Loreguard's page

So, looking at the new Remastered Swashbuckler.

It is clear that the Archetype doesn't grant the precise strike class feature, right away, and if they use a feat to buy it later, it isn't the 'same' as the main class version. It is also true that they gain a Style, but don't get any specific benefits from that style other than access to choose that skill to advance, and have its action gain the Bravado trait, to be used to gain Panache.

What seems unclear is, do Multi-class Swashbuckler archetypes gain the Stylish Combatant feature. As a sibling ability to Precise Strike (which we know they don't get) it seems believable they might not get it if not mentioned.

It says the only thing you get from your style is 'access' to choose advancing your style skill, and you gain the Bravado to Tumble Through, and actions listed in your style. But Styles is after the definition for Stylish Combatant, so not part of things you don't get because of Style.

The Dedication makes it clear that you gain the ability to gain Panache. However, as far as I can tell Panache does absolutely nothing without Stylish Combatant, and it also is tied to what Bravado does. So I'm feeling like by the rule indicating that the Multiclass Swashbuckler is supposed to have access to Panache and Bravado, the basics of Panache and Bravdo rules are supposed to be applied. And that Stylish Combatant is a part of that base rules.

I then went through the feats for the MultiClass Swashbuckler Archetype and saw the swashbucklers speed feat. This grants a +5 speed (which first thought made me think opse, maybe they don't get it) until I note that is when you don't have panache. Then it says your bonus becomes +10ft speed bonus when you have panache. That would be very consistent with the concept that without the feat, they could easily be expecting them to have the +5 to their speed normally when they have panache, and this ability boosted the speed, both while having panache, as well as the when they don't. While not absolutely cut and dry, this does make me lean towards the belief that the intent is for multiclass swashbucklers to have Stylish Combatant.

Otherwise, it would seem like paying a feat to gain the ability to gain Panache, which does nothing for you would seem to break expectations. It would mean the dedication granted nothing more than a very restricted skill feat advancement, and open a potential for you to gain abilities later. I think it would be very akin to saying you gain the ability to do the Cast a Spell action but not granting them any slots for spells or even cantrips. That seems inconsistent.

I will confess while I sometimes just want to get a chance to play a certain role, I'll admit, I've had so many concepts it isn't hard for myself to end up offering to be Player D, and fill a role that will help the party the most. Not because I will simply mathematically figure out what will give us the best, but by doing a little spreading out of our resource among different quadrants you diversify and strengthen the party. I also love to, if possible come up with reasons for me to have tie in's to other party members, if they are willing. I don't expect it of others, but enjoy coming up with links with a player or two if I get volunteers. This sometimes opens possibilities to have starting synergies with them as well. I am most likely to volunteer to be a player like D in games that I know less of the people, thus feel like a guest, and am willing to 'work' for the opportunity of being involved to play.

Really all the discussion seems to be mostly talking about player expectations, but as an example, the question about using a potion. If you want to 'give' a little bit on this, but put guard-rails on it. You can create a special necklace that can hold one potion, that you can fit one potion into. And that potion is already near your face, may have an easy or magic way to open and thus allow that one potion to be worn (available without requiring an action to pull out) so that it can be drank with only one action.

This means you aren't just 'changing the rules' to make all potion use easier, but you basically allow one prepped potion to be more easily used, to allow the characters to rely on them a little easier.

Probably as mentioned it would be good to make sure people's expectations are understood. And maybe if they were, maybe people would understand the reasons people choose what they have and have suggested what they have, and perhaps might come to understand it might not be as bad a core reason as someone might be assuming it is.

If I am understanding correctly, taking any damage and decoupling it from any subsequent spell save by the target, and having it based on the 'strike' (i.e. inverse result of the strike CS =CF, S=F, for example). While this sort of makes sense and for damage only spells might simplify things. However things that do damage plus effect this could get really confusing.

I rolled a regular success on the strike, so I do regular failed damage for the spell... but for the spell's extra effects, I have to have them roll a save. And say they get the Crit Fail on the save. Now they took normal weapon damage, and normal spell damage, but critical failure effect. Or they critical on their weapon strike, and do critical spell damage, but the accompanying effects expected to go with the spell's damage, they make their save, so they take the damage, but get no effects from the damage that are supposed to be part of the spell.

Honestly, I'd be more willing to consider the spell's DC to be benefiting against the target of the SpellStrike as if it were boosted by an AID action. (on a successful strike, boost the DC of your SpellStriked spell by 1, or +2, +3, or +4 based on the spellcasting Rank)

It would trade the coupling of the spell to a weapon strike, to a gain a bit of bonus to the DC, which seems like a very viable trade.

Moon Marches Magistrates

A coalition of those in the given churches focusing on keeping the 'eternal peace' in borderlands, by insuring that justice is carried out by insuring there are costs to those who attack the foundations of the civilization and people. Even if there isn't an otherwise strong foundational governance in said region. Basically even the twilights of civilization should have the benefits of the hopes for stability and justice.

I have to mention.... small children have been proven to being very able to be very proficient at Taunting. Be it used against, other children, adults, other small cute animals, or dangerous beasts.

So don't discount taunting, by way of minions. ;)

Well... maybe the Gap is the result of the Gods making the Whispering Tyrant forget he was a super-villain, and he now only knows himself as Zo. And somehow his prior supreme motivation was mystically transformed from ruling the world... to being the best known being in the universe.

Wow, already?! It is the first Starfinder lore book that will be Fully-compatible with the Second Edition ruleset that they have thus far only teased us with!

The ability gives a debuff against the target. It uses the Circumstance penalty as the means to affect the target, and it benefits the whole party.

If some party members get specialized off-guard, against the target, the fact that they personally get a better bonus than the other party member granted does not invalidate the fact that the party member helped the other party members. It might not be ideal that the individual might be one of the bigger damage dealer, and an additional boost might have been welcome, but it doesn't invalidate the action.

The cases where the target is already off-guard, is a case where the first part would immediately be redundant (unless the target moves into a position making it lose off-guard during its turn). That has more validity as a concern, but of note, it might have value in the case of the target moving out of off-guard, as well as the fact that the follow me bonus will still stack on top of it.

Potentially, what if each member of the envoy's team was allowed to take the bonus as a circumstance penalty to the target's AC, or as a circumstance bonus to the attacker's attacks? Or even limit the 'alternative bonus' option to their first attack to help minimize how often the option is triggered. But it could help such an action to still provide a viable contribution, even in situations where someone may already be off-guard.

Again, another thought, if concerns this solution is too powerful, you could limit it to a follow me bonus/option that triggers if the person is already off-guard to the Envoy when they attack them. This would limit this additional option to the situations where the target is likely off-guard to others (because they are off-guard to the Envoy) so it limits its usage to more of the circumstances where the normal benefit would have been lost already. Or to avoid the switching of penalty to bonus, you could instead offer that when the Envoy strikes an Off-Guard target, the follow-me benefit gives +1 damage per die to any attacks that strike the same target while considered off-guard to the attacker. (basically move the to-hit bonus that would have been lost to a better damage bonus)

I'm pretty sure they want to avoid having the directives from constantly having to have a roll made to do something. I think one of the feedbacks given to Starfinder play was that rolling to get a bonus to your own action or someone else's action being a standard thing you have to do each round was less fun than activating an ability and knowing it has some effect, even if small. Then ideally having the ability to do something active with your action to. (hence the Directives, buff but automatic) and (follow me, active action that boosts your baseline buff, but does something too) I think that feedback was talked about in past, especially affecting the old implementations of Envoy and Operative classes.

So I don't think they will want a directive as baseline as Get'em to involve rolling to have an impact.

If you really need a poison or disease that must affect everyone in the party equally or it breaks the plot or an encounter then just make a poison or disease that is biomechanical, nanocyte based, or magical that affects all types.

If the math is so tight that one or more members of a party having immunities affect the CR of an encounter then maybe make some guidelines for adjusting the DC of an encounter based on the number of PCs immune to an effect.

Really, for poisons and such this seems like a really good consideration. And then actually have poisons/toxins and such typically fall on defaulting to only applying to some certain subset.

Someone will voice potentially that 'well if it is flavor, then why have it at all' and there might be some credit to the question. But Flavor is what makes is have Tang and not just be a numbers game, so that is why.

Radiation is a pretty generic thing that would be an example of something that might be seen as poison/toxic but could easily bee seen to impact things ranging from biological, synthetic, mechanical, and potentially even energy or magical. If you need a toxicity item that spans genomes.

It also might be interesting to have PC fighting some sort of toxin affecting all the natives of a world, which they don't have the same susceptibility, unless the PC willingly took a PC species from the world. (something slightly akin to a Slithering plot)

But it might make sense to make poison/toxicity a far more 'discrete' danger in the world. And have relatively inexpensive 'antidotes' to many 'known' toxins that would be relatively cheap.

So the poisons you have to worry about are brand new creatures that haven't been seen before. You have to get a sample and let the medical device fabricate an antidote before you can resist it.

It would definitely change some of the flavor and meta between the two games, but it is very realistic in the sense that technology and knowledge could make that change eventually expected.

First I want to object that immunity to a single type of damage should be a hard 'not going to happen' for an ancestry. As an example, flight is going to be allowed, because the meta has changed from where Ranged attacks were an 'Investment' and now they are a presumption. When Ranged was an investment, then you had flight becoming something akin to an invulnerability to Melee damage.

They did this, not be getting rid of Melee, or getting rid of Flight, but changing the default assumption that the players weren't really presumed to ever actually be effectively limited from having a ranged weapon. They eliminated the expectation of 'Limited to only Melee' as an expectation that had to be worked in.

So although I want to avoid saying any particular way of playing is wrong, but let me say that a module whose monsters who do significant damage only do so because of Poison damage, I don't think the problem would be with the potential of their being a character immune to their poison damage. (So I guess I'm doing what I don't like and saying that that concept is wrong.... but I think I'm saying it is as least as wrong as saying an ancestry can't be immune to something it should be immune to)

That said, I don't think that reality is such that that is actually the PROBLEM we are actually dealing with. We already know that with the Pathfinder 2 core system, what used to be implemented as outright immunities is frequently manifested instead as Resistances in the newer ruleset. But here is the thing... embrace this change... and while both PC and Monsters can be built using different rules, they don't have to be different when it doesn't benefit them in doing so. Don't give the monsters Immunity to damage types very often either and when you do, have it something they acquire at higher tiers/instances of the monsters.

This solves a lot of expectation issues, and makes playing the game much better, letting people focus on the story rather than the disconnects that occur when hit by the unnecessary/arbitrary differences that don't help the story/game.

Poison and Disease are great damage types that provide wonderful potential for flavor. The goblin dog's rash that doesn't affect goblinoids is a perfect example of something wonderfully flavorful. I'm sure this will make some out there shudder, but elves being immune to Ghoul paralysis was quite flavorful for me in the early days. Give some monsters a poison that only affects aquatic/amphibious creatures? Or one that only affects Cybernetic/Robot/Construct creatures by default. (Note in a sidebar, it can be pointed out that diseases and poisons in this fantasy world don't have to exist only among one or two types of creatures, and so you can encounter a Scorpia Magmus (giant alien space scorpion) who unlike the 'default' Scorpia Magmus only affect organic\android creatures, some could affect all creature, or add energy based, or construct creatures to their normal impact.

Another example: Some creatures whom may gain a natural poison, or venom might have an immunity to their own species venom as a trait. (but not an assumption) Again, this enables flavor with the already existing rules.

Now then, a perfect example of something that in my opinion wouldn't work like this.
Making a skeleton character whom was not by default hurt by vitality damage and healed by void healing, and otherwise ignoring/immune to normal void damage. But I feel like these damage/healing types or balanced by different mechanics and are core to the nature of the creature. (it is worth-while asking if they should fall into organic or not) However, I'm fine with undead being able to be Organic, Cybernetic, Elemental/Energy, or even Construct even if, for instance the latter are very rare, normally only occurring in cases where an construct manages to obtain a soul before or through death.

So due to the fundamental nature of undead Ancestries they should begin being immune to void damage, and susceptible to vitality damage, which is the reverse of most living creatures. The balance is built in so should not be a balance problem.

So I think the solution to the Damage/Immunities issues with ancestries, is to not only move away from immunities for ancestries, but to move away from typically having them on monsters either, instead leveraging resistances where appropriate.

Guess what, purely tech robots might be immune to both void and vitality damage. But has the disadvantage of having much more limited options for healing as well. Some constructs however might have some soul and connection to 'life' that might somehow tie it to either Vitality or Void, and make it susceptible to such energies and their opposition, but that would depend on the nature of the construct in question.

Hmm... really this only covers damage immunities, there are other aspects of the Humanoid Assumption I wanted to talk about, but I think this is enough for now, and at least covers a specific topic.

edit: Forgot one though I was going to throw out as an option to throw on the wall to see if it sticks.
Basically a lesser form of Immunity to damage. So poison Immunity that would grant you immunity to poison sources below your level, but for sources at or above your level, would change to a resistance. This way you could be immune to some sources, but more powerful sources might overwhelm your immunity and leave you at least partly vulnerable. Just a thought/option that might be found useful in cases. Sort of like 'dispelling' lower level effects of a particular type you should be able to resist.

Ok...
RAI:
Intention of Stun seems to me to be... reduce how many actions the victim gets to take, and keep them from being able to react to events for a time based on the severity of the Stun.

I think in a basic sense it is easy enough to believe the basic concept is you lose a turn... or rather a certain number of portions of your turn, based on the severity of the turn.

I think RAI it isn't hard to imagine that if STUNNED occurs during someone's turn, it isn't impossible to accept that it would be reasonable for them to pay off... or lose some of their remaining turns from their remaining turn.

I would agree however, paying off your stun during your turn, could present the situation where they don't lose any time period where they can't react, and that would seem unintended.

My suggestion, allow actions you already have to reduce your stunned condition becomes Stunned 0 round, which prevents you from using any reactions until you regain actions again.

So in theory, one could strike on their term, be interrupted and Stunned, lose 1 action, spending 1 existing action to reduce the stunned condition, leaving them with the ability to use 1 more actions. However, they would be unable to use a reaction until their next turn. Stun conditions removed by burning actions during gaining the action regain their ability to use reactions immediately when the stun count is paid down as a gained action cost.

Now stunned does what it is supposed to, eats up actions according to its severity. And it also stops someone from being able to react to things for a time commensurate to the severity of the stun.

Now being stunned is appropriately bad, be it occurring during your turn, or during someone else's turn. Both similarly impactful, neither TGTBT nor TBTBT.

I think a potential intent could be that once stunned, you should lose any current reaction you may have and can not 'react' (either reaction or free action) to events until the start of your next turn and you regain actions, as well as you have spent down the number of actions per the value of stunned.

Idea being that if stunned, during your turn, you should lose an action, but it should also impact your ability to preform reactions until your next turn. But I agree it shouldn't need to eliminate the rest of your current turns actions with no recourse.

Or another option if you made stunned end your turn, any remaining actions should pre decrement the stunned condition. Such that a single action if interrupted gaining the stunned 1 condition, might make them lose the rest of their turn, and 2 actions, but as 2 is greater than 1, at the start of their next turn they would recover from stunned without any expenditure of new actions for that turn.

I think simply having it cost actions from current turn, and impacting reactions/free action triggers is a more reasonable option that maintains effect and flavor.

So currently at least in 1st edition rules there are seven starship roles that people can fill, of which as far as I can tell only two are limited to only allowing one person to fill the role each round.

The two limited are Captain and Pilot.

The other roles, people could each choose whichever one they want to do, including potentially choosing to all chose the same role if they happened to choose to.

Those roles being:
Gunner
Engineer
Science Officer
Magic Officer
Chief Mate

Noting that while I admit that the Chief Mate name sounds like they are a Chief therefore only one, when looking at the the text of its actions they refer to the role occupant a generic, person filling a role as a chief mate, not the role of chief mate. Actions for Pilot and Captain say refer to the person filling the Role of Pilot, or the Captain.

Also when I first saw chief Mate role I was ecstatic because it gave a way for more brutish characters to participate in space combat more seemingly integrated. After a bit I started realizing in a way some of the items were great for the occasional, wow, you were able to help in this circumstance. But if using my often leaning more toward the Harder SciFi when thinking these storylines they get a little harder to imagine them 'always' being your contribution. However, I try to keep in a more Guardians of the Galaxy vibe for the story and it helps me. But I can't wonder if others run into the same flavor catching them a bit off guard. So I both love the Chief Mate role, and also admit that little bit of hesitancy regarding it.

I don't necessarily see them reducing the roles for second edition, unless they simply make the individuals more directly affecting the space combat than before without having to go through such generic roles.

A part of me wonders about having the characters all roll their own initiative, and have the starship kind of act like a minion. The pilot turning in personal actions to Pilot, which turn into Vehicle movement actions. It might for instance require 3 vehicle movement actions to preform most stunts. Only one person is allowed to turn in actions to get vehicle movement actions in a particular round for that vehicle.

Only one person can control/fire weapons from any individual given turret. Weapons in simpler weapon mounts only able to be fired by the same person who fired them that particular round. But multiple gunners could select separate mounted weapons/turrets between themselves, however many gunners there are. (Although I'd be ok with ships having a max number of gunnery stations, I imagine it shouldn't normally be something that would typically limit a party.

Something I do think is important is that we have specific 'technological' sensors of different sensors that can be installed with different tiers for starships, but magic officers have similar abilities, but just get a bonus from an arcane lab. I think that sensors should be able to be be defined as either magical, or technological, or even perhaps hybrid, with different tiers. And it should even be possible to have both technological sensors and magical divination sensors. So maybe the default configuration of PC ships would either be Hybrid sensors (using both magic and technological sensors) allowing the operator to choose to use magic or computers to operate it. Or other ships might simply have both types of separate sensors.

And with that thought, I think it would be neat to include more definition of magic/technology in the ships. Engines being primarily magic powered, or they could be primarily Technology driven, and even others, especially the more powerful ones frequently Hybrid. The type of systems on the ship might generate a circumstance bonus/penalty when being scanned by specific types of sensors between Tech/Magic/Hybrid options for instance. This creates some extra variance and also adds flavor to the spacecrafts.

I also have to admit that I like the idea of that light/agile starship weapons might actually be able to be fired multiple times in one round, each time probably taking an action. Some weapons might only take one action to fire, and do more damage, but may only be able to be fired once per round. Other weapons might take more than one action to fire. And I would be fine with the idea of some weapons requiring an inactive round between shots, be it just cooling, or even something like requiring reloading which might even take a gunners action to instigate and verify. Or some weapons might require an initial -charge- action before actually making the attack. thus requiring actions spent over a course of two rounds to fire much larger weapons. (or for instance if launching long ranged missiles had a launch action that happened the first round, but they missile wouldn't actually activate until the next round, where the gunner who launched the missile would have to preform a targeting action to target the enemy. It would make variety in the weapons much more meaningful. Also it would be nice if they avoided the preponderance of 'Limited Fire 5' weapons, and providing more variety on the number of limited shots and some means to increase the magazine size so to speak.

A part of me wonder if core space combat will begin more like the Narrative Combat, and they would put out a later Tactical book with more detailed ship construction and combat rules to give them more time to get all the pieces right.

How do you make sure that a small ship with six staff members isn't 3x as powerful as a small 2 seat craft, just because they have extra bodies on board. How do we make sure that larger ships actually seem to have more to them. And ideally, at certain points it should be clear that at certain sizes roles are explicitly 'teams' of people represented by a leader, unless some option is added/selected to provide extra automation, or simplifications.

(i.e. a huge ship that is a 'living ship' that has bio-automation that takes care of engineering for the engineer, following their lead. (but potentially requiring some bioengineering feat or skill rank to leverage), or a huge ship that is just a giant,simple barge, so the first engineering 'role' can be handled by a single person despite it being a huge ship. But larger ships need to get larger, and their options that you choose should be default be getting larger as they change size categories. (i.e. a large ship with four cargo bays should have less cargo space than a huge ship with three cargo bays, for instance.)

I have thoughts about adding more science and civilization to Skitter Crash.

...
What is a good small amphibious predator among the Starfinder creatures that can be crawling out of the swampy water to invade the transported forest?

Hey, I have to say I like a lot of your suggestions. I agree with a lot of your thought processes regarding it. I didn't get al the way through the adventure with my own family, and they didn't themselves run into the missing the expectations of the players yours did, but I agree that the scale between science fiction and science fantasy can certainly be something that could/would affect peoples enjoyment of various adventures.

Some potential aquatic/amphibious options:
Jakkerant CR 5
Atlapak, Juvenile CR3
Holofang CR 4 (not really small)
Murzzilat CR 4
Murzzilat, Bantling CR 1

While not specifically aquatic/amphibious they are noted to be found in both marshes and forests
Tashtari CR 3

Just feel like I really need to respond that I really like the idea of three arcs for ships. With the arc's you specify, hitting the behind may give you the benefit that the hexes directly behind fall in both arcs so that when targeted from behind like that, the attacker can choose if they want to damage the starboard or port sides.

It also give the potential for Fore-centric and Aft-centric ships. Blockade runner ships might actually be aft-centric and have stronger shields specifically on the aft, because of the mentioned perspective they try to keep their enemies behind them as much of the time as they are hostile as possible.

A simplification of rules which gives the added benefit of also presenting opportunities for some slight variations that can be meaningful. (yet remaining relatively simple as a whole)

I wouldn't be against some potential variations on turrets either. Have early level turrets only cover 2 arc (maybe even with the secondary taking circumstance penalty) and even more advanced full circle turrets might have a blind (can't target) or weak (circumstance penalty) spot going one width hex path in a particular direction (like direct rear). As an example... option rule could be available to ignore turret traits such as that, but it gives extra flavor once realized and provides extra tactical factors.

I also agree that one weapon mount/turret should be able to be controlled by one gunner. (but generally only one gunner) Multiple weapon mounts might be triggered by a single gunner but would have something like MAP applied if not also Circumstance penalties. Barring specialized equipment, two gunners shouldn't be able to spit up and use different weapons on a single mount/turret separately. I might imagine a dual-gunner station, where one gunner assists the other gunner, but technically the weapons would all be being shot together as per one person not individually picked by the specific gunners.

Sorry, I meant to just respond to the idea of liking the idea of vehicles having three 3 arcs for firing and targeting. Thoughts just quickly spilled over to mounts and turrets options.

I think I have suddenly realized something that I realize has gotten lost over the version edition changes that might be something that actually been helpful.

It used to cost to advance in level. It could be flavored as paying a trainer, paying for materials used in training or a variety of things, but it gave a bit of a cost at level up.

One of the reasons I realized this was lost was looking at how for wizards they get to write free spells into their spellbook at level up. But normally writing spells in the spellbook requires expensive ink with actual cost/expenditures, but you somehow get some free ink simply by 'inspiration' on level up. Granted, some of that cost, easily half of it based on the Learn a Spell activity and its critical success might represent use of expensive materials to test your understanding, so some of it might represent the cost of failure to get it right the first time, and thus 'inspired writing' (100% correct) might cost significantly less ink used to write the spell. But it seems like it should still cost.

However, by there being no actual expected expenditures, for leveling up, we can't as easily (without compromising story here or there) count that ink as materials gotten in the process of leveling up. If leveling up always had an 'expected' expenditure, getting and using the ink could simply be a part of the expenditures for the training.

Such a full expenditure wouldn't have to be hardcoded to paying a tutor... it could be flavored according to the class, and might even involve upgrading their expected equipment.

For a fighter, the player and GM could agree that their 'training' costs go towards buying new, better weapons, or upgrading the quality of the ones that they have. A sorcerer buys magical trinkets to help pull their power out of their bloodline, or might even be allowed to be spent towards magical consumables who exposes their bodies to more magic helping it to further develop.

Monks may spend it on incense to help their focus, or demonstrate their dedication by finding and donating things needed by their order. (or a drunken order monk might spend it on really top tier booze to elevate their experience)

I suppose, with the way the game is defined to work by default one could argue the training costs are simply tied to WBL table and all investments counts as progress. But I think in many stories, actually dedicating some expenses/investments towards 'training/improving' actually could seem like a real benefit.

It does seem like a very big balancing act. For instance, because if you make roles for every crewmember on the ship, and have it have significant impact on the usability of the ship. Then you have the situation when you have instead of a single PC ship, you have them each in their own single ships, then each ship is then in theory handicapped by only have one crew.

Having created and balanced things for each player to keep track of for the ship in a combat, when they are in a fighter, suddenly there is four peoples worth of work to keep track up per ship, potentially.

Yet both types of encounters and somethin in between. Such as multiple bombers/gunships with a pilot/gunner, etc. should all be viable encounters in my view.

One thing to consider is that not all work done in the encounter have to be tied to 'character' decisions/actions. For instance, people like to roll, so rolling checks is a way someone can keep busy in an encounter. But for instance, the player playing a character that isn't very space/combat focused could be put in change of rolling and tracking damage against the ship. Or maybe might be put in charge of rolling any critical damage done to enemy ships, etc.

Sometimes, some of these items would just fall on the GM, but why not let the players help out and become more integrated into the process. so part of a character in a game often is what ability they grant to the party (normally through their character) while other parts is how the player gets to physically do something or another to contribute to the play. These could be rolls, decisions, or even tracking things and providing the appropriate notices when something exceeds some threshold or such. (tracking damage of allied ships, or enemy ships, or timed effects, etc.)

In some cases I could even imagine a player taking control of one of the enemy ships to reduce load off the GM.

The goal should be to help make the players get to interact with the system and feel like they are (roughly) similar importance to getting through the story. But it in my opinion shouldn't have to be tied to the 'Characters' all having equal importance to the situation. The number of ships and how many players may adjust the amount of work involved, and affect the distribution of encounter work.

Optional Rule:
Players' Party Contribution feats/boons

With this optional rule, you get to pick a feat which impacts the resources/abilities of the party in a given mode of play. However this bonus is not necessarily explicitly tied to the player's character.

In cases where a player leaves a game or has a character die, the GM will generally arrange for the given 'bonus' to eventually cease because of some other in story reason, unless a replacement player or character chooses to restore it.

The purpose of this is to allow a player whose character idea is, for instance, less spacecraft oriented, to contribute within a spacecraft/encounter mode, despite their character being less than ideal for such a play mode.

The example being one like mentioned earlier, where someone is a STR based combatant with poor DEX and Technical skills. If the player can choose to grant the party a Spacecraft bonus of some kind that isn't officially tied to their character, they can stick to their character concept without feeling like they are handicapping their party in the given play mode.

I'm for the idea of being granted sets of feats to be spent on specific modes(sets of modes) of play such as spacecraft. I agree that themes can certainly be a means of providing a bonus within such modes, but disagree with Themes taking over ship roles. I say that because I think other Modes may/should be able to come to exist. As an example another easy example I can come up with would be hacking/netrunning for instance.

So while having rules, not unlike 2e Free Archetype rule, which in this case would unlock Starship Mode Archetype, or Netrunning roles and they like as extra tracts to insure the players get new or unique abilities to contribute in those modes. However, I'd also like to see some class/skill abilities and feats to interact some with various modes.

Or we could take a step back and pull in some already proven concepts and leverage some of the Organized Play concepts, and have Mode Boons that player can select. They players start play with some, and can slot them during play. These could include abilities to contribute to their ship in Ship combat, or even things like downtime options to help the party for instance. Adventures, could similar to old Campaign traits, could grant players different Campaign boons that would connect them to a particular adventure, and provide some benefit in some setting in the adventure.

So some sort of Boon structure, and boon slots seem like a pretty flexible way of insuring that players can some some varied ways of contributing in various sub-settings of the game. Players could shift them around as they progress, and get better boons, or one they consider more relevant to the current situation.

Crasimia wrote:

How do you guys feel of the current state of healing in PF2e as of now?

I think healing is a little too strong, and I'm curious about the Stamina variant rule.

The Stamina rules, in my opinion, go a little too far into insisting that all normally HP healing shouldn't be able to restore stamina, theoretically making people in a way more fragile in various circumstances. I personally think having Stamina simply being HP that can be easily restored with time, allowing the stamina being restored via normal healing, the loss of doing that being only the expending otherwise unnecessary limited resources on something that can be restored easily without expending the resources.

I'd tend to make most healing that is repeatable without expenditure could be set to apply generally to stamina, and be allowed most to be applied to HP only once per day. Beyond that restoring HP would take up abilities that eat up your daily resources, such as spell slots, reagents or consumables to repeatedly refresh those HPs. In my opinion excess 'full' healing should be able to heal stamina, or at least heal at like 50% effect potentially.

The stamina rules do help give the definite flavor that taking damage past your stamina is more impactful, against your daily capabilities and eats up more of your limited resources to restore, rather than just watching and waiting for the red line in the corner of your screen to refresh to full length. I had hoped to see the subsystem more fleshed out process with the second edition StarFinder, since StarFinder had Stamina in core. But it seems likely they may be dropping that unfortunately.

If you like harder battles to take the flavor of the encounter into a more gritty state, it certainly has the potential to help with that. I'd suggest people look at it if they like that idea.

It can be viewed as a larger than usual scale errata. So if you already have the original Core book, you can simply use it and pull the remaster conversion information. And that is assuming you choose to play by remastered rules with Alignment gone and such. You can easily choose to simply play with the portions of the remaster that you as a group like. And use the books you have. As you presumably buy more books over time, you may get to a point where it might be worth it to invest in an updated copy of Players or GM Core to keep from needing to reference the larger remaster conversion/errata. But as mentioned, even the new books will have a little bit of Errata to them.

I ordered the new ones, because I could afford to, and want to support the transition. Back in my college days, I might have just stuck a printed off packet of sheets in the back of the core book I had and dealt with it until I graduated and got a job.

Both are perfectly valid prospects in my opinion.

A spellbook with spells written in it would be a multi-component item.
In theory, the fact that pages are taken up could actually reduce the value of the book. (less blank pages to write the buyers spells in) In any case, as long as the spellbook has at least half the pages free, I don't see the worrying too much about discounting the 5sp for it having some pages full.

It would be accurate that any inscribed spells would present the opportunity to 'learn' each spell included similar to if they had a scroll. I also agree however that the book scribed copy would be worth Less than a scroll as the scroll has the potential to be used to cast the spell as a consumable.

In theory, if looking for a reference, you could consider buying the book as providing value similar to buying a scroll, enabling you the opportunity to learn the spell, and then selling the scroll (for the expected half price). So one could potentially consider the value of new non-scroll spell potentially worth about 1/2 the cost of that level scroll.

Another explanation I heard for determining a cost to enable a 'learn a spell' was to pay for 'spellcasting services' for the cost of the spell. Which for 1st rank, is 3gp vs 4gp for scroll, 7gp vs 12gp for 2nd rank scroll, or 18gp vs 30gp for scroll of a 3rd rank spell.
However, it is also completely true that a book with any inscribed spells that they already know, those known spells provide no real significant value to them. So it isn't hard to imagine one only being willing to pay the price for spells they are interested in.

While some Magic Guilds might be willing to 'pay' to keep a spellbook with one of their less known spells out of the hands of others, even though they will obviously already have their own spell already. However, it hasn't been made clear that that is how schools work in Golarion. And if they did, expectations would be made when paying for the book, that you didn't make copies of its content (potentially even for your self) but certainly that would be sold to others. It is reasonable to question how much they would be willing to pay however. That probably is strongly related to how hard it is they are trying to keep the spell from being available.

I'd end up arguing that any attempt to try to sell, teach a spell you know, or selling copies of formulae's and the like would be handled as an Earn Income roll, where your time is spent looking for a buyer for a copy/access of what you are selling.

Re: Ed and RD. The rule creates a rather drastic shift in price/value/accessibility of various items depending on of there is a weaker version of the item available.

Taken to an extreme arbitrary example: if there is a Rare potion of Death that is 9th level and causes someone to die. If there is a Rare Greater version of that item that is 20th level and has that effect on everyone else in a 100 mile radius.

The existence of the first item suddenly makes makes the cost to access the 20th level version brought down to a 9th level's item cost. If costs are intended to be a balancing point, it can actually cause problems.

It is very much the same discrepancy that Prepared casters (the ones who have to learn spells at least) have over Spontaneous users, who get free rank-up on spells, while spontaneous casters have to pay for theirs. The Prepared casters who get all the spells obviously already had the benefit of the free spells.

Note, I'm not positive that with the wording as given, that this free granting of access to the higher level item actually completely invalidates the higher level item. The lower level item formula grants you the ability to craft the higher level item (at appropriate level), but I don't think it conveys the entire benefit of the native formula. To save the day of prep time, I think would still require the higher level formula as currently written, unless I missed something.

And as a GM, for my prior example, I'd have to keep in mind whenever making a lower level, lesser item of an existing item, I might have to consider making the rarity of the item different, as it was made clear that items with different rarites don't pass the benefit between them.

If someone is concerned about the fiscal impact of the rule on the game, rather than ignoring it you might allow someone to research the higher level formula via on-level daily income work, and start with 100% credit for the highest lower level formula in the family they currently know. You could even offer a discount (automatic progression based on some percent of the value of any actual production of the items in question.

Meaning a crafter who has been making +1 runes enough time, would after so many basically come up as a 'side effect', with a usable formula for a +2 rune.

Raving Dork, one issue with your example which makes sense having a 1st level character learn something early, and eventually being able to do more advanced things as they have leveled up. But the issue is, that it also presents the example allowing the higher level individual, going out and buying the primer on gunpower, and without ever touching an ounce of gunpowder, begins assembling the C4 explosive device.

People like to talk about Heightened spells, saying heightened spells are balanced to be worse than naturally higher ranked spells, so potentially there is a balance concession that if you get a heightened rank spell knowledge for free, you are getting something less powerful than a spell of the full native rank, so one can say the spell is balanced in it lack of cost, by its weaker strength. However, it was implied that items are definitely supposed to be tiered according to their actual power, not based on their weakest instance and progressing bit by bit, but less than something 'starting' at that level.

I think this is Ed's concern. It can be nice to get things for free. Often hard to pass up, but it may make certain things start seeming to lack values they used to and drift distribution of items to things that there are lower level items to, since they will become significantly cheaper to access. This creation of best value cutting diversity may be a cost the the flavor of the stories. Thus the concern.

83. Toy Gun Artifact (Malfunctioning) While it is 'technically' a very powerful artifact, it has long been forgotten and is currently and presumably permanently glitched. It is almost always found in large collections of forgotten toys, often collections of broken ones. The weapon will transform itself to look exactly like a small arms weapon that it is held near, and the holder of the artifact focuses on the other weapon. The artifact is supposed to replace the tip of the weapon with an orange colored tip, but the artifact currently fails to do that. Instead it creates a perfect replica, save that the weapon won't ever actually produce any damage or weapon effects. Any attempts to disassemble the object will work as long as one person keeps all the pieces, or keeps them together. Otherwise, if a piece is pulled away from the others, it will disappear and the object will vanish and re-manifest put back together with the bulk of the rest of it.

Any attempts to fire the weapon will result in a 'pew-pew' sound or similar, almost comedic, effect. And will not actually fire or use any ammunition. It will not trigger any effects (magic, feats, etc.) that require actual attacks to trigger. There are rumor's that sometimes extra buttons are found on the weapon that may say 'Galactic Rangers Ho!' or other bold, but perhaps non-sensical statements, but these have not ever been corroborated. These might have been actual toys that were found and disappeared mysteriously.

The artifact is nearly impossible to destroy. If enough damage would be applied to it, enough to destroy an adamantine object, the artifact will disappear, as if destroyed, however it will re-manifest in some collection of toys in some distant place.

If properly identified and a careful discreet search is made to find a buyer, there are believed to be methods a device like this might be considered to have significant value in the right (deceptive) hands. Otherwise, children may love to play with it as it can also duplicate actual toy guns very effectively.

84. Simple toy weapon. This toy weapon looks vaguely similar to a ranged or melee weapon, but does no actual damage when used to strike other than potentially specifically large melee weapons might do 1d3 nonlethal archaic bludgeoning damage, similar to a weak sap. Any critical failure striking with such a weapon, the toy will break. Anyone intentionally wielding such a weapon might be presumed either crazy or performing in some sort of act however.

I need Starfinder tales novels and/or Starfinder comics. NEED!

You are aware of the following correct?

It is worth noting, these are out and in circulation already. I have gotten the first few though a local comic store, and they continue coming.

I think that while I feel that Consumables by their very nature of only having brining their value if their initial value is destroyed, means there is reason to consider that manufacturing of a consumable by someone can be easily justified as something that could be expedited, especially with the concept that the initial raw materials have to be spent, which means, their sale should always be at a best a break even. Making consumables makes sense as a role playing investment.

Fundamentally, the batch rule just saved you the four days of prep time you lost with the old rules. With the remaster pulling that down to one or two days depending on the use of a Formula, it reduces how much making things in batch saves you, but it can certainly still be seen to provide a time saving.

I think the fact that mundane consumables are frequently made in batches of 10 helps to identify that the Intent of the rules is not for the investment of additional time into the crafting reducing the materials cost for that batch by that multiple.

I honestly believe the system went overboard on nerfing crafting due to the prior systems well known investment glitches, and people's tendency to believe that people should be able to sell their crafted items at-will for 100% rather than 50% or less. If people didn't consistently waffle on that rule, I think the developers would have been more willing to provide more incentive to make standard consumables, and rely less on daily free consumable subsystems.

Ravingdork is correct that people should be able to feel like their choice to invest in crafting abilities should feel like they can get something from that choice, and the system is a bit bare in that respect, without specific accommodations from the GM which would honestly be as easy to ask for without the investment as it would be with it. That can be viewed as a weakness of the system as it appears. Even with the 10x multiplier which I express seems to show that it was not the Intended way to read the system, fails to provide the thing that people who seem to argue it breaks.

The claim it allows someone to earn more money is false, as at most, no matter the multiplier, at any amount of time, it grants them the ability to Break Even on their investment (and loose all their invested time) as at most they will be selling the items for 50% of list, which was how much they had to invest to start the crafting.

At most, it would mean that it would allow a crafter making something at a 10x factor, to craft an item, and use that item, at only 50% + (50%/10) or approximately 55% cost. Simply put, I don't think ability allowing a fighter to pay half price for arrows would come close to breaking the bank anywhere since it is materials that don't build up. They range from having 0 value (once original cost is taken into consideration), to the situational value that your effective use of that item gives you at the time it is use.

Keep in mind it isn't' hard for a first level alchemist to be producing some potential of 15gp of consumable items every day to be used, for absolutely free via their 'reagents' ability. This is because consumables only have actual value 'if they are used', and they are priced higher than most would typically be ale to afford, save for specific circumstances. So really, making consumables more affordable to someone who should be able to make them, really isn't breaking the actual system. So it could take a first level alchemist more than a month to make an extra set of alchemical items that they are allowed to make and use for free without any multiplier applied. I think that the fact that baseline, a character class is being expected to use over a month's worth of consumable materials in one day to do their job, it seems quite clear that Consumable items are intended to be a cost/expenditure not something to be viewed as something if produced that is somehow comparable to a permanent item.

So Ironically, I think I've shown myself that even 10x is less impactful than I'd even originally thought to myself. I still suspect that it was not intended the the designers to be used as a multiplier. However, we can see that a player can be expected to burn through more consumables in a single working day than a month of downtime could produced normally, from raw materials.

So yes, batch crafting does save time. But not as much time as simply going to the store and buying it which is always cheaper in both time and money, and only reliant on the GM making it available. In the remaster, common items are now much easier to come across the ability to make oneself, without relying on GM's explicate approval. The time tax on creating/crafting your own item has also been significantly cut, compared to the prior rules. Since the remaster cut the crafting time tax significantly, it also cut the value you get from crafting in batches a little, but it is still there so you still get a benefit from the batch.

If you do decide to tweak consumables crafting, keep in mind that as long as you maintain the rule of selling items at 50%, and the requirement to have 50% invested in materials, it is likely you won't end causing that much of a problem to WBL, or create some economy glitch by allowing the player to make some of their own consumable for themselves, or even other in the party.

Or at least that is how it looks from this side of the table, when I look at the various factors.

Well you could make standard actions take 2 actions, move actions take 1, but then you don't have a swift actions taken into account.

Full actions take 3 actions. Which at least in SF taking full action is supposed to block swift actions so that works.

You could add flourish to standard actions and otherwise treat them as a single action, but then you stop someone from making an attack action more than once in a turn, which is obviously probably not the simplification hoped for with adopting the three action economy.
You might be able to take 'most' standard actions that aren't attacks, and make them become two action activity to prevent anyone from being able to do 2 in a round. Then take attacks and make them 1 action be implement MAP method making extra attacks less effective. You'll be making attacks much cheaper action wise however (as normally using a full attack to get extra attacks takes all your other actions away).

You may have to look at the things that are swift actions, as some of them are likely expecting to be only able to be done once per round, and probably expecting to compete for that slot. Maybe you can just get rid of swift actions and make them free actions that you can only do once per round?

Reactions would probably be able to remain similar to how they are.

The hardest part I think would be converting the Standard actions into either two actions, or one action depending on a variety of factors.

to stop distance inflation, you might reduce movement speeds by a small amount so that one attack and two move actions doesn't cause people to fly across maps faster than anticipated.

Honestly, I think one suggestion that I've heard was to give them a better chance to get benefit from being risky against tougher opponents.

Failing with Audacity: (or grace if you prefer)
When attempting to gain Panache from an opponent whose level is higher than yours. Potentially also have an option to include other opponents, when success is still hard, say a qualified check that would require more than a 15 to succeed on. Have a simple (not critical) failure grant panache, though the shock and audacity of the move.

Now, you can attempt moves that make you look good, or even attempt things that are a gamble, and reasonable risk you making a critical failure, but opens the ability to have a reasonable chance of gaining panache, even against a boss opponent.

Doing something someone "shouldn't" typically do seems perfectly in line with the concept of a swashbuckler, and them getting away with doing it seems perfectly reasonable.

There might even be a 'perk' that typical feats that grant reactions from acrobatics checks, might not trigger against swashbucklers unless they make a critical failure.

Look at it this way... Ysoki can be Core, and Beginner Box for Starfinder. They can print Skittermander for free in the next FreeRPG adventure supplement if they time everything right. Meaning everyone could have access to it for free. But interest in it would draw people into getting people to try the new FreeRPG adventures every year, and hopefully get new players involved, by drawing attention to them there.

Example:
#1: Ohhh... cute dice bag, what is that supposed to be.
#2: That is cool, I think I saw someone with a red one too.
#3: Yeah, that is a Skittermander.
#2: What is that from?
#3: Oh, it is from Starfinder.
#2: I don't remember seeing them there.
#3: Oh, the rules are in the FreeRPG adventure Skitter Onward!
#1: Can Players choose them?
#3: Sure enough, they are a complete playable ancestry, go check it out. I'll send you the link. They even work with the New Beginner Box if you want!

Seems reasonable. Might limit the alternate new language to one's which the elven (or specified) ancestry granted access to in the list of additional languages.

It seems reasonable for the Elven Lore feat to grant a new language that is specifically tied to ancestral aspects, rather than just individual access.

Not that I think removing the limitation would be breaking change, but seems to better fit the theme/intent of the feat.

P262 GMCore
Magic Scroll entry

Frequency once per day, plus overcharge;

Making a guess someone was copying some content over from Wand.

I could have been mistaken, but I would have been presuming that the Drained Bonded Item could only cast the spells from spells cast out of that class' spell slots, not ones gathered by other classes abilities gathered by multiclassing archetypes.
So I wouldn't have been planning on granting them the ability to use prepared caster slots from archetypes, and wouldn't have distinguished between prepared vs. spontaneous archetypes.

Ok... I came up with an example of a pretty reasonable science-fantasy monster.

Nanite-swarm Ooze

Perfectly understandable thinking drift drive was magitech, it is hard to imagine a technological way to fold space in a way to open a portal into another plane without something magical. *grin*

The Etheria's heart being what was stopping magic makes sense then, I missed that. It wouldn't be hard to imagine its effect having been keeping the drift's plane from being able to touch the affected part of the galaxy, so that still seems perfectly plausible explanation. You could even if you wanted to claim that the destruction of Etheria's heart causing the drift to shift and again begin making contact with the formerly affected region of the galaxy, causing things to go wonky. Of course there is a 'cannon' reason for why that happened from the Paizo perspective, but they presented countless other potential reasons, and as with any good fantasy story, there doesn't only have to be 'one' reason. Sometimes two seemingly unrelated things are destined to happen at the same time, unrelated people destined to meet and form a party that would change the universe, etc.

I think it is easy to imagine CR20+ critters that are any sort of base animal (even an alien/unearthly one) that might have received some sort evolutionary aberration due to something. (be it technological, cybernetic, magical, societal influence)

The story of something created to be an ultimate warrior/weapon that suddenly becomes a liability when the era of piece finally arrives on its wake, and people try to hide their past.

Honestly, some GMs may simply love a menu of special abilities that would be categorized at certain levels, so the GM can piece together their own creations like an a la carte. Which would basically be more of a focus on options and guidelines to similar the Gamemastery Guide but with more focus on providing a wider range of elements that could be chosen. But even with such a wider system, many will probably want specific examples showing the use of the subsystem, with finishing touches at the end of the subsystem section.

Basically, you could say there should be a Cantina full of playable ancestries, with a Smorgasbord of creatures lurking outside the cantina waiting for the adventurers to leave the confines of the safe space.

So should the create your own creatures be something in Alien Core, or should it be in GM Core. Maybe to encourage the variability of opponents encountered, it should be something in the Alien Core?

Something else worthwhile noting is that I think it is worth noting that the game should make it clear that most planets were/are not like Golarion. It was a kitchen sink, or Smorgasbord of settings, creatures, and cultures. Most other worlds in the universe would almost always be scoped to a much slimmer variation of ancestries that were native to any given world. Likely not just one ancestry, but frequently a small subset. Allowing each world to have its own distinct history of potential conflicts or partnerships between specific groups. After advent of easy drift travel, there is now the ability for any sorts of ancestries to have migrated, but frequently, non-local ancestries would still generally be rare, save certain specific migrations, such as the Kasatha one as an example. Otherwise if other worlds were as varied as Golarion, there should be an almost unimaginable number of types of creatures where people should almost be unable to encounter anything recognizable.

Something that comes to mind is you link the part of the galaxy in The Ravaged Zone as being low magic, and that why Drift drives don't work. However, Drift drives are supposed to be completely technological and not Magic driven, so that stood out quickly as breaking my expectations of a StarFinder universe.

My suggestion being to instead say these regions of space have had their relationships to the other planes somehow torn from their normal states, which might explain the impact to the accessibility of magic, as well as potentially be a reason that could have been preventing the ability to utilize drift drives, without labeling them as magic.

Depending on your desired explanations and timing, it could be that the drift crisis changed the drift enough that the Drift's plane has now moved closer to the formerly seldom accessible portion and now may sometimes function. (either scattered functioning drift lanes that could be found, or more random accessibility opening up over time)

Sounds interesting. I didn't get deeply into He-Man and She-Ra back in the day. I recall seeing something about a new She-Ra, and this makes me a bit more interested in giving it a try.

How are you proposing making your setting limit magic? Are you planning prohibiting spellcasting classes? Are you going to filter items that are available? If someone has racial spellcasting, with the ancestry be prohibited, or will you weaken the spells somehow?

I'm wondering if the Death trait only applies to application of Death, Dying, Wounded, Doomed. (List being pulled as condition/levels that directly involved in determining one's becoming dead) HP may not be directly related to DEATH, as it primarily simply triggers dying once reaching 0. That is partially not true, however, as I believe it is also listed somewhere that any hit doing more than 2x max hit points damage also triggers death.

It might be nice to have a rider on the Death trait saying immunity to this trait only stops the application of rendering Death, and potentially increasing listed conditions, such as dying, doomed, etc. depending on what the developers intentions were for it. It does seem like it would/could come up frequently enough to have it generally stated, so each death effect spell/ability doesn't have to restate it. (and any exceptions could be stated in particular death effects, such as any ability they don't want doing HP damage to those immune to death effects)

Thanks for the reference about complex effects it reinforces that the probably intent for most such immunities from death effects is probably intended to stop the death effect, but not necessarily other aspects. I can imagine running into conditions where I'd imagine HP damage might have been intended to have been folded in too. Certainly something adding the death trait, probably immunity from the trait would simply be removal of the trait, not removing the effects of the ability before the trait was applied. (if that makes sense)

Well first edition Starfinder, the mech rules (which if you talk about fully powered armor, it might fall into that category) handle the shift in power by literally calling it an overt shift in power/level, and your encounters you face are a higher CR when you are expected to be in your armor/mech.

Pathfinder has avoided any such dynamic 'shifts in power level' based on equipment, but perhaps that might be a meta they would be willing to change for the sake of enabling various levels of play. (some have wondered if this might be needed/part of the implementation of Mythic play that is coming out.)

Something that comes to mind is, would everyone have to be proficient in heavy armor to partake in a powered armor campaign? Or could you have a set of powered armor that only takes light (or no) armor proficiency, but and it does a lot to protect you from damage and elements, and probably carry a lot more, or better movement options, but doesn't enable you to have the extra weapon or special defensive slots. (or doesn't grant you access to readily use them, if the armor technically still has them)

Its true that another option would be to have an archetype that grants heavy armor proficiency, and give everyone that archetype as a free archetype, but that sort of dilutes the differences between character concepts, and probably would mean that the classes that already had heavy armor proficiency will probably be weaker, since the archetype won't do as much for them. Basically, will it be possible to have a non-martial partake in a powered armor campaign, without looking/behaving like they have become a martial character by default?

Well, stuff I've created has just be for personal use documents and gaming references. However, I've been able to do enough basic columns and text flow even with just Word and outputting as PDF. This included placing images in amongst text and having the text wrapping around it as appropriate. The images I'd generally use GIMP, and it was relevant/useful to use images that I could specify transparent regions as that was important for allowing text to approach it closely if I needed it.

I'm not saying Word is an IDEAL tool for the job. However, I suggest you consider if it is enough for your first project or not. My question being do you want your first project to focus on you learning newer/advance typesetting and layout tools, or presenting your gaming material in a simple to read, but not bland layout. I think it might give you enough features to present you with the ability to place appropriate images in the midst of your material that it makes your content pleasant to read without having to get super complicated for you or your reader.

I don't know what platform you are on, but I suspect Pages has enough layout functions that as long as my initial lookup is accurate that it has the ability to save to PDF, you could potentially use it if you are on a Mac.

Gimp is a graphics tool I like to use since it is free and available on multiple platforms. It is very powerful and capable of doing many of the things people often look to photoshop for. I don't claim to use it for many of those powerful things, and I wouldn't argue with some folks who may claim photoshop is more intuitive (especially if that was what you first saw), but it is both powerful and flexible and has lots of your fundamental tools such as magic wands and layers so you can do basic image manipulation and image file conversions pretty easily.

I suspect an important part of your testing of the PDF you create should be trying to see what it looks like on a variety of other people's machines. So I'd suggest you have a friend with a Mac, a PC and pick a few different phones and tablets as well to have them take a look at what they look like.

I don't know if you might get more feedback within the Third-Party forum or not. I can't tell for sure if that is supposed to only talk about products that are already published, or if intent to be published is enough to fit there. There appears to be on several occasions, for instance to be requests for various types of things/products in the Product Discussion thread, or questions asking if someone is working on something in there.

Are you going to be publishing under the Pathfinder Compatibility License, or just using either the OGL or Orc?

Well, I think it comes down to the question of is the Arcane list as powerful a Tradition that its spell list is powerful enough that being able to pick anything off of it is stronger than the other traditions.

I think that the game developers believe it does have a wider range of spells than the others, but they don't feel that it has more 'powerful' spells than the other traditions.

I think you can look at the other pick-a-list classes to see that I don't believe that they generally consider any one list overtly more powerful than any other specific list.

While the fact there is no class that grants knowledge of the entire spell list for preparation of their spells, that may mean they may consider it as a whole to be more versatile. On the other hand, I think the same is true of the Occult list, unless I'm mistaken. Other pick a list classes are, for instance spontaneous which can't nearly easily make use of wider range as they have a set number of spells they can leverage to build their subset.

So knowing all the spells would likely be a bit of power gain through versatility, but likely not something that would be completely game breaking.

The thing that it might break however is the often-considered theme of the wizard, whom is out trying to track down new spells. If spells are just common knowledge within the wizard community, it reduces one of the common DnD themes to drive such an academic to adventure. the ability to acquire new spells. Note this doesn't absolutely break the wizard either, as if you examine settings like harry potter, it seems that spells are all around them, and learning most (non-exclusive/rare) spells is merely a matter of making a little effort, or visiting a school or library. However, it is none-the-less a significant factor in the historical RPG wizard.

Then if you do this to the wizard, do you do this as well for the Witch and Magus as well?

I would argue that it is still around for keeping from Breaking Verisimilitude.

I think first edition had things it called Trade Goods that typically always traded for at value. In second edition they just mention exceptions being art objects and raw materials which trade at full value. (it is too bad they didn't go with a category of trade goods).

If I went into a store and bought some random object and went to some other random store and tried to get them to give me money for it, or stopping some random people trying to unload it, I'd probably consider myself lucky if I got 50%.

If you ask me, in rare instances I might have gotten close to 90-100%, much more cases would likely get closer t0 40-60%. And probably at least as many cases would get zero buyers or perhaps an offer for something like 10%.

So for me when you are defining 'what is being sold' and 'when exactly it is being sold', I consider a 50% as a reasonable 'average' that if anything probably is generous, as long as you are excluding the trade goods that just automatically are trading at near 100%.

Now, if an NPC approaches the PC saying... I've always wanted a crossbow and I see you have one, can I buy it off you. Then suddenly, they are trying to define the 'what' and 'when' so you can easily have the player demand full price, they aren't trying to drive the sale. They can even potentially ask for more than 100%, but that doesn't mean the buyer will be willing to buy for 100%.

Lets pretend however, the person approaching them, wants to buy the crossbow, right now, but they don't have cash, all they have is barley (which because of an overabundance for some reason, we will pretend is not considered a trade good). It might be reasonable to have the PC as for more. As the buyer is trying to force two transactions, one to buy the crossbow, the other to sell their barley for payment for the crossbow.

So the PC can easily justify 100% pay for the crossbow, assuming it is in good working like new condition. They can also look at the attempt to sell the barley as they are again defining the time and goods to be taken, to say they are only going to count the Barley at 50% value, similar to if they had tried to sell barley themselves.

So if the story involves an NPC who is by 'story' wanting to buy something. they should be willing to buy closer to the 100% price range. Buying from an lesser known vendor might be justification to cut the price a little bit, but it would also be a little conditioned on hoe much the buyer needs it and their actual timeframe on the need.

I'm sure that part of it is a holdover from first edition where it was an attempt to keep crafters from breaking the game via game economics. However the crafting system as it is in Second Edition makes that impossible at base reading of the rules. The 50% in that instance almost seems like a punishment.

But you can note that they seemed to intentionally leave it at 50%, since the game they made in between PF1 and PF2 was StarFinder. And in that game you only got 10% back. (and I'll admit that felt harsh)

But yes rules as written, you generally sell for 50% when the players instigate the sale, save for certain exceptions, which they list and the GM could choose as they deem fit.

If you say in the description of the town, that due to recent earthquakes or other natural phenomenon there are lots of injured and therefore there is a shortage of healing potions, and are none for sale. If a Pc had one and decided to offer it up for sale, it is reasonable to consider they might quickly get an offer for 100% value quickly, assuming the populace could afford it.

Just a quick thought, wouldn't some of the things causing bonus damage only grant extra damage only on a hit?

I think I'm closer on the side of bonus damage not affecting additional splash damage values unless clearly applying, but it would be worth noting some feats affecting damage may require hits.

First Armored Carriage concealed with the desert wind stance:

Technically it clearly states only Creatures are concealed. Items that are carried by a creature can't be targeted individually, you'd have to target the creature, so I'd say in a way carried items would not be able to be seen since you have to go through the attended creature first. However a vehicle isn't something you carry.

If a vehicle couldn't be targeted unless it was unattended, you might have an argument for considering it concealed. However by raw it seem clear vehicles can be targeted, both when occupied, as well as unoccupied. So by raw I don't think the vehicle would be considered concealed, unless you can get the Armored Carriage to acquire the state of being a creature (such as via some animation ability). It wouldn't seem unreasonable however to make it work if the aura covered the entire vehicle, as a non-raw decision, for flavor and/or playability, but I believe it would be clearly non-raw choice.

Pulling a vehicle with Beasts of Slumbering Steel. The effect is it creates mounts that are controlled by the designated riders. Since a vehicle doesn't have mounts, they have pulled propulsion. By default again it doesn't seem like by raw it would work, outside of the choice of a set of riders under the effect of the spell choosing to as a (mount and rider) set provide the propulsion for a vehicle.

As far as non-raw option, again, it doesn't seem like a horrible choice to make it work. However, the question becomes do the mounts get attached to the vehicle itself and control of them go to whomever pilots it, or do they need to be tied to a particular pilot. If attached to the Vehicle, which is not going to be an intelligent owner, does that mean the kineticist makes the choice of type of movement at start, or does the vehicle's pilot have access to make that choice as an action, or would the mounts/propulsion be tied to the vehicle and stuck in its original chosen form and pilot only have control of their movement choices? This unclear set of choices is one of the reasons I don't see any way to consider it operating as something supported by raw.

Elemental Artillery, certainly you can create it from within the vehicle and would be able to fire it as part of creation. If the vehicle has room for another medium sized object, it seems like it would be an option to have it appear inside the vehicle. But then it would be subject to the -2 or -4 penalties to hit from movement or reckless/uncontrolled movement if being fired from the vehicle.

That's my initial reaction. If you are the GM think about it and make your own decision on how you want it used. If you are a player, talk to the GM and understand they may not want to support it, but the might be willing to.

I'd like to see "Starship Feats" silo-ed in their own category (like "Class Feats" or "Ancestry Feats"), with all PCs getting a specific number of them at specific levels.

That way players don't have to worry about "wasting" a feat choice on a starship-specific feat if their game doesn't end up involving starship combat as much.

I agree that in theory, rather than having a feat that gives your character an ability, it could be like you said silo'd as a different stack of feats, and it would instead grant the ship you are on an ability due to your being on the ship. It would thus primarily only impact the game in space combat mode, so the 'additional' feat wouldn't generate power creep.

Some backgrounds or archetypes might offer some things used in space combat as well. But to avoid there being 'must haves' I see them generally being more minor options.

I agree, if you chose that one, you get the boosted version of it. If you learn a the other Psi cantrip listed for your conscious mind though some other feature, but got it from something other than your conscious mind, you would cast it only as a normal cantrip. With the dedication, it seems you get only one of the two normal conscious mind cantrips. (so if you chose the other one, and got the ray of frost some other way, then no you wouldn't have the psi version)

While those are really cool images, I have to admit that since the scale of space combat is supposed to be such enormous distances, I'm not certain it makes sense for the space whale corpses should take up more than a hex in that scale.

It would certainly work for some kind of space vehicle encounter type map more similar to air vehicle combat scale, rather than typical deep space combat.

I could easily imagine using it in a storyline where there is a base on an asteroid hiding in the midst of the elephant graveyard. That map would represent an encounter area where PCs on patrol are encounter someone trying to sneak up to the base. (or vice versa, the PCs are scouting and run into a patrol) At least that is what comes to mind.

P.S.
Actually, it bring up this question to me. Do we actually have any established space objects that take more than one hex on a spaceship combat map? If so, what would be an example?

So, I've been thinking, and both Wizards and Witches are both prepared casters, as well as limited to a slowly acquired subset of their spell list, and seem to from literature often associated with the use of wands.

Would the following buff of their prepared spellcasting seem useful as well as in line with the flavor in the lore that we think of for these kinds of casters.

[Reaction] Bolstered Overcharging of a Wand
If a caster has just cast a spell from a wand, and the caster has a slot prepared with that spell, the caster may as a Reaction, may instead expend one of their own spell slots of the rank of the spell cast from the wand and ignore the results of the flat check. The slot expended need not have the spell cast prepared in it. [The prepared spell slot must be from a casting class with this ability, and may not be a prepared slot that was not been replaced with a different prepared spell using some other feature such that it is no longer considered a prepared spell. It can however be a spell that they had prepared but have since cast it.

This means that with preparation/investment (something prepared casters are supposed to excel at) it gives these casters a bit of an edge, allowing them to mitigate some of the risk of using wands more than once a day and allow them to cast such spells more than once a day using a wand.

i.e.
most casters can count on 1 casting from a wand per day, and risk losing the wand to cast it twice a day. Only cost for second casting being the potential loss of the wand.

Wizards using this would get the one normal casting, but they also have the ability to combine both investment in the spell, and the item to be able to get extra castings of the spell, at the cost of other prepared spell slots.

A benefit of this concept is that it actually gives some life to potential stories of magicians using wands to cast magic missiles several times in an encounter validating that lore more.

If you feel the need to limit this ability, you could limit its use to their INT modifier times per day which could be a silent 'nod' to the old bonus spells mechanic.

One might need to determine how to rule on flexible casters. If you allowed them this ability, but only if the spell were prepared in their collection, they theoretically could have cast the spell from their collection without the use of the wand. However, it would enable them to safely try to cast the spell, and be satisfied with a roll of casting it, and breaking the wand, but not destroying it. Enabling them to get one extra casting that day, for the inconvenience of having to get the wand fixed. Much less of a boost, but still helpful if you happen to choose to prepare a spell you could get once per day free. I think that is how I would rule on flexible spell caster wizards and witches.

I think the above could also help Magus, but I haven't played a Magus enough to know if that sort of ability would be too much of an advantage for that class or not. It seems like they tend to re-use spells (the traditional shocking grasp spell people are discussing being potentially lost in remaster for instance) so it would probably benefit them. Question being would it benefit them too much, I'm not sure if it would or not. I'm curious if someone more familiar with playing Magus would feel this would be too powerful for them or not.

While these could be chosen to only apply to wizards, or might work for other prepared casters. Obviously one shouldn't implement all of these as that would break things. However some of these might ring a certain truth for your view of your campaign if you feel like these casters are suffering.

I personally liked the old historical rules where a prepared slot could be left open and filled by later preparation even if it isn't as efficient then. It was a simple and elegant solution for people who knew they were going into an situation with some definite unknown. It cost immediate availability of resources early on and a little time to help insure you had a more tailored resource in the future. However, as that isn't the baseline any longer, so I'm trying to work from there and think of other ways to help prepared casters. I'm also trying not to simply give away the substitution thesis, although I'll confess the potential of someone feeling like this treads on their area of expertise. I still think these items don't completely destroy the flexibility that the Substitution Thesis could grant a wizard, even if one of these other rules in play. Some might even strengthen the flexibility of the Substitution Thesis.

* Re-preparation Exploration Activity
One of the ideas is to allow the approved classes to have a 10 minute activity that would allow a prepared caster to re-prepare a spell they had prepared earlier. They would select a different spell of appropriate rank that they still have prepared, and it becomes un-prepared, in order to re-prepare the first spell again.

* Casting a cast spell from their Spellbook metamagic/spellshaping
Another option would be to allow a wizard to preform a 10 minute activity [perhaps a new form of metamagic/spellshaping] using their spellbook that would allow the caster to immediately following, cast a spell they had prepared earlier in the day but have already cast, using up one of their other spell slots of appropriate rank instead losing preparation of whatever spell was in that slot.

* Wizards Signature Spell feature
Another option. Give wizards a signature spell feature. A wizard's (prepared caster's) signature spell for a rank is chosen when they get their extra spell for that rank. They can choose to spontaneously cast a signature spell from any appropriate rank for that class, using up the prepared spell in that slot.

Specialists might likely be limited to picking their signature spell from their curriculum. Or it might only limit the highest level signature spell, but the bonus slots, if limited to only curriculum spells might still be limited to only being usable for signature spells if they are curriculum spells, leaving an advantage to keeping most signature spells in the curriculum.

This actually seems like something that could help give the Wizard class and even individual wizards additional flavor, which sounds like a good thing.

* Prepared casting duplicate preparations feature
People seem to mention signature spells as being strong for spontaneous casters, I could see an option allowing a prepared caster (any prepared caster potentially) to slot the same spell more than once, the spell becomes spontaneously available from any rank the spell was slotted in.

So a wizard slotting Dispel Magic into two first rank slots and a Magic Missile in the last, could cast Dispel Magic up to three times if they chose to use their Magic Missile slot to cast Dispel Magic. If they go up in level and slot Dispel Magic in first and second ranks, it would allow them to cast the spell using any of their first and second rank slots. (starting using their original assigned slot, but can use up other prepared slots of the designated ranks)

While this steals from some of the spontaneous caster's strategic strength, but doing it is inefficient (so has strategic cost) since it uses up extra prepared slots. However, in cases where a wizard is already knows they may need multiple castings, this lets their preparation in that respect get rewards by committing to their choice. Honestly I sort of feel like if you do this, one should allow it for all prepared casters, but that's my feel on it.

* Extra preparation selection feature for prepared casters
You could also simply allow prepared casters, or prepared casters limited to by spellbook/familiar, to prepare one more spell than slot. When you have used the last slot in that rank, you can no longer cast spells from that rank. (i.e. you have so many memorized, but only so much 'strength')

If people feel that prepared casters, in general are hurting due to their need for preparation, you could grant all prepared casters an 'extra' preparation for each rank, and that the casters that are limited by spellbook or other mechanism to subsets of their lists and grant them up to two extra 'preparations'. I'm not sure I really like the idea of two extra's but it was a potential thought.

As I was going over discussions about the wizard and the remaster, and looking at all the different types of casters, and comparing them, it occurred to me that I really felt the Animist's spontaneous casting list should be called a Collection such as how it is referred in the Flexible casting archetype, since it is populated based on daily choices in preparations, unlike the far more static list that can't change nearly as rapidly which we call a Repertoire.

Ok, I bring this up because in large part I'd mentally categorized them in the two obvious categories which have different names. The obvious divisions.

Spontaneous and Prepared are the ones I think people would immediately come up with. Also, not long after thinking of those, I think many people will be able to come up with Focus casters as another somewhat distinct from. Another might be Cantrip only casters, and we might potentially include impulses as another form of magic.

There are also, an a different axis (how many spell slots and what distribution) that could include the list of normal, wave casters, multi-class archetypes for instance as well.

Well, I want to go back to the first two for a couple reasons. One because I always found it ironic that Spontaneous casters were always singled out for being so flexible, and prepared casters' players would complain having to pick their spells at the start of the day was too hard, because they didn't have enough information.

I couldn't help but notice Spontaneous casters had to pick their spells at character creation (or level up for their progression). It is absolutely true that being able to re-use those spells within a day is an advantage within a specific encounter, so in a way, I can understand how from an encounter-only perspective, if they picked well (at creation), it could be a distinct advantage.

However if you consider a campaign can be played over several modes of play, the spells might have to be selected and divided up between encounter spells, exploration spells, and downtime spells. Prepared casters get the choice to rebalance each day to better optimize for whatever mode of play they anticipate that day.

Some of the most vocal complainers about the flexibility of spontaneous casters was always the wizards, and I saw the list of spells they started out with and would shake my head, realizing that advantage, that and the theoretical ability of them to easily add new spells easily to their spells known, I would get frustrated by their complaints. However it has sunk into my thoughts recently that I could see how if GMs did not really bother to have wizards be able to uncover enemy wizards spell books in the party's travels, or allow them to buy scrolls of spells they don't know, I could see how as they leveled up, that flexibility would absolutely diminish over time if kept very constrained.

This also made me think more about the other prepared casters whom simply 'Know' all the spells. This actually bothered me a bit from early on. It bothered me that with each new book, or even adventure, some casters were suddenly instantly upgraded with new choices. So I actually like one of the early 'rulings' that eventually got reversed, saying that those spell casters knew all the common spells in the core rulebook, plus whatever rulebook they came in, not necessarily all the rulebooks automatically. I honestly wish that there were uncommon spells in the Divine and Primal tradition that were unlocked by certain classes or deities for instance.

But let me continue forward some. It becomes clear that there are more than one 'branch' of prepared casters. Some are limited in the spells known, to specific ones they have encountered and collected. Namely the ones with a spellbook or spellbook like mechanics. They have to go out and specifically come to know any spells they need to prepare, and those spells have to fall into their list. The others simply gain access to all of them in their spell list if they are common.

Wizards are in the group of that greater limited selection of spells to choose from. Presumably this was due to a combination of items. One the history of the spellbook concept, and spells known. I'm sure that was a significant factor, as history and flavor are important to people naturally, and it was obvious that while pathfinder second edition tried to clean up a lot. Historical things that they thought they could still keep and balance well, they tended to keep. The other aspect I'm sure was that in keeping history for what types of spells the wizards had, the Arcane list had lots of spells, and they probably would have balked at the idea of opening up that entire list to any prepared caster. Any prepared caster for the Arcane tradition would be forced to have a gatekeeping mechanism. (we see it for the arcane witch and magus, for instance)

I can see how that gating mechanism is treated by a GM or campaign, could vastly impact the effectiveness of a prepared caster being able to build an array of useful spells to be able to prepare in their slots, in the varieties of play modes.

I'm trying to think through all the shared aspects that cross all the spell-casting spells, at least with respect to spell slots to try to keep in better mind aspects that affect their play.

They all start with a spell list which is based on a Tradition, but is gated by Rarity (for access, but not usability). Many classes have mechanisms, normally be feats or other class choices, which allow your to pull additional spells across from other traditions into yours. These increase your list size, impacting what magical items you can use, in addition to what spells you can learn, and these feats sometimes give you the spell in question as a spell known.

Next spellcasters have a Spells Known aspect. Some classes like Clerics and Druids, you simply know all your common spells from your tradition, plus the additional spells from your feats that expanded your tradition. Others have to collect the spells and pay to learn new spells and add them to you spells known. I think this cost, while not prohibitive, is definitely of note when compared to the classes that simply know all.

Now is where things split out more, based on slots granted.

Prepared casters daily make a list of what spells they are preparing based on the slots they have available, selecting out of their known spells. So these are their prepared slots.

Some prepared casters have swapped their normal prepared slots via a Flexible archetype for Collection slots. Their collection slots they pick spells out of their known spells and they can cast them as many times as they have usable slots for them. They populated these each morning as their preparation.

Spontaneous casters have a Repertoire of spells they build at character generation (and upon leveling up). These spells can be cast as many times a day as you have an appropriate slots for them. Signature spells allow you to heighten a spell using spell slots of other ranks than the rank where you have it slotted, increasing the usefulness of your spell slots for that spell.

Really, focus casters are sort of like a form of spontaneous caster advancement, as they get the ability to cast that spell with their 'focus' slots, but they aren't dedicated to that spell, and the focus slots are always at current max rank.

Wave casters can be either prepared or spontaneous, it just affects how many slots they get, and which ranks they keep. Perhaps further looking could be put into how the feats that give back limited use of lower rank spell slots for utility casting, but I'm not sure how much that helps this retrospective at the moment so I'm going to skip it right now.

Arcane Evolution is certainly a powerful option for sorcerers allowing a sorcerer to actually have flexibility on a daily basis with at least one spell. I would point out however, that it makes the spellbook, similar to a wizards spellbook, but writing all your naturally known spells becomes free. Yet adding spells costs the same as a wizard writing a new spell into the book. I kind of wish there was a small cost to write spells irrespective of if it were new or not as the implication is that writing spells into a spell book requires rare and magical materials. I wish there was a separate cost of learning and practicing a new spell. You had to know the spell before you could write/copy it into your book. It is a slight different, but I think it makes things more clear. It would also allow wizards to make smaller travelling spellbooks for their most used spells, etc. Things/ideas that are worthwhile concepts details for such stories.

While going through these comparisons, it really makes me feel like the Animist, in the new playtest, should really have its Spontaneous spells be described as being a Collection, since flexible spellcasting Collections are built entirely based choices made during your daily preparations. So your choices of apparitions during daily prep would fill out your Collection for the day.

I also want to point out that all normal cantrip casting is spontaneous, as you don't lose the cantrip (unless from a feat that is 1/day) after casting. So when comparing spontaneous and prepared classes, and their access to cantrips. Prepared casters get to choose from a wide selection of cantrips, based on what they expect the day, but the spontaneous casters are stuck with a static set which is normally the same size as a prepared caster. I think that over time/levels, spontaneous casters should learn new cantrips, so they can build some versatility over time.

I also think there should be some room for Cantrips which have a Minimum Rank to know/cast. These could even be things that would help prepared casters, as they could be VERY useful if you know you are going to need them, but might not always be powerful enough to invest in as a spontaneous caster, unless you get it free from your bloodline, for instance. Which that might even be the 'flavor' origin of some of these cantrips, as advanced bloodline cantrips (or witches advanced cantrips) that other arcane casters eventually learned how to reproduce.