Driftbourne's page

Going off the Dead Suns hardback, the only downside for me would be that ultimately, you're getting considerably less Toolbox material in the back. (Important to note: You're getting less Toolbox content but paying much less than you would for six volumes.)

Part of the issue with Dead Suns hardback is that the original AP came out before the first Alien Archive was released. What was cut out of the toolbox in the Dead Suns hardback, that wasn't already reprinted someplace else? That is not the typical situation for new APs printed in hardcover.

I like the hardcover books it's 1/3 to 1/6th the cost of shipping That's also more friendly on the environment. The AP itself is also cheaper than buying them separately. Hardcovers are more durable. Everything is in one place. I like having all the new aliens in one place in the back makes them much easier to reference for homebrew.

The only downside I see is if you are playing organized play and need to buy something for a character option you have to buy the whole AP. This isn't a downside if those options are in a free player guide.

Garretmander wrote:

That said, one of the PF2 update spoilers was doing away with ability scores in general, since ability score damage is gone anyway. So I imagine it might be tweaked from this anyway.

Wait...does this mean Str mod doesn't add to melee weapon damage? I feel like I missed this rule change...

Pathfinder remaster got rid of ability scores but kept the ability bonuses, the only thing ability scores were used for was determining the ability bonuses. The change just saves space on a character sheet.

I've unfortunately been forever cured of my love for dual wielding due to HEMA and that applies to guns as well :/

I've fenced and fought in armor for over 30 years, not sure why HEMA would cure you of that, although I do find crosstraining in Phlipino martial arts helpful for dual-weapon fighting. Fighting multiple opponents helps too, I know HEMA doses some of that but not sure to what extent. Also, I find it helps a lot for dual-weapon fighting to train frequently with a single weapon using my off-arm.

Game wise using multiple weapons tends to be thought of as more attacks, but in real fighting, I tend to think of it in terms of more defense and more angles of attacks or angles threatened. For guns, it's having more ammo without reloading, and angles covered. Unless you have a gadget to help reload a gun not sure how you could reload without a free hand. What if a skittermander with a gun in each hand didn't have to use free hands to reload?

I agree a lot of it is encounter design, but there could be more rule options to make the option of nonlethal combat more likely, or have morale effects happen. In PF2e morale just gets 6 lines of advice in the GMG and is not listed in the table of contents, glossary, or index. Making a table with morale levels or turning them into traits might help.

To help encourage players to choose nonlethal options more often might help to get rid of the -2 (PF2e) -4 (SF) to do nonlethal damage with a weapon lacking that trait for some types of weapons, or have some weapons like energy weapons have the option to switch to nonlethal damage. If there needs to be a penalty to balance the game have it apply to damage instead, after all the goal of doing nonlethal damage is to do less harm.
A simple global rule could be something like, making a nonlethal attack using a weapon without the nonlethal trait reducing the damage die type to the next lower size die, and removes its crit effects.

Having rules or at least guidelines for fines or punishments for lethal combat in areas where it's against the law would make it easier for GMs to deal with and make players aware there are consequences.

I got curious how a standard starship that fills up a normal 24x30" flip map where 1 square = 5 ft would fit on a 24x30" map using 30 ft squares. So a ship that size would take up 4x5 30 ft squares.

Even if all you do is land your ship on the map, leave the ship, and fight outside of it. Having your ship/home on a combat map will likely make the players feel more connected to it, or at least have some motive to protect it.

A 30 ft square map is also great for making ranged combat matter, mech, and vehicle combat.

A 3 encounter scenario could start with ship combat to get someplace. Use a 30 ft square map when you land, and have to find and fight your way to the final fight. Then use a 5 ft square map for the final fight. Not every scenario would have to be like that but it's a nice option to have.

Something like that could cover all the combat subsystems in 3 encounters. Hope we see something like that in the playtest.

Calgon-3 wrote:

I haven't played ship combat under Starfinder Enhanced rules yet and I'm waiting to see how that turns out.

My observations on SF1 starship battle rules is battles can be excessively long, and usually result in the enemy ship exploding, which is uninteresting. I want them to commonly end in surrender, or boarding actions. I want to get to those points in some reasonable number of terms. Not so few that the ship battle is uninteresting though.

It should *matter* how your starship is designed and equipped. If it doesn't what's the point of even having ships? IOW it would be easy to go too far in the direction of it's all about crew members doing dramatic things and employing tactics that rely on having good skill checks.

Narrative Starship Combat from Starfinder Enhanced is very quick (low tier 1v1 should be over in 2 rounds or less, while an endgame tier 1v1 might take 5 rounds or so), but the system does make your actual ship 99.9% irrelevant: Actual Shield, handling, AC, HP, and weapon values don't matter (it's a bit unclear, but the number of weapons might still limit your number of gunners, but the firing arcs and actual weapons themselves are completely irrelevant and every crew role can inflict 'damage' on your foe).

I recently had a normal ship combat end after only 2 rounds. After the GM told us he was shocked at how weak our opponent's ships stats were. This was in a scenario that just came out recently, so maybe Paizo is making more recent ship encounters so they don't drag on. That's a question of encounter design. I'm curious how long each turn takes comparing regular and narrative starship combat. The other big difference is likely prep time, or having to explain the rules mid-game.

When Paizo said they were working on narrative ship combat I had no clue what narrative combat even was. In the last 2 weeks, I've started looking into PBTA games. I'm much more interested in trying Starfinder narrative ship combat now. I don't think it should ever replace regular ship combat or need to be in the core rule book but differently has a place and for some types of encounters may be the better option.

I really like the 3 degrees of success in PBTA games. This wouldn't be hard to adapt to how Paizo does 4 degrees of success. PBTA games tend to have something like a Miss, Weak Hit, and Hit. On a miss your opponent might be able to do damage to you, on a weak hit you hit your opponent but they might hit you too. Applied to a science officer making a scan check, failing a check could cause the opponent to do damage to the ship, making their action seem more impactful. Narratively this could be played out as the scan failed because the opponent's guns hit near the sensor array causing them to be misaligned thus failing the check. This could rebalance ship combat so ships need lots of shields again to deal with the possibility of every failed crew action causing damage to the ship.

3. By limiting what you can do at one station and separating stations by move actions, it provides friction for role jumping, which helps prevent Skill Monkeys stealing the spotlight all the time.

You could do that by tying getting the ship's bonuses to your roll to using the right station. Some actions might be doable from any station but without the bonus for using the correct station. You could redirect shields from the bridge, but by doing it from the engine room you get a bonus.

I hadn't originally thought about resolving hand-to-hand combat during ship-to-ship combat, but I think it could end up working with a bit of design elbow grease. You could, for instance, have guidance on when to employ synced ship and personal combat and when not to so that you still have the option of having variable space distances.

Both systems use a 3 action economy, the only difference is the current starship combat has a set action order. Other than the pilot benefiting from going last regular PF2e 3 action ecomeny could be used. If the pilots just use a delayed action for their turn there's no need for special rules for their turn, other than a rule saying the pilot with the highest initiative roll can delay while the lower initiative pilot has to go in order.

Driftbourne wrote:

I made a technomancer character if that works

That sounds good. Original or enhanced?

It's enhanced, I checked to see if the features I took were playable in SFS. character is a Contemplative named Asgrok augmented paradox conjunction. I should have the character finished tomorrow, I mostly just need to finish transferring it to the forums from hephaistos.

I made a technomancer character if that works

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Raiztt wrote:

Be offended then.

The PEOPLE might not be lesser, but what they DO is.

I somehow find that I can't come up with a direct response to this that is both honest and not baiting. So... enjoy thinking that, I guess.

If you want to try and make the argument that dipping a basket of frys into a deep fat fryer and painting the Sistine Chapel have equal value as actions/activities you're welcome to take a crack at it.

I used to be a fry cook and a dishwasher before that. I've also designed and built 4 gigawatts of solar power. Was the lead technician in a pharmaceutical factory. Designed, built, and programmed a virtual world by myself. During the pandemic was the reason you had any food at all on your grocery store shelves. I've started a publishing company, owned a roller derby team, and played in a band best known for... finding creative ways to get publicity. The one thing I haven't done is get a college education. I walked out of my high-paying pharmaceutical job because the business was too corrupt for me, so went to a low-level job in an all-organic grocery store, that wasn't destroying the world or profiting off keeping people sick.

Pixel Popper wrote:

Cyouni wrote:

... there's been a massive push by companies to replace people (writers, artists, etc) by using AI to create something "good enough" to function for profit...

Why is that any worse than automation to replace assembly line workers, kiosks to replace food server order takers and cashiers, or any other of the myriad examples of advancement replacing human labor (the printing press, industrial looms, bulldozers, harvesters, ad nauseam)?

Up until now, automation has typically replaced jobs that people didn't want to do and there were enough other jobs that those displaced could switch into.

We're rapidly reaching the point where automation to displace jobs is getting to the point where it could destabilize the global economy, and people are starting to seriously question how to handle that automation. There are proposals for robot taxes that help offset the impact to society of those lost jobs.

AI replacing artists is part of that same discussion. So in short: AI art replacing artists isn't really worse than other automation in the grand scheme as we approach technostate feudalism. It's more apparent because people generally see art as a calling whereas tightening a bolt on an assembly line was seen as an interchangeable gig with any other physical labor.

Very simple solution, tax AI and automation replacing jobs and use the $ for unemployment, education, health care and retirement. The only thing in the way are rich people benefiting from replacing jobs with AI and automation.

I'm interested, but all my characters are signed up waiting for other games to start. I could play a pregen or make another new character but would like to see what the party needs before working on a new character.

More food, sounds like a field rations test. I hope they stream it too.

The length of the ship combat round is unspecified, so you can say that it costs 1 action to move to a different part of the ship. Done.

That's fine for movement but what happens when you get to where you're going, and you discover a boarding party has entered your ship and the GM says roll for initiative. Part of the crew is on the bridge still in ship combat and others are now in regular combat. If both used the normal rules for both then this would be easy to deal with, and players are already familiar with the rules for both situations.

Because it's an advantage to let the opponent ship move first so you can move last to take advantage of that knowledge pilots would need separate rules for initiative but everything else could be under normal rules.

Besides boarding parties, there are lots of other situations that could cause a fight to break out on the ship during ship combat. A stowaway, prisoner, or dangerous creature breaks out of their cage or cell is damaged by ship combat. A passenger turns out to be a shapeshifter and is working for your opponent. The other ship has a spell caster casting confusion on your crew, or a space barnacle-like creature is attached to the hull of you're ship and feeds off the crew's psychic energy causing confusion. Create a missle weapon that delivers a boarding drone. Let some heavy weapons do damage to small and tiny starships to let some of your crew fight outside the ship.

Boarding another ship could be an entire session or adventure in itself. But most current ship combats are an obstacle when traveling from point A to B For that the best strategy is to just disable the oppnets engines so they can follow you, no need to drag out a fight to the end.

Instead of rules at this point, it might be good to talk about what types of ship battle scenarios we want to see in SF2e.

1: Obestical to you're destination: Disable and run, or use chase rules.
2: Dog fight: Fight to the end.
3: Pirate attack or other encounter with boarding
4: Running a naval blockade.
5: Obstical to goal, fight long enough to complete a goal.

I don't think it would be the best solution for all situations, sometimes just a quick ship battle is best, but having some encounters designed to use the full ship, making players run around to deal with different things, other than the pilot could just use normal rules during the whole encounter. This turns your ship into an actual adventure location and not just a plot tool to get from one planet to the next. There are entire episodes of Star Trek that all take place on the ship. A ship is never going to feel like the character's home if they never actually interact with it in a meaningful way.

Another way to have the players have more buy-in to the ship and ship combat is to have each player be able to modify their ship station as they level up or have each player help build the ship by picking ship components for their station. Let the gunner pick the guns, let the engineer pick the power core, and let the science officer pick the sensors. For premade ships in a written adventure, each station could have a few quick options players can pick from at the start of a mission.

Also designing adventure so there is time and reasons to go back to your ship more often would help. Like going back to your ship for a rest, and being able to use the med bay to heal faster, or the ship computers and communication to get more info on something you encountered, or resupplying consumables. These all make the ship more part of the adventure and help the players connect to it.

Not all adventures need to be built around a ship but when they are these things could help out a lot.

I quickly skimmed over your 28 page slide show. too much to think over to comment on in one reply. But here's a start, first reaction.

4. Put GM in control of Drift capability access

That's already an option for GMs willing to use rules. Also even if the players have the best drift drive possible, the GM can always use the drift to cause a delay as needed, we have a whole book dedicated to doing just that. Even if you don't want a full Drift crash, there's nothing saying a single drift beckon can't malfunction. The drift is one of the best GM tools in any RPG game ever made.

I'd be more in favor of adding a new category to near and vast space, something like uncharted or even hidden space, that increases the table time. This gives GMs a per-location way to slow down the players if needed. Having some star systems being extra difficult to get to. Maybe some systems that want to be left alone developed a drift signal deflector or has other natural or magical phenomenon hiding the system.

7. Retain round-by-round ship initiative for positioning, but otherwise use standard initiative and 3 action economy

That's is what I'm thinking of too. Do that and most other issues you have listed are solved on their own.

8. Give all players more options on their turn, never over-constrain

9. Dramatically cut and simplify Crew Actions and Ship Roles

75% of the rules and options for the game are for combat, so I don't see why ship combat should be any different especially if the rules can be made more compatible with normal combat. Most ship actions are just skill checks, the problem comes from needing to know the ship's modifiers to add to your rolls, which are not typically shown on your character sheet.

10. Make physical movement around the ship during combat matter

I'm all for that and can think of several ways to do that, but even a medium-sized ship like the Pegasus is equal to a small dungeon, as far as having to move around to different rooms. This might make ship combat more interesting but will likely greatly increase how long it takes. This could be good if it's a major plot point, but for a simple other ship gets in the way of going from point A to point B it would drag the game down.

FWIW The Kickstarter did have a tier for PDFs of the Starfinder comic - estimated delivery Feb 2024.

I was thinking of the individual issues, didn't realize there was a graphic novel too.

also on comic tangent, I still don't have any of the new comics despite having backed kickstarter :'D I don't know if they are just not going to send pdfs until all parts are out or something...

Are the comics even available as PDFs? On the Dynamite site, there's an option to buy as a Dynamite Digital, not sure if that's actually a PDF you can download, it sounds more like some kind of E-book. It does look like the digital version is only available through the Dynamite store.

Dromaeosaurs gaining pronation and losing some feathers is a clear sign of the evolutionary step towards Dinosaurs evolving into Dragons. Breathing fire and feathers don't mix well, and having pronated hands helps with sorting and counting treasure. When bestiary 1 says: "dinosaurs
are an excellent creature to use in a game that bridges the gap between familiar real-world"
I just assume some have crossed the bridge more than others.

The garbage the History Channel shows is certainly a problem, but Pathfinder doesn't try to sell itself as a source of history.

Neil deGrasse Tyson had a great response when asked about what he thought about the movie Guardians of the Galaxy (I'm paraphrasing here) "If I've already accepted a talking raccoon that shoots large shoulder-fired weapons, I can deal with explosions making sounds in space."

For me, if I can accept studded leather being a thing, I can accept Dinosaurs with pronated wrists. Would I like a more historically accurate game, sure but it's never been advertised as such so I'm not expecting it to happen.

There is also a pretty sizeable contingent of people who believe vehemently that Dinosaurs should be as they have always been portrayed

My earliest memory of a Dinosaur which might be my earliest memory of anything was of an all white plastic Brontosaurus I had when I was 4sih. So I find Dinosaurs having any color at all shocking let alone scales or feathers. Actually, there was one other color of Dinosaur I remember, solid green from Sinclair signs.

Yea...not sure why I'm bothering.

I'm not welcome here, and people who post here will deny that hell or high water, because admitting there is a problem would require some level of collective self-reflection that I know isn't possible. They would do so as I was labeled problematic in some way and removed. Nobody left here could admit this is a problem, and absolutely will not

Paizo is perhaps more suppressive than WotC. That's really saying something.

If you expect the Paizo forums to support unfiltered speech like that platform formally known as Twitter, perhaps your in the wrong place, or are posting off topic, you have yet to post anything about the game in this thread.

There are not, or more specifically they are in such a narrow band they could fit on a postage stamp.

I used to think the game was losing players because the Forums seemed slower, but a lot of people moved to Discord or Reddit. The other platforms are more cell phone friendly than the Paizo forums. I just don't get the layout of Discord, so don't use it often, but on Reddit I see new players asking for advice every day.

I don't think this is possible. These forums are not a place for dialogue in the slightest anymore, only agreeance and adoration is actually allowed.

There is no allowance for viewpoint diversity here, which is why I (and many many others) generally stopped posting and pretty much stopped buying products here a long time ago. As far as I can tell this place is still heading in a purity spiral direction with no mechanism in place to slow it.

This is so bad here that the simple act of pointing out the lack of viewpoint diversity is likely to get me banned or my post deleted. If somebody asked me to elaborate, the elaboration will likely get me or my post removed.

In case you missed the news Pathfinder 2e sales have been through the roof this year. Earlier this year Paizo sold out of an 8-month supply of PF2e core rule books in 2 weeks.

I play my mystic healer as a tank, I'm sure most people disagree that's a good idea. Then there was that time I suggested it would be interesting to have more encounters in Starfinder without weapons, lots of people STRONGLY!!! disagreed with me on that, but no one got banned over it. Talk about the game and keep it civilized and there are no problems.

Historically there isn't one standard, but there are some types of shields that were predominantly one way or the other, others were mixed, or had both. Many shields had and extra longer straps only used to carry the shield around but not for fighting. Some shields had neither center grips nor straps for fighting such as some jousting shields were just tied right to the armor, or shields crossbowmen used that had a support arm or leg to prop up the shield on the ground completely hands-free.

Paizo has announced the release dates through Feb 2024 I'm not seeing them listed.

release dates.

I have no idea if there will be any new spells in the last 2 APs for Starfinder 1e, but if there are Paizo might wait until then to make a final spell card set. I don't know if they are even planning on making a final set of spell cards.

In an AD&D game, I was in a party of all 1st level characters encountered a group of hill giants. We just ran away, then spent several weeks of game time figuring out where the giants lived and then setting traps. So that doesn't really work in PFS where you don't have time to turn the scenario into a drawn-out downtime game, and still complete the scenario in 4 hours.

So I thought that plan might still work in a non PFS game, but rebuilding that encounter in PF2e I realized running away is not really an option if the giants are aware of your party, and are in range to throw rocks. The Giants have Perception +13 so will very likely go first, also makes hiding from the Giants very hard. The Giants have a Speed of 35 feet so likely can outrun most of the party. The Giants also can throw rocks up to 120 feet, with 3 actions can grab a 2nd rock and make 2 attacks at +19 and +16 to hit doing a minimum of 15 points of damage each. So with 2 Giants, that's a likely TPK against a party of 4 before the players can even try to run away.

I had always gotten that you didn't want to be outside of your level range for combat but this is an eye-opener that you shouldn't even be near an encounter that's too powerful.

I've been in some 1st through 7th to 8th level AD&D games. Our DM would always try to end a session in a town or someplace that would let the party split up during the week between game sessions and would run solo adventures during the week to help low-level characters catch up quicker. If someone was starting at 1st level in an otherwise high-level party, the first few sessions would be more social and low-level encounters playing out how the new character joined the party before moving on to harder encounters.

IMO shields granting +2 AC should be the ones using the forearm while those granting +1 AC not.

Roman shields were some of the largest and most protective and were just held in the hand. A buckler-size shield strapped to your forearm is fairly limited in what it can block. With a buckler in your hand you can punch block with it basically attacking the opponent's weapon, making it much more effective, than a buckler-like shield strapped to your arm. Because bucklers are much smaller than other shields they can be made very strong out of all metal and easily last as long as a bigger shield, but Game Balance says bucklers cost less so can't last as long.

The problem with making weapons and armor work like they do in real life in a game built around game balance is no one builds weapons or armor in real life thinking about how it will work with the game balance to make things fare. Every new generation of weapons is built to break that balance as much as possible.

That's the problem with shields there are so many types of them no one rule will accurately work for all of them. I do think the reduction in action tax for rearming yourself and standing up is a good thing. Fantasy is never going to be historically accurate, if it was I'd be linking to historical text showing the proper use of shields against dragons.

My take on the new art for the Dromaeosaurs is it's in addition to the art in the bestiary just different heritages. The ones with fewer feathers likely evolved living near fire-breathing dragons and developed pronated wrists to hold shields, to protect themselves from breath weapons, which is why they managed to survive with any feather left at all.

Related: T.rex art with pronated wrists always make me cry...

What makes me sad is humans have pronated wrists in Pathfinder but can't figure out how to hold a buckler in their hand properly and instead strap them to their forearms. Now if you want to argue, if the thumb-extended position on the grip was never used or not that's up for debate.

coming-to-grips-medieval-style.

If the PCs go first, this Enemy Tactic is useless

If the Enemy goes first, this Crew Action is useless.

I like that part, at least for a tactical game, it means you can outsmart your opponent by picking a static that limits their choices, assuming it's not always the same side going first. But not sure how well that plays out in a group RPG game.

If they happen simultaneously and both rolls hit the base target DC exactly (before applying any penalties), you've just entered a nightmare zone (both checks succeeded, so each roll takes a penalty, which means both checks failed, which means there is no penalty, which means both checks suceeded...)

If the result of the situation is always the same then, once you know that then you can always just jump to both checks succeeded.

Reading over the narrative starship rules, overview, and combat round section, it looks like the GM picks tactics first and the players pick second if I'm reading it right, or not missing something. I'm not seeing any mention of initiative being rolled. For now just going to assume initiative is being used, so if there is a tie then the tactics would happen simultaneously without a tiebreaker?

One rule I find odd flavor-wise is the GM can't use the same tactic for more than one ship each round. It also makes the GMs turn more complicated. I guessing that rule is there because attacks with all the ships at one time would be unbalanced against a single PC ship. But that rule makes a fleet of ships or squadron fighters being able to stay in formation almost impossible. Just an observation, I haven't had a chance to play using these rules yet.

Emky wrote:

I remember RPGs before the great "everything must be monetized!"

Before the Dawn of civilization?

And subs existed long before Paizo.

Back when some of us as kids had $ for 1st edition D&D because we delivered newspaper subs after school on our bikes. Kind of sad to just realize I had more freedom and respect at work when I was delivering papers at 10 years old than I do today in my underpaying corporate hell job. No wonder I spend all my free time trying to monetize my hobbies to free myself or just have enough $ to have a hobby.

The thing I like about Infinite and ORC licenses is they make publishing legally simple enough so people who can't afford lawyers can still publish using them. I like that Paizo has kept Infinite and ORC separate mixing them adds a lot more potential for legal risk. And to minimize risk even further I have no intention of ever mixing other third-party content under any license into what I write.

I remember RPGs before the great "everything must be monetized!" and, frankly, it was better. These $1 things here and $5 things there should be $0 blog posts with a tip jar.

I can remember TTRPGs before the OLG. I don't remember anything being free back then, as the saying goes TSR "They Sue Regularly." And blogs hadn't been invented yet.

Just a wild guess, If the supply is limited this might just be a way to prevent stores from stocking piling the special edition cover, so smaller stores have a chance to get them too.

Obviously, I'm not a Venture Officer, but I'm curious is there a private channel where a Venture Officer could ask for advice, instead of posting in the public forums here? Also, do Venture Officers get notices of changes like these to be ready to deal with them? or are Venture Officers expected to keep an eye out for changes on their own?

There's actually not that much errata.

A grand total of a page and a half maybe. That's less than we had with the old book for each printing.

One of the errata is a major change that hits upon the hot topic of the month. But in total the amount of errata is small.

It's only day one of the official release, there is time for more errata to be found.

I feel the need for a flow chart to show what can be used in what license, how and when they can mix or not, and how that applies to original content vs their party content and third-party content based on other third-party content.

Chocolate Milkshake wrote:

Here's an idea: Make it a bit of a Darklands melting pot. Xulgaths are already there, and hryngars (that's what they're called now, right?) would make a decent fit for a corporate hellscape planet.

heckuva a idea.

maybe *something* chewed up all the NOW UNNAMED inhabitants, and it's a floating rock of death. the largest dungeon imaginable. and for some reason, it's off of its orbit...

The Abomination Planet AP Collect all 180 hardcore books covering over 1000 levels to explore... That still doesn't qualify as the largest dungeon imaginable, for that we need Carl Sagan to describe the page count.

I just wanted to say. Today I learned paizo created infinite.

I honestly thought it was a place for people to vent their grievances with the system by fixing what isn't broken or breaking what wasn't good enough for them.

As you can see, the few infinite pieces I purchased I was not incredibly impressed with. But I get I'm probably not their target audience.

Still, cool to finally learn it was paizo itself that created it.

As for the orc stuff. What I've gathered from reading it

Infinite is infinite

Orc is orc

Is there a reason why infinites license cannot be just... Done away with and have it be under soley the orc? I am sure there is, but I am not smart enough for it

You might consider looking at Infinite Masters. Infinite Masters are all invited by Paizo.. Some of the infinite masters are actual Paizo employees and freelance writers, and some of the stuff in published Infinite Masters comes from leftover ideas that did have room to fit in the books.

I haven't bought any Pathfinder Infinite content, but the Starfinder Infinite things I have gotten have been really good for the most part. There are a lot more people publishing for Pathfinder Infinite so likely greater variation in quality.

It sounds like the only way to publish open content (mechanics) in Pathfinder Infinite is now by referencing the OGL and making sure to include some OGC.

While I understand the reasoning, this is a terrible look.

If you do want to avoid crossing the streams, I strongly recommend starting a second digital storefront for ORC titles. Otherwise the headlines just write themselves: "Paizo prohibits 3rd party publishers from using ORC license in its storefront." "Only way to publish open content in Pathfinder Infinite is by using the OGL."

Infinite content is already on separate storefronts on DrivethroughRPG from other Paizo-related third-party content.

https://www.pathfinderinfinite.com/
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/browse?ruleSystem=100193

'Tis a good last hurrah for Starfinder. Shame to see Starfinder dying after this.

Let's see there are 2 more hard-cover adventure paths coming, at least 5 more scenarios for season 6, and season 7 will likely have another 16 or so scenarios, Then the playtest, then Starfindeer 2e...

How are they thinking of making the operative more of a specialist them skill monkey? Both the current envoy and operative have the same number of skills and ways to specialize in skills. The big advantage operatives have as a skill monkey is Operative’s edge. If operatives lost Operative’s edge or Operative’s edge just appalled to initiative checks. Then make a new general feat that gives +1 to 3 or 4 different skills. That would allow classes that have only 4 skills to at least be good at these skills. It doesn't seem out of place for a soldier to be good at the few skills they can take. Some people have said that the operative is not too good its other classes were not as good. having a general skill boost feet that bost 4 skills would give every class an option to be able to be played with a more skill-oriented build.

Kringress wrote:

Paizo stated that the rules were backwards compatible for 2.0 and now you are FORCING us to purchase the re-master? WTH is wrong with you! I am a VO that will not even mention this s$~& to my players. If you don't like it I do not CARE.

I have many players that will look at PAIZO and tell them Nope, done with this s+~$ and leave the game and society if we force them to purchase the new books (which happened with the change from 1e to 2e), while stating the rules are on Archives of Nethis is not an option.

Please change your policy before it becomes a problem.

Here is what is needed:
Rules on refocus, Recall Knowledge, and Monster Abilities. Other than that there is no need to re-do characters unless the player wants to build under the new rules.

I just have to say that your post is an effective advertisement for NOT joining PFS. I'm repelled at the thought of having to interact with someone with such lack of self-control, disrespect for others, and apparent inability to engage in reasoned dialogue.

Everyone has a bad day. I suspect the OP knows his player's likely reaction to change better than we do. Where I live 85% of the players dropped out of PFS when 2e came out, the group never recovered and recently shut down completely. So I get the OP's fear and frustration that the rule change could cause enough player loss to end the game where they live.

Paizo might not require owning the book to play the remastered version of a class in PFS but with Archive of Nethys not even having the the new rules available yet, there's no way to comply with the change effective today Nov 15th if you don't buy the new books. If the OPs players are the type to refuse to use Nethys then they are likely also not reading these forums to keep up with the latest game news. So currently a softer rollout seems justified.

I will add one thing I think will cause some feel bad moments at tables. is grandfathering of characters made before this change. That's likely to cause someone to complain if someone else can play old versions of a class why can't they? But if you force everyone to update their character then this starts to feel like an edition change, and that's not how the remaster has been advertised to us.

Now let's remind ourselves how we got here and thank WOTC for this mess.

Our group didn't get any new players from the convention here, which is odd because even after the remaster books were announced our local game store had just got a full bookshelf of just PF2e core rule books in, and they sold out in about 2 weeks.

I'm shocked people at your convention didn't know about the drama, according to the internet, it sounded like even wild animals were up in arms protesting the OGL mess.

Something that organized play is lacking, you never really hear any YouTube creators talking about organized play.

I see lots of new players and DMs coming over from 5e all the time on Reddit for both Starfinder and Pathfinder since the OGL mess. I noticed a lot of them will say they are new to Pathfinder2e or Starfinder and then jump right into homebrew questions. Also a lot of the time it's a whole table switching over too, so not likely to be interested in organized play as much as an individual player.

So I'm curious if other areas are seeing growth in their organized play groups. Sadly the local organized play group where I live recently died out and is gone now, but I never saw many people playing 5e at any of the game stores either. Here Warhammer overshadows everything even Magic the Gathering.

figuring out what feats, spells, etc have changed (and thus need to be updated on an old character) is going to be a pain without some sort of composed list of which things have now been “errata’d”.

This was posted above by someone else, but In case you missed it:

It's still a work in progress but getting closer, but they actually show what the change difference is which is very useful.

Good to know about the Level Bump and Mentor Boon mechanics in PF2e since that's the direction SF2e is going. Does seem to be more of an organized play issue than for home games.

There are some people who have commented saying they play both home games and organized play but between the people saying they have only played one way or the other it seems split between them, I've only played mixed-level parties and mixed parties that's sounds crazy.

A lot of the examples I gave were more the rebellion/wartime operatives from Star Wars. Cyberpunk is a great example of street and corporate operatives. I had to look up Murderbot Diaries, android, and SRO-type operatives that's a whole over flavor, Chopper and R2-D2 might fit that a bit too. That's the tricky part about operatives they cover such a wide range of skills and flavors, which makes them hard to pin done to one concept.

If the new rules go into effect tomorrow, is the Archive of Nethys getting updated then too? Although the spreadsheet is probably more useful than the Neyths as far as figuring out what the changes are, Nethyes is easier to find for most people.

I checked my digital content download page last night to see if the pregen package had been updated. I'm assuming the old pregens are still usable? Is there a pregen update planned for the remaster?