Throughout the past few years I've been a little underwhelmed by the performance of Captains in Starship Combat. For a role so archetypical in sci-fi, it seems to me that most of the time they're reduced to pre-emptively providing a +2 or +4 bonus to somebody elses roll, which often have no actual effect on the outcome and kind of makes the Captain feel like a less impactful version of the ships computer when they aren't burning through resolve points.
Additionally, they're the only role which cannot rely on a single skill (Or BaB/Piloting, in the case of Gunnery). To pull off one of their most potent abilities (Orders) requires being extremely good at a second skill, or set of skills, just to be able to spend a resolve point to even give another team-mate a chance to make their own roll. For every position except Pilot, it would be more efficient to simply change positions and do it yourself. And trying to hit the DC with an attack roll for giving Gunnery Orders is even harder.
To help solve these issues and make the Captain role feel more useful, I've made the following PDF.
I'd recommend that anybody who feels the Captain role underperforms in starship combat take a look and consider using some of the changes within. They're not for every table, of course, but at the very least I can say they've been fun on tables I've been on.
When I was developing the magic officer, one of the things I had to wrangle was player expectation of what a character could do in a starship role vs what could be done the rest of the time. Some ideas that feel fun and cool for starship combat got fairly massive negative reaction in playtesting for being totally offscale with what a character could do the rest of the time.
I wish i had room for a whole series of starship magic devices. MegaCrystal Balls and Keels of the Magi, things that take the place of offensive or defensive systems, but are magical and the magic officer used them to do things like create space terrain, teleport ships, and so on.
But I didn't have room in the book, or time to do the massive playtesting such a system would require.
Understandable, I get that there's only so much that can be done in a book that has to actually be published, as opposed to what I'm doing which has literally no oversight, editing, expectations, or pagecount restrictions.
Metaphysician wrote:
I lean to the "no more mandatory roles" side of things, myself. Its hard enough to run a starship if your group has fewer than four players, as is, and that is with treating the Captain as expendable, which is weird enough already. The more qualitatively distinct and major actions the Magic Officer can take, the more it becomes required to be competitive, because NPC ships "always" have full officer complement.
Which, btw, is why the starship rules could really use Tier/APL modifiers for having more or fewer officers. A ship with three officers is *really* not the same level of capability as a ship with six officers, identical tier or not.
I completely get that, and it's why I wouldn't recommend what I've made here to any group that didn't already have a Magic Officer who has feeling a bit underwhelmed by their relatively minor effects, since homebrew is supposed to solve a specific problem rather than be applied generally.
I could have sworn I posted this before I left for the night...
Anyway, I'll admit, I messed up. Once I saw the hex map example you put up, I realized I had been messing up the distance from the ship the whole time. I retract my inescapable trap comments. I guess you've made something not particularly difficult to avoid with a nimble ship and kind of a pain for slower turning ones.
No worries, we all make mistakes. That was my intention when initially designing these functions, at least. Things get a lot more complicated if you've got a GM who likes to add space-terrain of course, but that only adds to the fun, for me personally, at least.
Garretmander wrote:
I think the only nitpick I have with these abilities, is that the magic officer is just sort of doing them sitting in the ship.
I feel you should have the solar ray system/or whichever item in order for the magic officer to do these things in the first place, with more expensive version providing greater effects. Not just some guy looking out the viewport and filling miles of empty space with stellar fire.
I considered something like that initially, but my reasoning for not doing this is two-fold.
1 - In the world where this version of the Magic Officer exists, I'm presuming that all modern starships are built with systems to facilitate their actions and defences that can mitigate them, so they could easily be sat at a console or in an Arcane Laboratory or similar areas of a ship doing this sort of stuff, rather than just staring into space.
2 - I don't really want to make the early game BP squeeze even harsher just so the ships Magic Officer can actually do something productive. None of the other roles except Gunnery require certain ship systems do take certain actions, and that's not really a trend I'd like to break if I can avoid it.
NorthernDruid wrote:
These seem really good.
The wall of fire and wall of force like effects could probably use a way to avoid damage/force through the barrier with some sort of piloting roll and be balanced around that.
Overall I'd be excited to try them out if I got the opportunity though. The spaceship combat is sorely lacking in any form of terrain or obstacles to maneuver around.
Huh, that's something I completely didn't consider. Added a couple clauses.
Ignite Space gets a Piloting Check medium difficulty DC 15 + (1.5 x Casting Ships Tier) to half damage when travelling through an affected hex.
Force Barrier gets a medium difficulty DC 15 + (1.5 x Casting Ships Tier) check to ram through the barrier, taking a substantial amount of damage (And dealing it to the barrier) whether the roll succeeds or fails, which can be increased to a hard DC 20 + (1.5 x Casting Ships Tier) with the Barrier Shielding system.
Understand, I do like your ideas, I just don't like them for Starfinder. I've tried to create a response that doesn't sound like I'm attacking you personally, but I can be a jerk without meaning to. Also, spoiler'd for length.
Don't worry about it, I've got thick enough skin to seperate criticism of my ideas from criticism of me.
Response:
1 - I'm not really hugely sure what I can do about that, it's an issue that already exists in the system that I'm not really making worse than it already is. So long as shipboard weapons exist, this problem exists, unless Paizo decided to try and solve it (Hopefully in the SOM) at which point I'll try to adapt to any changes they've made.
2 - So, here's a little illustration of the options I can think of out of taking damage.
Maybe it's just my own personal experience, but most ships I've played or fought haven't had poor or worse maneuverability, so they could turn in place without penalty. Most ships I've seen can reach a turn-rate of 1, whether through having it naturally, with a Piloting test during a Manuever, an Audacious Gambit, a Chief Mate's Hard Turn, or another Magic Officers Psychic Currents.
I do think that perhaps the system which reduces it to a single-hex restriction zone is somewhat problematic, admittedly, but I don't think in and of itself the rest of these rules cause a big issue for anything but the hardest of ships to turn, which were likely hardly really relying on their movement at the best of times.
I can't really respond to the issue of space combt being already a slog aside from to say that hasn't really been my experience except when I'm playing in one of the roles that has almost no impact on the outcome, like the Magic Officer. I don't really think ships constantly trying to maneouver around controlling effects to get into an advantageous position sounds like a slog, that sounds pretty interesting to me, a new angle to ship combat which is currently pretty much solved by big turret max shields, sit still and fire until all targets are dead.
First, space is gigantic. If your character can create an effect (fog, fire, force wall, what have you) that's 3 space hexes in size at a distance of 10 space hexes, why can't the character effect, say, an entire city? Not to mention, this becomes the only character (that I know of) that can effect 'terrain' in space battles, and it does so to a huge extent. I feel like you've basically made a new 100% necessary crew spot, in a system where it can be difficult to fill the already existing necessary crew spots. Particularly so if the opposition has a Magic Officer.
Second, the way spacecraft move around on the map, both the wall of force and wall of fire might as well be unavoidable for your opponent. It would be hilariously easy to put that ignite space power down in such a way as to make it impossible for a ship to maneuver around it. And of course you're going to buy a Solar Ray System, who doesn't want to do Xd6 damage with no save and no attack roll? Similarly with the force wall, it would basically be a no brainer to put that down in such a way as to completely trap a ship for the duration of the force wall.
Basically, to sum up, you have some neat ideas, but they are way too powerful compared to every other crew position as they currently work.
I'll address these I'm sequence.
1 - Essentially, any number of reasons as the DM wishes. The same thing could be asked about, say, what prevents the players from firing tactical nukes or antimatter missiles at a city from their ship. It could require latent magical energy from active ship combat to power it, ground based anti-ship based magic systems might render it useless, or perhaps the atmospheric conditions prevent you from materializing the effect.
2 - The point about it being a role the players will want filled is a good one, but I disagree on it being 100% necessary, anymore than having a controller in ground combat is, at least. It serves a unique position but that doesn't mean a necessary position, especially when you consider that all the effects are two-way (If they have cover from you, you have cover from them, sort of stuff.) I'm of the opinion that it's firmly in the good but not necessary category. (Edit: I'm also not completely sure why anybody would introduce this homebrew without having a Magic Officer in the team, at which point it's fulfilling it's main purpose.)
3 - I'm not completely sure how you've got that conclusion, when things like slide or back-up exists, especially while maintaining the 2 hex distance from active ships the effects must keep when first placed. Hell, even just turning in place is totally possible. Could you try and describe some examples of this issue to me, maybe there's something going on that I've not thought about.
When I was somewhat disappointed by the Magic Officer released with the Character Operations Manual, I started thinking about what it was I actually expected it to be.
Here is the results of that. A Magic Officer designed with environmental manipulation and control in mind, able to deploy both offensive and defensive effects that fill an untouched niche in starship combat, with some ship systems to augment parts of it's functionality.
Feedback is appreciated, so long as it's not something like 'Why do this in the first place, the existing Magic Officer is fine' because if that's your view you're probably not the target audience for this.
20th level characters are supposed to be ridiculously powerful. Their CR is equivalent to the living apocalypse, which is a monstrosity known for destroying entire worlds. A 20th level soldier isn't the equivalent of a skilled grunt. Makes sense that they could destroy a skyscraper sized cruiser.
Starships and terrestrial creatures/vehicles are not supposed to interact. They're not allowed to deal x10 damage to anything but structures since they are not allowed to target anything else besides that. They have to use damage as if it were a hazard. Likewise, attacks against starships on ground treat the starship as an object, like how hover carrier is an object, for example. If it were meant to participate in both forms of combat, they would use two sets of statistics, such as the endbringer devil.
Mind you that we're all aware that concrete walls have way too much health. Even full damage with a heavy nuclear missile launcher doesn't destroy it.
You're fine to disagree with how they handle it, because I'm not trying to change your mind on anything.
I'm well aware of how powerful 20th level characters are. I never implied they were simply a skilled grunt. I still don't believe it makes sense in fiction given the scales involved, when the fact that they are the same CR/Tier/Level is taken into account. If the soldier was a substantial number of levels above the tier of the vehicle, I would agree it could make sense.
If you think the size category system having next to no impact on the actual power of the entity involved is fine, cool, I can see why you're satisfied with the existing system. I would prefer if it did have a substantial impact, and the fact that it doesn't is why I'm not going to make powered armour bigger than large.
Honestly I feel like the main thing here is that it should just be given more HP.
The damage it deals should be fine against most things.
But lets think about this for comparison, a road train, which is a really long semi-truck-trailer mainly used in Australia. Normally they usually just do like 3 trailers together max, but the world record is nearly a mile. But just because it's big and long doesn't make it resilient. It's still just a tractor trailer. You could pretty easily cut through it (enough to disable it) it a pretty short time.
Now, it's also not an armored personnel carrier.
So perhaps something like this probably should have had higher hardness (for reinforced armor) probably had an on board shield system, and higher hit points.
To me, this is more a failing of designing this piece of equipment than a problem with how the system generally works. This carrier listed here sounds a lot more like the mile long road train (that will be just as fragile as a regular semi) than an actually armored personnel carrier.
If the existing system is fine for you, that's great, I'm not requesting it be changed or even suggesting a house rule on how to fix it at this point, simply stating why I'm not going to make powered armour bigger than large.
While that may be the case, that still doesn't really solve my problem of existing huge+ vehicles/powered armours being underwhelming for what they are, and it's not really within the remit of what I set out to do here to solve that.
I guess since there isn't any on going discussion, I'll ask. What makes huge+ size power armor/vehicles particularly underwhelming? I understand power armor, since it has no HP pool, but what about vehicles?
Size in and of itself doesn't get you anything in Starfinder innately. It doesn't get you more HP, damage, slots, strength, or anything like that. All that is controlled by item level. On the other hand, it doesn't make you harder to hit either.
Basically, all it does is make it harder to move around and easier to provide cover to others.
It gives vehicles more ramming damage.
Anyway, I prefer that a creature's archetype and level determines its damage and health rather than size category. A colossal combatant shouldn't be significantly more powerful than a smaller combatant of the same CR because of a size difference. Just personal preference.
It's a reasonable preference to have, but it doesn't match up with mine, really.
When the 800 foot long hovercarrier can be demolished in half a minute by an equivalent level soldier swinging a weapon (who, incidentally, can actually have more stamina+HP than it.) or annihilated by a single heavy missile from a medium starship a bunch of tiers lower than it, that is 15% of its length (Which it has absolutely zero chance of harming substantially in return), it seems a lot less impressive, and a lot less like the 'pinnacle of military technology' it is described as.
Edit: Another fun fact I remembered, the 4 million credit level 20 hovercarrier actually has less hit points than a 10 foot x 10 foot section of concrete wall. It also has less than a third of the hit points and almost half of the hardness of a 10x10 section of normal starship interior material.
While that may be the case, that still doesn't really solve my problem of existing huge+ vehicles/powered armours being underwhelming for what they are, and it's not really within the remit of what I set out to do here to solve that.
I love the idea of powered armour bigger than large, but I don't really know how to make them mechanically distinct in a way that does them justice while staying within Starfinders pretty tight number curves. Even the one existing example seems a bit, lackluster, to say the least, for a gargantuan object.
I think I'd probably lean towards something like Umbral Reavers excellent Mechfinder homebrew for things of that nature, personally.
I looked into methods of fixing the existing powered armour upgrade system in the process of making this doc (Calculator linked), and found that the numbers required a fair bit of fudging to make fit in satisfactory ways, and that it actually seemed simpler to just make a new table of powered armour which I could use some maths to fit into Starfinders progression system without needing to make a system that requires moving parts that can adjust for any suit of armour.
In short, I believe this is actually simpler than trying to make the armour upgrade system work in a satisfactory manner.
I'm also not one hundred percent certain why doing so would be a better solution than simply making a table of armours to fit styles of play at different levels; we don't have or need a way to upgrade light/heavy armours, after all, we just have sets numbered I-VI that you can swap to as you progress.
Certainly anybody who wants to make the upgrade system work is welcome to try, all power to them, but for people who don't want to have to dig into starfinders number guts, this is something where I've done all the maths in the background and it doesn't require any more thought.
Basic Version PDF (Each suit in the basic version is just a standard suit of powered armour providing the basics for people who feel like that is missing from the current system.)
Enhanced Version PDF (This version gives each type of suit a special ability fitting its purpose for people who think the basic version is lacking compared to existing powered armour. This is much harder to balance, so be wary.)
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Reasoning for making this:
Recently it came to my attention that powered armour has some problems with its progression that the upgrading rules listed in Armoury doesn't solve. As you progress up the levels, you jump from unique suit to unique suit, each with wildly different properties.
For example, at level five, you're in a basic Battle Harness. You want to replace your armour with another medium size suit at, say, level 9? Your options are either two levels below or two levels above, and even then, leave something to be desired. You reach level 12 and get into some Celerity Rigging; Fast power armour, that's really cool. But then you progress a few levels, and find that there's no similar options either above or below the Rigging in levels, and upgrading it to stay level with you is exorbitantly expensive. Plus there's another five level gap in Medium scale armour between 12 & 17.
That's why I decided to make this, so users of Powered Armour can maintain a consistent playstyle as they level up, rather than jumping from special suit to special suit, in some cases ending up worse at things you value (Like speed, or size) because there's no higher level options for you.
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If anybody has any feedback, it'd be appreciated. It's hard to tell what the numbers will be like in actual play, but they match up to the progression curves I plotted, so they should be reasonable enough.
