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I'm making playable ancestries for some of the intelligent monsters that you may like to play as. I'm intending on doing those that Paizo would be unlikely to make (he he, I started making a Pixie/Sprite/Grigg ancestry then Paizo announced they would make their own, grr). So far I've made 6 that are available on DriveThruRPG for your pleasure. Medusa
Sahuagin
Nymph
Archon
Werecreature
Serpentfolk
There will be more to come, with the specifics depending on what I like and what others may want to see.
I ran my players through a mech combat last week. They were level 8 and I wanted a single pilot mech for each of them. Using the build rules (see my other thread for my thoughts on the process) I could not make 5 tier 8 mechs for my players (there are 5 of them) with the points allowance, so I just gave them 160 MP to make a tier 8 mech for each of them. My players were a technomancer, operative, mystic and an envoy. I put them up against the CR 12 AHAV as that is within the increased capabilities of mechs according to the rules. Mech builds:
Spoiler:
Skirmisher (Tier 8)
Size: Huge HP: 302; Shield Points (SP): 19; Power Points (PP): 2/8/3 (initial/max/rate); Hardness: 4 EAC: 26; KAC: 29; Fort: +10; Ref: +10 Base Speed: 70’; Strength: +6; Operators: 1 Lower Limbs: Quadruped; Upper Limbs: Assault Arms; Power Core: Dynamo mk3
Attack Bonus: +9 + BAB/Piloting ranks Frost Rifle (lvl 8, upper)
Spoiler:
Skyspy (Tier 8)
Size: Huge (flight, recon) HP: 262; Shield Points (SP): 19; Power Points (PP): 6/13/1 (initial/max/rate); Hardness: 4 EAC: 26; KAC: 26; Fort: +8; Ref: +10 Base Speed: 40’, fly 130’ (perfect, max 5’ high); Strength: +4; Operators: 1 Lower Limbs: Hoverpad; Upper Limbs: Precision Arms; Power Core: Eternal mk2
Attack Bonus: +10 + BAB/Piloting ranks Sonic Shotgun (lvl 8, upper)
Spoiler:
Sharpwing (Tier 8)
Size: Huge (flight) HP: 303; Shield Points (SP): 19; Power Points (PP): 1/7/3 (initial/max/rate); Hardness: 4 EAC: 28; KAC: 30; Fort: +9; Ref: +9 Base Speed: 30’, fly 60’ (average); Strength: +4; Operators: 1 Lower Limbs: Agile Biped; Upper Limbs: Assault Arms; Power Core: Dynamo mk2
Attack Bonus: +9 + BAB/Piloting ranks Plasma Sword (lvl 8, upper)
Spoiler:
Charger (Tier 8)
Size: Huge (phase) HP: 336; Shield Points (SP): 35; Power Points (PP): 7/15/2 (initial/max/rate); Hardness: 4 EAC: 28; KAC: 28; Fort: +8; Ref: +10 Base Speed: 80’; Strength: +5; Operators: 1 Lower Limbs: Fast Biped; Upper Limbs: Tough Arms; Power Core: Eternal mk3
Attack Bonus: +9 + BAB/Piloting ranks Laser Rifle (lvl 8, frame)
Due to the story I was running the initial plan was for all 4 mechs to me remotely piloted, but the technomancer wanted to be in the field as he could then use the remote operation spell to control another mech if needed. The spell seemed like it could and should do so, so I allowed them to do that (not that they ended up doing it during the fight). I started the fight 1000' away from the AHAV as it was breaking out of the ground where it had laid dormant and they were approaching it. This is where we come to the first point. 1. Weapon capacity seems pointless
So, everyone continued moving up. The operative was in the sharpwing, so was double moving constantly to get into melee range. The rest were just moving and then shooting at the AHAV. It was firing at them and got some good hits in, taking out shields. However once it got through the shields, it didn't seem capable of doing a lot of damage after the 4 hardness. 2. PCs didn't appear to be close to being destroyed
So, the players moved around, took shots and some used their special abilities. Dual strike was used several times to get lots of attacks off and the EMP cannon on the charger was used a couple of times. Since their enemy was a creature and not a mech, but was a construct I had to quickly make up some rules for its impact considering there was nothing in the playtest rules (gave it a -2 attack for the weapon EMP effect). 3. Rules for mech effects against creatures
The technomancer wanted to use one of his teleport abilities to get inside the AHAV and do stuff to it from within. I allowed it since he is a spathinae and he started to mess with it using his spells and engineering/computers checks to give it penalties similar to the critical damage table for mechs. Afterwards we discussed how some spells might interact with mechs. 4. Spells and mechs
So, the PCs destroy the AHAV and win the fight. Afterwards, the players said their characters had little impact on the fight. 5. Character abilities have no impact on mech combat
Which leads onto my final point: 6. Mech combat doesn't feel special
So it seemed to be enjoyed and worth having, and I will probably use it again in my own game, but it definitely seems to be lacking something to make it special.
I made 4 mechs for my starfinder group to play with this weekend. Going through the process of making these mechs I had a few thoughts, some of which I've seen here already. I made my 4 mechs to be different from each other and to be single pilot mechs (I can give stats later when I have my sheet with them on). I did intend on a 2 seater but I got burned out designing 4 in a row. 1. Mech Points and distribution
I ended up building each mech as a tier 8 mech. Without massive in depth analysis, my personal feeling here is to just allow players to build a mech with a tier equal to their level and give each MP as per a mech of that level. If they wish to be able to use multiple people in one mech, give them 1/4 - 1/2 of the individual mech points to account for this. 2. HP progression
Second, HP Advancement/Hit Point Progression. Two terms for the same thing. One from frames the other from limbs. Rename both to one or the other. 3. Flight vs Recon frames
4. Limbs
5. Power Cores
6. Weapons
Next up, again something that has been mentioned, there is no generic melee attack for mechs. For some of mine I added a hammerfist just in case. However it would seem more elegant to allow mechs to have a generic slam attack. This also leads to most melee weapons having low damage. I feel this is because they add strength to damage where guns do not. Again without in depth analysis I can't comment specifically, but it seems like this was mostly because of special options each has. Thirdly, I do like the idea of varying weapon costs based on the level of their weapon which is independent of that of the mech. No weapon used extreme damage, although I imagine this is just because this is the playtest. In general the weapons seemed reasonably interesting and a mixed selection of abilities, although since I was planning on a single enemy encounter I focused more on those types of weapon. 7. Aux slots
So in general, I enjoy the mech building rules but there are a few spots that seem unnecessarily complicated. I will return with feedback after my players have had their fight.
With the deck of many worlds coming soon, I thought making a spreadsheet doing roughly the same thing would be interesting. It randomly generates a bunch of stats for a planet/system including things like tech level, species, number of moons, distance from their star, and planet type. At the moment the biomes aren't plugged in as I am still thinking on how to deal with that. Pressing F9 will allow the spreadsheet to refresh and change everything.
I thought about emailing the relevant Paizo section with these questions, but I figured they may be helpful for other first time 3PP creators. Anyway, I'm thinking of creating various ancestries based on bestiary monsters and there were a few things I wanted to check to make sure it is all ok. 1. Can I use monster names that are common in mythology, such as the medusa?
2. When creating ancestry feats, can I use the same style as existing Paizo ones?
3. Can I base ancestry feats off of existing monster abilities?
4. Can I make ancestry feats that are exact copies of monster abilities?
5. Can I make ancestries out of monsters that are Paizo unique?
6. If using an alternate name, could I reference the original name in the description?
7. If allowed to use such Paizo uniques, are we allowed to base them from non-core line books (ie World Guides and APs)?
8. Given that a certain amount of the above is ok, how is it referenced in the copyright notices at the end of the file?
THank you in advance for assistance with these questions. Figured since I was working on some of this, others might appreciate it as well and I might get a little something for my effort, but sometimes trying to understand some of the subtleties of what is allowed is complicated.
So when you use the Dragon Form spell, you gain the Dragon trait: Dragon Trait wrote: Dragons are reptilian creatures, often winged or with the power of flight. Most are able to use a breath weapon and are immune to sleep and paralysis. I bolded the relevant bit here. Does this make you immune to sleep and paralysis while using this spell? Seems like it does here.
So, communits have an option that they can be turned into a computer or have sensors added at additional cost. However, does this mean that sensors (such as motion detector, x-ray visor, shotgun microphone etc) can be added to computers normally? Technically the rules don't seem to allow this, but since communits can be turned into a computer and still have them added, seems like they should be allowed. Thoughts?
So when you move into an enemies square you provoke an AoO, that's fairly obvious. However, does the rider, who is not using their actions to move also provoke? Or does it count as forced movement and therefore not provoke? Just something that I came across when having stirges ridden by sprites attack the party.
In my various play groups some people have played characters that were half one race and half another, but because the rules don't allow for any such combination other than human-orc/elf they had to sit with one of their parent races as their main one. I decided to see if I could come up with something that allowed people to mix any two races together to get such a half-breed from these unions. Now this file I worked on is split into several different sections. The first is the first way of choosing a half-breed. Basically what I did was take each race, halve the bonuses/penalties to their ability scores and gave that to the half-breed. Type, speed, size, languages remained the same. Then I looked at the various special abilities and whatnot that each race got and tried to pick the more thematic, iconic powers of that race. Now I tried to get each race to a 5 RP value (which, yes I know is a not terribly great way to test power of races, but was a useful gauge to match races up) so that when combined together the half-breed of your choice would be a 10 RP combination and therefore of comparable strength to the majority of the other races. Now, some of these powers from the newer races didn't have set RP values so I had to compare and guess at some. In addition, the draconic/construct races I ignored completely for the simple reason of their base race type value was 10 RP and so couldn't reduce it by much to make them fit. The plant races, I didn't count as their full RP value, as they have had a reduction in Ultimate Wilderness as to what immunities etc they now get. The idea here is to combine two of these races, add abilities and you have your new race. Now this does miss out on the skill bonuses that the various main races get, so the second chapter deals with instead having the half-race stats using their skills and other misc bonuses rather than the big flashy iconic powers. This means that you can combine the two to get a more rounded half-breed. Choices people. THen, since obviously some of these races combined have weird connotations if their parents had a baby, so I included a section on a few different ways races could be combined to make the new one, to get the new half-breed. There is also a few tables in there allowing you to roll randomly to select your races, both a large, everything in it and a few smaller ones split by more sensible combinations (like avian for flying races, reptilian for the more reptile like races etc). Finally, there are 4 half-breed races I made using this system, 2 using two of the primary stat blocks and 2 using one primary and one secondary stat blocks. Plus some background info giving an idea of how they came about and how their society works etc. Anyway, have a look and let me know what you think. Now I know that some race combinations might be very powerful, but my hope is that the system I used has kept that to a minimum.
Since goblins are being added to the core races/ancestries, how about we look at changing some of the others to more Golarion/pathfinder specific races to help differentiate it from DnD and other RPGs with Ye olde fantasy races. Now humans are central to Golarion so they must stay and I think Elves and Dwarves are core to the fantasy that they should stay. Halflings and gnomes possibly, although they could be swapped for different ones. Half-elves/orcs I think should go away. They smack too much of being someone earlier wanting their character to be the child of elf/human and wanting a race specifically for it and the half-orc of being lets put a monster in that isn't really a monster. Put them in later, but for core, why not switch them? Could put aasimar and tieflings in instead. They are interesting and flavourful. I know some have asked for tengu/kitsune/etc but I feel that they are too Tienese for the Inner Sea background we seem to have for the core book. Changelings, rat folk/ysoki, vanara, vishkanya could also be interesting core races instead.
So, how does Spring Heeled Reaping interact with the new improved/greater spring attack feats. Spring heeled reaping gives you a second attack when spring attacking at your full BAB. Improved gives you a second attack at -5 BAB and greater gives a third for ones at -5 and -10 BAB. Now would you get two attacks at full BAB and then the extras on top of that, or would they just replace each other such that you get one at full, another at full or -5 BAB depending on which feat you use and then a final one at -10?
Just curious, if you capture a creature in it and then take off the kimono and put it in an extradimensional space like a bag of holding, what happens? Does the creature stay in the kimono forever as they are on a different plane to where they came from. Do they immediately reappear when you put it in? Does it not matter and they reappear after the right conditions are met? Following that, what if you planeshifted first, then put it in the bag of holding?
In one of ye olde faction player/campaign companions there are a bunch of traits for the various Core classes (such as extra rage for barbarians, extra sneak attack damage for rogues etc). However as far as I can tell there haven't been updates for the later Base classes. With the upcoming ACG classes and the new Guide for Season 6, I was wondering if there would be the possibility of either adding such traits to the Guide or in a later publication of some sort.
So I have an Aasimar that has 1 chronicle sheet held until she reaches a higher level (lvl 2 I believe). Now I should be able to play a game as her to get the 1XP needed, but I am curious if held chronicle sheets that have been assigned to that character would count towards the 1XP requirement for grandfathering.
In the ISGs book, the magic item section specifically calls out that the named magic armour and weapons can be upgraded for the relevant costs and magic armours can be of different types to that listed (ie leather instead of studded leather etc). However there is the FAQ that says that no named armour/weapons can be upgraded. Would the ISGs overrule this for the items within this book as it is the newer source (other sources of specific magic armour etc like Ultimate Equipment don't have this statement about upgrading) or will the FAQ still stand? If it is allowed to upgrade these items, would the costs to upgrade be just that of upgrading the +X difference and treat the additional costs for the specific item as a +X gold equivalent? |