Dracomicron's page

Regardless, I'd also want to see moar things like the Fringe Science stuff from Threefold Conspiracy in the game.

That one enclave of human women who were all perfect clones of each other, etc. There's a lot of space in Starfnder to do and elaborate on things like that.

Joro is nonbinary!

Paizo is still a business, and if you value the option enough to buy the book, then it's a good business move.

If you don't value the option enough to buy the book, there are still plenty of things for you to play.

I'm hoping so, so desperatly that we get power armor rules in Tech Core.

I do kinda hope that there isn't as much dissonance between mechs and power armor. In 1e the difference between a huge mech and a huge power armor is that the guy in the power armor is pretty much toast if they get into a fight...even though they are both giant robo suits and the same size, one is a moderate upgrade for a single character and the other is a party-wide resource with planet-cracking weapons.

I also have a Legacy Admittence boon goblin.

You can still get the Venom Spur, just think of it as an upgrade. As for not being able to switch to a new SF2e heritage, I'd role-play it as being an older generation goblin. "Goblin kids these days have it so easy. When I was your age, I had to bite things with my own teeth."

The nice thing about using your own teeth is that you don't have to worry about giving your food persistent poison damage while you are eating. I hear that can lead to some severe heartburn.

Well, some of the new Goblin feats would probably mitigate the heartburn, so...yeah.

Honestly I am just excited to pick up Crash Conoseur at 5th level. Going to crash my taxi into so many things.

I think it's interesting trying to think of scifi archetypes that are common in media, but there aren't space for yet. Off the top of my head-

•Shapeshifting and Physical Transformation

•Nonmagical Intellectual Doctor/Scientist

•Portals and Wormholes

•llusionist with Special Effects, Holograms, etc

I expect that Mechanics will fill the role on nonmagical science heroes, but it would be really interesting to have an experimental physicist-type that creates various nonmagical localized effects like elemental damage, wormholes, or status effects.

I loved 1e Biohacker, if you could get that sort of vibe from the physical sciences, it would be neat.

I do wonder if Vanguard will come back as an archetype, like Nanocyte will. It was such a great, flavorful class, but it was honestly just a tank retread of Solarian.

On the Terraformer idea and sort of borrowing from Evolutionist, it might be interesting to have a class that draws power from the biome they're in, like instant adaptation and resistance to damage based on where they are (resist cold at the polar caps, able to do void damage while in space, with feats and specializations focusing on specific actions. Not quite evolutionist, not quite kineticist, but somewhere in the middle.

Basically the ultimate galactic explorers.

Huh, so I recently made it to Interstellar Species. I honestly never would have expected Evolutionist to be the augmented cyborg class by the name. I expected evolutionist to be more of a shifter than a cyborg with a science fantasy approach to augmentation. So I suppose the answer to most cyborg archetype requests would be the Evolutionist class or archetype. Though all honesty, I could see evolutionist going the way of the nanocyte and becoming either an archetype, or a range of archetypes for each implant type (Magitech, Cybernetics, Necrografts, and Biotech)

Not really related, guess that makes both Evolutionist and Vanguard for classes with misleading names. Like Vanguard, if Evolutionist comes back, I hope it gets a more evocative name.

Evolutionist was a class I was very excited for, that playtested very poorly for me, and ended up not being materially improved for me in the release version, unfortunately.

I thought that it should be built around an evolved "battle form," perhaps like the shifter but actually more like the customized apocalyptic forms of demons from Demon: The Fallen.

If Evolutionist comes back, it needs a long, hard look at its themes and ideas about power costs, because everything the 1e class did was handled better by the vanguard, solarian, AND nanocyte, without the drawbacks for not managing your mutation points or whatever they were called.

Your ancestry feat can be retrained with the usual 7 days of downtime. You can't normally change your heritage unless you have 12 or less xp, (where you can freely rebuild)

It's really the heritage that is bugging me (goblin is now 4th level), because the Pathfinder heritage I chose (Razortooth) gave a weaker bonus than an easily purchased Starfinder augment (Venom Spur).

I could not wait to make a goblin taxi driver for Thurston's table at SkalCon last year, so I bought the Legacy Admittence boon for them. Now that Starfinder 2e rules are out for legacy races, will we be able to respec our legacy ancestry characters with the new (and frankly more setting appropriate) options?

I wouldn't even need a full respec, just heritage and ancestry feats.

I would agree the Stridermanders are just a teaser for the real entertaining part of the scenario.

The descriptions of all the ways the skittermanders "helped" had us rolling.

Che Guevara could not have done better.

My question about Rip, Tear is why it doesn't apply to the claw version of the narural weapons feat. Doesn't it make the jaw attack strictly the better choice?

This is an interesting feat with some situational utility, but I feel like it is missing the key problem with mechanic medics: when you're investing heavily into Int and Dex to make your main abilities and combat work, you probably don't have a lot of room left over to invest in Wisdom.

This is a problem because 1e Starfinder had Medicine as an Int ability, but the Pathfinder 2 paradigm of wanting Clerics to be good nonmagical healers as well now infests SF2.

I think this would be easily fixed by giving the level 1 feat High Tech Medic the ability to use Intelligence for Medicine. This would let mechanics (especially multidisciplinary biotech mechanics) actually be good doctors while keeping Medicine as a Wisdom skill for Mystics.

It also gives a sort of Biohacker feel as Biohackers could basically choose if their main ability score for any science-based check was Int or Wis.

Anyway, that's my two cents after making my first Mechanic using the playtest rules.

Striker Operative needs to give a skill other than Athletics. It's not technically broken as written, but it feels broken in spirit.

Operative is the DEX class. Striker is limited to agile/finesse melee weapons (all agile weapons are finesse anyways) and unarmed attacks. You can't start with a +4 in STR, only a +3. And investing in both STR and DEX is really bad for skill proficiencies because there's only one STR skill, etc. And, if all it did was give you trained in a skill you're not going to invest heavily in, it'd be fine.

But Operative also gets 4 free skill feats as they level... for the skill from their specialization, and only that skill. They do not, however, get free skill increases for it, so you need to spend some of your normal skill increases to unlock better skill feats. Honestly? This ability really feels like it was supposed to be skill increases instead of skill feats, because there's a lot of abilities like that in PF2 for classes. Inventor, Swashbuckler, Thaumaturge... And honestly, that would solve the problem here! Free advancement in Athletics would make you good at that even without going heavy on strength.

Honestly, the forced investing into specific skills is kind of bad anyways - did you know there's only 4 skill feats for Computers at all without raising it to Expert? Acrobatics only has 3 (though in party, because for some reason Steady Balance is listing under Athletics, at least on Nethys). So does Stealth. And especially for Stealth sure, you probably focus on it, but still.

So, as I see it... Specialized Skill Set seems like it's supposed to read skill increases and not skill feats. But failing that, Striker either needs the Ruffian treatment (can take STR as KAS) or a different skill (Intimidation, maybe?) Edit: Ahaha. The playtest let them take STR as their KAS even! But honestly... why does Operative's melee subclass push you towards STR instead of DEX?

Definitely agree. I have two striker operatives, and neither of them invested heavily into Strength because Intelligence is a better fit for being useful as rogue skill monkey substitutes (now in 2e that Operative doesn't have an Edge).

I like the idea of getting automatic skill increases instead of skill feats.

I suppose I should formally request PF2 classes and class archetypes. Want to make a mystic/rogue at some point, and would love to eventually make a vesk monk.

I was wondering about that, too. An easy fix would be to make Area Fire a trained-only activity; for a performance weapon, you'd need the listed level to properly do it at all.

Dracomicron wrote:

Squark wrote:

Dracomicron wrote:

Planning some truly gnarly undead SFS characters since this book just showed up on Character Options.

The Adventure is there, and if you own that, you've been good to go for about a month. To reiterate: This new Player's Guide has not yet been sanctioned. We do not know if the added backgrounds and Stitch Flesh will be SFS legal, and it is not 100% certain the character options reprinted in this document will be available if you do not own the adventure.

The book was an instant order for me. I've been waiting for playable corpsefolk since 2017.

It's in my cart, just waiting for the gold program to start, lol. I didn't realize this until PF2E, but I am apparently a sucker for undead PC options.

Also, on the subject of corpsefolk, I'm thinking of giving them a custom feat that lets them get into the Zombie archetype as an ancestry feat, perhaps around levels 5 or 9. It just feels too appropriate.

Oh that Zombie archetype is, uh, tasty. Hadn't seen it before. Thanks for mentioning it!

I'm patiently awaiting access to PF2 class and archetype boons so I can remake one of my SF1 characters, a shadow mystic/operative knife fighter... since the operative archetype doesn't really give the same stuff operative levels used to give, a rogue archetype would probably be the best fit now.

I'm content to wait on the idea though.

Dracomicron wrote:

Planning some truly gnarly undead SFS characters since this book just showed up on Character Options.

The Adventure is there, and if you own that, you've been good to go for about a month. To reiterate: This new Player's Guide has not yet been sanctioned. We do not know if the added backgrounds and Stitch Flesh will be SFS legal, and it is not 100% certain the character options reprinted in this document will be available if you do not own the adventure.

The book was an instant order for me. I've been waiting for playable corpsefolk since 2017.

Planning some truly gnarly undead SFS characters since this book just showed up on Character Options.

Most systems prevent this issue by making bags of holding explode if put inside a different extradimensional space.

I would imagine that, in Starfinder, safety protocols would prevent such an action as damaging to the planar fabric.

Just going from rules discussion online.

Boost applies to the "next attack," and Primary Target describes itself as an attack before the area fire.

I think I may have misinterpreted a little because if you choose not to Primary Target the Boost wouldn't activate until the Area Fire.

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 don't, either, but there are a lot better 2nd edition rules lawyers than me around; with things like Boost being clarified as single-strike only I wanted to be sure.

I'm trying to figure out if the Strength bonus is applied to the Area Fire part of Whirling Swipe.

You swipe your weapon in a wide swing to create a deadly arc. Your weapon gains the area (burst 5 feet) and unwieldy traits until the end of the turn. If your weapon has reach, the burst radius becomes the reach of your weapon. Area Fire with the required weapon, centering the burst on a corner of a square you occupy. You’re excluded from the burst. If you’re using a weapon with the backswing or sweep trait, you gain a +1 circumstance bonus to the save DC of the attack. If you have the primary target class feature, the primary target Strike you make is a melee Strike, rather than a ranged Strike.

Nothing about this text suggests that the burst becomes a ranged attack, and I couldn't find anything in the Area Fire or Area Damage sections that suggests that the weapon no longer gets the damage bonus, but I've seen posts online (perhaps from the playtest?) that suggest that strength is not applied to the burst.

I'm not familiar with PF2 so if this is settled rules from melee martials in the past I apologize.

SF1 undead having mind affecting immunity is a much worse problem. Not only did it make sense (mind-affecting SHOULD affect sentient undead because they have, well, minds), but it cripples mystic damage output via mind thrust and removes the potential to trick undead with magic...making them boring "roll for initiative" enemies, only.

When it first came out, I thought mutation points were just a rehash of Solarian/Vanguard design, and I am still correct. It's not great; it doesn't feel great to play.

Evolutionists should have a "war form" that they burst into when a crisis happens. Stronger, faster, natural weapons/attacks. Anime has loads of these sorts, but it's also common in regular science fiction as well as World of Darkness games like Werewolf and Demon. Demon, specifically, allows you to build your celestial form, which is how I would see this play out in SF2 with feats.

Within the existing context of the setting, though, that would transform orcs overnight from "oppressed underclass" to "scheming villains."

Unfortunately not unheard of in the real world for the oppressed to become the oppressors as soon as they gain power.

The oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors.

Even avoiding modern comparisons, we can still look at the French Revolution: they executed 16,000 "counter-revolutionaries" while the rebels were in power, even inventing the guillotine to make it faster and more "humane" than beheading with a sword or axe. History is littered with revolutions that are as bad or worse than the status quo; they're just exchanging one in-group with another.

I think orcs taking over drow areas of control with merciless (but ostensibly egalitarian) corporate ideology is a great idea. Apostae is not supposed to be a nice place, and demons still have an interest there. They can still have a different variety of oppression:

"We abolished indentured servitude! Here's your biweekly paycheck for 1,000 credits!"

"Okay and here is your 1,000 credit bill for rent, food, and air!"

"Oh, you want EXTRA money for incidentals and medical bills? Well in our corporate utopia, you have the choice of getting a loan or working off-the-books overtime... You know we do need a blood scrubber for Demonic Ritual Wednesdays."

The stereotype of orcs is that they're dumb followers. Making them savvy capitalist jerks is a good change.

It's very possible to do a multiclass caster; you just need to make sure that high level, high DC casting isn't your primary schtick.

For example, I had a dwarven xenoarchaeologist 4 operative/4 mystic, and her entire kit was dedicated to exploration and first contact. I could passively find traps in three different ways, share languages, heal, handle nearly all skill checks, and provide a bit of support combat utility. I wasn't a full mystic mind blaster, nor was I a devastating trick attacker, but I brought a lot to every team.

As a non-caster variant, my SRO, Dragonbot, is a Shock & Awe Soldier 5/Experimental Armor Prototype Mechanic 5, and his main thing is debuffing pretty much anything that moves while dispensing electricity and sonic damage while in his large or huge dragon-shaped power armor. No one ability really relies on being full level in either class, so he remains effective as long as he can keep his Intimidate high and his guns updated.

Adventurers track down vicious drow conspiracies, plumb the depths of Apostae, spark an orcish prisoners-with-jobs revolt, and finally get to the center of the web, the mastermind behind the great dark elvish conspiracy.

Jububnans. Puffed-up jububnans all the way down. The PCs are forced to flee before the infernal hopping catches up to them. From now on, they must always look over their shoulder. What they once thought were centuries-old callous drow corporatists ended up being three jububnans with one holoskin between them, and nothing left to lose.

Discussion and some answers to this can be found in the So-what-is-going-to-happen-to-Apostae thread.

It was always serpentfolk.

The dragon just flies through a star, thereby increasing its speed and giving it invulnerability. Watch for it to be flashing and for there to be exciting music, because during this time it cannot be defeated.

I'm glad I get to play a kobold. I wish all Starfinder-only players got to. I feel like the reason I get to play one is a bit of a half-measure that benefits long time players only.

I was sad when kobolds existed in Starfinder and I couldn't play one because they were restricted to Pathfinder players.

I always want people to be able to play what they want to play, as long as it doesn't hurt other players.

I love the idea of the cross-play being a discount (so that it is cheaper for example to purchase Androids and Ysoki with Starfinder points than with Pathfinder ones) but I do agree that these races should be available with Starfinder points as well. It's one of the biggest complaints of one of my devoted Starfinder players, Dracomicron, that he had to use Pathfinder points to purchase a Kobold.

It's something that I hope they change sooner rather than later.

Hmm

Yeah. The only reason I was able to make Braxidax is because they gave us free PF2 points.

I would pay triple SFS AcP for Kobold.

I made a ranged kobold mechanized evolutionist, and so far at first level it's basically a lot of fiddling with very little payoff. Normally I go for melee characters to put up big damage numbers, but this time I'm trying something less optimized.

Is it just me, or do "capstone" boons no longer exist?

Like, the Tier 4 boons don't say "capstone" anymore in the guide or on the printed sheet. I see a couple in the retired boons section...

Can we only buy one "capstone" still?

PFS1 also got a pawn pack, which seemed really cool. SFS has plenty of first contact situations with weird and wonderful aliens and NPCs, and it would be great for future GMs to be able to break out pawns with the dedicated art for Ziggy or Datch when they show up in scenarios.

Weren't... bears... already available through ACP?

I wasn't selected earlier, which I kind of expected since Charli has had other chances to shine in the Society. I look forward to voting for the new candidates.

And this means that Zoggy and Charli can plan a high level game together sometime!

I'm running 5-10 at Con of the North; if that helps!

I am assuming that my character was not selected, I didn't get any emails about it

I did get an e-mail, in the negative, so if you didn't get one, that might be a good sign.

I am looking forward to voting for Zoggy.

Looks like Zoggy wasn't selected as an option this time.

Obliviously, he will remain on the forum and cheerfully vote for the bestest starfinder to be First Seeker.

I am looking forward to voting for Zoggy.

Gronnigan is probably my best First Seeker Candidate, but Zoggy would certainly be my most beloved.

Looks like the deadline just passed.

Exciting times!

was always the 16th. As a procrastonator whos family goes nuts for the holidays its greatly appreciated.

Yeah, I just managed to get to submitting my last candidate last week. December is a blur.

Have a prison ship with one airlock to prevent escapes.

Space OSHA has words with the Warden.

Claxon wrote:

Everything else probably does 50% damage. because basically anything that isn't explicitly called out as affecting Incorporeal creatures does 50% damage.

What about magic energy damage?

From SRD:

"An incorporeal creature doesn’t have a physical body. It is immune to all nonmagical kinetic attacks. All energy attacks and magical kinetic attacks deal half damage (50%) to it."

The way I read it, is that magic energy isn't half'd but then it does say ALL but it goes out to point out that magical kinetic energy attacks deal half damage.

"Magic energy" is a subset of "energy," so it still does half damage. The only reason "magical kinetic" is a relevant term is because they're completely immune to nonmagical kinetic attacks.

The character I would like to be put into the running has 3 reporting errors. Three of the tables were reported with the wrong faction. I assume if I send an email to the error reporting email that I can get that fixed?

Or should I plan to play the character 3 more times before the deadline?

Also, can a play have more than one character for consideration? I didn't see anything about that but I could have missed it.

My sweet summer child...

I've had multiple characters with a half dozen or more reporting errors. Send the e-mail and Alex will make sure it gets sorted, which should qualify you if it puts you above 45 reputation for one faction.

And yes, you can have multiple characters in the running, but only one in final consideration.

I didn't get an e-mail for my earlier starfinder of note, Tana Ikarian.

But she was also killed at a Thursty table without a chance at resurrection, so nevermind. :D

Its a political appointment. Having the job and getting the job are two different skill sets. Any character of that level is going to get around and know people, so if people know the player, its just art imitating life.

Yes, if I were to submit Dragonbot, with whom I have played online and posted with on the forum a considerable amount over the years, he might be a popular choice for his, uh, signature style.

He would be terrible at the job, however. Even worse than Tera Nova (shots fired)!

Wheras I have more subtle characters that would be better administrators but less likely to attract the votes necessary for election. It's a paradox of democracy.

I'll be the downer, VOs and freelancers/contributors probably shouldn't be included in lists of choices if it comes to a public vote/scenario choice. We already have many, many ways to contribute and have our voices heard in Society, and beyond that regardless of how it actually ends up if a close friend or popular VO ends up winning it smacks of favouritism. Let's be honest, those of us in the two categories above already have an improved chance were we to enter simply because the names are likely more well known among the community, that's just not fair to people who don't have the same level of exposure.

I hear what you are saying, and I appreciate the sentiment, but I would like to counterpoint that y'all likely have some of the best and most interesting characters to contribute... and in the end isn't the point of this to get the best and most interesting First Seeker?

Dracomicron wrote:

Wow! I entered Zoggy

Aww, not Dragonbot? I was looking forwards to an engaging and progressive Starfinder mandate XD

Unfortunately it looks like Dragonbot will remain about 10 short of the required reputation by the necessary date. He started repping for Jadnura and only changed over to Exo-Guardians later to steal their guns protect those fragile organics.

I have a third character that may enter the running, Brayal Yawoh, a pahtra ex-convict who would be working to reform totalitarian governments and continue work on prison reform started this season.

Wow! I entered Zoggy, since he's already a Forum member, but just to hedge my bets I need to get my sessions and rep cleared up on Gronnigan, since somehow the system had him at only 36 Dataphiles when he should be 47.

Public Service Announcement, kids: Don't let your official session info with Paizo sit unattended for 4+ years without reporting errors.

... ... ...

The Perplexity work is on hold as I get a handle on the wider Starfinder situation. I think we can both agree the full game takes some precedence ;)

But yeah, I eventually want to get back to writing out the Perplexity and maybe even making it more of a "terrifying event dungeon" that could be explored in future scenarios/adventures.

MWAH HA HA HA....

But yeah, no extra specialty boons since Perplexity Part 3 was kinda run in Beta Mode when I did it.

Well then, I guess my character is only

Heyooo!

But seriously, it's awesome that you've got the whole toybox now.