Driftbourne's page

I'm a little confused at what problem you're trying to find a solution for.

Ancestry Paragon isn't allowed in organized play, which is the only way I get to play the game. Ancestry Paragon also didn't make it to the remaster books, not sure it matters if it was remastered or not but it feels even less likely to ever be allowed in organized play.

Sometimes, though, a character is the embodiment of their ancestry to the point that it’s of equal importance to their class.

That doesn't describe some of my characters that describe all of my characters in SF1e, SF2e, and PF2e. I don't care about editions I like them all, I don't care about Ancestry Paragon specifically it's just the only way to get more ancestry feats to be exact it gives you 5 extra ancestry feats for free (no trade-off with taking other feats.)

An Ancestry Background would take up your background slot so has a cost, it would only give you one more ancestry feat and the ability boost would be aligned with your ancestry as well as the 2 skills aligned with your ancestry. Unlike Ancestry Paragon an Ancestry background is balanced to fit into organized play.

An Ancestry Archetype, similar to a class archetype, would give you 4 extra ancestry feats at the cost of losing class feats, again making it balanced for organized play unlike Ancestry Paragon, also backgrounds and archetypes are not variant rules again fit into organized play.

I'd even go for making Ancestry Paragon full class, but just an Ancestry Background or a general feat that lets you take extra Ancestry feats would do for me.

The Ancestry Background and Atrtchtype I'm talking about are both generic that could be used with any ancestry and you just allow ancestry feats that already exist, but in addition to that other more specific Ancestry Backgrounds and Atrtchtypes could be used for some ancestry to expand them even more. I'd also like to point out this doesn't have to be physical abilities this could be used to explore the cultural sides of ancestries too.

I give up

What happens when you point a flashlight at a disco ball?

One concern some SF1e players had was ancestries not having access to as much at 1st level in SF2e an easy way around that is to use Ancestry Paragon but that's not allowed in organized play. With the playtest over, here are a few ideas to help boost ancestries that could be added in later books. These ideas are also good for players interested in playing more on their ancestry.

1. Ancestry backgrounds This could give a character trained in two ancestry-related skills and one extra ancestry feat, and tie their background more to their ancestry in some way.

2. Ancestry Archetypes, could be similar to Ancestry Paragon but have the cost of taking an Archetype to balance it out in organized play. Ancestry Archetype could be a generic Archetype allowing any ancestry to get more ancestry feats as they level up and or there could be specific ancestry or even heritage Archetypes that add new options to an ancestry.

For people who want to play more to their ancestry but don't have access to Ancestry Paragon, what about having ancestral backgrounds, this could give a character trained in two ancestry-related skills and one extra ancestry feat, and tie their background more to their ancestry in some way.

Another idea is ancestry archetypes similar to Ancestry Paragon, this would be another way to make focusing on your ancestry playable in organized play.

1. Lasers underwater tend to have a reduced range depending on how clear the water is, they might boil instead of burn and also possibly could cause an explosion of sonic damage as well.

Laser Makes Big Bangs Underwater.

2. Starfindr already has several underwater upgrades for armor or as augmentations, although I don't know of any that work like the Underwater rune. Personally, I think having to use specialized equipment feels better in Starfinder than magically adapting a weapon, although I think it could be fine for non-tech weapons.

3. Real explosions underwater can actually have a larger area of effect, that's for the shock wave of the blast, but not sure how that would affect area affect projectiles might, most likely would be slowed down just like bullets.

4. The Traveler's Chair in Starfinder is called a hoverchair.
There is a Hydrojet. armor upgrade already does that, but I am not sure how that would work in conjunction with sitting in a hoverchair but it could be easily adapted. In Starfinder If you put enough upgrades on a hoverchair at some point it might start needing to use power armor, mech, or vehicle rules or be treated like upgrading a drone.

5. Real bullets can travel underwater for a maximum of 5 to 10 feet. To go beyond that you would need to shoot mini torpedo bullets or use magic.

How googling physics for 5 minutes works with game balance...

What ideal is depends on the mission. That's why the Starfinder Socity has 4 ships for the party to choose from each mission.
Starfinder Society Starships .

All the ships you listed fall into the category of hero ship, which generally is any ship that works with a crew of 4 to 6 in Starfinder that's typically a Medium explorer.

It sounded like they wanted to leave The Pact Worlds out of major lore shifting conflicts. The upcoming war between the Veskarium and the Azlanti Star Empire sounds like it will be the big war AP for SF2e. My guess is most of this will happen in Azlanti space since it hasn't received a book yet like how the Veskarium was covered in Near Space.

Drift Crashers had a brief trip to Hell and some time travel. If you add some time travel to your idea, Iomedae's faithful leading a crusade against the cybernetically enhanced forces of Hell could also be used as an idea in PF2e for Iron Gods from Hell, or even as a PF2e/SF2e crossover AP but I don't think Paizo would do anything like that until Starfinder has had time to establish itself as it's own game.

I was doing some poking around with creature types and I realised we don't really have a ghostly option.

A ghostly ancestry could be modeled after the hologram in Starfinder. Instead of having a Diminutive constructed core, a ghostly PC could have some Diminutive object significant to its death or the location of its death as it's core. Instead of a hardlight body, a ghost could have a manifested body.

A hologram While in its natural core form, can take only mental actions or project its hard light body. A ghost would be similar while not manifested.

There's a lot that could be done with that to make it more ghostly but it's a good start.

When you find options that work well for both roleplaying and game mechanics at the same time, this is what I'm calling Unified Roleplay Theory (URT)

I think if we're going to discuss damage and the theory behind it, it might be helpful to list all the different qualities of damage that make different forms of it useful in different situations:

Resource cost is a factor that crops up in extended adventuring days where daily attrition starts to kick in. Martial classes aren't particularly affected by this at all, as their damage is almost always at-will, but casters need to ration their higher-rank slots based on the amount and difficulty of encounters they're expecting to run into, and thus not expend all of their most powerful spells too early or in the easiest fights.

I think resource cost is really important to look at when talking about TTK It's much easier to have a quick TTK if you use everything you have, but that can set you to to fail in the next encounter.

Since I'm on a quest (tilting at windmills) to find ways to measure roleplaying what about
Roleplay Value (RV) as a quality could apply to the damage type in some cases or directly to the use of certain weapons or spells used? some examples would be.

Clerics favored weapons.
Dwarves clan dagger.
A Tengu with the Storm's Lash ancestry feat using electric arc.
Weapon Improviser archetype using a random object.

These are all examples of when a character might consider RV over DPR.

When I first got into PF2e I didn't know anyone that played. before that, I had played D&D for over 20 years with mostly the same group of friends. So PFS was the only way I could find a game. For PF2e and SF organized is the only way I have played, and I'm having a great time with it.

Some of the things I like about PFs are if you can't make it to a game one week it doesn't mess up the game for everyone else. Because of that, you can also show up each week with a different character, instead of playing the same character. It's a good way to meet new people. Part of the fun of going on an adventure is not knowing what's going to happen. not knowing who the rest of the party will be adds to that. It's like being in the military or having a job with lots of travel where you have to deal with new people all the time.

For a character with a deep background to not slow down the game, I tell just a little bit of their story each week during character introduction. Also knowing your character goals and background and how they connect to the game machines lets me squeeze in a bit a role-playing into most of my actions, this goes back to the idea of ARGs and ARBS, and planning for role-playing efficiency.

For me part of the strategy of having a balanced party in PFS is to bring several characters to a game and pick which one to play based on the party's needs. I always have a backup fighter and a strong support healer to play. Also, the strategy for building a single character is very different, Some characters I try to build a character that can survive with a bad mix of classes and not rely on teamwork, for that often they are supporting characters. Some of my characters are a bit off the wall and I only play them if the rest of the party is well-balanced.

Full-party teamwork can be hard to do in PFS but if you are playing a melee character it's easier to talk to another player playing a melee character and work out a strategy for flanking with just them. If you are in a live in-person game sitting next to a player your doing teamwork helps, and makes it easier to make plans without disrupting the rest of the game.

I also plan for teamwork even if the rest of the party doesn't. All my characters always have some kind of backup healing in case no one plays a healer. All my casters have a knife, so they can flank for a melee character if needed. I often do that without ever attacking with the knife. I tend to do that later in a fight when one more big hit could end it. Beyond flanking, if you are into teamwork, playing a strong support character can kind of be the party's teamwork supporting the other players doing what they do best, it's not the same as having a good strategy the whole party is in on, its more of a backup plan knowing your backup plan might be all you have. Several of my support characters have prevented TPKs by thinking that way and having background stories and goals that tied into being prepared for that added up to a lot of ARGs and ARBS.

Unicore wrote:

I have had the most fun with playing PFS games by post. I find folks really put thought into their characters and posts and you end up getting to know the other players better since the game takes a week or two instead of just a few hours.

I only have PFS experience in play-by-post, so I have nothing to compare it to.

But that has been my experience in PFS PBP as well. Since you have at least 24 hours to take your turn, you might as well write up your entire impassioned speech rather than just posting a diplomacy roll. And a group of players who get along with each other will often join back up for the next game. I was in a group that played through about 6 or 8 scenarios as a consistent group over the course of about a year.

Granted, play-by-post format introduces different problems that have to be addressed and managed, but that is a topic for a different thread.

I've played PFS both in-person live and play-by-post. Both are fun but can feel very different. If you have a time limit because the game store

My best example is my character who reads harrow cards. In a live game, so I don't slow down the game I just draw a card and hold it up as a prop when making a recall knowledge roll or making a decision, just pending the cards is where my knowledge or decision came from without reading the card. In a play-by-post game, I've done multiple full card readings just during character introductions, and full card reading mid-game doesn't slow down the game. I still just use one cards for knowledge or quick decisions, but unlike a live game I have time to read and spin that card into my response, and not just hold it up as a prop.

I like this idea of ARGs, ARBGs and fun, because it kind of shapes your experience, regardless of whether your character can deal huge damage or not.

Not only that, but can also shape your experience, regardless of whether your action succeeds or fails. Here are two examples with very different character types that I have the most fun with when missing attack rolls.

My melee character who does lots of damage also uses intimidate. He's got a gladiator, and wrestler background story so being intimidating is part of his job to be entertaining in combat, he's actually very timid and polite outside of combat. A lot of the fun of playing this character is failing attack rolls, and then making up wild banter to intimidate the opponent, the more often he misses the more frustrated he gets and the more wild the intimidation banter gets. If he has actions left I'll roll for intimidation to demoralize, but even if he doesn't have actions I'm still going to do the banter for the fun of it. when he finally does hit then it's payback time and somehow it feels better than just a big number on the damage roll. Even if his attack ends the combat he's still going to roll to intimidate one last time.

I have a roguish character who is overly self-confident and uses deception and intimidation a lot, their whole appearance is even a lie. I had really bad luck with dice rolls in their first 3 game sessions averaging about 1 or 2 points of damage per session, so I started to role-play that they are blinding aiming from around cover, and not really looking where they shooting, but being overly self-confident and deceptive, they even managed to deceive themself and assumed every attack was a critical hit even if it missed. After attacks, they would yell at the opponents, things like.
"Surender or I'll shoot your other eye out!"
Sometimes it's just banter sometimes it gets an intimation, or deception roll. In one encounter they had claimed to have killed more opponents than there were before the fight had even ended. Then during the last encounter of the 3rd game session, I rolled a nat 20 and rolls near max damage, plus there are other effects in play increasing the damage, and drops the last opponent. Now their overly self-confidence is completely justified to them. The ironic part is that when they finally hit and did massive damage killing the boss monster, the boss monster only had 3 HP left...

Some ideas for mathing or thinking about PF2 I've seen listed so far:

DPR: Damage per round.
TTK: Time to kill.
ARGs (actions related to goals)
ARBS (actions related to background story.)
DPB: Damage per battle.

And if you're looking to have fun, then don't worry about any of it. It doesn't matter that much. It's a mostly fun discussion for min-max nerds like some of us on the forums.

I made up the terms ARGs and ARBS because I never see people talking about optimizing or measuring roleplaying.

One use of ARGs or ARBS would be to measure how often the options you chose to give your character high DPR gets used. Or it could be used to measure how many total available options you have that help you get high DPR. If you are not into roleplaying, then ARGs is about player goals, not PC goals, that might be, I made this character to do lots of DPR, and I want to use this feat and weapon to do so.

ARGs or ARBS can be used for measuring roleplaying opportunities. Any time you can connect your character's game abilities to their background story or goals you are making roleplaying connections to the game mechanics, when you do that roleplaying opportunities come naturally whenever you use those abilities. If all your character game mechanics are covered in your background story and goals, then your actions will have high ARGs and ARBS. If your background story is unrelated to the game mechanics and has no connection to the current adventure. Then the only time you will likely get any ARBS is if you bring up your background story in conversation.

There's no one right way to roleplay, but this might help give someone an idea of how often their background story or character's goals might come up on their own when playing the game, or measure how often they do. I have No idea if this is useful I just made it all up.

There's no one right way to play the game so there's also no one right way to measure the game.

I never look at DPR and TTR. I look at ARGs (actions related to goals) or ARBS (actions related to background story.) All of this adds up FPT (fun per turn.)

Every option for my goblin merchant sorcerer is related to being a merchant or goblin. Every option for my harrow reading fortunetelling Tengu is related to fortunetelling or being a tengu. As they level up I Pick new options that fit their background, goals or are related to things they encountered while adventuring. So I'm getting ARGs and ARBS almost every turn.

So for me, FPT happens when you get to use ARGs or ARBS. The great thing about FPT is it's not just related to combat, it can happen any time you get to talk to another PC or NPC about your goals or background or use a related skill or ability in any situation. For me, just using an ARGs or ARBS is a success towards FPT even if that action fails, and having a ARGs or ARBS succeed is a critical success for FPT.

If your only goal is to do big DPT then you only get ARGs or ARBS when you succeed at doing lots of damage in combat, which limits your opportunities for FPT especially outside of combat.

Since I value ARGs, ARBS, and FPT I try to take an interest in other player's goals and character stories, the more I know about that, the easier it is to interact with them in a fun meaningful way, because FPT is best when it's FFTWT (fun for the whole table.)

I'm really hoping for Technomancer to be a standard bearer for virtual reality, augmented reality, and software. I think manipulating hardware is easily handled by other classes, so junkbots and tech-flavored-fireballs shouldn't be the focus.

I want Radagast, but stepping out of the Matrix, wearing a blue screen of death as a cloak, carrying a staff from a video game boss, with a wild look in his eye.

I think both virtual reality, and augmented reality benefit from hybrid magitech. Makes for a good explanation of how they work, and a reason they could directly affect/harm the user.

The PF2e hazard system could easily be used as a hacking system, or hazards for a hacking system. The hazard system also allows for multiple ways to disarm or defeat the hazard. One of the problems with hacking is it tends to be a subsystem that leaves the non-hackers out of the game. With the hazard system, the hacker could face one set of challenges to overcome, which could include vitural combat. While those outside of virtual reality could help the hacker with computer checks, or by having to locate and destroy or depower the server the opponent is on.

I suppose it's not off the table for them to roll the nanocyte into the mechanic, the way they rolled the precog into the witchwarper.

I hope they don't, in a world built around tech there are going to be different ways to deal with tech, just like there is different ways to be a melee character in PF2e The way I see it is

Inventor is kind of a tech barbarian (takes risk to do damage)
Mechanic is tech support, engineer
Nanicite is a tech oddity class
Technomancer is the tech caster

I'm curious if any encounter type besides combat is being considered.

As someone who plays a goblin merchant sorcerer who doesn't cast spells in combat, I'm wondering the same. At least at low levels, they have always had useful options even in combat, and excel at social encounters, they are the only spell caster I've played in PF2e that has managed to find a use for every spell they know during a single game session.

moosher12 wrote:

So I'm pretty sure it's a given that the Mechanic will have both an augmentation subclass and a drone subclass. I hope they get a subclass that emphasizes boosting armor, shields, and weapons.

Id like that; not sure how they'll differentiate from inventor at that point though.

Do you really want an inventor working on a starship's reactor core? I think playing an inventor is a great option for a space goblin, or working at spaceX where you can blow things up until you get it right.

I'm hoping they have a subclass of mechanics for dealing with starships vehicles, and mechs.

Thanks all.

So for 2e, is it safe to say Abomination Vaults followed by Seven Dooms for Sandpoint followed by Shades of Blood would be considered the 3 biggest, in that order? Thanks again, no issues if some 1e adventure paths were mentioned. Good to know.

Crown of the Koldbold King was remade into a hardcover book for PF2e It combines 3 adventures to make the hardcover book.

Crown of the Koldbold King .

Crown of the Koldbold King, it's not as big as Abomination Vaults, but it's 128 pages and has 5 levels of dungeons.

That's not fair, how did Paizo know that making the cover match my dice trays would tempt me?

As much as I'd like to see all or as many as possible of the old species make it to SF2e, I'm looking forward to something completely new that doesn't have something in SF1e or PF2e to compare it to.

All valid points, but I expect the upgrade system/track exemplified in the playtest will more or less be what's printed; devs and (whatever percentage of) players seem to want loot drops being a part of progression. Id rather ABP but I won't hold my breath

The other issue is the playtest surveys closed 3 days ago.

It's not an issue for home games where the GM can choose to use the variant rules, it's mostly an organized play issue. The only way around that I see is something like making a feat, weapon trait, or specific weapons that use automatic level progression and can't otherwise be upgraded.

I don't disagree with anything said, I think you have some good points, but I'm not sure, if it's the best solution, because we don't know what will be in the SF2e GM Core or its equivalent. I would think that SF2e being 100% compatible with PF2e, would still leave room for SF2e to have its own new optional rule variants.

I wonder if SF2e could have an option rule variant that is more specifically deals with automatic bonus progression just for weapons.

Normally a variant rule is up to the GM or in organized play just not allowed at all. What if individual characters could take a feat to use automatic bonus progression with a specific weapon, or a weapon could have a trait making that weapon use the automatic bonus progression?

Driftbourne wrote:

The big question for 2025 is what in the world can Paizo do to outdo "The Gap" Is it even possible to outdo "The Gap"?

Paizo can always release the romantic comedy novel of the love triangle between Irori, Abadar, and Asmodeus.

I can't prove that there is not an ad for that in the back of "The Gap."

The big question for 2025 is what in the world can Paizo do to outdo "The Gap" Is it even possible to outdo "The Gap"?

The problem with environmental protections is they needs to work differently for different types of adventures. In some cases, it enables the adventure to happen at all, on the flip side it messes with or in some cases prevents the use of trap like hazards or survival adventures. All of those should be options at any level.

I don't know how to balance all of that out, but at least if environmental protection is an armor upgrade and or available separate from armor, then adding or removing it won't mess with the PCs armor.

Since equipment is tied to level, one solution is to loan the PCs high-level equipment when it's a requirement to play the adventure. The flipside of that is trickier because you need a good reason why the PCs have lost, left behind, or have had their environmental protection disabled.

Silly question, what is a reported?

I've played a soldier, mystic, operative, and Witchwarper in the playtest so far, so would like to play either an envoy or soliarian if no one else is, but can play whatever is needed.

I've played Shards of the Glass Planet twice already so my character will stay out of decision-making when possible. Although both times I played it it played very differently.

So obviously reptiles are not mammals so no breasts. Snakes tend to have a different larger-scale pattern on their underside, but vesk are not snakes. There are some rare scaleless reptiles, but I don't know if there are any mixed with parts with and without scales. As far as what type of lizards look like Vesk I'd say they kind of look like iguanas or monitors.

lizard species .

I could keep going, and knowing me I probably will later (I haven't even touched on their relationship with the Vesk- the Girl Scutes are a secret paramilitary group for Skittermander Independence!). But I hope this helped you think of fun ways to play with the idea of "Helpfulness"- and Viva La Skittermander!

I'm playing a Pathtra Brutaris player (the brutaris teams is a secret paramilitary group for Pathtra Independence ) I have been trying to recruit the party's skittenrmander to join in helping the vesk go home.

I'm also curious about the Vesk resort set up at a Skittermander holy site.

A simple solution if the PCs really need higher-level thermal capacitors for a mission an NPC can just loan them to the party for that mission. That's no different than the Starfinder Socity loaning the PCs a ship when needed.

NASA Astronauts didn't have to buy their space suits, they are assigned to them by the Mission Control Center.

I've never played in a game where all the monsters were played by other players, but I used to play some of the important NPCs for a friend's game. Those were some of the funniest game sessions I've played in. Usually, it was NPCs the party was meant to interact with for a while before the Party realized they were the bad guy of the session.

The idea of having a separate group of players play all the monsters is interesting. I wonder if running it as two separate game threads might work. That way the main party and the group playing the monsters are only acting on info their characters or monsters have.

The Star Friends were very active with the community during the Filedtest. I just figured when they got quiet, they were busy with the playtest, and that the signal-to-noise ratio on a survey is much better than on the forums. Considering the changes mentioned in this blog post I think the developers did a good job reading comments.

I'm excited for SF2e but, it's going to take me a few more years to finish playing all the SF1e scenarios, so I'm in no rush for SF2e, if anything I'm most curious about the Galaxy Guide at this point. I didn't get a chance to play all the Playtest adventures, so still playing them just for fun, which kind of feels like SF2e is already out for me.

When is it coming out? Just to clarify, I'm not American, so I don't understand when you guys use seasons as a date lol! I'm really looking forward to the release!

Galaxy Guide comes out in May 2025. The Palyers Core should come out around Gen Con, which is July 31–August 3, 2025

I could have sworn there was going to be a Playtest next month for Technomancer, Mechanic, and Starship rules. This blog makes it sound like the playtest is finished though, with no note of further playtesting. Did we all collectively hallucinate the second Playtest?

Excited for these new changes and absolutely love Chk-Chk's rizz in this picture!

The other playtests are separate. No idea when or if there will be a starship playtest but the Technomancer, and Mechanic I thought they said would start a month or two after this playtest ended, but there's no set date that I know off, other than the Technomancer, and Mechanic playtest will be out when the Player Core comes out so people at least have the playtest version from the start.

In the same vein, I don't think renaming Crafting to Engineering is a good idea, because there are a lot of Crafting jobs that are not Engineering. Rather weird if your artistic worshipper of Zon-Shelyn is using Engineering to paint pictures.

Using crafting to fix a starship's reactor core leak seems WAY off. I feel really should be separate skills. The issue isn't renaming Crafting to Engineering SF1e already had Engineering, the problem is replacing Engineering with Crafting feels like flat-earth theories replacing science. Another issue is that Engineering got split up into Crafting, Theivery, and Engineering Lore.

Maybe one solution is that for some task like fixing a reactor core you can use crafting but only if you have engineering lore. Maybe some really hard-to-fix things have a minimum proficiency level of engineering lore needed too. This way crafting is the skill to perform the task and engineering is the knowledge to be able to do it. Now that I'm thinking about it, complex engineering things are often better off not just being a simple skill check the hazard system would be good at dealing with them.

Whatever works out is fine with me but I do prefer if they are at least flavored more for the Setting in Starfinder.

One thing I would wish to see is changing the names of the skills in Starfinder to be a little more sci fi sounding. Just a handful of skills changing their names would make it feel a little more sci fi, like changing Crafting to Engineer, Society to Culture, and Nature to Life Sciences (Not too sure about this last one since the Nature skill relates directly with the Primal Tradition).

I agree the skill names are one of the few things I don't like. There is a huge difference between recall knowledge between Nature and Life Science.

Nature: Recall Knowledge about fauna, flora, geography, weather, the environment, creatures of natural origin (like animals, beasts, fey, and plants), the First World, and the Elemental Planes.

Life Science: You can use Life Science to recall knowledge about bioengineering, biology, botany, ecology, genetics, xenobiology, zoology, and other fields of biological science.

Here's hoping body mods will be reworked too. Both the fact that the system used a separate limit from Investment even though it didn't need to, and the fact that this meant that characters that didn't want mods were leaving stupid amounts of power on the table with nothing to take instead.

I agree, I think just using PF2es Investment system for both magic items and augmentations is a great way to balance the use of tech and magic, letting players mix the two how they like.

Driftbourne wrote:

I hope the new hand rules don't apply to just skittermanders, SF1e has lots of other multi-armed species that I hope to see in SF2e someday.

It would be very strange if it was a Skitter exclusive change since as early as this playtest we have Kasatha who are also four-armed and Barathu who can theoretically go way beyond. Multi-armed rules seem to exist on a system level though so that shouldn't be a worry. I hope.

I agree, I also I'm also wondering if this will make it into PF2e, It would be odd for multi-armed characters to go back and forth having to play under different rules.

If there's anything that makes it back from Starfinder to Pathfinder I hope it's this trait.

I wonder how things like that will find their way into PF2ed. In a home game, you can just decide to include the traversal trait in your PF2e game, but in organized play, you tend to need to own the source material to use it. I get the idea behind needing to buy a book to play a class or ancestry in it or use other new player options, but for something like a new trait it's more of a core rule issue I wonder if there will be some kind of compatibility document so SF2e and PF2e can share core improvements.

Squark wrote:

In my play experience so far, multiple arms have been a complete nothing-burger. They do almost nothing the swap action doesn't, but they're treated like they're as valuable as much more useful abilities like darkvision, extra movement speed, or save bonuses. Letting you use them to climb rapidly loses usefullness too since flight is so readily available. They need to do something, and after several playtests, they've failed to do anything once in my experience.

It's a start, but I think using anything in those extra hands is still a trap - it's more things to pick up after you drop them if you go unconscious than if you just used two hands and swap. This change rewards leaving the extra hands empty even more.

I was hoping for something like being able to change active hands once per turn as a free action. It'd let them use those other hands a little more often and provide some value to not just using Swap.

There's a lot of value to having free hands you can use, like having a weapon ready and being able to open a door at the same time, or climb, or hold on to something in Zero-G. I have several characters with 4 arms in SF1e and I've never once used all 4 hands to hold objects at one time. I take that back, one time our mission was to take someone shopping and I had all 4 hands full holding shopping bags.

I hope the new hand rules don't apply to just skittermanders, SF1e has lots of other multi-armed species that I hope to see in SF2e someday.

Starfinder has a book that explains all Removed Deities, The Gap. What it doesn't explain is how a list of removed Deities is still known, maybe that means we are in the eye of The Gap.

Driftbourne wrote:

Considering the first hardcover book for SF2e already came out in April (The Gap,) I don't see anything strange about getting a second book before the Player Core. Also being a book with lots of setting lore in it, other than The GAP the Galixy Guide will be the one SF2e book that is most useful for people still playing SF1e who are interested in the setting update.

Point taken but uh... The gap was an April Fools prank... Wasn't it?

It's still for sale, and I have one on my shelf how could it be a prank? The lore in it is 100% accurate too.

Also, the Galaxy Guide will be useful for people wanting to play PF2e classes in the Starfinder setting.

is it just me, or is it a little weird that Galaxy Guide is dropping before Player Core?

Considering the first hardcover book for SF2e already came out in April (The Gap,) I don't see anything strange about getting a second book before the Player Core. Also being a book with lots of setting lore in it, other than The GAP the Galixy Guide will be the one SF2e book that is most useful for people still playing SF1e who are interested in the setting update.

you brought up "I meant the PF2e version of a 4e minion (which has 1 health)" I have no attachment to it either way, I was just suggesting a easy to kill opponent of some kind for some lang range combats.

I forgot all about XP I've never seen it used in SF1e or PF2e I'm used to just level up every 3 scenarios.

1 health works without having to make new rules.

For cover and or concealment a forested area could work from ground level and flying at the same time without needing 3d measurements. Shooting from a window could protect from ground and flying attacks too.

Another idea, a forest could also have cover and or concealment at range. For example, every 30 feet of forest would increase the amount of cover. 30 feet of forest could give concealment, 60 feet hidden, and 90 feet or more invisible. Using the same map and changing the range where cover or concealment increases or not would make the map play differently from one encounter to the next.

Maps for ranged combat when flying is common, could still have cover, a forested area could count as cover from above. Objets like tables could be used that way too, or being under an elevated walkway.

I had to look up PF2e minions, that minion only has 2 actions might help too.