Fardragon's page

+2 bonus to Shouting and Facial Hair.

pixierose wrote:

Also Nethys didn't disappear. The only deities known to be missing are Torag and Rovagug. Nethys just isn't as popular.

If that's true then it is unknown. The Core Rulebook doesn't account for him. He could be less popular or he could be missing.

I don't see why he'd be all that unpopular when his replacement is very much like him.

It isn't made explicit in the CRB, but the developers have made this point clear on the forums. The 20 gods in the CRB are not the only 20 gods, nor are they necessarily even the most popular gods. It's just that there was only room to write about 20 of the multitude of gods that are worshipped in the galaxy, and those where the ones the writers chose to include.

So, unless a god is explicitly stated as missing they still exist and still have worshipers.

It depends what you mean by "hard SF" you can strip out all the magic, and you are still left with technology that is completely nonsensical in terms of real world science.

Space Opera without magic is still Space Opera.

gustavo iglesias wrote:

That's fibe, is up to her to decide what she likes more.

But it is a blantant attempt to murder logic to pretend that there is no such thing as overkill in combat.

You do not play a solarian for social skills. You play something like an operative (spy) for that.

What if no one wants to play a social skills specialist? It's likely to fall to the character with the high charisma to do the negotiatating. Not every negotiation has a high DC, but if the whole party has charisma as a dump stat they are likely to get themselves into silly fights, arguments with cops, and pay over the odds every other step.

If you really aren't interested in ever doing anything other than hiting things as hard as possible, then play a soldier.

50) The players owe an amount of credits equal to the value of the ship to a crime boss. If the players sell the ship he will want his money back (credit: WEG Star Wars RPG).

And if the GM thinks it excessive, they can always make it unavailable.

But dismemberment isn't going to be a worry every enemy you fight.

Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:

The game assumes you can buy no greater than +1 in a "typical" settlement.

Exactly. So, unless you are not in a «typical» settlement (ie: a settlement combining or exhibiting the essential characteristics of a settlement), the game assumes your lvl+1.

Your GM could of course change that, just like he could ban solarians, make Ysoki an evil race, or say that everybody has to play with a Kasatha because his campaign will be about kasathas, and that's ok. Just that then the campaign is not within what the game assumes.

I would guess that a good 50% of adventures don't start in a settlement at all.

Everyone meets in the tavern is a tired old cliche.

Everyone starts in prison with nothing is catching up fast as the new cliche.

John Lynch 106 wrote:

Rules say most settlements (at the GM's discretion) will allow level + 1 euipment.

They do not. Rules say the game assumes ilevel+1 is available (quote with page reference below)

Quote:

Says nothing about chargen though.

Actually, Chargen directs you to Chapter 7 (Equipment), after noting you've got 1000 credits and waffling for a bit.

Literally, 'For more on the equipment availability and how much it costs, see Chapter 7'

In Chapter 7, p167. We have Item Level (where availability is discussed).
To quote the relevant bit:

"the game assumes that in typical settlements you can find and purchase anything with an item level no greater than your character level +1, and at major settlements items up to your character level +2. The GM can restrict access to some items (even for appropriate ilevel) or make higher level available for purchase."

So Chargen points you to Equipment, and that chapter flatly tells you level +1 or even +2. It is, in fact, the default assumption of the game, with the GM's option to restrict it beyond that.

No. It doesn't. It says the equipment is available IN A SETTLEMENT. It does not say "at chargen, characters are assumed to be a settlement". The rules are deliberately non-specific, because it depends on the GM.

You will be mediocre at Diplomacy and Mysticism compared to the other PCs, you have only 3 skill ranks per level, and your character cannot take 10 for common knowledge.

That's making pretty categorical assumptions about who else will be in the party. (although personally, I would aim for 10 int, taking the hit to wisdom).

I think:

• For mult-level modules/AP's, the Solarion will be better damage as he gets auto-upgrades to his weapon. The Soldier won't be able to afford new weapons immediately at each tier without giving up other credit-costly goodies.
  

This is very dependent on the GM. It seems that a lot of people posting on there forums are expecting their GMs to throw unlimited credits at them.

Okay, so I've seen the consensus in the forums that Solarians "have to start as Soldiers".

I reject your reality and substitute my own =)

I reject you postulate that there is a consensus.

Sedoriku wrote:

Wait, you ignored every aspect of the solarion class that makes it different from a soilder except photon mode and three of the class skills and call it 'disappointing'. Good grief, this wasn't a solarion playtest, it was a serial numbers filed off soilder playtest and of course you're going to be disappointed. You dumped the key stat for more damage and little to no survivability. The Solarion may have problems, but building one like tis is more of a problem than the class every had. If you want a really good melee DPS, go soilder. Please quit trying to ramrod the Solarion into that mold and complaining when it doesn't work.

The solarian is a front line melee fighter...

Source?

th3razzer wrote:

However, once that tops and skews your view of a class, archetype, race, storyline, core game? At that point you need to, NEED TO, shut up; take a step back, breathe, and talk with your GM. Stop flooding - needlessly, I might add - the forums hoping someone, somewhere will agree with you.

Well, he's not really WRONG. Is it really skewing your view of a class to go 'The class is not good at this thing it is supposed to be good at'?

I don't think is states in the CRB what the class is "supposed to be good at".

The error here is the assumption that the class is supposed to be a front line melee fighter that can go toe-to-toe with a soldier. It doesn't say that anywhere.

I keep trying to remind people that this is a ROLE PLAYING game, not a pure combat game. The solarion has significantly more out of combat utility than a soldier (which, as has been pointed out elsewhere, sucks in that department).

Fardragon wrote:

Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:

Fardragon wrote:

Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:

Fardragon wrote:

What do you mean by "monsters"?

Something for the players to beat to death? Plenty of robots for that.

Anyway, we know that at least some artificial beings have souls (androids). Therefore constructing one involves the manipulation of souls. Ergo, constructing a robot with partial AI may require the use of a partial soul.

Androids are made in ways that don't cross ethical and moral reasons, from what I remember the Android body is made and a soul decides to inhabit it, which is completely different than creating Undead.

That wasn't always the case. The first androids where originally constructed by humans as mechanical servants. Putting a soul into a non-living body is necromancy. Androids came into being via necromancy.

No it's not. It could be Conjuration since you're summoning the soul. We don't have exact rules for creating Androids so it's a moot point.

Androids =/= Undead

Android bodies where not alive before they gained a soul. Something that is not alive is, by definition, dead. Putting a soul into a dead body is, by definition, necromancy. This necromantic act may have occurred by accident, or at the volition of the soul itself, rather than have been done deliberately by the creator of the body, but it is still necromancy.

What? No.

That logic is nonsense. Minerals aren't dead just for starters. No, just, no.

Er, yes, minerals are dead...

Fardragon wrote:

Michael7123 wrote:

Fardragon wrote:

Belief systems have changed. On Pathfinder Golarion, people believed the creation of undead was an evil act, but that was not always the case (1st and 2nd edition AD&D). Good and evil are what people believe them to be.

The pathfinder setting (to the best of my knowledge) has never operated on the assumption of morality being relative- which is something I really appreciate about the setting. People can believe whatever the hell they want- that doesn't change whether or not their actions are objectively good or evil.

The people living on Golarion pre-gap believed that good and evil where absolutes. Like anything people believe, it could be wrong.

In the Starfinder universe people have become more flexible and less certain and dogmatic in their beliefs, which is why alignment plays a diminished role.

Which shouldn't affect fundamentals like whether or not ripping up souls to make controllable puppets, thereby affecting the souls natural cycle are evil.

It affects whether or not people believe souls are harmed during the process. If you do not believe a soul is being harmed, then you are not setting out to do deliberate harm, therefore you are not doing anything evil. In order for an act to be evil it requires intentional harm. Plenty of good people do harm through ignorance.

Fardragon wrote:

What do you mean by "monsters"?

Something for the players to beat to death? Plenty of robots for that.

Anyway, we know that at least some artificial beings have souls (androids). Therefore constructing one involves the manipulation of souls. Ergo, constructing a robot with partial AI may require the use of a partial soul.

Androids are made in ways that don't cross ethical and moral reasons, from what I remember the Android body is made and a soul decides to inhabit it, which is completely different than creating Undead.

That wasn't always the case. The first androids where originally constructed by humans as mechanical servants. Putting a soul into a non-living body is necromancy. Androids came into being via necromancy.

What do you mean by "monsters"?

Something for the players to beat to death? Plenty of robots for that.

Anyway, we know that at least some artificial beings have souls (androids). Therefore constructing one involves the manipulation of souls. Ergo, constructing a robot with partial AI may require the use of a partial soul.

Personally, I would prefer ammunition had been pretty much dropped from the game. Tracking ammo is a dull chore that detracts from having fun.

It's just making robots out of meat. What is there to be evil about?

This is a case where the GM has to apply common sense. It's not enough to simply wear a badge saying "pilot" and go to sleep. Any sane GM would rule that player cannot add any ranks to anything, for the same reason that a character who is dead cannot take any actions.

I suspect the way CR is calculated has been changed slightly. I would go with the IaAS values, as the most up-to-date.

It actually happens in RL. Ink cartridges can cost more than some printers (as the printer is sold as a loss leader). The printer ships with ink cartrages included...

The reason this kind of thing can happen is there are very high mark-ups over the manufacturing cost.

In a pseudo-medieval economy mark-ups are lower because supply chains are shorter.

Fardragon wrote:

lakobie wrote:

Battery Charge managment is a non issue. Many enemies are going to be carrying spare battery packs (as well as the battery packs in any energy rifle or weapons as they come with one), theres an armor mod that restores charges to batteries by walking, and casters can recharge batteries for spells.

You are assuming the players are going to be fighting intelligent foes using compatible technology. They may be fighting beasts and monsters, greys who attack with their mental powers, or aliens from another part of the galaxy who use an incompatible battery format.

Granted if you're fighting nothing but enemies that don't use equipment then the GM should keep an eye on loot so that it stays around recommended WBL.

This, combined with the need for credits, rather limits the freedom of the GM in the kinds of story they can tell.

Battery Charge managment is a non issue. Many enemies are going to be carrying spare battery packs (as well as the battery packs in any energy rifle or weapons as they come with one), theres an armor mod that restores charges to batteries by walking, and casters can recharge batteries for spells.

You are assuming the players are going to be fighting intelligent foes using compatible technology. They may be fighting beasts and monsters, greys who attack with their mental powers, or aliens from another part of the galaxy who use an incompatible battery format.

I believe that the automatic specialisation is only in your classes starting weapon proficiencies. If you want to be specialised in a non-class weapon you need to spend (at least) two feats, one for proficieny and one for specialisation. Taking the proficency before level 3 doesn't grant a free specialisation.

I am not certain why they added this resource-counting mechanic. It won't make the game more fun. I hate bookkeeping.

Oh well. One nit in an otherwise great system.

Hmm

I believe it is to act as a credt sink. Controlling the amount of credits available is very important for class balance in this game.

And I agree, I don't like it. It pretty much forces adventures to revolve around "paying" work. I know some groups feel they need the lure of gold to motivate thier characters, but my group are quite happy to trot off on adventures through pure altruism.

I think the writers thought it was so obvious that a grenade is destroyed when used that they didn't think it was necessary to state it.

They are meant to be expensive, because they are powerful. Making them cheep would be equivalent to giving out unlimited fireballs.

GM: "you reach a door."
Player 1: "I open the door and toss in a grenade."
Player 2: "I toss in a grenade too."
Player 3: "My character also tosses in a grenade."
GM: "The room is empty, apart from the debris from your grenades. Across the room you see another door."
Player 1: "I cross the room, open the door, and toss in a grenade."
.
.
.
etc

I do think is was a design error to really so heavily on currency to limit character power, but that is very much the path that has been chosen, and we are pretty much stuck with it.

Can we not just apply our own judgment? I, as GM, see no reason the fusion can't be attached to the mote (for both logic an balance reasons), so that is what can happen. I don't need a rules lawyer judging if I am interpreting the letter of the rules correctly or not, so long as it is in the spirit of the rules.

Speaking as a 1st edition vet, I think game balance is overrated.

There was no attempt to balance classes in 1st edition AD&D, and guess what? it was still great fun.

It's a story-telling game, not a tactical wargame. If a player wants to play a character who is weak in combat but specialises in some obscure ability a good GM will allow for that when planning the adventure. If the party consists of number crunchers who build their characters to be combat beasts, the GM will allow for that too. Either by making the enemies harder, or by putting them into a scenario which they have to resolve without fighting.

I don't see a problem with that. If you wanted to play a military engineer, you would play a Mechanic, if you wanted to play a military ranger scout you would play an Operative. If you want to play a military shoot-them-in-the-head-until-they-are-dead type then play a Soldier.

Fabian Benavente wrote:

Rysky wrote:

I know Starfinder is in effect an "Elseworlds" future of the Pathfinder setting, rather than the definitive "that's what's going to happen" future... but that still requires building off the Pathfinder setting.

Saying that it is actually Starfinder instead that builds off of an "Elseworlds" Pathfinder opens a whole other can of worms.

Still confusing setting and game mechanics...

Starfinder Gameworld/setting builds from Pathfinder Gameworld/setting but the mechanics are different.

Let me try to explain another way.

In PF, the witch class was introduced after the the core classes. Do you think witches never existed before they were introduced mechanically? Did witches suddenly appear in Golarion on 4710 when Paizo published the Advanced Player's Guide in 2010? Was the evil eye hex discovered in Golarion on 4710?

The same thing applies to the different archetypes or magic items or spells or whatever that are introduced after the Core Rule Book.

I really don't know what else to say. Setting is not the same as mechanics in a game.

Uh, no I'm not. I didn't even mention any mechanics in that post.

And yes Witches existed before the class itself, I don't really know what this has to do with your argument though. If anything it supports mine.

bull's strength is not an abstract mechanic, it's an actual in game spell, it's a thing that exists along with plate armor and bastard swords in the Pathfinder setting.

The spell name is a thing that exists in the game world, yes. But how it works is not. Strength stat does not exist in the game world for either PF or SF. You cannot go to an in game book and read "King Zog the Mighty was known for having a strength of 23". You can go to a book and read "King Zog was very strong".

So the spell "Bull's Strength" can exist in both the Pathfinder Setting and the Starfinder setting. However, mechanically, in PF it is represented by adding to the Strength stat, whereas in SF it is represented mechanically by increasing the amount of stuff you can lift.

Key rule: No plan survives contact with the enemy (read: players).

I tend to write only a couple of chapters at a time, with only a sketchy idea of the overall story. That enables you to be responsive to what players actually do in a given situation, without having to create too much content that no one will ever see. There is nothing more disheartening than creating a wonderful dungeon that the players don't find or skip past.

If I was intending to publish, I would want to play the same adventure several times with different groups before I felt happy to put it out into the public domain.

I think Mike Elite's rule 3 is pretty much impossible to follow. The rules are riddled with cliché from the start, there is no way to avoid it, but you can subvert it. Beware of doing that too much though - players don't like to have their expectations undermined too often.

Also, if you intend other people to run your adventure, remember that spelling, punctuation and grammar are important for making your meaning clear.

Technomancer hacks the CRB.

IonutRO wrote:

Lashunta sexual dimorphism from Pathfinder got retconned into a metamorphic subspecies system. Damaya get what used to be female stats in Pathfinder.

Why?

So the GM didn't have to say to players: "if you want to play this subrace you must choose that gender".

Vidmaster7 wrote:

I swear people get so panic-stricken over everything. They can always make a prepared caster in a later book or you could just use one from pathfinder and convert it. If you figure out how many options is in pathfinder you should be able to guess its only a matter of time before they exhaust enough others to make a prepared caster for starfinder.

It's not people being "panic-stricken", and that's a pretty rude way to describe the situation. People have things they're excited about and interested in playing- and this is one that looks like it won't be in the game, at least for a very long time (especially since Starfinder has an extremely sparse release schedule for now- the first AP is coming out over a year).

It's basically the same thing as the No Gnomes debacle, except instead of being a relatively unpopular core race it's a basic mechanic that's represented by 5 out of the 11 classes in the CRB.

I would say that it isn't really comparable. Why not? Because Starfinder is not 2nd Edition Pathfinder. It is a new game (all be it sharing the same universe), and Pathfinder will continue to be supported, prepared casters and all.

No, I think you are. "Special materials" aren't really a thing, apart from the fluff text. Items are priced based on their effectiveness, not what they are made out of.

The explanation given covers that. In Starfinder an "Adamantine Dagger" and an "Adamantine Greatsword" are completely separate items, so each would be individually priced.

Although I doubt Adamantine will actually be used, having been rendered obsolete by more advanced materials.

Basilisk war droids for everyone!

And I wish I knew what you were talking about.

It's some kind electronic entertainment that the hip teens be down with.

Psychos, soldiers and chosen ones.

That sums up most PCs.

And not that many are soldiers.

Come to think of it, my current group consists of two chosen ones, two psychos, and one very quiet barbarian

We already know the setting favours using technology for everyday stuff.

Magic is for doing awesome stuff that can't be easily achieved with tech.

What someone considers hard SF has a lot to do with how they understand science: not just the level, but the interpretation.

That's why I don't like hard SF: you are basically painting a target on your story and inviting people to tear it to shreds. Not based upon the quality of the literature, but on silly technical details.

David knott 242 wrote:

I wonder whether the ship in Alien Archive that you would have to be a jerk to use is some sort of organic spaceship?

Maybe it's a giant enslaved space whale and you're a jerk because it's slavery.

I saw that story on Doctor Who!

Come to think of it, I wonder if there will be a Starfinder story that Doctor Who hasn't already done?

The miners of Falcon's Rock, and asteroid mining station, are afflicted by a mysterious plague. Only by traveling deep into the belt can the ingredients for the antigen be found.

Fardragon wrote:

I don't think the difference between light and heavy armour is the amount of protection provided and the amount of skill required to use.

Cosmetic effects are cosmetic only.

For some reason i am having trouble parsing your comment. You do not think the divide between light and heavy armor is based on how difficult it is to use or the amount of defense it provides?

i have been assuming it will be a trade off between AC vs DEX mod and tiered by level as weapons are.

So just to spit ball a concept, when light armor at your tier caps out at +6 K/EAC and DEX +4 Heavy armor might be more of +8 K/EAC and DEX+2 and they would scale up so that maybe light maxes out at a +14 K/EAC with a +10 DEX mod and Heavy is +20 K/EAC with a +6 DEX mod.

Basically they keep enough distance between them that you either need DEX or you notice the difference assuming that you are comparing armors of equal level.

Or would you break the armors out by improvement slots? Heavy armors are heavy because they can support more mods and support systems?

i would also think that there would be strong cosmetic break outs for different gear. a laser rifle shouldn't look like an assault rifle and nether should look like a flame thrower even if all three deal 2D6 damage and count as long arms. likewise, to me, a light armor shouldnt resemble heavy armor so closely, it takes away its cool factor and makes it less interesting.

Yeah, me too.

Marking exam papers has turned my brain to mush.

I used to be an Astrophysics postgrad (i.e. a professional scientist, junior grade). This is what you learn by studying science at the highest level:

Everything you think you know is wrong.

The Gray mentioned in his story is really interesting to me. I can't wait to see more of them in the Alien Archive.

*** FILE NOT FOUND ***

Dick Turpin then. He has something of a fanbase, didn't even give away what he stole, and I don't think Disney have been anywhere near him. There was a 1970s British TV show, and, err, Carry on Dick.

Bandits who dress in Lincoln Green, use a longbow and hang around in Sherwood forest have a fanbase.

Besmara is CN because that's her alignment. It may well be that the majority of her worshipers are evil. As with Damoritosh. Since most of the Vesk worship him, he no doubt has many neutral and good followers, despite being evil. Starfinder has no "one step" rule.