Fweeba's page

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.

Starfinder Revised Captain 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 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.

Revised Magic Officer

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.

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.

(Link to reddit thread for this PDF.)