Kishmo's page

I'm so stoked to see the final release, and sink my teeth into the new witchwarper and precog!!

I really don't like calling their "alternate [reality / timeline / spatiality / whatever]" schtick a Quantum Field. I have said it before, but, the word "quantum" is so overused and diluted in sci fi, it's lost all meaning. Especially given that quantum science and quantum computing are still burgeoning fields in real life, the more that those fields develop and mature (and usage of the word "quantum" along with that), the more that using "quantum" as a stand-in for "something weird, spooky, and/or high tech" will feel quaint and outdated.

Chk Chk not rocking a dad 'stache like his Old ManBug fills me with sadness; but adding bright coloured sprinkles to coffee (...and poetry?) makes me happy. So, I guess, perfectly balanced? As Zon-Shelyn intended?

Thanks for a great season, everyone! Honestly after several past seasons of "mysterious organization hounds Starfinders for unknown reasons" (s2 & s4) I went into s6 expecting it to feel repetitive, but - the Order's methods and gear, and the 'hunting down the Founders' bit helped to keep it fresh!

Oh, also, I'd like to take this opportunity to loudly ask the devs to please give me more queer and political adventures, like 6-10.
(Surely there'll be more Pulonis stuff in seasons 7/8, right? We haven't even seen Miiyu's final forme yet :D)

lol get rekt Vesk-6
A stellar attunement interpreted through the lens of auroras, caused by solar plasma and magnetospheres, is a really cool take, on solarians! So good - looking forwards to seeing more Dae!

participate in a trial by combat against a team of crack combat-lawyers

God, I love Starfinder :)

Ha ha, it's so weird to fight NPCs that we created for a different adventure.

Must be a bit surreal, yeah! Luckily they aren't exactly likeable NPCs; I imagine this would be harder if it was, like, a beloved ally NPC like Ziggy or something :)

"I am Jupitus, of Nchak. It is a pleasure to meet you, Baazo!" Jupitus is quite pleased with talking down a fight, and with a little skittermander, no less. (Interstellar Species had a bit in the trox write-up about how trox feel protective of sktitermanders, after seeing how easily they are taken advantage of, so I am imagining Jupitus's protective instincts kicking in!)
"Big boom and burn..? Tell me, Baazo, is Ongie, ah, alright? Only, we've noticed a nasty trap, plus, well, all of these holographic walls. I understand she's hiding from some scary people, but. Is she alright?"

In the empty room, he'd take a look around, but mutters something to himself about getting lost in your own holograms.
Perception: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (16) + 11 = 27

Jupitus again calls out into the new room, "Hello? Anyone? We are not The Mongers, if that means anything to anyone here!"
Pile of UPBs and gems feels too good to be true, so once again suspecting a trap, Jupitus checks around.
Perception: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (9) + 11 = 20

Back during the journey
Jupitus would have agreed with Zynn. "Yes, The Professor is not, what you would call, a 'people person.' But they're working on it. Or, I am, at least. In any case, their scientific knowledge is a boon, even if it comes with a side helping of scorn," he says, with good nature.

The Present
"My last assignments saw my friends and I taking an 'unscheduled portage' through the Darkside of Verces - very chilly. Not much fun. But, it did motivate me to purchase a thermal regulator, which seems like it will come in handy, today! So, who's laughing now, Verces! Ha!" Jupitus says as he buttons up his armour seals and activates said thermal regulator, before leaving the Gorgon. "Don't forget to turn on your environmental seals, Team! I don't suppose anyone is capable of casting Life Bubble? No? Well, stay warm! Does anyone need a hat, or a scarf?"
Note to self: take a rank in profession: knitting to make mittens for teammates!
On the ground, Jupitus would set about assisting Zynn hitting the pavement and asking around.
Aid Another, Diplomacy: 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (7) + 6 = 13
Turns Zynn's result into a 22.

Yup, that's the name! If you ask him, Jupitus says his parents named him that because of visions of some far-away gas giant they divined during his incubation, and named him after that gas giant that reminded them of their home's shepherd, Liavara.

...but if you ask me, as a player, it's because trox are big and have a commanding presence, so I wanted a name that also sounded big and impressive, too (and maybe kinda sorta also after British B-List comedian, Phil Jupitus.)

I assume this is some kind of Space-Zoom situation, so we're all on the same call? Time to put those "zero ranks in Computers" to work :D
A new connection enters the call, but the image is just black. A deep grumbly voice, partway through a sentence, says, "..into the lobby, yeah, but it's just black? And now I can't hear anything! This is worse than the Data Scourge was, how in the hells do yo - Oh!" A large insectile face framed by two large scythe-mandibles comes into view, entirely too close to the camera and out of focus. "Oh I see Radaszam! And someone else! HELLO RADASZAM, THIS IS JUPITUS, I GOT YOUR MESSAGE, CAN YOU HEAR ME?"

Once (digitally) settled, Jupitus would listen to the briefing, but at no point would he be able to put himself on mute. There's probably a bird chirping behind him, and you can hear his breath through his spiracles from the still-too-closely-held comm unit throughout.

Jupitus scoffs at mention of The Orgnization, but is otherwise quiet. "DO WE HAVE ANY LEADS ON WHERE TO FIND THIS 'ONGIE' OR HOW TO START LOOKING? Professor, do you know anything about Vesk-7?" you can hear Jupitus ask someone off-screen, before he shout-talks back into the comm, "RADASZAM, I AM ASKING THE PROFESSOR ABOUT VESK-7, HE IS VERY LEARNÈD ABOUT THESE THINGS."

Diplomacy: 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (12) + 6 = 18
Hireling Physical Science: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (20) + 10 = 30

Ooh, ooh, pick me Teach, I know this one! There's an FAQ about it:
How do abilities like Get ‘em and Stunt and Strike interact with weapons that can affect more than one target (such as weapons with the blast, explode, or line special weapon properties)?
In most cases these abilities will only target one creature, and therefore the attack resolves as though only one creature (the target of your ability) is affected. In the case of the explode weapon property, the attack roll only applies to the attack against the grid intersection, but additional damage can be applied to the creature closest to the targeted intersection (the same creature that would take extra damage if you scored a critical hit). Note that as per the existing FAQ, you must still use the creature with the highest CR to determine the DC of your skill check with trick attack.

So yeah, you apply the relevant ability to only the specific creature it's affecting. In your example, Navasi would roll attack once, but yeah, apply a +2 to the role vs Red - so she'd have the one die roll, but a 21 vs Red and a 19 vs Blue.

Fun fact: this character, Varuthalla, is the reason that that FAQ entry exists in the first place :D I asked the question when it came up while theory-crafting the character build that would become Varuthalla (i.e. using the selective explosions stunt & strike with AoE heavy weapons to avoid hitting allies.) I just got lucky and it happened to be on that magical day in 2020 when Joe Pasini fell into a Spice Trance and answered like, every FAQ ever :D

I'm honestly starting to think that people worried about ancestries with immunities are just doing so much pearl-clutching about maybe one or two ancestries (SROs and Living Holograms, mainly) who have a broad array of sweeping immunities. I'm pretty sure Thurston has specifically said that he knows SROs (and, by extension, holograms, since they have the same Robotic species ability, word for word) are too OP and that they'll be toned down in 2e (although I hope they still have some strengths against those effects; but maybe something more in line with a +2 vs bleed, poison, etc., that plant-like or undead-like or other X-like species have, rather than just blanket immunity.) So that case, we can safely assume, is dealt with.

Beyond the broad suite of immunities SROs have - what else is there? I think most other species with immunities are, comparatively, few and far between, and where they exist, are niche. Like sure Elves are immune to magical sleep, but how often does that come up. Androids (and many others) are immune to inhaled stuff/vacuums, which does come up all the time, but any adventurer can buy that for cheap. Other, more esoteric things (like borai being immune to negative energy damage, or quorlu being immune to flanking) feels okay, in that they're relatively rare species, and those are very niche immunities that aren't going to be game breaking (because of either low occurrence, or low impact, or both.)

Put another way: we know SROs are OP, and that they're being dealt with. But that one "bad apple" isn't enough to throw away the whole bunch, Sapient. Give it one more chance before you give up on ancestral immunities?

what if there were anti immunity spells and ammo? Instead of removing ancestral immunities giving GMs tools to easily and quickly fix encounters that would be rendered useless by an immunity.

I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, it gives GMs more options - and, indeed, I have advocated for this in other threads. If you for whatever reason need poison to affect the SRO in your party, sure, say it's techno-magical poison that melts circuits as easily as flesh. Hell, there's even existing options for poisons and diseases for that already, like instant virus or circuit melter. Heck, the biohacker class's entire biohack class feature specifically says, from the get-go, that biohacks affect constructs, undead, and other non-living things because you're not just mixing in bioreactive crap, but also chemical compounds, nanites, and whatever else that affects non-organic physiology just as easily. There is room for this in the existing design space.

But, on the other hand, it feels really bad, as a player, when you think you've prepared for something (by being the right ancestry to have, or you bought gear that grants, or cast the spell or whatever else to get resistances / immunities) and then the GM says "aha, but, this isn't just Fire Damage, this is Double-Plus Limit Break Fire Damage, that bypasses resistances!" This is an actual example, by the way.*

If we start having different 'levels' of adverse conditions, it starts to feel very gamified. Like, for example, if you can get Resist X 1 from your ancestry, which lets you ignore Level 1 X. But, aha, the bad guys have figured out how to do Level 2 X, and you're still affected! So then you take the feat or buy the gear or whatever to get Resist X 2. And then oh noes the baddies now have upgraded to Level 3 X and you're still affected..! It turns into this weird arms-race treadmill that just...doesn't sound fun.

I just wanted to comment that this was beautifully written. The general structure, the prose, and the vocabulary came together wonderfully.

Right!? This passage was very nicely written, in particular:

A second reply, unrelated to stelliferas specifically: speaking as one of the 1e players giving SF2 ancestries side-eye, I don't think anyone doubts that the Paizo 3 Action System has the chops to accurately and faithfully port over beloved 1e species. Instead, the problems are twofold: one, the size/effort required for a SF2 ancestry compared to a SF1 species, and two, the "back-heaviness" of P3AS ancestries.

I think this is generally well understood, but...just wanted to point it out. The problem isn't so much "no way SF2 can do the stellifera justice" but rather "will we have to wait for a book 7 years into SF2's lifecycle to get the SF2 version of stellifera?" PF2 is now at (per AoN, at least) 36 ancestries, and it's been out since Aug 2019, so, 4½ years now. By comparison, at 4½ years old, SF1 had just hit Alien Archive 4 - not even counting species from APs & scenarios, there were just shy of 90 (!) playable species. So: I don't think anyone is saying that the extra space and options devoted to each ancestry in the P3AS is bad - and, indeed, it fixes an existing complaint, that of species having so little to go on. Rather, SF1 Enjoyers are hesitant about if that trade-off, from higher quantity to higher quality, is worth it. Is it better to have 36 well-developed ancestries, or 90 less-developed ones. We're all waiting to see.
(Yes, granted, PF2's development hit a huge year-long stumbling block, with the Remaster/OGL and all that, but even so - you can't tell me that, were it not for the Remaster, they would have put out another 55ish ancestries by now.)

And that's the problem: how long will it take SF2 to get back to the 130ish species that 1e has, now? If the life span of a Paizo RPG Edition is in the decade-ish span (OGL garbage notwithstanding, laugh/cry) we might not ever get there, in SF2. Then again, we know the Star Friends have said that The Cantina Feel is a priority for them, so - who knows. Like I said - we'll all just have to wait and see.

The second point has already been well-discussed, so I don't want to re-litigate that, but: it will feel bad if a SF2 ancestry needs to take a bunch of feats at up to level 9, to get an ability the SF1 species got at starting. Speaking personally, this one feels like less of a big deal. I can stomach a nerf to some abilities, in between editions. Stomaching a steep decline in how many ancestries there are, and the speed with which they're published, though, is a different matter.

This is excellent - well done! If this (or similar) were published in a SF2e product, I'd be perfectly happy with this! I think your heritages and feats accurately capture "the feel" of stellifera. It is more complex than your standard species/ancestry, but that's fine, imo: it was like that in 1e, as well. Some player options are just more challenging than others to use. And that's fine :)

I want to point out one thing specific here, though: one of the hidden complexities of stelliferas, being "communication." This wasn't even a super-well sketched out facet of the species in 1e, and it's not really called out in the 1e write-up, so it's easy to overlook. But the general gist is: stelliferas can't talk, vocally. It's not mentioned in the mechanical species traits in 1e, but it's hinted at in the flavour text: "stelliferas normally converse through a complex color language, changing skin and nearby water to various hues, supplemented with limited telepathy, so they had to rely on augmentations to communicate with their planet’s invaders." (Hilariously, the augmentations mentioned in the write up have no rules accompanying them, so there's no item support for that fluff.)

The species doens't have proper limited telepahy, like shirren or lashunta, but instead just have a spell-like ability to cast telepathic message, which, as a spell-like ability, takes time: it's a Standard Action. Usually it's more of a hand-waving peice of interesting character development - by convention, most GMs that come across a stellifera in their games will ask, "so, how does your cephalopod communicate?" It's interesting in combat, though: stelliferas can't combat banter, unless they take an Action to cast telepathic message, or someone else in the party takes the trouble to learn Stelliferan :D

So, it might be fun to add in something along those lines: stelliferas lack the physiology to communicate vocally, and so to communicate tend to learn the signed versions of other languages, or rely on allies learning stelliferan, or similar. Usually by mid-level it's easy enough to buy an item or augmentation to grab actual limited telepathy, or pick up some other way of communication.

Then again, this hindrance chaffed for some, so maybe it would be fine to just say stelliferas all grew mouths as part of the upgrade to 2e, in deference to playability.)

Like I said, though - this is really well done!! I was half-contemplating taking a crack of convering a handful of interesting 1e species to the P3AS as a side project to put up on Infinite for the Playtest Release; I was thinking of trying stelliferas, but, seeing this, I think I'd better choose something else! :)

Year 7 Hype!!!

I'm very excited to hear that it's a season of wrapping up loose ends and resolving dangling threads from past years - while also laying groundwork for SFS2e!!! I made a thread the other day about some of these loose threads; feel free to head on over, but watch out, the whole thread contains massive spoilers for, well, all of the first six seasons XD link Hmm, and is that a little symbol of Triune I spy on the crystal rock-gem-node thingy, to Sarmak's side, in the Season 7 banner image?

I quite liked the "mini-arcs split by tier" format that we first saw in Season 3, so it's nice to see that making a return, as well. Plus, this seems like a fair compromise between resolving loose threads (which 'deserve' to feel high tier - like, ain't no way the Vault Lord is a CR 3 enemy :D) while also letting new First Seeker Sarmak and his mission statement get some limelight. (I imagine it would not have felt very good for Sarmak, and Sarmak's player, if their inaugural season was 'lol we're sidelining you to deal with past crap.') I'm hoping that we see a higher ratio of high-tier to mid- or low-tier scenarios this season; it's always nice to blow the dust off of our lvl 14 -701s, and whatnot. It's fun to think about a Tier 13-16 scenario, to let some more PCs apply Devastation Ark chronicles; but realistically, how many lvl 15-16 SF1 PCs can there really be. That said, a few more 11-14s would be pretty cool!

Finally, inb4 "We're going out with a bang!" is a literal end of s7 planetary bang :D

I think this is a solution to a problem that SF1 had already (mostly) solved. One of the chief ways this is handled in SF1 is a set of default assumptions that are laid out regarding what species can (or can't) be assumed to be able to do. There's this bit, which is printed (in one form or another) in all of the Alien Archives books:

This book continues the Starfinder tradition of presenting players with a multitude of alien species to choose from when creating their characters. See page 158 for a list of the playable species in this book. As always, it’s up to the GM to decide whether to allow player-character versions of these aliens in their game. While there is a preponderance of nonhumanoid aliens with strange morphology, all playable alien races are considered to be able to hold and wield two hands’ worth of weapons and other equipment (unless otherwise noted). Similarly, any playable alien can purchase and use the equipment presented in the various Starfinder books regardless of their specific physiology. A character might have to adjust armor originally created for a different species before they can wear that armor effectively; see page 196 of the Core Rulebook for rules on adjusting armor. At the GM’s discretion, these rules can be used as a baseline for adjusting other types of equipment for similar reasons. The GM can also opt to treat nonhumanoid player races as humanoids for the purposes of spells and other abilities.

(Emphasis mine.)

The default assumption of "has two hands" and "unless otherwise stated, every character can use every item regardless of physiology" has caused some consternation, but in general, has proven to handle most cases - which, for a system as varied and wild as Starfinder, is pretty good. Not perfect, though - and yes, this is one area that could see some improvement.

I'm pretty that there isn't a published default assumption posted about "unless otherwise stated, characters need to sleep" or "exchange gases with their atmosphere" or whatever else, but in general the community has adopted that as a generally agreed-upon convention, as a sort of addendum to "every physiology can use every item." (Every species has some sort of speed entry listed in its write-up, though, so land speed is something that's detailed!) There are exceptions posted, such as species that don't need to breathe or don't need to sleep. It would be nice to have those included in the 'default assumptions,' assuming that those are included in SF2 - maybe somewhere in the creature type rules? Feels like that used to be included in Pathfinder creature types.

Medicine: 1d20 + 12 ⇒ (19) + 12 = 31
Kenji inspects the corpse, and then has a private conversation via their neural link to their VI aeon stone. Afterwards, they turn to Momo, and 'path, "Momo, would you please help me check something on the bridge? I wanted to take a look at one more item."
As the khizar leads the human away, Montmorency would flash to everyone's comms, pointedly excluding Momo's, to share that Lulora evidently died of asphyxiation.

(I really need to watch that playtest stream to see if other operative mechanics have been teased).

In the recent SF2e playtest that Jenny GM'd for Cosmic Crit (pt 1, pt 2) (I think this tidbit was in pt 2? The entire playthrough was great, though, def worth a listen) Jenny teased that different flavours of Operatives can do different things to get extra damage. It sounds similar in some ways to the 1e Trick Attack, only absent a Skill Check - you just take the action, and get bonus damage and/or bonus effects on your attack. The Operative in that playtest, ya boi Iseph, is apparently built as a sniper, and so they took the Aim action to do extra damage, but other Operatives may have other actions that aren't Aim - confuse or bluster the foe more like, say, a feint, or use the terrain to your advantage or make some kind of 'terrain attack,' and so on.

As the breaching gun dissolves back into a cloud of tiny planty robots that re-corporate into their form, Kenji turns to regard Flenn, and pulls some of the vines and foliage around their 'head' into upwards-facing curves - the khizar equivalent of a smile.

Oh man - when a niche utility option you picked not only comes up, but the dice actually do the work to back it up, too? Just right.

Not seeing any other takers, Varuthalla tries to follow Sefel's firing solutions to make quick work of the turret, so we can concentrate on these drones. Fire at Will vs the remaining turret; I don't think we've used any ICMs this round, so taking two.
L Particle Beam vs AC: 1d20 + 15 + 2 - 4 + 3 ⇒ (20) + 15 + 2 - 4 + 3 = 36
Coilgun vs AC: 1d20 + 15 + 2 - 4 + 3 ⇒ (8) + 15 + 2 - 4 + 3 = 24
L Particle Beam dmg: 3d6 ⇒ (2, 1, 1) = 4
Coilgun dmg: 4d4 ⇒ (1, 2, 4, 1) = 8
Crit roll, if we manage to break shields: 1d100 ⇒ 86 86 = Glitching power core

We are in a target-rich environment, with three people having not acted still, so if Kosigan, Troivayan, or Gil-Oloth wanted to shoot at Blue Drone (in our Aft, targetable by turret HAML & Aft heavy laser net) or Red Drone (in our Starboard, targetable by turret HAML & Starboard coilgun) then - by all means!

A time limit on air storage in low-level space armor would give an opportunity for dramatic tension that is classic in some space stories. We don't want to handwave it away. Having air in space is like having water and rations while traveling in barren wilderness. Usually it does not matter, but in some circumstances managing the resources is the challenge in the story.

Stuff like this already exists, though, which is, I think, why the SF1-Enjoyers are tearing their hair out with a lot of the discourse. All armour in SF1 gives you environmental protections for a number of days equal to its item level, and there's any number of low-level options (gear, augmentations, spells) that can provide that same, with varying levels of additional (or subtracted) benefits, at different price points.

But, it's very much still possible to have environmental tension at low levels; there's tons of Society scenarios that do just that. "You're in tier 1-4, so you're likely to have, at best, 5 days of environmental protections, and most of you will have less than that. Oh, but your ship crash-landed 8 days away from town. Well, good luck!" Having an android or SRO or whatever in the party helps, but unless the whole party is constructed, there's still tension. As Mathmuse points out, though, one party member being breathless doesn't remove the tension, though. Hell, maybe having a constructed party member actually increases the engagement: once the human's armour is out of batteries, the android gets to choose between keeping their own armour, or giving their armour and its seals to the human and being more vulnerable! Unless you really built your character around the idea of "I can survive any environment" and, I dunno, spend all your credits on extra environmental collars or something (in which case your preparedness should be rewarded by obviating the challenge) then there's still risk and challenge there.

This is another case of Starfinder 1e already having an excellent set of narrative tools and items to tell these stories, which brings us back to the wailing and gnashing of teeth about why we're fixing something that isn't broken, and the default answer of "because that's the way it is in PF2" just doesn't satisfy.

We can already tell those stories - and androids or SRO or whatever else lacking lungs doesn't kill the tension. (Unless you're some kind of specialist party that lacks lungs entirely, in which case - that's awesome, and you should be walking through air-based challenges, and your GM should be throwing you into EMP-rooms instead of poison gas rooms :D)

A lot of y'all are talking about androids, SROs, and other ancestries as if there hasn't already been seven years of Starfinder. In Starfinder, androids, SROs, and whatever else don't need to breathe nor do they suffer the normal environmental effects of being in a vacuum because that's what the currently published rules say. Like, literally, that's what it says.

So, the issue isn't "come up with real-world physics to demonstrate why androids should be susceptible to vacuum-borne badness, for verisimilitude" (also: looool you can't, this is Starfinder*).
The issue is "demonstrate why this established ability from 1e should change." What is the motivation, and does it outweigh the 'damage', if you'll permit, that is done by changing an outwards-lore-affecting ability of a bunch of ancestries? So far, I haven't seen a great answer to that.
And this doesn't even touch on the other can of worms changes like that bring up: will the setting acknowledge that a bunch of species just changed overnight, diegetically? If so, how? Did Oras wake up one morning, choose violence, and say "f@#! all y'all non-organics" and smite them with the gift of lungs? I'm not sure that every little change needs a diegetic explanation, but big enough things do. I dunno where that line is, exactly, but "a bunch of ancestries that used to be fine in vacuums, no longer are" feels close to that line.

(All of this feels slightly academic, since Thursty has already said that this specific "lol androids breathe now" instance isn't necessarily something that they're seriously considering, and that it's maybe just a stalking horse, to gauge reactions. Which, honestly, from where I'm sitting...I don't know if I can take another *checks watch* 19 months of these. It feels like I need to be on here on pg 8 of these comments advocating for "stuff in the spirit of SF1," or else all the audience & devs will see are the PF2-only crowd, whose thoughts and opinions do not seem to align with the current Starfinder enjoyers'.)

(Actually, I'd like to ask: do I need to be out here on Page 8 saying androids shouldn't lose breathless? How much decision making is being based on the internet rage machine 'The Discourse'?)

* It's Starfinder, there's some plausible in-universe explanation to rationalise practically anything XD You say they need to shed heat in a vacuum; I say they use magical perfect superconductors to relay electricity (or even some other strange esoteric thing!) without generating heat. You say corrosive gasses eat internal bits, I say non-reactive polymer super-meta-material. You say the cosmic background radiation would corrupt their hardware and software, I say there is no CMB in Desna's Path because Sarenrae, Desna, and Ibra love us (and we love them <3.) And so on, and so on.

The end of Season 6 is just on the horizon, and we have a pretty clear idea of what plots are, and what plots aren't, going to get some screentime. So, I thought I'd put down some thoughts about what's still up and 'unresolved,' for the (presumptive) final year of 1st Edition Starfinder Society.

Do note that there's other unresolved threads hanging around, but I'm not including things that are more "Setting" mysteries that aren't specific to Society - things like the ongoing Gideron/Marixah cold war, or exploring Drift Lanes (although I do think it would be mean to dangle Conrasu and the Nebula Union in front of us in 6-02 and then not let us play a weird cosmic plant/construct thingy :D)

SPOILERS for basically all Society scenarios, past and present!

FORMAL STORYLINES
I'm calling these "formal," in that they're clearly identified storylines that have been hanging around for multiple seasons, and are still unresolved. It would be surprising if these aren't addressed, one way or another, at some point.

INFORMAL RECURRENCES
The following are less obvious in their need for a resolution. I think of these more as story seeds that may or may not be picked up again. Unlike the Formal Storylines above, I don't think it would be surprising if any of these plotlines are left untouched.

I'm sure there's more that I've missed; feel free to add on! Or, share which ones you'd be excited to see more of!

Starfinder 2-00 Fate of the Scoured God

*laughs in Jinsul*

You simply can't for example heavily limit all two-handed weapons for everyone on their end, just because a few ancestries might cause shenanigans with them. Balancing it on the hands side is really the only reasonable way to approach that problem in its entirety.

I still don't buy that every two-handed item needs to be re-balanced and re-evaluated because of kasatha, or skittermanders, or whatever else. I remain unconvinced that "a human with a 2H greataxe" is fine, but "a kasatha with a 2H greataxe and a shield" is broken. But we're re-treading old ground at this point, so. Shrug.

I'm confused why gonzo and balanced are being presented as mutually exclusive, particularly when it sounds like both sides have already found the middle ground they're happy with, sidebars.

I'd rather have species be more powerful out of the gate than have sidebars. The main reason I'm not big on sidebars is: Organised Play.

As others have said, I'd rather have powerful options balanced against the existence of multiple arms (i.e. one big gun that takes multiple actions to fire, or has the Flourish / Open / Unwieldy trait, to prevent the skittermander from firing it three times) than multiple arms balanced against the existence of powerful options (i.e. "you have four arms, but only two of them are 'active' at a time.")

Oh sorry, I didn't realise you were following up on a previous thought or whatever. All I saw was

Aside from flight, multiple arms, and size: large - which have been addressed already - are there really all that many Starfinder ancestries that have special features?

and I thought

Aside from flight, multiple arms, and size: large - which have been addressed already - are there really all that many Starfinder ancestries that have special features?

No, I'm not talking about math enhancers.

Ohmygosh, yes. There are tons.

Weirdo senses, like blindsight/sense based off of vibration or thought or emotion (not to mention everything going on with khizars! <3)

Enough 'non-biological lifeforms' to fill a database, like amrantah, holograms, SROs, and trinir.

And then, there's the oddballs, that defy explanation and are each their own delicious category of "weird," like astrazoans, stellifera, barathu, novians or thyr!

I could go on (and this doesn't even touch the "awwww" category of species, like brenneri, vulkarisu, scuridays, or bears!) It's a real casserole of bizarro species, and central to SF1's much-vaunted Cantina Feel. But playing around in that design space to come up with new, interesting, and fresh ancestries (that aren't just "human, with a weird forehead [or whatever]") was a big deal in SF1, and what a lot of SF1 Enjoyers fell in love with.

Value/lack of value judgements about the merits of atmospheric threats in gameplay notwithstanding: going from "androids do not breathe" in 1e to "you can take a feat, to hold your breath for an hour, at level 9" in 2e feels bad. People in the "PF2 Only" camp don't seem to mind, since that fits nicely into the existing PF2 ecology; but people who've played Starfinder are used to the former, and find the latter jarring.
(Plus, it's cool as heck to see art of that loser, Raia, wearing a fishbowl helmet, while chad Iseph is YOLOing at the Swarm in space, locks fluttering in the wind low-gs! XD)

Put another way: compared to PF2, this feels fine. Compared to SF1, this feels like a strict nerf to something that wasn't game breaking. Not to be too dramatic, but this feels like more "flattening" of species to all be at the same power level in all areas, which is one of the big worries SF1 people are apprehensive about.

So, I guess this is yet another one of those areas where the devs get to thread that fine needle between keeping the 'feel' of 1e, and acquiescing to what is normal in PF2.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think atmospheric threats (vacuum, thick/thin, gasses, smoke, etc) should be trivial in Starfinder. It's the far future, of course there would be readily available armour seals and/or reliable magic to counter atmospheric issues. Sure, "lol, Life Bubble wins dungeons" was a fun joke/meme for the first bit of Starfinder's existence, but once Paizo adventure creators got used to it, we stopped seeing encounters that were foiled by environmental seals (or, those threats were written cleverly to neutralize seals/Bubble, which is exactly what you'd expect modern threats would do; seal-piercing nanites, targeted dispel first, etc.) And that's fine. Honestly, has anyone ever heard the sentence "god, I miss gaseous threats being a big deal" at a Starfinder table? I know I sure haven't.

In short: easily overcoming atmospheric threats is another one of those "meta-states" things that Starfinder should keep. Just like sniper rifles make long-range encounters easier, and vehicles/starships make overland travel encounters easier, and universal translators make First Contact no-shared-languages encounters easier, and so on.

It's the far future, and this is another easy way Starfinder can differentiate itself. Let androids be breathless; it's fine. If that means there's a discrepancy between PF2's androids and SF2's androids, oh well. That's a (pretty easy) problem for GMs crossing the streams to solve. Or, heck, just say that Ancient heritage androids lack breathless, but other heritages don't.

(Maybe the edition chance is a good opportunity to introduce some downside to armour seals? Maybe the field that keeps out Bad Gasses also hinders mobility, and gives you a -1 Armour Check Penalty [is ACP still a thing in PF2?] or something. That could be interesting - like, imagine you're breaking into an AbadarCorp vault. What would you rather: be slightly more stealthy, or more impervious to gas attacks?)

I will admit, my initial reaction to the community voting for Androids and Vesk was :\ We had the chance to see how bonkers SF2 ancestries could be (Barathu, I choose you!) and we voted for...androids and vesk? Both Core species in 1e, and one of them already existing in PF2? Yeah, okay, really, this is fine, but - think bigger, you pepperonis XD

...but, honestly, the vesk entries are super cool. Love how flavourful and evocative a lot of the ancestry feats are. Plus, as a big fan of vesk saints (shameless plug :D), it's pretty cool to see that concept being introduced as a pillar of Veskarium society, and having mechanical support no less, right out of the gate!

The Android ancestry feats are also very interesting. There's a number that rely on using nanites, and some even seem to "occupy" nanites; cf. Nanite Shroud, which says "while Nanite Shroud is active, you can’t use other feats that require the use of your nanites." But, it's not entirely clear which other feats require the use of your nanites. I'm a bit surprised that there isn't a "Nanite" trait to specifically call out those feats; this is the perfect use case for a "Nanite" trait, no? (Although, saying that out loud, having a "nanite" trait would feel very proscriptive for any presumptive future SF2e nanocyte class. And we certainly wouldn't want that..!)

Vesk Weapon Familiarity mentions doshkos but I dont see any doshkos listed in any of the playtest.

Seconded - was hoping a vesk preview would include some sweet sweet doshko action! I guess they have to save something for the Playtest :D

An operative with computers plays exactly like an operative sneaking up on people who plays just like an operative jumping out of the skylight with athletics.

Disagree. Sure the actual Trick Attack works the same regardless of Skill used (mechanically, anyways) but I'm not even talking about only Trick Attacks in combat encounters. I'm saying that in 1e, it's nice to have a breadth of flavours of Operatives. It's pretty common in my experience to roll up to a Society table and find two+ Operatives that use different skills to Trick - and that (usually) also means they have different Stat distributions, and shine in different ways in skill encounters, too. And that's a good thing.

I don't even buy your argument that RP doesn't matter for Trick Attacks. Sure, very few people come up with a unique description of how their Operative uses their Skill to get a momentary advantage for every single Trick Attack attempt (and, I'd argue, people probably shouldn't.) But, cool attack narration comes up often enough that it's nice that every Trick Attack description isn't a Stealth-based "I approach from the shadows and stab."

Whoooo, 11-14! *high-tier high five!*

Yeah, I agree that that first splash image looks like a Pegasus having a bad day in the Scoured Stars system (as a precursor to a certain side mission in 1-99.)

"Or that could be the Spacepony that preceded the pegasus and they look very similar."

Fun Fact: prior to the Drake and the Pegasus, the backbones of the Starfinder fleet were the combat-capable Manticore, and the more scientifically-equipped Griffon!

Hooray for Sarmak! Here's to a Season 7 (and beyond!) full of Dyson swarms, ring worlds, and Penrose spheres!

Question...from Space!
(Not to clog up your landlubber thread, only I just followed the link from Alex's post, and I didn't see a corresponding thread for Starfinder questions in the Starfinder Society sub-forum...)

Sorry if I've missed this already being brought up, but - the Starfinder Guide no longer seems to have tables showing ACP Boons by faction and required reputation tier; nor can I find the section where the individual boons are described.
Are those bits gone now, or am I just blind? If the former, is the idea that people can just look at the boons for purchase under the Boons tab in My Org Play?

I think the balance of portable games elements is a really interesting area, where we shouldn't jump to conclusions until we've seen more of the game yet.

On the one hand, the StarFriends have said the games will be compatible. In some of the interviews and podcasts, they've spoken about how great it'll be to not have to re-print monsters in both games if they already exist in one. Need a daemon in SF2? No prob, grab the stats from PF2, give it a laser rifle (i.e. ranged attack that does Fire dmg) and you're good to go! This implies the 'math' about monster defenses, HP, offenses, etc are likely to be the same.

But, on the other hand, they've also very specifically and intentionally said that "compatible" is not the same as "balanced," and that different meta-game assumptions can change things such that game elements that are balanced in one game might be OP or imbalanced in the other. Just making up examples, but: while you can bring a PF2 Fighter into SF2, having loads of reliable melee damage in a system that isn't equipped for that might break stuff. Similarly, sure you could bring a Soldier into PF2, but having loads of reliable non-magic AoE damage might break encounters. Just making up examples (the Solarian being a Str-primary attribute class means the game design more than likely is accounting for melee beatsticks, for example) but you get my point.

So, maybe they'll be exactly the same, but I wouldn't be surprised if the monster stats tables diverge a little - especially at higher levels. Maybe PF2 will have higher ACs, but SF2 will have more HP, or something.

Rasheen's Footsteps (and its follow-up from 2-22, for the record) is purchaseable in the boon shop, under the "purchaseable with ACP" header.

To add onto the above: while nothing is 100% confirmed, from what we've heard, it sounds like there will be a Season 7 of Starfinder Society that is still in 1st Edition. So, presumably, we can expect 16 or so scenarios (with freshly-minted First Seeker Sarmak!!!), from May 2024 to April 2025ish.
After that, again just presuming here, but there will then be a little interlude, and then Season 1 of SFS2 will launch at Gen Con, August 2025? Options will have to be limited to what's available in the SF2 Core rulebooks at that time (although I suppose it's not impossible that there might be some PF2 options available, in some form or another?) so more than likely you won't be able to make, like, a new bantrid nanocyte or whatever, if there are no published rules for 2e bantrids, or nanocytes.

If it helps, the final scenario for PFS1, 10-98 Siege of Gallowspire, was an interactive special that had a spot written in for "heroic finales." I.E. If you, as a player, wanted a PFS1 character to have a heroic end to their adventuring career, knowing that they likely couldn't be ported over to PFS2, there was a satisfying narrative moment for that. It wasn't mandatory, and there's no reason PFS1 characters couldn't have wandered off into the sunset elsewhere or "off camera," but it was a neat little send-off, for those who wanted it. Like Sebastian says, no reason to think that that might happen for a presumptive SFS 7-99, though /shrug

One final thought: the Starfinder Society campaign has something that the Pathfinder Society campaign didn't: actual player characters moving from PC to NPC. That being the case, we may not want to 'retire' our SFS1 PCs, if there's a chance they could one day run for First Seeker, or who knows, Faction Leader, Official Guidance-Unplugger Venture-Captain, or what have you. Just something to noodle on :)

Pathras are an option for this. Pathras! Skittermanders seem to be far more common and wlll be needed for adventure writing far sooner than Pathras.

I wouldn't be so sure about that being the case in 2E. The iconic solarian is a pahtra (from the pictures we've seen, anyways) plus the StarFriends more or less said in the Keynote that Pulonis is signing the Absalom Pact and pahtra will be a Core Ancestry, so they're getting a real promotion in terms of mechanical importance.

give us the platyparians you cowards :D
Very exciting! Absolutely locking in that borai, 'cause I'm curious if the 2E iteration of it has a more flexible approach to its "parent species," unlike the 1e version which requires a new Old Talents entry for each other ancestry (which, I think, ancestry feats should allow for?)

What to pick for second, though...hmm. In the grand tradition of Starfinder being deliciously weird, I'm leaning towards shirren, or barathu. Something uniquely "Starfinder," that you can't kinda-sorta fake-arrive at by picking some existing PF2 species and squinting (like you could reasonably 'fake' a pahtra using catfolk, or sub in iruxi for vesk. I know it's a superficial similarity at best, but shirren and barathu don't even have a PF2 species they're phylogenetically comparable to.)

Voting for what we want to see is pretty awesome, too! Thanks, Star Friends, for yet again involving us!

We can make some assumptions about overall tech level; after all, we have only to look at SF1 to have a pretty good idea of how tech-y the baseline setting is likely to be. Yes, things will change and meta states and blah blah blah, but I think we can safely assume that every PC, outside of some very niche builds, is going to have a bunch of technological items on hand. All armours (outside of rare cases, like the leathers uncontacted societies might wear) will likely continue to have environmental seals, all PCs will be assumed to, at minimum, have a comm unit that has the same general capabilities of a modern-day smart phone (and the mystic's healing ringtone spell seem to reinforce this), and so on. There will surely be some analog weapons, but I expect the default assumption will still be "all weapons are tech unless otherwise noted."

Anyways, what I'm saying is, if we even get a SF2 technomancer, I'm sure they'll have enough options to interact with the world, even when fighting dinosaurs or primitive aliens wearing hides or whatever. SF1 did a great job in this regard: Space-Fireball only needs you to have a used battery, even if the explodees are carrying pointy sticks, after all :D As another excellent example, consider jolting surge, which can be cast on a tech thing the baddie is wearing, or you can just hold your own tech thing as the delivery mechanism.

Love Hotbox - my only complaint is that we didn't get art for it! I can just imagine it in my mind's eye: Barsala, Quig, Zemir, and Iseph, all cramped into the Sunrise Maiden's space-head, bleary-eyed and giggling, as Scout hovers in the air, Barsala holding a grenade emitting a fun green haze of smoke underneath Scout's props, which are sucking up and dispersing whatever "team buff" Barsala has cooked up :D

Damn, still going to be at work. I expect you nerds to take copious notes for me.

I had to stop after 1.5 hrs, but, here's my non-edited, point-form, notes:

Solarian - Dustin played a "Balanced" solarian, implying can attune to either attunement. Also implies "unbalanced" (Broken Cycle?) solarians may be an option?

Envoy - can issue Directives - if they "Lead by Example," i.e. do the same thing they Direct, there's another another bonus? I.E. if Directive is to attack (with Get 'Em) and then the Envoy also attack that same target, they get bonus damage?

Solarian - Binaric Assault: hit and swap attunement to same #, but opposite attunement; i.e. if you're Photon 2, you'd change to Graviton 2.
Mote acts as a short-range gun, and got a 2nd attack; hitting with it swapped back to original attunement
(but if only 1 had hit, would have swapped & stayed into opposite attunement) (the "Cycle trait")

Envoy - Quip reaction; demoralize someone hit by a strike

Get 'em! is still a thing. Looks like 1 action, grants -2 to AC?
Has an option (class feat?) to Reaction, re-deploy Get 'Em if the current target dies
Get 'Em also grants "critical specialization" if you crit against target? In this case, applied a Save vs Slowed when Get 'Em target was Crit

Kasatha: natural grace: 1/day no action, reroll a Ref save? Ancestry feat?

Low & Moderate difficulty are the 'average' encounter type expected. Low combat ended just at start of Round 3.

Solarian - Stellar Rush = stride twice, with +10 to speed? 80 ft in one move :D
Solarian - then some kinda gravitic pull, enemies within 10 ft make Fort save vs Class DC or get pulled, son (also Dustin is pro at Class DCs :D)

Soldier: Menacing Laughter = reaction intimidate vs Suppressed people? Neat!

Solarian - has a reactive strike by lvl 5

Machine gun firing in auto-fire: currently, each automatic fire is +1 extra ammo expenditure per target targeting. Follow-up fire on Primary Target takes regular ammo, as usual? Very Playtest, very subject to change

Solarian - shattering impact (class feat?) = makes weapon die +1 size, but also breaks solar weapon? 1 action to re-form.

I'm slowly muddling my way through learning the Paizo Three Action System rules. This feels so obvious that I must be missing something, but: what about the existing mechanisms, of Open or Flourish actions, in PF2?

If the big consideration that we're balancing against here is "it's way too OP if the Rocketmander can wield & fire three rocket launchers at once" then wouldn't it be pretty easy to slap the Open trait onto the Rocket Launcher? Or, migrate SF1's Unwieldy weapon property into an SF2 trait, such that a Strike with an Unwieldy weapon takes two actions, rather than the usual one, and/or cannot be used with Reactions.

I still feel like multi-armed species should have some benefit to having multiple arms out of the gate, and having to choose between which 'hands' are active or not just Feels Bad™. Like others have said above, that level of management and tracking is too much. The more I think on it, the more I believe the best way to make this work is not to apply complicated systems to hand management or hand economy, but to instead apply the balancing to the weapons, actions, and items you do with those hands. In short: having multiple hands should give you more options of what you can do, but you should still be limited in the number of actions you can take. More hands = more options to choose from, but at the end of the day, you've still only got three actions. If any given action / item / whatever is so powerful that doing it three times would be game-breaking, the 'balance' should be applied to that action / item / whatever, rather than to the skittermander with six hands.

(Before people come in with "what about this feat chain" or "this archetype lets you..." or whatever else: remember that SF2 isn't trying to be balanced with regards to every existing option in PF2. If there's some gunslinger feat chain that lets you shoot every pistol you're holding as 1 action or whatever, that's great and all, but that shouldn't impact how a shobhad works.)

I'd personally, give them all names and sources then put, *feel free to change the style/appearance/manufacturer of your weapons, the universe is a big place* as a side bar.

Seriously, Skittertech Scattergun sounds cool, but a scattergun is a category, not an weapon name.

Kinda sounds like what you're asking for it all in First Edition, already. The problems you're describing was maybe true of the first year of Starfinder, when it was a new game with only one or two books published, but all the things you're asking for are here, now, at the end of First Edition's life-cycle.

I know the magma wyrm is just a made-up example, but, it's not hard to find a Cryo weapon in nearly every weapon category (even solarian crystals!), and for those without (like, say, sniper rifles) there's the Frost fusion, available as early as lvl 4. There are really big handcannons. There are weapon manufacturers. There are doodads and gizmos to staple onto your guns. There are wild and crazy science-fantasy guns that exist at the intersection of "super science" and "mad magic" - I wrote a post about it, just the other day. Nearly every weapon has at least a little descriptive blurb anchoring it into the setting, already, too: for example, did you know the plasma conqueror is considered by many vesk to be the ranged 'spiritual' equivalent to the doshko, or that kin-killer sniper rifles are based on 'haunted' relics found in ancient ruins?

You already have the ability to 3D print whatever weapon you need on-demand, via Crafting. Same idea goes for printing Fusions on demand, to change some of the damage type of your weapon on the fly. They're not free, but that's not a fault of the gear selection; that's just the Starfinder game economy. Your other point about wanting to add more flavour via manufacturers or custom names or whatever else - I mean, what's stopping you? Especially if you're the GM, who's going to say "no" :D People adding their own flavouring or re-skinning items is absolutely allowed and encouraged in Paizo TTRPGs. If you want to say your scattergun is named Ol' Whistler because that one time you used it to perform percussive maintenance on your engine to escape the carnivorous plant-asteroids of the Diaspora it dented the barrel and it makes a whistling sound when you shoot it now - go ahead! Starting tomorrow when Enhanced comes out, there'll even be rules to keep one specific weapon, and upgrade it to still be relevant at higher levels, so you can go from level 1 to 20 all using "Granny's Lucky Laser Pistol!"

*Laughs in Bombard soldier*