Driftbourne's page

I withdrew from 1-09 Abduction, so there is 1 seat left. It's listed as being on the Paizo forums, but is actually on Mythweavers.

I am GRIM*! or GRIM*! is me.

Based on the description of 1-17: Corpse Fleet Conflict, it looks like this might be the first chance we get to see Cinematic Starship Combat used in a scenario, if anyone is interested in giving that a try.

I would try asking this in the Organized Play forums.
Organized Play General Discussion

We have one for Pathfinder at our store, but not sure where the VO got it, or if it's an official poster or one they made.

I've been wondering about doing the same with the same character, different levels concept. It's kind of almost like making your own pregen at multiple levels. Each level would have to be registered as a different character, and as you pointed out, boons would not carry over.

I like the idea of getting slow play back in SF2e, but not how it currently works. If you need to slow play just one session to let someone else catch up, then you're stuck with 1/2 XP.

My idea for slow play is that you only slow play on the chronicle you would level up from. Doing so, you don't get any XP and don't level up from that scenario. Some adjustment to income might be needed, but the rest is normal. Next game you decide to play normally, you would start getting XP again and level up, and there's no partial XP to deal with.

Mystery of the Frozen Moon: Full
Sloughscar Summit: Full

1-09 Abduction: (Levels 1-2) 1 seat open

1-17 Corpse Fleet Conflict: (Levels 3-4) 6 seats open
Reminder, you can make a character starting at 3rd level in SFS2

Part of the problem is the irrationality of claiming someone's sensitive scent sense can translate chemicals floating in the air which could arrive from various places can somehow suss out where things are located, particularly without the aid stereoscopic sensors like two eyes and two ears provide for sight and hearing. I can think of ways of justifying this but my way may be different than the GMs way and this could lead to questions of "Does the deafblind PC know about x."

As moosher12, human smell is in stereo. Interestingly, the stereo effect is subconscious; we can't tell which nostril is receiving more sent but our brains can still figure out the direction.

Now, looking at what wolves can smell.

Wolves' noses can focus nostrils in different directions, giving them an ever stronger stereo sense of smell, allowing a wolf to pinpoint the exact direction a scent is coming from. (This is why Vlaka can have a precise sense of smell.)

The question becomes how fast is a sense of smell vs vision. Looking that up, I found that the brain reacts to smells on a rapid temporal scale similar to vision and hearing. It's how smells move through the air that gets weird. What a smell looks like

In most of that video, there are no objects in the path of the smells being visualized. So I'm imagining that Vlaka, seeing the layout of a room, is sensing the placement of objects by how smell flows around them. This should also help with knowing where the ground is. Chasing pray would be like following the wake of a boat until you got to the boat, and knowing the wake narrows as it gets closer to the boat, you could tell how far away it is.

Receptor Cells: Wolves 200 million / Humans 5 million
Portion of the brain dedicated to processing scents:
Wolves the size of a human fist / Humans the size of a pea.

Range: Detect prey from 1 to 2 miles, depending on wind, up to 60 miles for massive herds or forest fires. (There are no rules for this, but where Vlaka should really have an advantage in detecting other creatures is in exploration mode.)

Fun fact, wolf noses have noseprints like humans have fingerprints.

Driftbourne, the issue isn't that Boost makes combats too easy (SFS not being tough enough is a separate problem), but that characters with access to Boost tend to flatten out their combat routines while making those who don't have it feel like chumps. So, they make the game worse for themselves by choking out other options, and worse for other people due to the relative power differential. The ideal way to play should not be spamming the same move over and over, especially when this move is available to basically everyone (since simple guns with Boost exist).

I am happy to report a workable homebrew fix, though: limiting Boost to just once per minute allows for players to still experience the unga bunga big dammies that make the trait worthwhile, but adds in the tactical choice of when to use it, keeping it from becoming a locked-in turn element and allowong players to feel better about using more of their kits.

I saw the Plasma Casters conversation on Reddit, sounded like the whole party had them. I'd love to throw about 10 diathas at that party lol. Diatha

If I were going to optimize a party around boost, I'd do it so that each PC had boost with a different damage type.

The only character I have with a boosted weapon in my safety inspector envoy that uses a boom pistol with boost and razing to take out hazards with hardness. It's very situational and something most other characters are not optimized for. (Can I use Suppercharge Weapon with that?)

I think for a home game, your solution works fine. Another idea would be to have Boost take a round to charge up; that way, you prevent a PC from one-shotting an opponent on their first strike. Thinking of it now, most encounters that felt too easy, the PCs were able to take out some of the opponents in round 1 before they could even attack the PCs, and then the battle was all downhill from there.

Unfortutlly the General section of the Online Campaign section is hardly used. The active parts of the Online Campaign forums is the Recruitment section.

Recruitment

At the top of the recruitment section are the Play-By-Post Lodges for both editions of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Asking a question in the Discussion sections of the lodge of the game you're interested in would be the best place to ask about finding Play-By-Post games run on the Paizo forums.

The event section of the organized play forums lists online events for multiple formats.
Events

The local Pathfinder/Starfinder Society organized play group where I live, some parents bring their kids to the games to play. Organized play is desgined ot be friendly for people of all ages.

There are many Discord groups for Paizo games. There are too many to keep up with, so I stopped using them other than our local stores' Discord. Some of the event listings I linked to will point you to them.

In Pathfinder Society 2e, content from player's guides is accessed via chronicle boons (if it's available at all)

Since all the player options in Guilt of the Graveworld are already sanctioned by ownership of the book, I don't see Paizo removing that. If Paizo were going to make owning the player's guide count for sanctioning, all that would have been needed was saying so. If Paizo doesn't make that statement in response to your question, then I think a likely answer is that Paizo is waiting to put some of them or all in a chronicle boon. "If ?" they are also going to be available through a chronicle boon, then this comment is likely the answer to when. Jessica Catalan's comment.

Driftbourne wrote:

Speaking of ways to make CSS more fun or easier to use, a new 3rd-party tool was just released.

Mobile View and Cinematic Starship Combat Builder added to Starfinder Encounters

"Why is this spammer talking about Cascading Style Sheets? Oh wait..."

Cool to have a new tool for it!

CSS could mean Cascading Starship Scenes; it's what happens when one cinematic starship scene leads directly into the next.

CSS could also be Classic Starwars Sheets

Would be especially interesting if starship encounter design actually used terrain that needed maneuvering around other than asteroids (starsector, another game, has interesting "space terrain"

SF1e has lots of Space Hazards

What SF1e doesn't have is tokens to use as space terrain; for that, I've been using X-wing and Armada tokens. Unfortunatlly both games have been canceled for a while. X-wing had an expansion pack called Never Tell Me The Odds with 90% just space obstacle tokens, 5 types, 17 total obstacles, all different shapes. There are a few left online for around $18. There are also Etsy stores that make 3d verstion of some of them. Too soon to know if x-wing obsticals will be useful in SF2e.

SF1e already has several space maps, so not sure if SF2e will need a new one anytime soon, but if we ever do get one, I'd love to see it come with one sheet of space obstacle tokens.

Speaking of tokens, a set of cover, concealment, difficult terrain, and hazards would be great to have, especially with all the ranged combat in SF2e.

I've run a few games now where, even without the party using boost and only using ranged weapons, wipe out the opponents quickly, one-shotting many of them. In one case, it was a party of 4, all 1st level. I ran the encounter with the harder adjustment, and all the opponents had cover, and I still felt like I could have applied the harder adjustment a second time as reinforcements to make the encounter more interesting, but still not put the party in any real danger. To be fair, this was a low encounter, but it ended up being the ending of the game because the PCs chose to go left instead of right near the start of the adventure.

So far, all the scenarios I've run have all had low and moderate encounters. Boost seems like something handy or balanced for the PCs to have in more difficult encounters. Another way to balance that is give low encounters more cannon fodder when needed.

The Lore spire says
"There are no rigid rules on when to use these adjustments. A party of six high-level PCs might seem like the ideal case for the Harder adjustment, but if the players are all relatively inexperienced, the standard difficulty could be best. In most cases, a four-PC party of low-level characters would use the Easier adjustment, but there are situations where the GM or players prefer not to apply it, such as if all players are experienced and want a challenge.

A GM’s goal is for the players to complete the adventure and feel as if they have overcome obstacles to do so. Attempt to run games which are neither extremely easy nor extremely hard; cakewalks are not the desired experience, but neither are consistent TPKs. GMs can alter their adjustments partway through an adventure based on the PCs’ performance, using different adjustments for different encounters.

GMs must: Run combat encounters without substantially increasing difficulty, except as dictated by the scenario.

The scenario says: "You can use the Adjusting Difficulty
sidebars to make the adventure easier or harder."

Playing devil's advocate... It doesn't say you can't apply the harder adjustment more than once. Runs for cover...

Something worth pointing out for people who haven't played SF1e: Vlakas have more detailed lore in SF1e. There's a whole section on Vlakan communication. Archive of Nethys.
The section on Relations goes into how they use their sense of smell a bit. I love the section on Vlakan poetry. I might build a Vlaka poet after rereading that section.

I just found a video on Protactile that shows someone describing a building and giving directions to find a room in it. Though it was an interesting example because we deal wiht describing spaces on a map a lot in the game. touch-based language

The same video talks about back channelling in Protactile, where the receiver gives instant feedback to the speaker. I think this is where the "intimate" description comes from in the book. For the deaf-blind, it's a necessity; for those not needing it, it's a more deaf-blind way of communicating, since it uses hands, arms, shoulders, back, or leg contact.

Found a video on the Protactile theatre version of Romeo and Juliet ProTactile Romeo and Juliet: Theatre by/for the DeafBlind. This is the first example I've found where the sense of smell was used. Besides being interesting for playing a Vlaka, I think this would intresting to add to the descriptions for the festivals going on during 1-10 Rites of Rekindling.

So it looks like Protactile works well in groups of 3. I wonder how that would apply to species with 4 or more arms. I imagine having reach might help for larger groups. Maybe the 2nd and 3rd sets of arms could be used to rally what's being spoken.

_______________________________

There are real heptic suits for gaming that let you feel hits from video games. Something like that would just need sensors on the outside of your Starfinder armor to allow Protactile like commucncation through armor. I wonder if heptic gloves would even allow communication without contact. Good for receiving a motivating ring tap spells.

__________________________

Then, once the party begins to attempt to address the mission objectives, how would they communicate with the deafblind PC, particularly if none of the other PCs has tactile sign language ability?

So I think this is solved with a basic comm unit. Comm unit description says "allowing instantaneous wireless communication with other comm units in both audio- and text-based formats". The Vlaka description says "Vlaka text is grooved". So I would assume Valka comm units display grooved text, and some have some form of haptic feedback, other wise you would not know when you receive a message.

If no one has a comm unit or doesn't speak the Vlakan tactile sign language, or has telepathy, or communication spells, then you basically have the equivalent of a first contact situation with an alien species that speaks an unknown language. IF you don't have any of the abilities or equipment listed above, it becomes a puzzle to solve, which is one of my favorite parts of the game.

Something else to keep in mind is that even a blind-def Volka can still make sounds. Some might even be able to speak, and if not, can still make other sounds like clapping, or playing a prerecorded sound or message from their comm unit. Learning to speak when you're born blind-def is much easier in a world with advanced tech, magic, and telepathy.

Still haven't had time to get to sense of smell yet...

So I had some time to look into how the deafblind communicate

Google brought up these:
Tactile Sign Language (Hand-over-Hand): The deaf-blind person places their hands over the signer's hands to feel the shape, movement, and location of signs.

Tactile Fingerspelling: Letters are spelled directly into the palm of the person's hand.

Protactile: A newer, touch-based language that does not rely on ASL or visual cues. It involves touching the person's body (back, shoulders, arms) to communicate, allowing for faster, more natural interaction. DeafBlind people are creating a new language The Protactile sign/word for dog would work for vlaka too.

Print on Palm (POP): The speaker uses their index finger to "draw" capital letters on the palm of the deaf-blind person's hand.

Braille and Technology: Utilizing Refreshable Braille Displays, computers, or smartphones that output text in Braille, often used with screen-reading software like JAWS or TalkBack.

Object Cueing: Using specific objects to represent daily activities to aid understanding, often used in conjunction with other methods.

Although not related, the first thing that comes to mind when I read Object Cueing is the Inca Quipu, a record-keeping device fashioned from knotted cords. I think this would be interesting to adapt into a form of string braille. Quipu.

The vlaka ancestry page mentions haptic touchscreens. These are likely more common in Starfinder for everyday use, not just for deafblind vlaka. One real-life use being developed is touch feedback for touch screens in cars so the diver dosen't have to look at the screen. Tanvas Haptic Touch Screen. Starfinder's version is likely way more advanced.

Protactile is much more of a 3d language than Braille. Instead of or in addition to Haptic Touch Screen, I think for the Starfinder, hardlight screens or projectors would work better.

Out of time again, I still need to take a look at having a heightened sense of smell, which gets interesting, some sources suggest scent is considered vastly higher than 4-dimensional.

In a home game, this is something you can work out with the GM in advance or at session zero, but in organized play, I think a lot of it comes down to the player. As a GM for organized play, I often don't know what characters the players have until 5 minutes before the game starts. Sometimes people sign up in advance, so I know what their character is, then they get to the game and decide to play a different character. So none of my game prep for organized play is based on what the characters are.

How a player wants to deal with roleplaying a deafblind vlaka, I feel, is up to them. It helps a lot if they are prepared to demonstrate or discuss their character during introductions. Describing in character how your character walks into the mission briefing room filled with strangers, establishes communication, and introduces themself to the other PCs. This lets the GM and other players know how to deal with your character. How you describe entering and sensing what's in the room gives a GM something to work with to adapt to describing the game to your character is a huge help.

Rule wise "precise sense with a range of 90 feet" covers combat and "Vlaka text is grooved, so it can be read by sight and touch, with modern technological devices also integrating audio descriptions and smells as appropriate alongside their haptic touchscreens." so a comm unit covers communication. Plus, the rules HolyFlamingo! posted above are enough rules to hand-wave most situations, if a player isn't into roleplaying, having a deafblind character.

That's how I see it from the GM side, although every GM is different. I'm out of time to go deeper into how I see the player side right now, but playing a character that perceives the world differently is something I find interesting. Most of my research into how to roleplay senses abilities I don't have is on google looking for real-life examples, not in rule books.

Event Listing.
Mystery of the Frozen Moon: 1 seat open
Sloughscar Summit: 1 seat open
Abduction: 1 seat open
Corpse Fleet Conflict: 6 seats open

Belafon wrote:

I can't speak to SFS (haven't played SFS2e). For PFS, the difference is that those scenarios are designed to be replayable by introducing a variable component.

In SFS the scenarios do NOT have written variable components.

However, the SFS GM has more leeway than the PFS GM to alter things in the scenario, including difficulty level. They're not supposed to alter key aspects of the scenario but they can add flavour encounters if they want.

I've played almost all the SFS scenarios twice and there can be considerable variation from one run to the other.

One reason I think it's easy (or sometimes needed) to add flavor encounters to the new SF2e scenarios is that they are only 2 to 3 hours long, so there's session time for it if you want to try to run them longer. I've gotten a few scenarios up to 4.5 hours. I feel most SFS2 scenarios I've run so far (all the non-meta plot ones) usually have some part or NPC that invites being expanded.

I think the difference is that in Starfinder 2e, all scenarios are repeatable. So I think that eliminates the need for replays. Note there's no SF2e replay boon you can buy with APC, and it looks like SF2 replays are not tracked.

The Gap also affects other planes, so the changes between PF and SF timelines could be much bigger than just the normal passage of time.

Planar travel is very commonplace; anyone who has traveled to another planet by Drift Drive has experienced planar travel. For some busy routes, it's as common as taking an airplane today.

The Drift doesn't exist yet in Pathfinder, so it's possible that Starfinder could have other unique planes. There's always room to do more with the Drift. For people who didn't play SF1e and didn't read Drift Crisis or play through Drift Crashers and Drift Hackers, having an SF2e book that goes a bit deeper into the Drift can turn the Drift from this is how we travel in Starfinder into this is one of the really cool things about Starfinder.

With common diabolical legal services, getting into Hell at any character level should be easy; getting out is the hard part. Going to Hell is something that has happened at the 1st level in an SF1e AP.

I haven't seen Rage of Elements, but I'm thinking something like Planar Ports of Call.

A 1/5 split isn't splitting the party; it's someone went off on their own. It sounds like luck is the reason they survived.

In a play-by-post to really do a split party right, you could make a separate game thread for one of the parties, so neither group knows what the other is seeing or where they are. Although in Starfider comm units, could overcome some of that.

Time line-wise of book releases, Tech Core is more in line with the Armory book, although the Tech Core is more like Tech Revolution content-wise. So hard to tell if a god/magic book would follow next. Meanwhile,
There are all the spells from PF2e that could be used, and until we get a divine book in SF2e, the divine lore from SF1e mostly still works.

SF1e had a few books in planning or being worked on we never saw because the OGL mess happened, and they started working on SF2e. I think the planar book was one of them. It sounded like some of these projects were getting rewritten for SF2e.

SF1e has several interstellar drives that are similar to drift drives, but for other planes. Helldrives, First Drives (first world), Shadow Engine, Planar Aperture Drive, Elemental Engine. There was some planar travel in Drift Crashers, post Drift Crash seems like it would have been a good time for an SF1e planar book. I "think?" it was said in a live stream that the Planar Book was what was replaced with Starfinder Enhanced.

Outside of the connection between PF1e Distance Worlds and the Pact Worlds, planar travel gets you to locations that Pathfinder and Starfinder have in common, that haven't been explored in depth in Starfinder yet. Not sure when a book like this would come out, definitely post-core books, but likely sooner than later otherwise.

Event Listing

Event Listing

Maybe in a book like Galactic Magic, but unless there's a lot of updating to do from the SF1e Galactic Magic, I don't see it happening anytime soon, kind of like how there's only a few big changess to the Pact Worlds, so no Pact Worlds book to start, instead we are getting a book on Absalom Station which we never got in SF1e. Another book SF1e never got was a book on the planes, so that might be a better chance for something sooner on fiendish things, although not limited to just fiends.

I used to want a 5th tradition for Starfinder just to have one that was Starfinder only, but now I think it comes down to having more tech-flavored spells than a new tradition. It doesn't get more "tech Mystic" than motivating ringtone.

A PF2e wizards writning down spells in a book isn't much different from writing a computer program for a spell chip. When triggered, both do a preprogrammed effect. In Starfinder, magic can often be seen as an alternative power source for tech items.

I am unaware of what problem this new approach is solving.

Besides making them easier to write, balance, and cheaper to produce, there are several player facing benefits.

1. It's also easier for GMs, since you don't have to prep for high and low tiers. Which also means there are fewer pages to flip through when you only have one set of stat blocks per encounter instead of two.

2. Most near TPKs I've been in, we only survived because, at the last moment, when the GM realized they used the wrong tier stat block or had mis-calculated APL.

3. Playing the only 1st-level character when the rest of the party is 3rd and 4th-level isn't always fun.

______________

If your group only has one table, the problem is no different than only having a 4th-level character when the group is playing 5th + scenario. The quick solution for players are play a pregen to level up your character, or if you have time, make a 3rd-level character.

Also, Hephaistos 2e has the tech playtest classes in their character builder.

Hephaistos 2e

You can't play for no credit as the fourth player at a 1-4 table, for example, because the table could continue without you by adding a pregen.

I feel like an exception to that rule would be good for situations where an experienced player dropped out of another game to play a pregen to help a GM with a table of all new players. Having new players play multiple pregens can be overwhelming, and having at least one experienced player at the table can help the GM out when teaching new players. This is a common occurrence at our lodge.

I really like that all Starfinder 2 scenarios are repeatable. I've already repeated 3 of them. The last one I repeated, another GM had to cancel on short notice, and being able to run a scenario I had already run made it easy to fill in on short notice. Because it was on short notices one of the players had also played it before. So being repeatable helped both sides of the table.

Empires Devoured is also a playtest adventure; some of the hazards in the playtest were known to be overturned, so I'd consider that when deciding to let them be saved. An alternative to character death I sometimes use is that they are knocked unconscious until the end of the session. That way, they can be saved, but it feels like something bad happened that could just be fixed with a quick spell or med patch.

I'm hoping for spherical power armor for Novians, with the Novian being the power source, to make a miniature Dysion's sphere. Another option would be making a Novian becoming a Dysion's sphere into an Evolunist niche.

The first 3rd to 4th level Scenarios are starting to come out, and I have a few questions.

1. When making a higher-level character, do you record your starting experience points on your first chronicle as the minimum to start at the level? Or do you start with 0 XP and just level every 12 XP? I think if you start at 0 XP, it might answer question 2.

2. Can you do free rebuilds until you reach the next level above where you started, as a 1st-level character can before reaching 2nd level?

3. The starting credits or equipment chart on the Lore Spire covers levels 1, 3, and 5. I thought in SF2e the top level you could start at was 7th? (although there's no need for that in season 1)

4. How does starting a character at a higher level and GM chronicles mix or not? For example, if you have 2 GM chronicals and build a 3rd-level character.

I'll quibble and say Precog flavor is mostly in SFS 2, but the pre-roll mechanic which I just love isn't there which is unfortunate since I liked that a lot. I've had fun with the SFS2, but certainly the range of options available in SFS1 still makes it very attractive to play.

I wonder if the pre-roll mechanic was left out because it would be more powerful with crits being 10 over AC or DC.

Imagine a worlanisi precog with 3 pre-rolls and hero points. That's a lot of dice control. I'm courious to see if worlanisi luck remains first nat 1 of the days = becomes a nat 20

SF1e only had 7 classes at release.

The tech playtest mechanic and technomancer are still playable even in organized play. With the precog now being a witchwarper subclass, that's 8.5 classes from SF1e covered at the release of SF2e.

The release of SF2e was on August 1st 2025, that's only 6 months ago, not a year.

Tech Class Playtest pdf

I think this is the first SF2e scenario with missing stat blocks for creatures in the Alien Core. The Archive of Nethys has a new tool for printing missing stat blocks as a printer-friendly PDF. You can also apply the difficulty adjustments of the encounter to the stat blocks or print out all levels of difficulty.

Encounters for Starfinder Society Scenario #1-14: The Beasts of Bo: Part One

To find that without a link it's:
AoN > Setting > Adventures > Scenarios > SFS Year 1 > View Encounters

There was talk in another thread about starship combat in organized play, how it's better to have more challenging starship encounters at the end of a scenario, because losing a starship battle is usually a TPK or complete mission fail, especially if it's the first encounter of the scenario. So I had an idea for a boon you could get by spending ACP in case your ship is destroyed. I'm also a big fan of fail-forward mechanics.

Rescued: The boon would rescue you; it might take up all of your downtime for the scenario that left you stranded. Gain +1 to Subsist in one environment that you were stuck in. For getting stranded somewhere with a population, you might instead gain the option to take one versatile heritage feat or a local lore skill.

Optionally, to make it feel more like the character really was stranded, have it that the character can't play in the next scenario you play in. Maybe quicker rescues cost more ACP

Thought it might be an interesting way to allow scenarios with higher stakes or consequences.

Thanks for taking the time to post this update. All of your hard work and the work of the entire Starfinder Team is greatly appreciated! I've been playing TTRPGs since 1979, and Starfinder is my favorite setting by a long shot. I've only played Starfiner through organized play, and having a great time doing so!

Now that more scenarios are out, and they are all repeatable, the original want of other adventurers getting sectioned feels less important than it did early on. I love the shorter length of the SF2e scenarios; it leaves time for GMs who like to mod and add some of their own flavor to them (within SFS guidelines), making repeating them more fun.

Now that the higher-level scenarios are starting to come out, I'm looking forward to being able to make a character starting at higher levels. At first, I thought this was just a good option, giving us more flexibility, being able to use our one character instead of pregens at higher levels. Now I'm really excited about when I realised this allows me to start at 3rd level, which is great for character concepts that are built around them getting an archetype at 2nd level.

I'm 1 game away from getting my first "whatever they come to be called."
Just had another idea for that. Use a little Skittermander face for the symbol and call them "nufriends."

Thanks again for all of your hard work. You bring our favorite galaxy to life! or in Zo!'s case unlife.

Speaking of ways to make CSS more fun or easier to use, a new 3rd-party tool was just released.

Mobile View and Cinematic Starship Combat Builder added to Starfinder Encounters

I dug a little deeper and asked AI to show its sources for the info on Gnolls and Kitsune, and it linked to another thread started by the OP

Upcoming Galactic Ancestries Book for 2E

Which is odd because it's not what the AI link says it's linked to, AI claims to be linking to "Paizo Forums - Scions of Lost Golarion / Part 3 Player Core 2", I can't find a thread or blog post with that name. But there is a Reddit post on Scions of Lost Golarion.

My guess is someone taught AI the dubious knowledge feat, and or the deception skill.

No reveals were needed, all information that was problematic could already be found in the Alien Archive entry featuring them.

More info of this old conversation can basically be found in this old thread

But essentially, an old Discord post from devs insinuated that greys had a real chance of being cut, especially since at the time, reptoids were confirmed cut, and Ikeshti's had retcons applied to their lore. So we were expecting greys would either be cut or get the Ikeshti treatment.

I just want to point out that the thread linked to had several posts removed by Paizo, so the first post in that thread is not the OP.

Milo v3 wrote:

I feel like cinematic is the closest it's been, but has suffered from not giving players enough agency in the examples for me to want to use the system over just replacing the whole encounter with one or two skill rolls and just not having a system for starship combat in my games.

I really hope that whatever system they come to gives reasons to be doing different things each turn and have actual decisions get made.

Yeah.

I ran the Corpse Fleet encounter and almost immediately my players asked to do tasks not listed like targeting engines, taunting crew, hacking systems, etc.

By CSS, using creature building rules for balance and scaling, it opens up using a lot of other regular actions.

Ttaunting the other crew is just a matter of calling them over ship comms and using intimidation to demoralize.

For hacking, you can borrow the hacking action from another CSS; they're all listed in the Archive of Nethys Cinematic Starship Scenes

Hack Defenses [two-actions] (magic or science officer)
Attempt a DC 22 Arcana, Computers, Nature, Occultism, or Religion check to infiltrate sensor networks or nullify sensor patrol drones and turrets in your path.
Critical Success: Gain 2 Infiltration Points.
Success: Gain 1 Infiltration Point.
Critical Failure: Lose 1 Infiltration Point.

In the SF2e GM Core, there's a Hacking Subsystem.

To target the engines, let an Enovy use Get'Em at the engines. The PCs hit the engines, giving the opponent's ship the glitching condition. Ships in CSS's can get persistent damage like PCs can, why not conditions? Since CSS doesn't have movement rules, instead of the glitching condition, use Off Guard to simulate that a slower ship is easier to hit.

To make CSS more intresting plug in regular actions/rules whenever you can. Doing so lets your players use actions from their character sheet, giving them more choices directly related to their character.

I also don't get the hate on SF1e's Starship Combat, especially reading what came out after I quit running it. We're GMs really going, "oh you all explode now, game over." instead of disabling, surrendering, abandoning ship, etc? I think only once did I ever had a starship combat end in "TPK" and that was because it was a Halo: Reach style "survive until you can't" style finale mission to set up our next campaign.

I'm not one of the SF1e starship combat haters. I had fun with it, but I see more potential in CSS and adventures built like Nova Rush, add movment rules to either, and you have tactical combat. Until we get full starship rules, I think a more useful conversation would be how to get the most out of CSS and adventures like Nova Rush to make them more fun.

I quite liked the cinematic combat stuff having played with it a few times. Personally, I'm not sure we need tactical combat, coming from someone who loved the tactical combat in SF1. I think what we need is the ability to get more crew actions and to customise our ships. Specifically, swapping weapons and choosing bay options. AC, shields, HP etc can all be covered by the building rules as in the cinemtaic combat stuff.

I agree that more options would be good. I wonder if, when the full shipbuilding rules are out, if you could just plug in a ship with a full stat block into a CSS and just use the rest of the CSS to set the obstacles, non-ship threats, and victory conditions to make an encounter. I also wonder if a list of crew actions for the full starship combat rules could also be used in a CSS.

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I think for those who have only looked at but not played with CSS, or played a CSS as written, there are more weapons and crew options than it may look at first sight.

If you take all the CSS we have so far 3 from the GM Core and 4 from Guilt of the Grave Word, we have 8 types of ship weapons plus a gunner action. Two of the weapons also have variations for different levels.

For pilot actions, there are 6, but Tactical Withdrawal appears in 3 different CSS having from slight to completely different variations. I think this is important to point out because, unlike standard actions that have a single fixed definition, an action in CSS can have the same name but be made to do whatever the scenario needs.

Some of the other crew roles are lacking actions, but are also some of the crew roles that have things to do inside the ship during a battle, using non ship realted ruels.

Thanks for the reminder about that. I'll have to start keeping an eye out for scenarios that go together to see what the impacts are. This is the first season I've been able to play or run scenarios as they came out, and in order, so first time I've seen the results of past scenarios play out. I had assumed effects would show up next season.

Now that you mentioned it, I just checked the chronicles for 1-13 Foul Humors, and if Tadasi survives is on it again. Checking warhorn I have seats left, but know at least 1/2 the players are from the first game.

If Tadasi died in my game a 2nd time, but showed up alive again in a 3rd scenario. I think it would be fun to progress her recovery from Borai to Corpsefolk. I could do it without changing any of Tadasi's stats and just say her change in appearance is the result of experimental blood transfusions done at Dreamlink Labs. If she survives Foul Humor,s I'll say the transfusions worked, and she returns to looking normal.

It's also kind of fitting for my group, we played Disaster at Dreamlink near Halloween, so I used skulls as hero points.

* If space combat is going to be its own miniature-based game, does everyone get a miniature of their own?

I think this is important because one of the frustrations in SF1 was that only the person (pilot) moving the ship got to really make a lot of choices. As a gunner you're just rolling dice and hoping to roll high, but you're not making many interesting choices.

I think it's very unlikely that everyone will be in their own starfighter, unless they do an AP like Mechageddon! for starfighters. For one to do that, everyone has to be good at plioting and that narrows down character choices a lot. Most species wouldn't enjoy 5d6 weeks of Drift travel in a single-seat starfighter, so you also need a base ship.

So that makes the question what kind of starship works best for long travel with a crew of 4 to 6, and what kind of combat works for that size of ship. So we're talking about flying RVs with guns or in Star Wars light freighters, basically something you can live in, which just happen to be small enough to fit on a flip mat, but big enough to fill up the map.

From the STF CONline 2026 - Starfinder 2e Developer Panel last week, it looks like the SF2e developer working on staship combat was inspired by a game called Faster Than Light. Which looks like it could work with the size of ships I described above. I haven't played FTL, but watching some videos on it, it's got great reviews, so maybe they're on to something.

Also pointing out the lear long Drift Crisis event, was particularly inspired by the need to chage how the Drift works, so travel could become more predictable for things like space piracy to make more sense in Starfinder. That, combined with how FTL plays, and I think we will see more boarding action in SF2e, which makes sense with the size of the ship that fits a crew of 4 to 6. That doesn't mean there will only be shipboarding combat.

The ship in Battle for Nova Rush is big enough to act as a small base ship and could hold a few starfighters or a single shuttle-sized ship. I think if the party has more than one pilot, having 1 or 2 smaller ships, you could launch, could add a lot to a starship battle.

TL;DR - I think space combat design needs to start out by thinking a lot about what wining and losing means for the adventure. Provide build advice for GMs on how to use low and high stakes space combat. Especially for how to make LOW stakes space combat work because that's what you need the most of.

I think for low-stakes combat, the goal should be for the PCs' main mission to be completing some goal not related to combat, but they have to survive the combat long enough to complete the mission before fleeing. Having goals like that also gives the PCs who are not pilots or gunners something to do.

Also, being able to directly target the opponent's engines or weapons could help end battles without having to fight to the death. This also leads to opportunities to board ships.

I think Ascalaphus hada really good point about high stake encounter happening at the end of a scenario, where a TPK wouldn't end the game right at the start. I also think having a final battle with a ship you have encountered before, where one side or the other had fled the fight, helps lead up to a better boss fight. That's harder to do in a single scenario, but could be done as part of a meta plot or AP.

I think losing doesn't have to mean a TPK. You could be stranded on a shipwreck in space, or you might be able to crash land and be stranded on a planet. You could be taken prisoner or rescued by someone else. A lot of these options work better in longer adventures and more sandbox games. They could be harder to do in organized play. For organized play, being rescued could be a downtime activity or a boon you buy with ACP

Ascalaphus wrote:

But if the stakes are going to be that high, that has some consequences for how you can use them.

5) There needs to be (in general) some way for the PCs to be able to just run away from a fight once they realize they're losing.

In normal combat encounters most of the time (not all, admittedly) it is possible to realize that you're losing and its time to retreat, regroup, and come up with a better plan. In fact, those make some of the best encounters IMO.

That's one problem with Drift travel is activating a Drift drive requires the starship to be stationary with conventional thrusters off for 1 minute to "spin up" the engine. So fleeing tends to turn into a chase. Which can force a GM to have the opponents fight to the death if their ships are slower than the PCs' ship. Letting opponents flee when they take x amount of damage is a great way to keep starship battles from dragging on.

I don't think Dtrif trave needs to be changed, but having options like diverting all power to the sublight thrusters to make a getaway could help. Another option the PCs could be told in their mission briefing not to pursue fleeing starships.

If the PCs are the ones who flee, doing so could have some impact later on in the adventure. But being able to flee depends on whether the PCs' ship is faster than the opponents, back to needing some way to make a quick escape.

1-13 Foul Humors doesn't say what to do if Tadasi didn't survive in 1-03 Disaster at Dreamlink Labs. So I've been looking at all the potions, since Tadasi was found dead due to the PCs getting to Dreamlink Labs late due to some bad luck with piloting checks, when I ran Disaster at Dreamlink Labs.

1. If the PCs found Tadasi's body but didn't get her name, run 1-13 Foul Humors as if Tadasi had never died.

2. If the PCs remember Tadasi's name, just change Tadasi's name in Foul Humors.

3. Have Arta save Tadasi, but Tadasi is now a Borai. I think this fits the scenario well since the Borai's physical description says "their blood becomes infused with void energy, turning it into a thick, black ichor." Which ties into the description of Tadasi's corpse in Disaster at Dreamlink Labs, "Her body is partially drained of blood, and her fur is matted with an oily black substance." (I'm assuming the black substance is ichor.) This would also make Tadasi a Reborn Newbornite.

I got a few weeks before I run this, so courious what others have done if Tadasi didn't survive in Disaster at Dreamlink Labs.

* No Character Synergy: It doesn't matter in the vanilla version what exactly your character is, it comes down to skill checks.

For the most part agree with all you said, just wanted to add some comments to this one.

I always felt that Character Synergy and even lack of player awareness of the starship Ruel came from; that's it's not part of character creation and wasn't on the character sheet, unless you had the character portfolio. It also didn't help that Starship combat used a completely different action economy.

Especially in organized play, where the players never got to build their ship, I had always wanted a crew station modification rule, where each player could at least have some input on their crew station.

To help things run more smoothly, I used the Starship Rules Reference Cards and, at the start of combat, gave each player the cards for their crew role.

* Easy Exploits: The bulding rules were subpar in balance. It was easy to make your starship much stronger than its tier suggested,

That's one thing I like about CSS being by the encounter; if the balance is off, it's like fixing an encounter without having to update the rules. How or if that applies to the full starship rules, we'll have to see.

For obvious reasons (TPKs suck) Paizo wasn't willing to make space combat actually deadly.

That^^^ Plus half the time in SFS scenarios, the starship combat was the first encounter on the way to the main adventure, so a TPK would end the game at the start.

Side note: The longest SF1e starship combat I was in lasted almost 6 weeks in a play-by-post. The only thing that kept it interesting was taunting the enemy ship's captain. One of the players came up with the famous line "Eat my shed fur!" At the start of the next scenario, my character gave everyone on the crew a t-shirt with their best taunt from that battle on it.

The ability to drop in/out easily via PFS is what kept me coming back to PF2

People still drop in and out all the time, not sure why you think that has changed?

As a customer since near the very beginning, I'll still check in every few months to see whether Paizo has course-corrected, but that'll probably require entirely new OP leadership. PF3, maybe?

To me, the problem is that since the new store, there are no forum comments directly on the blog post; that's where we got a lot of comments from Paizo. That decision wasn't likely made by OP leadership, since it affects all bolg post, not just the OP blog post. A change of OP leadership is not going to change that. I think OP leadership is doing just fine. I feel there have been other shifts in how Paizo communicates. I suspect that comes from much higher up the OP leadership.

the months-long radio silence on Starfinder 2E adventure sanctioning,

I'm a frequent poster to that thread, I'm in no way upset about it, mostly courious and hopeful for change. Although there's been no official response in that thread, there was a comment, I believe, to a blog post, so I can't find it anymore, but the gist of it was that there's no sales data suggesting sanctioning APs has helped sales. I'm guilty of buying both Murder in Mettal City and Guilt of the Grave World, so that data may be correct, if others who only play organized play have bought them too.

I do think we are in a year of experimentation with organized play testing ideas before making SF2e and PF2e more standardized in how they run. Paizo's always seemed more willing to take risks to try new things with Starfinder. I wonder if not sectioning SF2e APs is testing, making all SF2e scenarios repeatable, and that would be harder to do with sectioned APs. Just a theory, but if true, a blind test would give better results, which would explain the lack of response. I like everything being repeatable. I hope PF2e gets that too.

Since seasons tend to change at Gen Con, if we get any big news about organized play, I'd suspect it would be around then.

Hang in there or take a break, but don't let it get to you.