moosher12 wrote:
I think lore-wise, the strange use of the term gun should be blamed on something that must have happened during the Gap, otherwise it's kind of hard to grasp why a knife is a gun. Blame it on the Gap, and it makes sense to me. Although the last of consistency in it's sue is still confusing.
Squark wrote:
The Galaxy Guide factions with archetypes are: https://store.paizo.com/starfinder-the-gap/AbadarCorp, Free Captains, Hellknights, Knights of Golarion, Starfinder Society, Xenowardens. Galaxy Guide minor factions
So looks like in the Absalom Station book (Stewards, Aspis Consortium, Eyes-Wide Agency) will be geeting a deeper dive. If thats the case then, I think you're right that Faction Guide will be broken out among a number of new releases in the coming years.
Squark wrote:
Opps, the 7th in the index is Minor Factions, which adds another 10 factions with only 1/6 page write up vs 3 pages. So, there's still room to expand on these in a full faction book.
CorvusMask wrote: I just hope we get the Starfinder planar book that we never got in Starfinder 1e before edition had to end suddenly :'D I think I remember hearing it was planned at some point, but hey we can still get a 2e one and it won't need as much rewriting due to remastering now... I also remember hearing a Starfinder planar book had been planned for SF1e. If the OGL mess hadn't happened, it would have made sense to have a planar book after all the Drift Crisis APs that give us a little taste of planar travel in Starfinder. Plus, most of the other FTL engines in SF1e were planar drives.
Wyddelbower wrote:
The Cycle is mostly for Solarians, and is popular with the Kasath, although not limited to either Solarians or Kasath. There's a full page on The Cycle in SF1e Galactic Magic on pg 132. Mystics aren't about Duality; it's more about healing any and all you bond with. "Transfer Vitality: You can transfer up to 10 Hit Points (minimum 1) from your vitality network into yourself or a bonded creature you can sense within 60 feet. This works on creatures with void healing as though this action had the void trait." An individual mystic may favor one of the other but isn't necessarily worried about the balance between Vitality and void healing as a class feature.
Tech Core. October 7th, 2026. There's also the new Paizo catalog for 2026. I haven't read it all yet; it's 140 pages, but it looks like it goes to December 2026. It's a free PDF or free print copy + shipping cost.
eggellis wrote:
I'm in the same boat, but my highest is only 6th ot 7th level.
I think there is a good chance for Uplifted Bears to make it into SF2e since they were very popular in SF1e, but I also think there is a big difference between Starfinders uplifted and Pathfinders awakened. Awaken: You were at one with the wild. Then came the event that changed everything. You drank from a glowing lake, someone pulled a magical prank, a druid sought to elevate your mind. You were pulled out of the present moment of the wild and into a land of thought. Uplifted Bear: Though their physical forms resemble those of their mundane counterparts, uplifted bears are far from simple animals; those who underestimate them do so at great peril. At some point in the past, a population of bears—the stories range from an initial group of several dozen to all the bears on a dying planet—were modified to increase their mental capabilities, granting them extraordinary intelligence. The details of who modified the bears, and why, were either lost to the Gap or, as more conspiratorial takes posit, deliberately concealed. While some uplifted bears are obsessed with uncovering their origins, others feel this focus on the past only holds their people back. Awakening seems to be rare because it's a rare occurrence for a species Awakened Animal PC if it's first-generation awakened. This would be even rarer for animals from Golarion, since Golarion is missing. Add to this, anyone who was Awakened during The Gap would have forgotten their awakening. Uplifted seems to be past tense, and not something the PC experienced directly. It also affected a group and not an individual PC. I wonder how Awakened bears or otters would differ from Brenneris or Uplifted Bear, assuming you can find a planet with native bears or otters. There's also a big difference in how others would react to seeing you for the first time. Awaken: Others Probably... 1. Think you are a beast who is easily provoked. 2. Want to study you as an oddity without respect for your agency or comfort. Uplifted Bear walks into a bar, the bartender says, "What can I get you today?"
I got a complete collection of SF1e Hardcover books, but I can't afford physical books anymore, so I have been just buying PDFs for SF2e. I wonder if enough other people have done the same to cause the increase in PDF prices. I'm sure the tariff tantrums, Diamond bankruptcy, and now the Iran war didn't help. I started with PF2e when it first came out, but switched to SF1e when I found the PDFs were only $9.95 at the time, then, over time, got all the SF1e hardcover books. Now the PDFs are almost as expensive as the old SF1e books were. To keep up on Starfinder, I'm going to have to completely give up on PF2e. I wonder if SF2e hasn't sold as well as it could have because some PF2e players who might have tried can't afford both as well. At this point, the best way to market a game to me is putting rules on the back of food packages. I don't blame this on Paizo; the whole ecomoney has gone down the drain.
CormacDM wrote:
This is literally how Pathfinder scenarios work; they are all meant to run in one session. For a longer connected story, run scenarios in a season's meta-plot.
I'd like to see Dirindi in SF2E, they remind me of what a Ferengi news caster would be like. I hope to see Stellifera; to me, they are the poster species for how strange things can get in Starfinder, although Barathu does a good job of that too. I also really like the lu-venon. I'm excited to see they will be back in Starfinder Society Scenario #1-23: Psychic Echoes. If lu-venon become player may depend on what happens or what we learn in that scenario, since it appears that lu-venon haven't left their moon yet. It would be fun to play the first lu-venon to travel to other planets, meeting other species would almost always be a first contact situation for them. Is season 2 getting a player's guide? I was under the impression that the Invasion’s Edge Player’s Guide was just for the release of SF2e to give s more player options at launch. Unfortunatally the answer was likely in the blog post comments that are now gone.
I would try asking this in the Organized Play forums.
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.
Clebsch73 wrote: 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
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.
HolyFlamingo! wrote:
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. 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.
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.
Squark wrote: 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.
QuidEst wrote:
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
Alun01 wrote: 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
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
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.
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. __________________________ Clebsch73 wrote: 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 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.
pauljathome wrote:
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.
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,
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.
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.
RP. wrote: 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.
RedOrca wrote: 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.
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.
Davor Firetusk wrote: 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.
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:
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