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I always assumed when PCs use profession checks the wonkiness comes in because they're not really doing a conventional work period. Basically they're jumping in as temp work, rustling something up associated with their skills but well below 'adventuring' tier. Super safe but then super low in rewards relatively.

On the other hand, in a narrative sense if they actually got a long term job and became functionally an NPC working for a group/etc, they could have salaries or whatever. I just figured the rules were intentionally weak so even they have 'off time' its not a real replacement for being a PC adventurer.

I like it. Gets a little wonky on the metaphysical though. Like unlike 'conventional life' in the AC setting where the whole "Does the Soul really exist?" it does in Starfinder.

So if you die, but your stack remains...but what happens to your soul, do you go get judged and the copy is just a copy? Is the stack like a 'magic jar' for your soul? meaning you don't actually die until the stack is destroyed too?

Well we've seen introduction to several outsider variants that reflect the 'modern' Starfinder setting. Holy angels toting lasguns, Nanite cloud defenders of Law, Demon/Devil spaceship.

I feel in a way such planes reflect the general tone of the prime material. What prevented Devil Spaceship from showing up earlier? Or Angel with lasgun? I'd say general level of belief.

I'd be inclined to say that Devil Spaceship existed during Pathfinder era too, but constraints on manifesting within the Prime AS a devil spaceship prevented such, so it would take a different form.

Kind of like a Ghostbusters 'pick the form of the Destroyer'. Until the general mortal mindset shifted to 'guns and spaceships and shit' the outsider forces, even if they had such knowledge and possibility couldn't manifest it in the prime.

I figure the notion of "The Sun also has connections to the elemental plane of fire, and positive material plane' can lead to all sorts of non-IRL-Solar possibilities for life. Like the planets themselves can be different sorts of 'energy magnets' for the stuff being put out by the sun. Plus things like super dragons and gods coming around and going, "Yknow, f~++ it, I wanna build a house here."

I'd say use NPC route with the provided quicker-gen rules. In the event the NPC survives/participates long enough that they actually require a bit more thought, then you can stat them as a PC.

I still feel things like population and then crew for starships are a bit off.

I feel populations for the listed areas (including Absolom station) needs to be increased by a factor of 10.

Similarly I felt a disconnect with the ships as pictures and the ships as rules. A gargantuan cathedral ship with 145 complement. A drift cruiser with all those windows but only 14 passengers combined in good and luxurious quarters? And 26 crew? That's more appropriate for a modern day big yacht, not the space liner pictured for the Opulus.

or the 'huge' garden ship with its 27 complement.

a minor tweak I'd do would say the 'complement' represents only the crew associated with the skill checks, but total crew is actually 5-10 times that number.

Could a band of a hundred men with single-fire weapons barrage a swarm to death? That kind of volume of fire would essentially be like duplicating autofire, no? :P

Hey guys! I found the Imperial Guardsman!

I figured the galaxy was also kinda skewed as a result of the whatever that happened during/caused the Gap. So things like stars and stuff getting a slight bump in location or age, and things like carbon dating being odd, like some pieces of the same object of same composition registering as older/newer than the rest of it. So even if you had older markers/info from pre-Gap, you still can't figure out how long its been, since this star-info says one thing, this one has moved well more than it should have, and these rocks over here and giving different readings.

otherwise, size is the same as ours.

Shadowrun wise, you could be called a Cyberdoc.

On the other hand, the ever creeping guns and armor stuff makes for Borderlands (game) pretty well. And in general there's sorta 'magic' in Borderlands with tech. The mooks and opponents scale similarly.

Adding a bit to my earlier thought. As players of characters we express desires on how we want actions to turn out, but mechanically there's still a system that actually determines if our desire for outcome actually matches the reality of outcome.

So when we say, "I attack the darkness" what we actually mean is, "I attempt to attack the darkness, lets see how that turns out".

or 'I leap over the fire pit like a badass and do a flip that lands me safely on the other side' actually means, "I want to try <above> and since I don't have a class ability to take 10 on it, I'll have to roll and see how that....oh my...ok, looks like I didn't make it...."

I like the cold war/detente thing. Though presumably some factions push their minions/devoted a bit more in pushing the envelope of divine sanctioned douchebaggery :)

I'd counter the players argument with "You have to make skill checks to be intimidating or bluff or whatever, just because you want to do something and making you have to roll for it doesn't take away your agency any more than making you roll for an attack or skill or attribute check does."

I inferred that your own ship tends to be semi-sovereign territory unless you do something that draws heat to your situation. Other than overt external safety concerns (um your ship is leaking a shit ton of radiation, fix it or get sunk). I imagine its not a forced issue as it has natural consequences if you don't defend. If instead you take your combat capable ship and flee? Fine, station security isn't going to shoot you down, but you might not be welcome the next time you want to show up and dock.

I'd also lean towards "maybe you get a discount for repairs if needed, but otherwise no compensation, because you're already benefiting from being under OUR umbrella."

I imagine its as comfortable or uncomfortable as the GM is about it. And then the rest of the group. And then the rest of society around your play-group.

And that's not even including the scenarios of "Um. Sure we're comfortable about it. Totally."

If it is compatible with the group, then the issue is almost a non-issue. its definitely more of a 'not dramatic' issue, and gains the same level mundane attention of "How much time is the GM willing to put this into the worldbuilding, what's the benefit/whats the point/etc? Putting it on par with any and all other gamemastery options and setting details that don't really come into play unless players intentionally focus on it.

If it is incompatible with the group, I find it no different than the player that decides to play Chaotic Douchebag, or Lawful Stupid, or "I'm totally going to solo stuff while the rest of the party sleeps" or "I'm making everything about me." or "I'm the GM's girl/boyfriend" or any of the hundreds of other things that can pop up in a game group ever experienced.

Now on the other hand, if you're a player and you want to play nude and the group is ok with it, but the GM doesn't want to spend time incorporating that into his game setting? Or give it the same level of detail and interest that OP might have in it? It absolutely doesn't matter what our opinions are or suggestions on how it might fit in. Because it won't apply, because its not going to be included.

So in a sense a group participant is welcome to do their own internal world building and wool gathering as much as they want, on the same scale as some players like writing bazillions of pages of backstory, but
beyond whatever individual attention a GM wants to give it, no one else in the group is really obligated to care. The only real time I see it being a problem is when a player wants to take their individual stuff over the shared play experience of everyone else participating.

As a group decision, the group is free to take whatever aspects of the setting in-character, or incorporated by game devs under advisement and use or discard them as needed. The group I played with never had any trans/gay/etc stuff in setting because none of us were and it didn't interest any of us. We could have been genderless for all chars as the group adventure never included romance or players playing genders other than their own real ones. GM still played out the various NPC stuff from paths since that was built in for some cases, but ultimately no impact beyond any other NPCs in any other stories. We didn't think it was wrong, or evil, or I dunno, 'icky' or something. It just didn't interest us. Our games weren't any less because we weren't using the 'full Pathfinder experience' or something. And we had tons of house rules and setting variants not 'canon'. But again, its all a shared experience. If the group is cool with it? Cool/ If the group doesn't want it? Cool too. No one minds a rotating spotlight, but over the decades I've seen groups ask people to leave when they become too me-me-me focused (sometimes its the GM too).

Zon-Kuthon suffers in rapturous wonderful agony. He does not sleep.

Soooo internet gaming? :) Spends his days purposefully getting called names by 12 year olds and basking in the suffering?

Long term I hope the product has the success that allows for an expansion into the other continent areas of the setting. Arcadia, some more stuff of Tian Xia, etc

Heh, if this had happened with a GM I used to have, my party would be asking ourselves:

Did WE really steal IT? Or did IT end up with US on PURPOSE.

Its more cinematic for them to flee in a teleport, than, "Curses, foiled again!" and hoof it.

Gee I dunno maybe use that orifice in the middle of your face and express your views? Or do you expect the GM to use telepathy to figure out your "ive got sand in my underwear" issue? :P

Eh, its a fantasy game. The guy next to you is a Drow, the girl across from you is a changeling, you're pretty sure the guy next to you is trying to play a MLP character but you don't want to give hint that you get the reference, and the GM just attacked your party with a tentacle beast.

And you're all murderhobos. Play as you will :)

I like the potential for this, if we could hammer down some reasonable guidelines you could then in turn use this to modify effective CR, if you were so inclined. Or give the GM a better sense of what CR threats to actually throw at the PCs. As we see in the various threads, you can stick with Char Level and Wealth By Level and still end up with some ginzu-buzzsaw-tacnukes of doom that hit well above their APL/character level weight.

If they don't want to go on the cart?

There's also the "Apparently you want me to be your adventure-bot-whipping-boy GM" where you get pushy me-me-me players that want the GM to spend all their time catering to how obviously awesome the Players and by nature their Player-Characters are.

Bad player-gm relations are not always the GMs fault :)

4 more summoners and you can Megazord.

This one time at band camp(fire).....

Heh, two years later and this thread is still going I see.

I miss the old ways, where you look across the table at the GM's face as you discuss with the other players about whether to put that ring, or say...Girdle, on.

I figure given the character history, as some have noted Hell Knight makes a decent match. Just think of yourself like a 40k Space Marine: Purge the unclean, kill the heretic, blood for the blood god.

wait...forget that last one.

Too many definitions in the OP. Not optimized.

...hehe

A good grease spell helps to erm...extend...grapple experience.

Wow, this thing has been going for a year.

Magic Missile?

I'd prefer to think of it as a start of a good night.

Eh, like anything its based on individual preferences and then a shared narrative. If the GM knows I don't want same sex npcs hitting on me, but I'm fine with the concept in general, then that's how play gets modified. If the tone of the group is not interested or opposed to it, there's no benefit in forcing the issue. I do notice the Adventure Path stuff seem to throw that in with same-sex pairings. I don't mind, but its more because in general I consider NPCs to be...ahem...interchangeable for more than sexuality. I don't care what their gender is, or race, more like...what alignment are they and are they going to try to backstab us? :)

That's sort of the 'downside' of the otherwise excellent Adventure path stuff. Well, one of several things I suppose:

1)By following an AP in a sense it leaves little or less room of homebrew adventures, as simply following the path takes you to 15-18, and more recently, mythic tiers.

2)Storylines of the AP tend to use the "there's some significant connection with one (or all) of the PCs to a specific plot point/etc"

Consequently players interested in playing APs have to sorta accept that in general, their PC's are going to be kinda constrained and you won't really have 'free play' access with them until after level 18 or so. Similarly the framework of the AP storyline tends to prune out or lean against certain backstories, just for ease of access.

Honestly, the way I see AP stuff is just build the classes you want and then pull 'background' from the AP itself.

Hm, seems a little 'light' to just lose Flurry in order to gain Rogue-progression sneak attack (if I'm reading it right).

Also in a sense, isn't the Dim Mak already sort of 'quivering palm'? I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of some sorta precision damage added to Monk stuff, though again I think you should trade away more than Flurry to get it.

I'd say not potentially evil, but it does set the precedent for "What you do to NPCs, expect to be done to you." You kill helpless foes? That triggers the "Foes will now probably kill you if you're helpless' 'game flag' as it were :P

Yeah, make sure the tens and 'ones' dice are clearly identified too. No flubbing the dice to get the 'better result'. Yeah I know, last time I rolled the red die was the tens and the blue was the ones, but THIS time its the other way around!

Practice flipping off boxes of kittens and kicking over sandcastles until the lamentation of the young no longer bothers you. Then you should be sufficiently armored to deal with Players.

Heh, anyone here old enough to recall 1st edition Barbarians from Unearthed Arcana, which got xp for destroying magic items? Good times. Good times.

Ugh. Keeping up with edition changes is what killed the original run of D&D for me. Over the course of the game I bought everything from the original boxed sets, through 1st edition, 2nd edition during college, then 3rd. Then...3.5 came out and I went...um...no more. I actually started to buy 3.5 and then friggin 4.0 came out.

Which is why I like Pathfinder 3.5, its a decent game system and I'd prefer to see it keep going. But yeah, expensive.

Well, the LE guy is probably the least offensive (or potentially). By their nature, the NE guy is a selfish "beat your mother to death for 10 dollars" kinda evil. The CE guy? Gleefully destructive evil.

The LE guy generally has a purpose, and doesn't mind getting his hands dirty. He'll have a code of ethics, even if twisted.

Yknow, once upon a time I believed Dr. Doom was the template/example for LE. But over time, I'm thinking he's more NE and pretends to be more principled than he is. He is a selfish putz that will sacrifice anyone and anything to get his way, he's like...an evil tantrumming child.

This one's a toughie for me. As much as I'm a Gammaworld or Star Frontiers or Shadowrun or even RIFTS fan, maybe its my older-school sensibilities that makes me not too keen on mixing tech and magic too much. I like the idea of 'at best' advanced firearms being "Old West" level, or the Kung Fu Gunslinger stuff, but not really interested in 'whole armies running around with firearms' stuff.

Likewise, while I would appreciate more flavor and stories Re: Numeria, I'm not really interested in basically a Pathfinder version of Shadowrun's "Shadowtech" or related cyber/bioware/genetic handbooks. I like the current idea of "Yeah, just say replace various magic effects and give them 'tech names'; Laser? Yeah thats a pistol/wand of Scorching Ray, etc.

Hey guys, why does this scroll read "Hastur Hastur Hastur"?

..sadly that doesn't work anymore.