just it, though, nothing is described as dealing with life force, you're just making some stuff into some other stuff, and they're not even alive or even undead in any way, they're literally just really small robots you made. Additionally, I'd agree with you that Corrosive Haze should be in Conjuration. You can find a thematically similar spell in Pathfinder called Acid Fog which is Conjuration. Yeah, that's the weirdest part, there's not even a precedent anywhere for Corrosive Haze to be anything other than Conjuration. I know D&D 5e had some oddities like how they turned Acid Arrow into Evocation, so I even checked if D&D 5e had something weird like that, but nope, clouds and such as still Conjuration, precisely because whenever you summon something or makes something out of nothing, it's always conjuration. At least in D&D 5e they can excuse it with it simply being a completely different spell that just happens to have the same name, i.e. instead of summoning an actual acidic arrow (Conjuration) you're instead shooting a "shimmering green arrow", i.e. some form of bolt of corrosive energy of some kind (Evocation). But in this case, it's very clear, and the description is counter to the classification. If you want more spells to be upset at, take a look at Fabricate Scrap(Universal), Junksword(Conjuration) and Junk Armor(Conjuration) all of which in my opinion should be Transmutation. Agree 100%. All of them straight-up says that you're turning X into Y, i.e. a transmutational process.
I think I found another one, and I think that it could be a result of forcing sci-fi elements onto spells that were mechanically realized without conceptual fidelity, because the issue is eerily similar. The spell "Inject Nanobots" is described as: "You concentrate key particles in your blood into tiny biological nanobots that you can inject into a foe with a touch, disrupting and damaging its natural processes. ... the nanobots deal 4d8 damage and swarm through the target’s biological or mechanical systems ...". It's classified as necromancy, yet seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with necromancy. If anything, it's transmutation, but when push comes to shove I have no idea why it's a spell at all, but at least with transmutation we can pretend that transmutation is used to change the nanobots.
I was just looking at spells, and this is part of the desceiption for Corrosive Haze: "A 5-foot cloud of acid-resistant nanites continually converts nearby water vapor into deadly acid. You can create the cloud in the same square as a creature ...". Now, Corrosive Haze is classified as Evocation. But if you create or summon the nanites, shouldn't it by all established standards be a Conjuration spell? And if the nanites are magical in nature, the transformation of water into acid would be textbook Transmutation, but let's say that what the nanites themselves do is irrelevant to the classification of the spell that creates or summons them. I just can't see how this is an Evocation spell. Is this simply an oversight, or am I missing something? |