Faragdar the Free Captain's page

I think it’s great that the Starfinder setting has a space elevator. It’s a really cool idea, and a far-future setting deserves some advanced but not outlandish technology like that. There’s just one problem. It should never work on Verces.

The space station at the end of a space elevator tether has to be in geostationary orbit (technically just a bit beyond). Verces, though, is a tidally locked world. It doesn’t *have* a geostationary orbit, unless you want to count Lagrange points. The nearest Lagrange points, though, would still be at least a million kilometers from the planet, and those would be above Fullbright and Darkside, not the Ring of Nations.

So Skydock should not stay in orbit, at least not based on science. Magic would have to keep it up. But if the Verthani have sufficient magic to levitate a space station big enough to hold nearly a million people, why would they even need a space elevator and why wouldn’t they have all sorts of other advanced gravity-defying techno-magic?

(As an aside, Akiton, on the other hand, is a small world with low gravity and a normal day-night cycle, not to mention a thin atmosphere. It would be technologically feasible (and fairly urgent) for an advanced society to build a space elevator there. If it wasn’t such a fundamental change to the game setting, I’d be tempted to switch it in my game.)

Am I nitpicking? After all, this is a universe with cities inside the sun. Except those are clearly described as being sustained by magic far beyond the Pact World races’ capabilities. The Verthani, on the other hand, are still around and no more advanced than the rest of the Pact Worlds. It’s an unfortunate inconsistency, in my mind, but it would also be tricky to correct. Nevertheless, I’d like to come up with an explanation for Skydock that doesn’t sound completely contrived. Any ideas?

I've just started playing Starfinder, but I've found that magic missile is basically an indispensable spell. Our party today had a technomancer with magic missile and a mystic with shooting stars. They did, by far, the most damage. By simply giving up a move action, they were doing 6-15 damage per round, automatically. Our operative had to succeed at a skill check and then an attack roll to do 2-8 damage, while our soldier with an artillery laser had to succeed at an attack roll to do 1-10 damage.

That disparity seems kind of outrageous. Granted, the spells will run out over the course of several encounters, but charges run out, too, and does it matter when a 1st level technomancer can do an average of 40+ damage before his 1st level spells are depleted? Other characters will require twice as many rounds to do as much damage.

I bet if I house-ruled it to only being cast as a standard action with 2 missiles, almost all technomancers would still take it as one of their starting spells. Anyone else feel the same? Are there other rules that seem imbalanced and create very difficult to ignore power combos?

I realize this may seem like a dumb question, but I don't see the answer in the core rules, and I want to make sure I'm not missing something.

When an operative succeeds at a trick attack, is the bonus damage of the same type as the base damage for the weapon used?

My operative intends to use trick attack with a pulsecaster pistol, and I want to make sure GMs would agree with my interpretation that the bonus damage would also be E/nonlethal.

I have been reading the module "Incident at Absalom Station", and I noted that several NPCs have special abilities that I can't find listed in the Core Rulebook or the Alien Archive. These are NPCs with standard character races and class grafts, so whatever abilities they have, I would think they should be available to PCs.

Specifically, Jabaxa has "Persuasive (Ex)", which is not an ability available to Envoys; Vrokilayo Hatchbuster has "Awesome Blow (Ex)", which is not an ability available to Soldiers of any fighting style and is resolved similar to a combat maneuver (but isn't a listed combat maneuver); and Clara-247 has "Precise Shot (Ex)" which is not an ability available to operatives.

Am I missing something the Core Rules? Am I missing a rule book? If not, what am I supposed to tell my players when they wonder why NPCs are using abilities against them that they can't, themselves, learn? Granted, Jabaxa's and Clara's abilities I can just sneakily manage behind my GM screen (though I do not like the idea of a secret mechanic, as opposed to a role-played ability), but Awesome Blow is going to be a little obvious.