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Gryffe wrote:

That's bad writing 101

Bad writing 101 is... not intentionally writing bad stories because they fit your notions of consistency better? Nevermind that your assertions aren't even necessarily consistent or accurate to begin with.

This IS bad writing because it's a cop out. You establish facts about your universe and then refuse to deal with the consequences. As a result, everything in this universe is meaningless because the writers can pull out anything they need out of their arse. Need to make a very impressive big bad for a special occasion ? Bend the rules of the universe to give him special powers. Want to get the PC out of a tight spot ? Bend the rules of the universe to save them.

Now don't get me wrong. I think that instakill bots are a terrible thing that should never exist if you want your friends to stay your friends and players to keep coming at your table. But you can't deal with a gamebreaking in-universe problem by simply putting a cloche on it and pretending it doesn't exist. Look, here are two potential fixes I invented in five minutes during a lunch :

-The Pact World hard-coded inhibitors in the AI "brains" to prevent a perfect killing bot from ever existed, and the policy is strictly enforced. Nobody tryied to bypass this security for the same reason nobody tryied to launch a nuclear bomb on a neighbouring country in the last 70 years.

-At some point a squad of killer bots existed, but after they wiped out an entire planet in a week, a goddess dedicated to the protection of biological life cursed the very concept of robot itself to never be able to outperform organic life.

There you have it. And I'm not an official author working a full time job on figuring out solutions to these issues.

I'm not saying "do nothing about the killer bots issue". I'm saying to that you should either ditch the AI entirely, avoiding the issue in the first place, or give an explanation as to WHY this won't happen.

(I saw some people talking about high-level caster defeating basic drones. It's true it could happen, but we have to remember that magic and technology aren't incompatible in the Starfinder universe. Which means robots have access to the same kind of magic the PCs have. Ultimately, biological life can't win an arm race against a machine.)

NB : I see a lot of people understimating the speed at which processing power increases. Do keep in mind that it evolves at an exponential rate, which mean that when machines start to approach our level of computing power, they'll reach it soon afterward and then pulverize it in the blink of an eye (compared to the time it'll take them to go there).

Here's a visual representation of the evolution of processing power for those who have troubles imagining it.

1) Because that's not how robots work in the vast majority of science fiction - especially heroic space opera. But then I suppose that assassin droid should have just killed all the Jedi before they could move.

My issue is not about tropes or what other pieces of work are doing, it's about internal inconsistencies. You have smartphones and spaceship computers perfectly able to hand the complex tasks they're assigned, but somehow the robots get stuck with a human level of cognition for no reason at all.

2) Because video pattern recognition in real time is hard. I've done some programming work on it and it's nigh impossible to duplicate the kinds of things the human brain does subconsciously. Starfinder AI may have solved that, but there's no need to assume it can do it instantly. Computers don't process information instantly, they do it really fast. Process enough data with complex enough algorithms and really fast becomes slow.

Even with instant processing, the robot still has to move weapons in the real world. Its aiming and firing will not be instantaneous or even light speed.

That would be a good point, if it wasn't for the fact that our own world's Weak AI are child toys and we have virtually no strong AI yet. A civilisation that has figured out and perfected Strong AI to the point we're shown would have no problem with that. Optimizing things like pattern recognition and space perception is a prerequisite for that kind of big work.

And even if we take movement into account, you would still be dead before you even understood what struck you. Machines can move at surhuman speed. That's not hard, animals already do it.

3) And in comparison to Pathfinder? A setting which the designers routinely ignore the logical consequences of the magic they put in. Which has routinely been shown should properly either evolve into a Tippyverse or descend into some kind of shadowpocalypse. But doesn't, because it's designed to be fun place to have adventures in, not a rigorous simulation.

I don't really understand your point there.

Are you saying that Starfinder brings "new" possibilities because high-end technology is now so ubiquitous that continuing to carry a setting-sized Idiot Ball would rip a hole in reality ? Well, that's not "new" possibilities then, like you said simply playing in a Tippyverse would bring as much to the table as Starfinder RAW setting.

And I don't like the "everyone is stupid because it's supposed to be fun" excuse. It only makes me question why no one in-universe ever figured how a bunch of level 4-6 spells can completely destroy the entire foundation of the society they live in. That's bad writing 101 and a clear sign that whoever conceived this has to step up their game.

Starfinder offers (almost) no unique storytelling opportunities compared to Pathfinder.

The reason for this is that the writters completely botched the "science" part of science fantasy by establishing many facts about the way the universe works and then completely ignoring anything they built whenever it's convenient for them.

For example, here are some facts established in the Starfinder universe :

-a large spectrum of AI exists, from Weak to Strong AI and even True AI (ie they have a soul).

-robots exists.

-the level of technology availible in Starfinder is vastly superior to ours.

Considering this, here are some interesting facts about robotic in general :

-the "reflexes" of a machine are more or less the speed of electricity, as it's used to carry the signals that allow it to "think". Its computing power makes processing a situation so close to instantaneous that we can ignore that part.

-markmanship is pure mathematics. If you can account for every factor and process them (which a machine can) there is literally no possibility of failing a shot.

Now, let's take a look at a typical situation in the Starfinder universe. Your party of adventurers are infiltrating an ennemy facility when they take a wrong turn and come face to face with a security drone programmed to kill on sight !

How the fight goes down following Starfinder established in-universe logic : The brain of your character try to make the association between the picture of an armed drone his eyes are sending, the knowledge he has about what an armed drone is, and what he should do now. This takes approximately 0,25 seconds. In that lapse of time, the drone drew his gun, fired a single bullet in the head of each one of your characters and wrote a complete report of the incident to its hierarchy. You're all dead. Roll a new character.

How the fight goes down following Starfinder ruleset :

DM : Everyone, roll for initiative. *rolling happens* Alright, David, your solarian goes first.

David : I strike it with my blade !

DM : You deal some damage. It's its turn. It aims at you and shoot twice. *rolls the dice* Both shots miss !

Does that sound a little unfair and unfun ? Maybe, but science isn't fair. Ask a trader from the 90's what he thinks about trading machines that probe the entire stock market in real time and performs hundreds of transactions by the second. And secondly, why the f%%~ would you involve robots and AI in your setting if you absolutely don't want to deal with the logical consequences ? That would be like creating a setting where the entire Earth is covered in volcanoes and never explaining why humanity is only mildly inconvenienced by the heat instead of just dead.

When the most power-gamey of my players shows up with Stabby McStabface the shobhad soldier, with a reach weapon in two hands and a rifle in the others, I will wince in pain.

"I threaten all the squares!"

"Not that guy over there"

"Oh, I shoot him"

"I threaten slightly more squares !"

"Le gasp ! What can I possibly do against such a fiend ? He even has the gusto to shoot those not in range ! Impossible !"

Gee, man, you have pretty low standards for what powergaming is. Good thing you weren't my DM back when my fae sorcerer was casting DC 32 charm monsters.

Besides, I don't like the way YOU pigeonhole an entire race into a single role. Nothing mechanically is stopping you from playing an Envoy or Mechanic shobhad-neh. You're just imposing that can't exist because "reasons".

Another major issue is how to heal them (both undead and constructs)

Didn't they say something to the effect of "If you have a soul, positive energy can heal you no matter what ?". Constructs are at least covered by that. I don't know if undead are still wounded by healing in SF.

So what if that corporate paradigm became the norm?

Big IF that ignores public pressure, consumer associations activism and decades of laws actively preventing this and getting constantly updated to keep up with this crap.

Also ignoring paladins of the God of Free Market that would call for a crusade against those pratices, and sweeping under the rug any kind of AA and indie producers that would base their entire marketing strategy around it.

(I can already picture it, hipster gun shops selling vintage analog rifles and providing courses about how to assemble and maintain it.)

Only if the game has been pre-setup to make that a possibility. Without the idea that 'monster' races can be good being a given in the world's general knowledge, why assume out of character knowledge that they CAN have different ones? The players might know they could be good but why would a low level paladin?

Detect evil. A sense motive check.

Besides, assuming that the character will treat every single monster as evil because we, as players, know that there are exceptions is meta-gaming too. A low-level paladin might be naive. Think there's good, and the possibility for redemption, in everyone, even demons and devils. We know it can't happen but maybe they believe it. That could be fun to play actually.

But I'm probably biased, I'm playing a L/N cleric kobold of Bahamut after all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think that is overly simplistic. Especially the description of the grey. In a real grey campaign you DON'T know what the goblins will or will not do. Maybe they will keep their word, maybe they will not. If the goblins ALWAYS keep there word, then it will shift to a white, if they always attack it will shift to black.

Not only that, but there's options other than "kill or not kill".

Take the goblins prisonners, send them back to the village, put them on trial for their actions.

Make them sign a magical pact that'll kill them if they break their oath.

Actually take actions to make sure they don't fall back to the dark side, for example by having them strike a bargain with the villagers (the goblins protect the village from outer threats and the village feed them in exchange).

"Grey" doesn't mean "a#~$%%*s VS goody two shoes". It means people are complex and can change, for better or worse.

I am hopeful that we won't need to make Starfinder easier to learn.

Complexity isn't an issue here. But we're talking about a rulebook that is 528 pages long. Five hundred and twenty eight. Pages. Long.

I think you're probably living in the same world as me, a world with enough free time and interests in the matter at hand that half a dozen hundred pages seems like an A-Okay entry point.

But for anyone who isn't a "geek" it's not. And I don't think that "casual" roleplayers are going to feel welcomed in the Starfinder universe if the current rulebook is good enough as an entry point in Paizo's eyes.

Then again, Paizo probably already thought this inside out and considered it not worth the cost. But saying "meh, this untapped and enormous market really isn't worth it" strikes me as both odd and potentially snooty toward the "unworthy plebs". Especially when a certain competitor of yours managed to squeeze its manual size to half that number and produce a beginner box to attract a wider audience than the basement dwellers it's been associated with for so long.

Not picking sides here, I love RPGs as a whole, and I think it has the potential to reach a way larger part of the population that it currently does. It deserves it. What worries me here is a strategy that I can only attribute to a disconnection between what seems acceptable to game designers that makes a living out of breathing life into fantasy and what's acceptable for the average Joe that have multiple hobbies and only so much time to dedicate to something as ressource intensive as RPGs.

@rook 1138 : Alright, let's stop it right there. The only reason you sell at 10% and can't buy at a discount is because "video game logics".

When playing Starfinder you have to get out of the mentality that a RPG is trying to emulate coherence. If you want a universe with a tightly weaved internal logic, you play G.U.R.P.S.. Not Starfinder.

What Starfinder IS to RPG is what pulp is to realism : uninhibited fun. I'm not a dev', but I think that when they polished every aspect of the game, the main question they asked themselves was : does it improves and upholds the game overall balance and enjoyement ?

So let's stop making bad excuses to try and justify and instead embrace Starfinder's core philosphy. Is that too "game-ish" for some people ? Yes. Does it make Starfinder inherently wrong ? No ! Can you houserule it if you don't like it ? Of course ! Or play another RPG, I guess ?

Trying to half-ass a compromise and twist Starfinder in something it isn't will only result in a grostesque Frankenstein's monster that satisfy neither sides of the fun vs realism scale. The kind of "solution" you're proposing just feel like a slap in the face to everyone at the table it's introduced in.

Duh, a podcast. Nothing against you guys, great work and keep it up, but podcasts are lame. I could read in 30 minutes max what it takes me 2 hours to listen to.

Too bad, I liked your written review and wanted something more in-depth, but I guess I'll pass this time.

Given that the door is now open to other Magical Beast creatures being PC races, my main question becomes how this is going to work out when eventually we wind up with Magical Beast Alien PC races that amount to large intelligent cats, wolves, and horses/unicorn/Pegasus (or rather, alien creatures that look like them) and we have to ask ourselves how they're holding the weapons and items.

Handwave it away. It worked for My Little Pony, no reason it won't in Starfinder either !

. . . because if a race *didn't* balanced out to being equal the others, it wouldn't be suited as a PC race? Paizo simply isn't going to let you pick a species that makes you intrinsically better than everyone else. Especially at this early stage of the game, where time spent supporting stuff like "level 6 start campaigns" is not time spent on basics that are far, far more important.

I don't know. In my experience, people tend to play what's fun and yeld interesting RPs. Otherwise, all the races would be pigeonholed to one or two classes that plays into their strengh, which is clearly not what's happening. Then again, I'm the kind of guy that play a dual wielding kobold ranger in 3.5, so maybe that's just me ? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

24 new playables races and still no kobold tho, the only race worth playing (at least in my heart). How sad is that ?

Btw, I'm not a big fan of all the playable races being balanced. It's a vast universe out there. How come every single race just so happens to possess the perfect balance of strength and weakness as to not overshadow our borin', ol' vanilla humans ?

(And does that mean playing a kobold won't suck this time ? It's not nearly as fun if it doesn't handicap you. You have to offset their godly charisma somehow.)

Stash on rations and outstarve the goblins. It's a battle of will and they're goblins.

This debate is moot. I mean, I see the argument here, but serious talk, when was the last time you saw a group of ennemies try to flee or surrender ?

In real life, animals as well as humans 1) carefully pick their battle, only fighting when they know they'll win or that there's no other options and 2) will try to flee / play dead / surrender after some injuries rather than die in the gutter.

Most people that defend "realism" here are really just branding a different flavor of gaming mentality without actually being realistic in the slightest (or at least not enough). They just think it is.

At the end of the day, the "AI" that comes with the statblock is just a tool, and if you understand why and for what purpose it was created it's okay to break it in different, more interesting (to you) ways so long as everyone at the table is aware of and ok with it.

Perhaps the language is really the thing that needs to change.

"Legally Protected People/Persons" wouldn't imply that other beings aren't people (which the phrase Legal Persons does), but would imply they aren't protected.

No, it doesn't need to, you're just overthinking it. Keep in mind that the legal jargon isn't supposed to be known and used by the common folk - it's a tool designed for a certain function.

Namely, to designate an entity that doesn't necessarily exists as a physical being in the real world. Dead people, an entire group sharing a common trait, a business company or even a cause can all constitute a legal person.

It's a catch-all term not a political statement.

The lack of aging effects has allowed me to make some very interesting characters. For example:

Madame Karina, corporate spy and criminal mastermind - N female venerable human operative 15 (outlaw theme, spy operative specialization)

Man, whenever you post stuff like this, I always love it.

Darkling's point was that it lets you create a blast shield out of nothing. A sane GM wouldn't let you use the feat if nothing appropriate is there (although a sane GM would probably not require you to take this feat in the first place). If the intent WAS to let you transmute a paperclip and a granola bar into a shielded bunker with nothing but the power of your imagination, however, then this game is even worse than I thought.

I always imagine it like that...

While I will agree with that for the most part, I did like the idea of this being the weapon that I used with me through my quest/adventure

its sentimental value afterall

Funny, that reminds me of the Ancestral Relic feat. Something like that for Starfinder would be cool.

31. Your new cybernetic eyes come with a mature content filter.

The horror !

Come on ENHenry, the shirrens are adorable. LOOK AT THOSE BIG COMPOUND EYES ! No, seriously, they're cute.

but genetics is genetics.

Don't forget that this is a fantasy universe in which we have records of humans having children with a few dozen different races. I don't see them reproducing with ysokis that unlikely (though the child would probably be an ysoki or a human with slight touches of the other race rather than some gross hybrid).

5) Can we finally just all agree that as fantastic and as long-lived is D&D / d20 / Pathfinder, the first version was crappy as far as system design goes, but it lasted so long only because there was so little competition for so many years?

What do you mean, "so little competition" ? We had the timeless Bunnies & Burrows !

But here's what I'm saying: In essence, that's exactly the same thing as AC. It removes a step, that's it. Now, it'd be closer if PF damage scaled up based up on how much you exceeded an opponent's AC by, but in the end, every game system has an AC, unless you automatically hit.

Well, no, not really. Because in Anima, getting successfully hit (attack roll > defense roll), even if your armor deflects the blow (% of damages reduced to 0), deprives you of the right to perform any kind of active action until the end of the turn. This drastically changes the flow of battle.

I'm small and not that strong but intelligent. I hoard scientific knowledge as a hobby and work hard to live off my writing.

So... I guess I would fit as an Ysoki Scholar Envoy ?

And, in the case of character wealth and starship "wealth" its necessary to keep them separate systems so that players don't try to shove all of one into the other becoming disproportionately powerful in one category.

Never understood that logic. If your PCs NEED that ship to pursue the campaign, why would they f&@% themselves over by selling it ? And if they DON'T need a ship, then why would you give them a ship in the first place ?

Honestly, while it sure does streamline the system a lot, the BP shtick reads like a lazy way of getting the issue out of the picture. Not to mention the unfortunate implications of such a system - PCs can't be anything else than murder hobos because actually trying to build a stellar business or empire is going to throw major wrenches in the whole credits/BP balance.

Tough question to answer in a vacuum.

Why was a boss alone, with no one to take a few shots for him ? Did you outsmart the ennemies or was he just waiting there for you all alone ?

No cover to hide behind ? You need a line of sight to shoot someone. Couldn't he cast something to equalize the playing field while staying out of reach ?

I mean, the way you describe it, I'm imagining both groups standing 5 meters from each other in a blank void with absolutely zero furniture, environmental hazards, sounds, nothing.

In that situation, sure, the caster is going to get completely wrecked, especially if he refuses to just pull a gun out and makes a last stand. But that situation is NOT supposed to happen in the first place, and if it does happen, then something went horribly wrong at some point prior.

I've never understood why fantasy games have needed to include humanoid animals. I've also found the selection of those animals to be included as races very haphazard. If one, why not all?

Ah ! As a wannabe role-play author, I can answer this one ! There's a bunch of reasons and here they are in no particular order :

-Humans really are nothing more than anthropomorphized monkeys. And if that worked for us, well, why not sticking a pair of pants on a rabbit and call it a day ?

-You'll usually want to include some real world folklore into your game. Most of that real world folklore features creatures that are both anthropomorphized and sentient. From there, it's a small leap to make them playable as well. Kitsunes are creeping as a popular choice for that reason.

-Most people are boring and refuse to play anything that isn't human-ish enough (if not outright, then at least subconsciously. My game will include giant caterpillars and horse-sized, quadrupedal, dinosaur-ish dragons as two of the five playable races and I'm fully expecting them both to be the least popular choice for exactly that reason). Anthropomorphized animals fit a nice niche on the "overdone elves to akward starfish aliens" scale.

-"If one, why not all?" I think there's a misunderstanding here. Most of the time, when an anthropomorphized species is included, it's not a bunch of normal animals transformed by the flick of a wand, but an entirely new species that evolved in lieu of, or parallel to their feral counterpart. So, if one is to create 30 different anthropomorphized animals, you have to come up with 30 different origin stories, 30 different typical culture and 30 different racial tendencies. Even if you were to deliver that much content while maintaining a high-enough quality in a sustenable timeframe, your players would be bored to death before they even read half of the stuff presented to them.

-FURRIIIIIIEEEEES ! I mean, you can find Starfinder's lead concept artist on furaffinity. Can't handwave the influence of the lobby on the media.

bookrat wrote:

By "large portion of the modern world" you really mean "one country of the modern world," right?

Yup. By "large portion of the world" I did indeed mean the majority of the world's 3rd largest country by population. That's a pretty significant portion.

Hold on a minute, let me check Wikipedia... 325 millions of americans... 7,5 billion humans on Earth... Yup, about 4,3% of humans on Earth are americains, "pretty significiant portion" of humankind indeed. I'm sure the 95,7% of other humans will agree with you on this subject.

Numbers are a pretty misleading thing when taken in a vacuum, amiright ?

My assumption is that a change of species serum would either be too easily abused, or would have to limited to only appearance without any change of abilities or stats. It sounds like a design nightmare.

Could simply use the reincarnate rules. You keep everything the same, except you recalculate your stats as member of the new race, and swap your racial abilities and powers with those of the new race.

It's not like changing race is impossible right now, it's just that you have to die first. Or pay a fat stack of credits for a Wish. Pretty inconvenient.

And since the means to change your race are so limited, you're kinda screwed in the rare case it does happen to you and you don't like it. Goes both ways.

Still no serum of species change tho. I guess that would make the Reincarnate spell a little too good compared to Raise Dead, but it could offer a ton of worldbuilding possibilities.

Would changing species be seen as mundane as changing your look ? Or would the "native" members see it as an imposture ? Maybe the law would enforce a "cooldown" between each change, as the admnistration would need that time to modify your ID (not to mention that heavy changers would be targeted for identity theft by con artists).

There's a ton of possibilities there, and no RAW rules to explore them. Sad.

Ship weapons are too inaccurate to target individual NPCs (or small groups of NPCs), however they do 10 times the listed damage should they manage to hit.

Because obviously computer-assisted weaponry optimized to hit targets moving at hundred of km per hours with sufficient accuracy to target vital systems can't ever lock correctly on human-ish targets *roll eyes*

Seriously tho, that's just the designers of the game telling the PCs "no, you can't ruin our AP by simply shooting the bad guys from a fighter jet, f@!+ you". On the other hand, that's exactly what prevents the NPCs from dealing with a pesky group of PCs the same way. Fix logic on this topic at your own risks, the idiot ball was invented for a reason.

What king of death are we talking about ? "Stabbed in the eye" death or "burned like a crisp by a nuke" death ? While death is almost as benign as a cold in Starfinder, every treatment availible except for reincarnate require to have the body in (mostly) one piece and a decent shape. Party members that were chewed on, dissolved in acid, burned in a sun or otherwise disintegrated are much harder to get back.

As for uploading someone in a clone or something like that, don't forget that the most important part of a character is their soul. You can't simply grow a body in a vat and call it a day, thus a purely technological solution to death is impossible.

The way I see it, if you want it, you could simply reflavore spells. Instead of searching for a mystic to cast Raise Dead on your dead PC, you go to a station that'll regenerate them for the same price - the cost of the soul beacon is instead justified by the specially calibrated nanomachines or whatever technobabble b$#%@!~@ you want them to gobble.

As for the PCs that upload their soul into a computer and then remote-control a clone/android à la EVE online, simply apply the solution the devs are using with their game : the PC trade the risk of permanently dying with a loss of every cyber/bio-augmentations they have bought with every death and maybe a temporary level reduction that represents the time it takes to "reconnect" fully with the new body. If you're particularly sadistic, you could even make that service costs a monthly fee to pay for the servers, otherwise the virtual soul of the PC will be deleted to make place for the next customer. Cost gets higher with each level to represent the higher space the soul takes. Gotta keep them motivated to hunt for credits in dangerous adventures !

They are also useful for a much smaller level range; for instance, a 13th level character in a Flight Frame is outclassed in just about everything (except having reach) by a 13th level character in Exident Skyfire Armor with a forcepack.

Yeah, but the style points tho.

Historically, shields stopped seeing usage when the progress in armor smithing made them obsolete. There's no point in hoarding a shield and wasting one of your arm for it when your armor is just as good at protecting you. Since we're in a sci-fi setting, it's safe to assume that armors are as protective as they can physically be, rendering any shield useless.

Really, if something is going to blast through your armor and shred you to pieces, adding a small wall that is at most as protective as your armor isn't going to do you no good.

On the other hand, deflective shields that could protect and entire area from damages, reflect projectiles or stop otherwise intangible attacks that would go through a physical, non-magical armor can still see uses. But that's less of a flat bonus to AC and more of a special property added to your defense.

Genetic research into long lived species and lionization treatments for shorter lived species to increase their life spans.

Today's scientist are already deep in reverse engineering the DNA of species that are naturally able to litterally rejuvenate at will. I feel that a sci-fi world like Starfinder should have readily available (at least to an adventurer's budget scale) medical treatments (probably daily pills for a set number of weeks) to get back into a younger shape.

Social tensions between those who support interspecies relationships (romantic) and those who oppose them.

I never felt that was relevant even all the way back to Pathfinder. With reincarnate being the cheapest way to get back to life and a bunch of cursed artifacts trapping the dungeons, interspecies relationships were never uncommon for adventurers. And now that we're in a modern society with all the improvements it brings along, those couples should be common sight.

I'm still amazed by the fact that, in a sci-fantasy world with serums of gender-bending and operating tables stuffed with nanomachines that can raise the dead, we still have no way to readily change the race of our character.

What if a character really is an Ysoki inside, stuck in the human body they were born in ? Or a Lashunta sociologist searching for a deeper understanding of the Shirren society ?

You could even build entire plot hook out of that !"Come, ladies and gentlemen, and try our new, very special take on the escape room theme ! Thanks to the latest innovations in morphological serums, you too can experience the thrill of being a Golarion Kobold trying to protect their lair against a boarding party of adventurers ! Can you work together as a group and escape with your treasure under attack ?"