Goblin Squad Member. Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber. Pathfinder Society GM. Starfinder Society GM. 67 posts. 8 reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 35 Organized Play characters.
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Another weird rules interaction is with Mature Animal Companions and flying. "During an encounter, even if you don't use the Command an Animal action, your animal companion can still use 1 action on your turn that round to Stride or Strike."
If you have a Bird animal companion, it has a Speed of 10 and a Fly of 60 Feet. But since the Bird cannot use Stride to Fly, it can only walk 10 feet.
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I used Nathan's method; however, I had a problem. I would lose track of which identical monster on the map corresponded to the one in the initiative tracker. Fortunately, I stumbled into a solution.
After placing the tokens on the map, open each one up by double-clicking; that brings up the Edit Token dialogue box. On the Basic tab, modify the Name field to something unique. For example, change it from Goblin to Goblin #1. When rolling initiative, Goblin #1 will show up in the initiative tracker. It's also helpful to check the Show Nameplate? box; that'll display the name to the GM on the map.
I like to hard-code the initiative for each monster by using the macro "/roll 1d20 + 6 &{tracker:+}" (where 6 equals that monster's initiative modifier). Doing so bypasses the need to enter the initiative modifier in real time (trading more upfront work to reduce in-game work).
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I’ve reviewed the CRB to see the extent of alignment embedded in the rules. The good news is that alignment doesn’t affect too many places in the rules. A number of sections have spoilers for length; these spoilers include many specific rules implications. Everyone’s game without alignment will be different; I’ve included a few suggestions and questions for you to ponder if you are going this route.
Methodology:
I searched the CRB for any mention of “alignment”, “lawful”, “chaotic”, “evil”, and “good”. I excluded anything where those words aren’t in the context of alignment. For example, “evil” shows up in “devil” and there are multiple mentions of trade goods.
There are many references that are general and don’t need any rules updates. These references include the general rules on alignment (pages 28-29), character sheets, ancestry preferences, Lost Omens setting, and the Glossary.
First up are the classes; the Champion and Cleric classes both embed alignment prerequisites into them. For the Champion, I assume that the PC will pick one of the causes (Paladin, Redeemer, or Liberator) in the same sense that a Barbarian picks a totem; the choice gives the Champion’s Reaction and affects other feats and class abilities. Many Champion abilities will need updates. Cleric works fairly easily, though some class feats are affected.
Champion:
The biggest challenge is “The Tenets of Good.” You’ll have to decide whether to keep or toss those; if you eliminate them, you should note that multiple class feats have “Tenets of Good” as a prerequisite: Dragonslayer Oath, Fiendsbane Oath, Shining Oath, Aura of Courage, Divine Health, Litany Against Wrath, Shield Warden, Sense Evil, Litany Against Sloth, Shield of Reckoning, Champion's Sacrifice, Litany of Righteousness, Auspicious Mount, Instrument of Zeal, Celestial Form, and Celestial Mount.
Multiple feats add “good” damage. You may need to change the damage type for it to be effective. Reference Divine Smite (9th level class ability), Smite Evil (Feat 6), Aura of Faith (Feat 12), and Blade of Justice (Feat 12).
Vengeful Oath (Feat 2) adds hunting down evil creatures to the Champion’s code. This feat also allows you to treat creatures that have attacked a “good” ally as if they are undead for purposes of lay on hands.
Sense Evil (Feat 8) allows the Champion to detect evil beings; this feat is not applicable in a game with no alignment.
Radiant Blade Spirit (Feat 10) augments the divine ally (blade) with flaming and aligned properties consistent with the cause’s alignment. You may want to change the damage type for this feat.
Blade of Justice (Feat 12) increases damage against evil creatures and changes all damage to good damage.
Aura of Righteousness (Feat 14) grants evil resistance 5; this feat is not applicable in a game with no alignment.
Celestial Form (Feat 18) and Celestial Mount (Feat 20) add the celestial trait; does that mean anything in your game?
Cleric:
Multiple feats reference good alignment (Holy Castigation – Feat 1; Heroic Recovery – Feat 10; and Eternal Blessing – Feat 16) or evil alignment (Command Undead – Feat 4; Necrotic Infusion – Feat 4; Improved Command Undead – Feat 10; and Eternal Bane – Feat 16). I recommend changing those prerequisites to healing font (good alignment) or harmful font (evil alignment).
Divine Weapon (Feat 6), Align Armament (Feat 8), and Castigating Weapon (Feat 10) deal alignment damage; you may need to change the damage type for these feats to be effective.
Only a small number of spells have alignment references.
Spells:
Some references simply apply the evil trait; these include Abyssal Plague, Bind Soul, Chilling Darkness, and Ghoulish Cravings. A smaller number of spells apply the good trait: Holy Cascade and Searing Light.
Detect Alignment and Undetectable Alignment have no meaning in a setting without alignment.
Chilling Darkness does additional damage to celestials; Holy Cascade and Searing do additional damage to fiends. Should bonus damage apply to something else?
Circle of Protection and Protection apply bonuses against specified alignments; these spells could be modified to protect against other types of threats.
Summon Celestial and Summon Fiends bring in creatures with the celestial or fiend traits; do these spells have meaning in a game without alignment?
Focus Spells:
Litany Against Sloth, Litany Against Wrath, and Litany of Righteousness all target 1 evil creature. Litany of Righteousness also inflicts weakness to good damage. Do these spells work in a game without alignment?
Ki Strike (Monk) allows bonus damage of force, lawful, negative, or positive. Lawful doesn't work in a setting with no alignment.
Angelic Halo has the good trait, but otherwise works.
Celestial Brand causes the target (1 evil creature) to take additional damage from good creatures. You could change the target to any creature and allow extra damage from allies.
Embrace the Pit and Hellfire Plume both have the evil trait. Additionally there are additional changes with respect to evil and good damage.
Rituals:
Atonement should be changed to the tenets of the deity (instead of being based on alignment).
Call Spirit has a critical failure condition of evil spirits appearing and attacking. This still probably works (though the effect is not elaborated on so this requires GM judgement).
Consecrate does alignment damage.
Create Undead has the evil trait.
Planar Binding discusses alignments with respect to various outsiders. Depending on your setting, this spell might not even make sense.
Resurrect has a critical failure condition of an evil spirit possessing the body. This still probably works (though the effect is not elaborated on so this requires GM judgement).
Only a small number of items have alignment references. Do Holy Water and Unholy Water exist in your game? Both do aligned damage. Holy Water only damages fiends, undead and creatures weak to good damage; however, you may want to keep Holy Water for its ability to harm undead.
Aligned weapon properties (anarchic, axiomatic, holy, and unholy) shouldn’t work in a game without alignments.
Items:
Celestial Armor and Demon Armor both have alignment references. These items probably shouldn’t exist in a game without alignment; alternatively, they can be modified.
Aligned Oil does work in a game with no alignments.
Holy Prayer Beads include Divine Wrath as one of its spells. One option is to replace that spell with another spell; Holy Cascade could work well since it adds additional damage to undead (and fiends).
Rod of Wonder has the Chaotic trait; otherwise, it works.
Wondrous Figure (obsidian steed) becomes a nightmare and has some alignment effects. This item might not be applicable to your setting.
Holy Avenger has the Lawful and Good traits and some other alignment effects. This item might not be applicable to your setting.
Robe of the Archmagi has 3 alignment types (good, neutral, and evil). Eliminating the alignment restrictions seems easy and obvious.
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Meadow lark wrote:
Based on everything that has happened previously (PF1) an extra dimensional space should have nullified the magic of the scale.
Let's say that your right. But do you really want to be right? Because here's how I see it playing out.
The players and GM spend some amount of time getting to the game. Perhaps you live five minutes from the game store and its trivial. Perhaps you have a one-hour drive (as I did yesterday).
Then you spend 15-30 minutes setting up the situation for the scenario. You place the scale in the bag of holding and head off.
GM: OK. You travel from Otari to the Grand Lodge in Absalom without incident. Here's your chronicle sheet. Thanks for playing. See you next week.
Other players: Is that it? Now what am I supposed to do? What a waste of time getting here just to get a chronicle sheet.
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The task level is minimum 0 (lowest possible task level in Table 4-2). Thus, you are rolling against task level 0 (CR 0) using Table 10-5 and requiring a 14 or higher to succeed. On a critical success, you gain currency for "task level +1" which would be task level 1. Hence, the daily amount earned should increase from 5 cp per day (for both Trained and Expert at task level 0) to 2 sp per day (for both Trained and Expert at task level 1).
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I had a player who needed to leave before we finished the scenario (1-00). I was unable to locate any instructions on how to fill out a chronicle sheet for a partially completed session.
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Clarification: There are no Optional Encounters in Escaping the Grave.
What about the optional ambush encounter?:
The ambush is the intended Boss fight for this scenario. The boss arrives with a number of allies depending on how long the player's exploration took (hence the description that exploration time matters). The boss encounter provides 2 Treasure Bundles (or 20% of the scenario's treasure).
What about the giant undead?:
That is a cinematic device to force the PCs to leave the area of Goldenflame quickly after finishing the Boss fight. There is no risk unless PCs insist on sticking around to fight something that should be described as unbeatable for low-level PCs.
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It works if you enter the event ID in the search bar:
Event ID Tier
15735 Level 5-6 Soldier
15736 Level 7-8 Soldier
15737 Level 10-11 Soldier
15738 Level 12-13 Soldier
15739 Level 15-16 Soldier
15744 Level 5-6 Champion
15742 Level 7-8 Champion
15741 Level 10-11 Champion
15743 Level 12-13 Champion
15740 Level 15-16 Champion
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Ticketing is similar to GenCon (both in format and pricing).
I like what they do for generics. They use tokens (similar in size to OPF boon tokens) and each token is worth $2. If you buy too many tokens, you can exchange them for full value at the end of the convention.
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BigNorseWolf wrote:
As long as I have people, how flat/hilly is the area? I may be walking to the hotel and whatnot and "seeing eye donkey" to carry my geek bag doesn't fly well with the bus.
The immediate area around the convention center is flat and easy to navigate. It is similar to the area around the Indiana Convention Center.
I recommend Origins to all of my PFS/SFS friends. There's a large enough OPF presence to participate in a lot of games but small enough that you can get to know people over the duration of the convention.
Additionally, Origins is large enough to have a large exhibition hall with lots of opportunities to try out other games (if you want to).
I strongly recommend getting advance tickets as it takes some time to non-ticketed people to get seated.
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Jack Brown wrote:
Gary Bush wrote:
Gary D Norton wrote:
I don't have any time either before or after PaizoCon. I do have time before and after Origins. I also have time before and after GenCon.
I will be at GenCon and would be available. I do have experience with Starfinder.
But I will be jealous the whole time. :)
I will also be at GenCon. :)
And available at some point.
For GenCon, I am flying in on Tuesday (scheduled to arrive 5:08 PM). I set Wednesday aside for bonus gaming. In the past, I have gone to Scotty's, but sadly that is no longer an option.
I would be delighted to run a Starfinder game or two on Wednesday for Gary & Jack & others.
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Certification of 5-Nova/Glyph GMs is something I take pretty seriously. I’ve worked for decades in jobs that require certification and I would like to share my thoughts on this matter.
Going to three evaluation games requires more planning and coordination than we previously had for one evaluation game. For my 5-Star evaluation, my local Venture-Captain emailed me when we I was getting close and we arranged for an evaluation game at an upcoming convention. That was pretty easy, but the job of finding two more evaluation games will require a lot more effort (especially for GMs in regions without other nearby Venture-Captains).
#1) A Venture-Captain performing the Observation role should not be someone who are friends with or regularly play together with GM under observation. They should be an independent reviewer.
Taking Hilary’s example posted above, I applaud the role that Jack, Keith, and Jon had in mentoring Hilary. Kudos to Hilary for accepting the constructive criticism in an effort to become a better GM. However, I find it inappropriate for Jack, Keith, or Jon to perform that evaluation since they are invested in the outcome. Prospective GMs should not be cherry-picking their observation Venture-Captains.
#2) We should incentivize the Venture-Captains in some way for performing observation games.
We need Venture-Captains to perform this function for GMs that they do not know. But they are forgoing other opportunities to observe the GM. I propose that Venture-Captains be given volunteer credit (as if they were GMing) when they formally observe a game at a convention. This gives the convention organizer a resource that they can use since a Venture-Captain should be able to volunteer for observation games in a manner similar to volunteering to run PFS (either 1E or 2E) and SFS events.
For observation games outside of a convention, perhaps we could have some sort of boon that the Venture-Captain would receive (though I have no idea what boon would be attractive to the Venture-Captains).
#3) The Venture-Captain should have reasonable familiarity with the game system under observation.
While I believe a large portion of evaluating a GM falls under generic GM skills, there is still a portion that is system specific. Otherwise, there is no point in requiring a GM to re-certify for different systems. I propose that an observation Venture-Captain must have a 2-Nova/Glyph level in the game system. That should be enough for a Venture-Captain to have a reasonable working knowledge of the rules set and what it takes to prepare a game in that system without necessarily being an expert.
#4) We should have some form of clearing house to pair up GMs and Venture-Captains.
Some people, as part of their regular life, travel to different areas. This could prove very helpful for helping GMs get their observation games. It is certainly possible that a traveling GM could contact a Venture-Captain in the area that the GM is traveling to, but I don’t know that there’s any way for a Venture-Captain to look to see if there is a prospective GM where they are traveling to.
#5) We should simplify to a simple Pass/Fail system
I am concerned about requiring GMs to Exceed Expectations in one or more areas. I expect a lot of table variation in determining whether the GM’s behavior is meets or exceeds. Additionally, do we really want to penalize prospective 5-Nova/Glyph GMs who are merely competent but not exceptional?
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How do I go about obtaining Venture-Captain observation at a large convention?
I am volunteering at both PaizoCon and Origins this year and would like to obtain my three Venture-Captain observations at those events.
I should reach 150 tables by the end of PaizoCon. I should have 50 unique scenarios at or shortly after Origins. I have run 1-99 six times and 1-00 seven times; I am unclear on whether or not I have met the 10 specials requirement.
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GM Hmm wrote:
Yes, you have not run for me yet, Glenn! We'll have to work something out on that sometime! But here's the weirdness... Although I'm an active Starfinder GM, I'm far behind you in Starfinder experience. It seems odd that the first few people that I may be mentoring through Novas and Glyphs will likely have skills and experience that far exceeds my own in those campaigns. Yes, I'm a quality GM. But if I do an Observation game, you'll be more likely to be mentoring me than the reverse!
Hilary, I think you are fully qualified to judge a 5-Nova game session.
As a 5-Star GM, you already know what it takes to manage everything outside the scope of the rules set (preparation, managing the table, handling disruptive players, reporting, etc.).
As a 2-Nova GM, you have enough experience in the Starfinder system to provide a quality-control check on the GM's Starfinder rules knowledge. I don't expect anyone to have perfect rules knowledge, but an observation game should give provide ample evidence about the GM's general knowledge of the rules.
My concern lies with a V-C who doesn't have some reasonable experience with the game system that the prospective GM is attempting to qualify for; that V-C won't be in a position to judge rules knowledge of the system by the GM.
I think this is an area that will grow more problematic as the number of game systems increases (especially if OPF expands beyond Paizo games).
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James Hargrave wrote:
So page 14 lists the following:
"Damaging, but not destroying, isn't enough to prevent the lock mechanism from engaging again later, as described in the Creature section on page XX"
I can't seem to find that...is it actually the same page or the page after? I'm being blind as usual...
The text should refer to page 16 (subtier 3-4) and/or page 17 (subtier 5-6). The relevant text is under the Security Robot's Environmental Control special ability.
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Dennis Muldoon wrote:
Thanks Gary, that's what I was looking for. I wish they would include these things in the stat blocks. Sounds like it's basically the same as the PC version (Combat Tracking). Does it persist after the round, the way Combat Tracking does, or does it require a move action every turn?
Dennis, I use it in the same way that a PC's Combat Tracking ability works (i.e., persists until changing a target). I don't see any reason that the NPC version would be hampered. From my perspective, this is a simplified version of the PC ability and should function the same unless otherwise stated.
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Dennis Muldoon wrote:
Can someone point me to what the 'Target Tracking' ability is that Bargai has at tier 3-4? Is that the exocortex mechanic Combat Tracking ability (move action to designate target, then treat BAB as mechanic level vs that target)? I'm having trouble finding anything listed as 'Target Tracking'
I believe the intent is to use the Mechanic Special Rules presented in Alien Archive (page 138). Target Tracking has shown up a couple of times in previous Starfinder Society scenarios.
For a mechanic creature with an exocortex, add target tracking at CR 1 (see below), wireless hack at CR 5, twin tracking at CR 10, multitasking at CR 15, and quad tracking at CR 20.
Target Tracking (Ex): As a move action, this NPC can designate and track a single foe, gaining a +2 bonus to attack rolls against that target. Use this same bonus for twin tracking and quad tracking.
