Not my problem if my connection has to rob the town blind to pay me.
Even better is when you sell the crazy thing town cant afford, then steal it back and sell it again and someone has to buy it. (bonus points if you are high enough level and you gain a resolve point for planning a crime)
None of these would fly in game, but just they way they wrote it made us all start coming up with insane ideas because the cities don't really have an opt out clause.
The best part is you can sell a canteen of water on the elemental plane of water and other such nonsense
Or use your amazon prime delivery service to sell water to desert planets
My character is an Outlaw theme and i chose it solely based on this rule, not because it will ever been useful to me but because i found it so hilarious
Probably not but my group had a multi hour long laughing spree about random nonsense you can murderhobo your way into with that one little sentence.
"here poor peasant village, buy this level 19 plasma cannon"
'but sir we only have 10000 credits to our name and thats for the winter'
"yeah i dont care, give me the 53000 its worth"
'yes sir... i guess the children dont really have to eat this year'
Or because you can sell illegal stuff you can literally steal someones house/ship/weapon/{insert funny thing here} from them then put it on the market and make a profit from it leaving them to deal with the after effects. Or even sell it back to them and they kinda have to buy it.
We've had our envoy cleverly concoct a second persona of Groucho Marx just so we can blame him for all the dastardly deeds and shenanigans we are going to pull with this just for pure hilarity
The easiest way to tell if it falls in line is to look at it and ask if you would ever play a Human or a Verthani instead of this (strictly on a rules basis). If the answer is no then its generally to strong.
But saying that nothing in the template is going to break your game and after say level 2 or 3 no ones even going to notice it anymore (as class level will quickly make racial stuff irrelevant)
I guess if you wanted it more in line then i'd say:
*Drop either the bonus feat or the easily augmented rule (let the player choose to show which parent they most favor)
*Making it just a plain +2 to a single stat of the players choice
*Allow the Player to chose between Skill Focus and Skilled (Again to show the parentage they take after there)
*Bump Hit Points to 5 (to show that while not +2 con level they are generally heartier than average)
That way they still have a super adaptable template but don't just get the best of everything, but the template still allow a great deal of customization to fit the play style they are after
Its not going to break the game by any stretch, but it looks like it will have all of the bonus of both races and no real down side.
Its not going to overly effect the game though as its really just a Verthani with a free bonus feat and what will likely be a +2 Dex instead of +2 Con. But it will be a bit stronger than most races due to the sheer adaptability of it due to these factors.
Overall though if you and your players are happy with it nothing there is going to destroy the game, but I'd get your other players feedback due to this getting all the benefits of human and verthani and no real drawbacks
(the half breed rule will never really come into play unless you make a bunch of stuff that targets racial types like verthani, and then it will seem like you are picking on the player with that oddly specific level of threat)
I'm assuming they are wanting to play a sneaky cyber'ed up character so be prepared to deal with 21+dice roll stealth checks at level 1 if so lol
I played one as an Outlaw Tech in star wars. If I were to remake Invio Dati in Starfinder I would go with an ExoMechanic and start cybernetic enhancement as soon as possible. The other way would be as a drone Mechanic and have the spy drone be reflavored as your personal Servo Skull (still start cybernetic replacements as soon as you can to remove the weakness that comes from flesh and to give praise to the works of the Omnissiah)
From there it comes to role play. All of my computers and engineering checks i would make but i would spend the time to anoint the machine with oils and seals, and would use the proper prayers as befitting a data praetor to activate the holy machines
I would actually stay away from the Technomancer though, while the Machine Cult are basically techno-sorcerers they strictly use technology and magic is still viewed as heresy (from a strictly role playing view anyway)
5%(rounded to the nearest whole number) of the BP if space battles are relatively rare or you plan to reset BP each level anyway. 2% (again rounded) if space battles are common and you don't want to reset BP so they will accumulate it over time.
(If rare or BP resets when level up happens)
So if they are say level 3 and defeat another level 3 ship in such a way they can salvage it then they will have their base 95 BP and a bonus 5. Not a huge amount and once they level to 4 their BP is reset to 115 anyway so at any level with only 1 or 2 space combats they are never overly powerful as the BP will reset at each level up the party has.
(If common or you don't reset when level up)
This way again the same 3rd level party ends up with 95+2 BP for their star ship victory and will get an extra 1-2 BP per ship they defeat (though i'd rule here that anything less than tier 1 gives no BP) It will take 10-20 ships defeated in such a way they are salvageable to "jump" tiers. And I'd argue if they are engaging in 10-20 star ship combats per level then they probably need the extra BP for sheer survival. Even this you can treat like weapons and never let them get a ship more than level +2 (so 20-40 perfect victories leading perfect salvage of a ship
"Greetings Shop keep, i'm here to finally buy a Zenith Laser Rifle"
Sits down 722,000 credits
"I dont like the stock on this and the fit is off, i'd like to try the Paragon GyroJet instead"
Lays down rifle
'Very good sir here is your 72,200 credits back, you are just over 650,000 credits short on purchasing the Paragon Gyrojet rifle'
ANGER fACE
"You know what Shop keep... you're the reason i murder people and take their stuff"
It doesnt make sense, but then again it doesnt have to really. I wish Starfinder didnt work off the Gamestop model, but apparently they are the ones that won the corporate wars and set buying and selling practices during the Gap
Apparently I clicked something wrong or missed a step but I tried to subscribe to the Starfinder Rule Books with Alien Archive, but I guess I combined it with the Starfinder AP modules and it wont be shipping until November.
Is there anyway I can have it separated and shipped now?
That's fine as it will be your game to run. Most ranges in games are generally nonsense though (hence why shotgun style weapons always seem to suffer needlessly)
A normal 12 gauge has a range of about 50-70 yards according to the shell being used (with a slug being 75-120 yards according to if you're using a smooth bore or a rifled bore)
In this game you have ranges of like 120ft for weapons and even for a mildly skilled shooter that's nonsense levels. Rifles are usually sighted in at 100 or 200 yards and shooting to 300 or so is pretty easy for most. So the fact that rifles only have range increments of 40 yards is crazy to begin with
To avoid the trope you'd have to greatly increase all ranges in the game overall because none of them make sense really. Oddly enough the pistol weapons with 60ft ranges are about the only realistic ranges as most people shoot between 15 and 30 yards practicing with sidearms and to go beyond that starts to take s decent amount of training and skill
If you want to I don't see what it would hurt, shotguns have chokes on them that essentially do this now days. They dont really remove spread but cut it way down to give improved range and put more pellets in the "kill zone" when hunting.
I wouldn't really let them have range increments though. While chokes increase shotgun range its no where near double. Might want to add 10+ft as you see appropriate, but I wouldn't give them range increments overall
Originally i just assumed the different drift engines just "folded" space at a better rate. So a 1x engine was normal but the 2x engine folded it twice as well so would cut the time requirement in half.
The problem i had was the fact you still use thrusters to move in the drift space... so could a ship with 5x Drift engine but only 2 Hex thrusters be kept up with by a ship with a x2 Drift engine with 10 Hex thrusters?
Maybe its exponential so a 5x drift engine folds space 25x more efficient than the x1 types (but then the travel times make less sense)
Cant wait until AP4 so we can get some answers to this (and hopefully a super nice beastie book with all sorts of weird creatures to encounter there)
An upcoming Adventure Path article may help with that desire. :)
Yeah I was told the second AP has acid weapons in it, i'm now trying to figure out how to convince the GM to let me have a peek at them. Acid is the most superior energy type after all :)
We're already in the middle of a game now so unfortunately aren't going to be able to use the Archive races yet (barring an unfortunate character death)
But if we were starting now I'd say ok to any and all of them. I've always been one to let my players play anything they want to that best fits their "image" of the PC they want. The more options the better in my mind
It looks fine overall(except melee damage, see below). But power armor seems so tacked on that i'm not sure its worth dealing with. It seems like its more for playing mech battles than personal usage.
Giving Heavy armor an upgrade that can give strength boosts and the ability for weapon mounts would be a much easier way to simulate the effect people are wanting
Add in something like
Armor Upgrade - S.Booster
S. Booster v0.18 - Sets Armor Strength to 18
S. Booster v0.22 - Sets Armor Strength to 22
S. Booster v0.26 - Sets Armor Strength to 26
Other than weighing a ridiculous amount, personal (non mech sized) power armor seems like its easier covered in Heavy Armor Upgrades.
But if you are wanting to just keep adding Mk frames of battle harness then you are going to have to greatly reduce the melee damage. Even the Large Jarlspayer only gets 2d8 at most and the Huge Flight frame is only packing 2d6
This is pretty nice. I'm going to run it by my group and see if they want to include it. We all tend to like star wars and play the Fantasy Flight edge of the empire game but tended to enjoy the d20 based systems more so this would be something that might could bridge the gap and let us have more star warsy stuff running around in starfinder
already designed the VT-49 as our ship if we ever get one :)
I just generated a sheet and then started plugging in formulas to tally things for me. I have a huge spreadsheet of feats and spells from 3.x and pathfinder (havent done it for Starfinder yet) that are just cells with comments inserted that you can copypasta into the sheet.
Its not super fancy but its adaptable and just needs inputs from you to do all the math and stuff for you
Its definitely not something with a fancy graphic interface i went with function over form that works with how my brain works more than anything. I can send you a copy if you want though might give you some ideas if nothing else
Id say its just there to tell you that anything smaller than Medium is unable to use an expansion bay for a second power core.
The capital ships coming with multiples i would say is just a design feature and doesn't cost any of their expansion bays. For being 10000+ feet long they are still woefully small expansion bay wise already no need to cut into that even further
but thats just my feelings from reading it over a few times trying to get a handle on the ship rules
As one that hates Space combat because the idea of a bad round making the whole party suck vacuum for their last few moments of life is horrible. I second the stealth options. I want to be able to jack the engines to ludicrous speed and run under the radar only actually fighting if there is literally no other option in the universe.
Boarding would be a fun mechanic though. Breech Pods and the like could add a whole other depth to crazy stuff that could happen to the party or the party can do to opponents
I'm not a front liner so my con is a 10, with stamina being a pretty big (at least as big as a huge CON score) buffer i'm not investing anything in it except the +2 i'll get at 5th and 10th level. Hug Cover and try not to punch anything in the face (or get punched in the face to much) and CON largely becomes a nonissue.
About the only down side is the weaker Fort save, but i'm willing to live with that
Well I guess an acid spear is pretty nice. I'm still saddened by the lack of acidic weapons. The dart guns are fine I guess but I was hoping to eventually get some that could use batteries like the cryo guns.
I super like acid damage and was sad that only dart guns gave me that option overall. But at least i can have a melee weapon now so thats cool
Because Acid Dart Weapons are the only thing that lets me dissolve my enemies... I wish there were energy based acid weapons though for the ease of recharge
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It's ok like I said I've gotten so much great stuff from Paizo I'm just going to mark this one up as a fluke and donate it to my local game store so maybe they can use it to introduce others to pathfinder.
It was just odd to get the email stating I was receiving a starter box as a subscription order after so many years. Just didn't seem like it belonged there I guess.
I appreciate the response though, that's what separates Paizo from so many other companies. You guys have the best customer service in the industry :)
I have to say this is the first Paizo Product that I have been disappointed in. Its not like the product doesn't look amazing and have a place, but to get it as a subscription item is lackluster to say the least.
I've been playing D&D for over 20 years and have been a Paizo Subscriber from almost the beginning, and the last thing I actually need in my collection is another "starter set"
I've gotten so many great products from Paizo that I can overlook this one as a fluke, but besides donating it to my LGS or something i have absolutely no use for this product, and it just doesn't seem in line with all of the other products that I have gotten from my subscription.
I have to admit i kind of liked the first ending better. Very heroic and tradgic at the same time. That would have made a bard estatic to write that ballad.
So after a year and a half how do you feel about the RotRL AP?
Did you enjoy running/playing in it?
I have to say i really enjoyed this campaign journal, and i thank you for taking the time to write all of this up for us after your games.
At first, we used one mana pool which the spellcaster used to cast all spells (the cost of a spell depended on its level). That made them very powerful. Since "Sins of the Saviors", we tweaked this to keep the same number of spells per level as the classes normally get. It has helped a bit.
The reason we decided to use this system is that we're not big fans of the Vancian system. My friend and I find that there are some big flaws in it. But there is still room for improvement in our system as well. Although in Ruh's case, even by the book she would still be very powerful due to her 3 rods.
Thanks for reading my log, and I hope you'll enjoy its conclusion!
I love the Vancian system of Magic, but i can understand alot of peoples want to stop using it in hopes of something better. And spell pools tend to be the most used. The problem they pose is that while trading a 6th level spell for 1 more casting of mage armor hurt the wizard a bit, trading 6 castings of mage armor for ANY 6th level spell you happen to know GREATLY helps the wizard. To the point it almost makes them not really need anything more than a Cleric to party with and they are unstopable
But yeah with 3 MM Rods and at the levels your PC's are approaching they are going to be powerful. But i think spires will prove quite challenging for them. Its a very "oulined" adventure with alot of things seemingly missing, but done right i think it can be a real test to even the high level PC's
Spoiler:
though i think Ruh's permencied arcane sight is going to give you ALOT of trouble. It will basically be the Heroes Feast vs the haunts situation all over again. All that really good stuff will go to waste due to the wizard just being able to see everything and never being surprised
You dont have to thank me for reading your log. this has been a great read and i have rewritten a huge part of RotRL's due to the ideas that i have gotten from your log.
I cant wait for the end to see how everything fairs with your group.
Yay the adventure continues, cant wait until the end game i want to see how this plays out
moonbeam spoiler
Spoiler:
Vulnerability to fire for the lose… Frankly, I am getting pretty fed up with the meta-magic feats. It’s the first campaign we play up to a high enough level to use them, and I find that they make spellcasters overpowered. In many cases, they completely trivialize encounters (like this one) by allowing the mage to simply nuke the hell out of the enemies in one round. In this case, Ruh did something like 198 fire damage in one round (132 times 1.5 because of the vulnerability to fire). In the next campaign I DM (whenever that will be), I am considering simply banning quicken, maximize and empower meta-magic feats altogether. It seems to me like the “caster versus melee” aspect would already be balanced without it. Feel free to share your thoughts on this issue.
Also if I had to do this again, I would give the tree a surprise round of attacks. I was too nice to go straight to a regular attack round.
reply
Spoiler:
i think your frustration comes more from the "spell pool" you allow your casters to have. The only drawback to being a wizard is the fact you have limited spell selections in a day, and allowing them to know all of the spells and still cast them until they run out of spell points makes a wizard VERY hard core. Its largely the same with the cleric. Even though they know all spells they are limited on what they memorize in a day... again allowing them to cast what ever they want is making the spell casters gods (for lack of a better term)
I dont mind an AP ending at 13-14th level at all, but i would like maybe once a year for Paizo to revisit some old AP's (rise of the rune lords) and then do a "high level end" for it. Taking it the rest of the way to level 20.
Though my ideal dream would be for paizo to maybe even just once a year or every other year to do a super adventure for epic levels (i know never going to happen, but a boy can dream)
Even if Paizo doesnt rework epic levels, just having an AP every few years would be nice. There is so rarely any pregenerated Epic materials to us that the DM really takes a beating when trying to run Epic games. I enjoy running them, but alot of times its more work than pleasure, and getting a pregen to take some of the stress away would be wonderful.
"Permenancy
This spell makes certain other spells permanent.
Depending on the spell, you must be of a minimum caster level and must expend a number of XP.
You can make the following spells permanent in regard to yourself.
(chart Removed)
You cast the desired spell and then follow it with the permanency spell. You cannot cast these spells on other creatures. This application of permanency can be dispelled only by a caster of higher level than you were when you cast the spell. "
I thought the same thing for along time until a DM hit me with a Dispel and it stripped my Dark Vision away (sucked as we were in the Underdark and I was then blind :( )
You dont have to do this to the players, but i have found the higher you go in level the more and more little things like this turn the game into a "win big/lose big" situation where the battles are concerned.
The story will still carry the group (and your doing a great job with that) but the battles start to become total frustration (when they lose horribally) or boring (when they walk through challenges)
just my two copper.
I'm still loveing this story, and cant wait until these guys finally assualt the runlord... this is going to be great :)
Arcane Sight can be annoying. I will generally let my players use it for a while, but then its Dispelled (you can dispell pernamanced effects) ALL spell casters knows what brightly glowing blue eyes means and almost to a fault NONE of them want a arcane sighted wizards just walking around looking at them. Especially if they were to battle because the Arcane sight wizard now knows their highest spell levels, buff spells and defensive spells... not a good combo. Ruh has been able to use it and abuse it now... but now its time to go and pull out a greater dispell.
As to the fight being easy, (i'm stuck in Mexico at work so i cant get my modules to check the Lich's stats) most wizard fights tend to be one sided. Either they TPK the party or they are slaughtered by the party. Its hard to have an edge of your seat battle with something that basically comes down to a coin flip. I've mostly found that changing their spell lists to be more defensive helps alot. Have them buffed ALOT (just about untouchable)but have them with minimalist offensive spells lets the players feel like they're in danger, and really enjoy the thrill of hitting/damaging the wizard. But they arent in any real threat for a TPK (unless they act really stupid and then the wizard can use a few of his higher level offensive spells)
Also remember he's a lich... he'll be back in 1d10 days :)
Its just like the monk... a hodge podge of abilities that seem good on paper but never really transfer into what you expect in play.
It is actually priced a bit high in my opinion. 10K for the thing is more than enough. Its useful at some levels, but more often than not its a +1 AC +1/+2 Damage Item. So while nice isnt anything game breaking.
Between the Belt and the Feat that lets you be treated as a monky 4 levels higher (for unarmed strike damage) I cant tell you how many Monk players I've had that thought they rocked until 11th level and then realized they would never really get any better.
Honestly not being a Conjuration Specialist Wizard/Master Specialist/Alienist will greatly weaken the already weak PrC so I cant imagine any DM not agreeing to the changes as you propose.
I would let you do it simply because i've never seen ANYONE play an alienist, so the concept is way to cool for me to disallow those minor changes.
So take the idea to your DM and let them pick it apart, but I see nothing wrong with it at all
I dont remember seeing an admantine Dragon anywhere except in the Immortals Handbook... as one of its most powerful creatures (CR in the 90's if i remember correctly)
Though its been quite a while since i looked through that book as nothing i've ever ran required CR 80+ creatures.
Awesome! Thanks for taking the time to read my log and letting me know you like it. It makes me very happy to see posts like that. :)
What part of the campaign is your group at now?
no worries, its great games like this that inspire others. Your a truely gifted DM. I never knew that there was only 1 player until you told everyone. So good job.
As to my group, we're on Curse of the Crimson Throne right now. My cousin has offered to DM that AP to give me a break (i've been the groups DM for most of 5 years now and i wanted to play a bit) So i get an entire AP worth of time to actually prepare for this campaign.
I'm really stoked, its putting the fire back into me for DMing that i think was starting to die from the constant work it can become. Plus between your great log and a few ideas i've read around the net i think this is going to be one epic campaign.
Its hard to believe i didnt even know about Pathfinder until about 3 months ago. I just thought it was their rulebook (which i downloaded, scanned through, and then forgot about) Now i have 16 books to buy to get all the AP's and the articles about their world.
I'll put my vote in for the yes the Loremaster can learn the language crowd
First, Druidic is simply a secret language, theres nothing mythical about it. Its just the language they invented to be more in tune with their way of life. Plus according to the rules it has a speech pattern and an alphabet, so there for "can" be copied if someone finds a sample of it. It might be as hard as WPA encryption to crack; but it is possible if one is willing to do it
Second, You can take the feat Polygot and know Druidic. So there is precident for other non druids being able to know the language.
Third... because who cares. The Player could be putting their skill points to better use, but instead they want to use them to speak languages. Great I say. Its building a characters fluff and making them more intresting to the Player.
Plus its adding to the game. Imagine what that character is going to have to do to learn that language in game. Speak to a vile blightlord, or enter sacred groves to fine ancient texts on druidic life, or any number of other things... isnt that the point of the game to find farspanning adventure and to make unique characters that intrest you.
And even after the fact. How are the druids going to take it. Not care and start a new tradition of teaching from the druids, start a holy war to kill the one that stole their sacred writings and speech, or does it rob druids of thier ability to commune with nature because their language fell into the hands of another and now something has to be done to put that right.
Enjoy the fact that your players are giving you game hooks... i wish mine did more often :)
This is a great campaign journal and has given me SO many ideas about how to run RotRL's with my group. I loved how you emersed the party into the town to begin with so they really had to care when a towns person died...instead of it being random person "b" in an adventures mind
Please keep up the work on this log. I'm very curious how it all ends now (i'm beginning to think of these characters like i would ones in a novel i'm really enjoying so i actually care about what happens to them)
