Flyteach's page

I'm definitely disappointed at the lack of awareness of the Paizo team to what players want. While plushies and dice bags are nice, the online tools are actually critical to players and GMs, directly supporting play, not just a sideline. The community created tools stand head and shoulders above any of the "officially licensed" tools. One made promises it never kept and couldn't even keep up with content updates over multiple years. It wasn't expensive, but certainly didn't provide the breadth of usability that Hephaistos does. The other, while newer, doesn't even support offline play (PDF export/download of character sheet). Despite the ivory tower concept of universal internet, it just doesn't exist and sometimes going paper and pencil is the only way to play. That just means I have to spend more non-playing time ensuring I have copied everything correctly rather than playing. So, less playing which ultimately means less revenue for Paizo. Online play and character building is here to stay, I'd suggest that Paizo find a way to embrace rather than disengage those that produce them (and sorry, the licensed tools don't hold a candle to Hephaistos and Pathbuilder).

For three years, and after several unanswered emails to CS, my subscriptions that were shipped using USPS-MI was absolutely useless for tracking. Other times my shipment would arrive in a USPS box that clearly said "tracking provided" but Paizo never initiated the tracking. Not that anything can be done, it's water under the bridge but also goes to show that there were probably many who had these issues and nothing was done to rectify it.

Pre-ordered! And, I missed Aaron's marketing quiz earlier. No minimum for me to subscribe, I just wouldn't want to miss anything and since I'm primarily an online player, definitely appreciate the PDFs. Given that, 3 or 4 per year would be outstanding, especially if they can explore some higher level adventuring and definitely more space/starship related material (starship combat with boarding).
Using published maps would be nice, especially for ships, however it's easy enough for me to use alternate ones (like from 0-hr.com) which also adds some spice. Given that starship combat can basically utilize the same map, maybe less maps would give more space for an extra level?

My subs came today. Thanks Paizo!
Now, it was shipped in a flat rate USPS box. I'm not going to argue the shipping charge since it also says "handling". However, the box is clearly marked with tracking information, the box says "insured and tracked" yet I do not receive a tracking number for this type of shipment. It would appear that I'm paying for tracking, so I'm not sure why I can't get a tracking number when it ships.
Flyteach

I understand that Paizo feel they have to delay the release of digital products for a number of reasons, but I can't help but wonder whether those reasons are actually worth the potential alienation of consumers that not releasing digital products when the physical product is so heavily delayed entails. Obviously I don't have insight to the data that Paizo have, but I for one am feeling like my confidence in Paizo's ability to deliver a product is shaken, which won't be easily restored. I planned to start Fists of the Ruby Phoenix in April, then May... and now it's been delayed to July I don't know if I should plan around Paizo product releases at all! After all, what happens if we get to July and it gets delayed AGAIN?

To clarify: I like Paizo products a lot. They're consistently high quality and that level of quality paired with their frequency of release used to be the biggest selling point for their systems. But between the Absalom book being delayed, what, two years plus? And now this? I don't know. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Paizo make it extremely hard to get hyped for their upcoming releases when we don't even know if they'll ever actually get released.

I can remember the days when we didn't know what was going to be available until we saw it on the shelf at the store. You are entitled to your opinion, but I'll continue to trust Paizo to do what's best for their business as I'd think they'd know it pretty well and I, as a player, really don't know squat about it.

it also looks like the April/May/June orders will be shipped closer to July than the beginning of June. Sigh

Where did you get that information from? Sarah just said above that shipments will start going out next week for April and May.

Sara Marie,
Please pass on my thanks for all the information you've provided. As an SF subber, I'm much more happy to get GEM a month late and since SF APs are going bi-monthly, well, I'll just used to that a sequence early. As a business owner, customers can't and won't agree or support every business decision we make. What they need to understand is that the leadership in a company will do what they think is best for the company, at the time, with the information at hand. I respect that. Keep up the great work.
Flyteach

I believe that if starships had been made a more intensive part of this AP, then the BP economy would make more sense and provide a better gaming experience. Unfortunately, the AP is starship light which makes it hard to justify working for the BPs.

In my campaign, I'm replacing it. If the ship has weapons, make it a starship combat with Deminda.....think the famous scene in the trenches of the huge ship in the universe that shall remain unnamed. Either Deminda herself, or with an escort or two. If the ship doesn't have weapons, then one of the SOM options like eluding asteroids or mines or some other space anomaly on their escape. Either way, it exercises some starship options and isn't just another dungeon crawl encounter.

Thanks Jeff, it looks like it was corrected very quickly.
Flyteach

Alright! 15 minutes and an answer in email. Thank you so much for taking care of it!
Flyteach

It appears that I did not get the full pre-order price adjustment for this order. How do we get this fixed?
Flyteach

Everyone, check your receipts. It does not appear that the 30% discount was applied to my order: Order #35689452
Flyteach

Sara,
I'm not sure this is related only to this month's shipments. For the last 2 years I've had USPS/MI and the tracking either didn't come, came late, showed my package sitting in Kansas City for over a week, the package arrived before tracking was released, or sometimes just plain stopped in K.C. and several days later the package would show up. But nothing showed that it entered the USPS system, just showed sitting in K.C. I figured it was just poor tracking problem, but if you're going to take this to them, we can look at some of my old shipments and tracking experience.

FFoD hit FG marketplace today (23 February). But, it's kinda sad that going into what looks like another summer of limited in person gaming (Paizocon is only online, for example) plus, as others have said, the most intriguing and interesting AP to be published for Starfinder, that Paizo does not seem likely to fix this. It seems like they are shooting themselves in the alien appendage as people can't play it without significant overhead, but then GMs won't buy it due to this difficulty potentially leading to lower sales and then the answer "well, it didn't sell well, so it's not worth the effort". I still have hope that Paizo management will see the light and err on the side of quality. Long term customers generally value quality above everything else.

I haven't read Starship Operations Manual, perhaps they have some options for a starship chase there.

Yes, along with ideas for some other hazards that would still exercise the groups starship roles without having to be all out combat. Also, there are boarding rules that could be leveraged when using an unarmed transport.

Flyteach

I’m back, and we completed Part 2 just yesterday.

EVENT 4: DRIFT LEECHES! (CR 3)

This was the weakest part of the book so far. It’s a bit early for a random encounter, but the main problem is that it was a really boring combat.

The drift leeches are just ridiculously weak - the low attack bonuses combined with low damage and lack of a special attack is a very lackluster combo. The healing power just drags things even more. Zero gravity is an interesting conundrum to throw in a fight, but in such an open environment it didn’t factor much.

FWIW, during my prep, I decided to replace this even with a starship event. I'm thinking along the lines of a chase instead of planted mines on the ship which would require some combat. Oh, yes, my players will have an armed ship, so this would be possible. With all the pirates and other bad actors in space, I won't leave the crew without the means to defend themselves.

Aaron, you can add another vote for a subscription.

@Corvus, you're making my heart go pitter patter! Starship heavy Starfinder? I can't wait!

Leo, glad you're here. I'm still working through it. I don't want to give out spoilers or opinions before getting to the whole thing.

Thanks, that's what I figured. Get the starships back into Starfinder!

Flyteach

I'd like to run it for Society credit.

So, I was wondering why my map and AP were shipped separately a couple of times during the past few months, each being almost $6 postage each. OK, my setting was "cheapest". Now, I was looking at my January shipment (one AP, one flip mat, SOM Pawns) and shipping was estimated to be $24. That seemed a little high, so I began experimenting. I changed the shipping to UPS (I have issues with UPS, but that's a different story). Estimated charge was now $21. Well, now, isn't that interesting. Changed again to USPS Priority and now the shipping estimate is $13.
There's something seriously broken with their shipping charge algorithm and Paizo needs to take notice. At the very least, they need to notify their customers that we need to be proactive in selecting a shipping method, if they don't want to be responsible for attempting to calculate the cheapest method.
In particular, most of my stuff has been coming through the UPS MI portal, which seems to be the absolute slowest (I wouldn't necessarily mind if it WAS the cheapest), but based on what I found, it's the MOST expensive AND the slowest. Plus, the tracking seems to not be very good when the shipment is handed to USPS.....the tracking generally stops, sitting in Kansas City for 3 to 5 days, then will suddenly appear on my doorstep.
C'mon Paizo, I know we're all under pressure with the current world situation, but charging double for "cheapest" is surely letting your best customers down. I can buy more stuff if the shipping was being charged correctly (and this is for domestic US.....I get that foreign shipping is a whole different and sad story).
Flyteach

Yup, I wrung BD514 thru James Turner's online ship generator and it flagged the power core issue right away for me. Otherwise, it seemed ok. But, "I've made a few modifications myself" if you know what I mean and have created a few versions for my players to choose (or roll their own) which include some type of weapon. That let's me include some ship combat/action encounters which I find sorely lacking in FFoD #1. Even played around with some ablative armor and deflector shields to exercise some of the SOM options. Just can't wait until I get my hands on FFoD #2 so I can see what the Oliphaunt holds.
Flyteach

I'm just going to throw this out there. I've been super excited for this since it was first announced. I've read through about 80% of the AP and I've got 2 major observations.
1. Lack of starship combat. We've even got a brand new book out but not a single encounter?

Going back over the summer, I'm wondering if someone got a new computer and had their preferences wiped and didn't know how to set them up again to reproduce the PDFs that were being produced before these problems. But yes, each month for the last couple brings new challenges to those of us who depend on the electronic version.
Flyteach

Is anyone else having trouble with the file size of the PDF? Wow, a Gigabyte just for these three APs? My hard drive is going to fill up fast. That's about 10 to 15 times larger than previous APs except 3FC which seemed to jump to about 100 Mb per adventure, which is still large compared to all the previous ones. I haven't noticed any special difference in content or quality of the art or resolution of the document. The whole Third Printing of the CRB is less than 150 Mb
Flyteach

What's up with the huge file sizes?
Flyteach

@Celion,
For those of us who don't know how to recompress these bloated files, can you point the unenlightened in a helpful direction? Thanks!

Flyteach

Got mine today. Love 'em.

They look great! Hoping for more....

I. Cannot. Wait!

The indemnification clause is new.

Can you post the fix or URL to original for reference? Thanks!

Good morning and happy after Gencon.

I received my monthly sub, but I received the Near Space book instead of the Near Space Pawn collection for the sub and per the shipping receipt.
Vaclav G. Ujcik/Flyteach

As of 3PM Central time, it's working. Looks like there's maps and a doc. Many thanks to whoever fixed this!
Flyteach

Yup. Calliope emailed me last night that it was fixed, but it's not fixed. Earlier I could download a corrupted file. Now it's just stuck on "Personalizing.....". I already emailed back that it's still broken. Hope to hear/see something today and follow up here. You're not the only one, my brother has this issue also.
Flyteach

We're No (Big Damn) Heroes!

All I get are JPG and PNG files of the original 7. The character data is completely missing in action. I can't GM quests and demo at a convention if I can't get the pregens.

Anybody else notice that the Better Days ships as listed on page 15 do not follow the shipbuilding rules? For one, you can't put a Pulse Gray power core on a Heavy Freighter. Also, the HF has 8 cargo slots. Am I missing something?
Flyteach

Just wondering, as they bring a fun way to make the story more immersive.

Flyteach

At the top of page 10, the heading should be Subtier 3-4 as this is the higher level subtier description.

On the bottom of the left column of page 3, there is missing text. It ends with ".....Fitch has stepped" Looking at the top of the right column, it starts with a new heading (Summary) and paragraph. It may be one little word, "in", but thought I should bring this up in case there's more to that explanation.

Flyteach

Yup, not a super duper subscriber ;) but also a subscriber to SFS and no email or availability. I just posted a note in the customer service section about it.
Jim Ujcik

Hi Katina, My account shows a subscription to Starfinder Society RPG, but I didn't get an email yesterday nor does 1-05 show as available in my downloads. Original Order 4361056. Thanks!
Vaclav G. "Jim" Ujcik

William Pall wrote:

Claim to Salvation is written for lvl 4 characters.

Oops, I meant to say that Into the Unknown is written for lvl 1 characters, so if you do it after Dead Suns I characters won't be in the legal level range.

I thought ITU had to be the first chronicle sheet run and chronicles had to be applied in the order played. I'm not familiar with PFS, so it's a basic question, but confusing to me.

Hmm, you're right. I don't see anything in the guild guide. However, there are several chronicle sheets that have a box marked "Normal". Maybe it'll come next season?

Since the ITU has to be played as 1st level, this works only if playing slow progression. For normal progression, ITU would have to be moved before the AP to count, right? Or am I missing something?

Starfinder Roleplaying Guild Scenario subscription still says "Pending"