M4R-T3N's page

My subscription order is listed as a Future order for today's date. Does that matter as to the queue, or if the order will even process? I did get two reminder emails for two different orders; one correct which was listed as a 'future order' and one incorrect that was listed as 'next order' which I cancelled. The incorrect one was a duplicate book from the correct order and a book I had already received from the October subscription shipment.

Nevermind, my confirmation just went through. It was still very confusing though.

This is more of a curiosity than a suggestion, but how are we supposed to know with the current library when an update of our PDFs go through? I know it's not the highest priority, but currently there is no way to know when a product was last updated.

The download selected feature in Library does not seem to work. I tried downloading all my Starfinder 2e products as a test and only the GM core went through. Also, there is no telling if a download is a single file or a by chapter .zip file.

I had the issue with it not sending the reset password email, but then I went into my browser and cleared the browser settings and it worked. The email came almost immediately after.

M4R-T3N wrote:

Still pending... and still getting lame excuses from customer service.

"Unexpected volume of orders" - It's a subscription service. You knew how many you were going to need and hold before you ordered the books.

You understand that subscriptions aren't the only orders going out right?

Publishers are supposed to gauge interest in a product based on subscriptions and early pre-orders. Based on those numbers they are then supposed to judge how many extra books they need to go to other distributors for direct sales and order those on top of those books. There is no excuse for running out of books to send to subscribers or early pre-orders.

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"Unexpected volume of new subscriptions" - Are new subscribers getting preferential treatment over older ones? I have been a subscriber for years.

No, there's no preferential treatment either direction. Its luck of the draw in when your order gets generated. As a long time subscriber you have probably experienced this before.

This is just nonsense. No business would ever 'randomly generate' the order of fulfillment. That is a recipe for lost orders and duplicate shipments.

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"It's Gencon" - Gencon happens every year. That should have been planned for months in advance.

Yes and there's usually a delay every year because GenCon is that disruptive. They can only ship out books once they've received them from the printer, and they can't really rush them to print any faster than they do.

Why is an annual event ever going to cause a disturbance unless they let it? They know it's coming. They can order the books earlier or order extra for the con. They can certainly ensure that the books that are destined for subscriptions are left at the warehouse and not sent to the con.

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"We had technical difficulties further delaying shipment" - For a week or more? Unless something catastrophic happened, that shouldn't have delayed things more than a day or two.

Yes, the technical difficulties can in fact delay things a week, as they started shipping about a week after they initially intended to.

If there is a delay that substantial, then in is good business practice, if not good manners, to let affected clientele know without having to jump through hoops to contact customer service or hunt down obscure posts on forums as to what is going on and how long a delay is going to be. When they send you an email saying your order will ship in 3-10 days and now it's going on 19 with no clarity at all as to when or if your order is going to ship, excuses from the warehouse, and having to hunt for answers instead of being given them freely is beyond frustrating.

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"We are a small team/company" - But not a new one. The company is decades old. These issues should not have cropped up on this scale, and these excuses are just that... empty excuses.

What does age of the company have to do with anything regarding man power to get books out of the warehouse?

The age of a company has everything to do with this entire post. With age is supposed to come experience and with experience comes learning how to handle the various issues that come up, particularly when they come up on a regular basis, such as Gencon. They could certainly have hired some extra staff during this high-volume period on a temporary basis so that the small team is beefed up a bit to carry out the necessary work and not strain their workforce.

Still pending... and still getting lame excuses from customer service.

"Unexpected volume of orders" - It's a subscription service. You knew how many you were going to need and hold before you ordered the books.

"Unexpected volume of new subscriptions" - Are new subscribers getting preferential treatment over older ones? I have been a subscriber for years.

"It's Gencon" - Gencon happens every year. That should have been planned for months in advance.

"We had technical difficulties further delaying shipment" - For a week or more? Unless something catastrophic happened, that shouldn't have delayed things more than a day or two.

"We are a small team/company" - But not a new one. The company is decades old. These issues should not have cropped up on this scale, and these excuses are just that... empty excuses.

Ah the pre-Gencon, "we packed up the books to sell at our booth" shipping slowdown... Every year

Either its right in two places in the book and wrong in another, or its wrong in two places in the book and right in another. Either way, there is an error that is causing confusion and needs to be corrected or clarified.

15 crit fail, 25 success, 35 critical success on a DC 25 has been how it's worked the whole time. Yes, that is an asymmetrical number line. No, that doesn't change anything.

This has been known the whole time.

That is how it's been played at your tables the whole time. It is not how this rule been played by many people this whole time, and just today How Its Played created a video with critically failing being failing by 10 or more, or as HIP phrased it in the video, "MORE than 10 less than the DC." This rule needs clearing up.

well, if that is the case it makes it a lot easier to critically fail than critically succeed, as the range to make a critical success is 9 from success and critical failure from failure is 8. It makes more mathematical sense to have it be a failure of 10 or more. Plus, a rule repeated twice in the main rules seems to have more validity than one crammed into the back in an index where they need to save space.

I found a couple pieces of errata in the fourth printing of the Core Rulebook. The first is on Page 10, Playing the Game, third paragraph. Its a simple typo. "Once a check is rolled, the GM compares the result to a target number called the diffificulty class (DC) to determine the outcome." I am not sure what diffificulty is but it seems difficult to class.

The second is one that has slipped through the cracks since the first printing and that is in the Glossidex, page 630, and actually has caused significant confustion in the community. It is under the Criticals heading. Here it says that a critical failure is 10 less than the DC. This contradicts pages 10 and 445 where a critical failure is described as failing by 10 or more. If a failure starts at 1 under the DC, so a critical failure should be 11 lower than the DC.

Hey everyone,

I am looking to find a group to play one of several APs with, for both PF2 and Starfinder via VTT. The VTTs I know and prefer are Foundry and Fantasy Grounds, with Roll20 being fine as well. Others might be cool, as long as you are willing to teach me how to use them. I would also prefer Discord for voice chat.

Those APs for PF2 include Ages of Edgewatch, Abomination Vaults, and Strength of Thousands when it available. For Starfinder, I am interested in Threefold Conspiracy, Live Free or Die, and Horizons of the Vast.

I am available on most weekdays from 5-10 PM Central time (GMT -6), and weekends from 10 AM - 10 PM for 4-5 hour sessions. Thanks for considering me.

Muaa ha ha, I win, by 11 seconds :D

Belafon wrote:

If trick attack was only intended to give the target a -2 penalty to AC, why would you write "flat-footed against your attack" instead of "-2 penalty to AC against your attack?"

Let me turn that around and answer with another question: if trick attack wasn't supposed to provoke an attack of opportunity, why would they specifically add in a sentence in errata stating "against your attack"? This makes it clear it just impacts the specific trick attack, and not reactions provoked by that attack?

Anyways. I'm not really interested in debating the point, especially since, you know, I don't personally rule this way in my games :D

All I'm saying is - in some contrived situation where a player was arguing with their GM saying that successfully tricked ranged attacks should provoke (perhaps there are zero operatives in the party, but you're fighting a group of high level operative enemies, so this ruling is really in the party's favour or something?) - I don't think that I could definitively argue the point. I think there's enough wiggle room for either side to make a case.

The change makes it so that the Flat-Footed condition would no longer take place on movement after the attack should the attacking player have Shot on the Run, as it would in the original printing text.

I think you will still find table variation on this. The phrase "flat-footed against your attack" appears not only in this ability but also in the envoy's clever feint improvisation, and many GMs take it to mean that the enemy has the flat-footed penalty to AC but can still take reactions. Others interpret it as you did and think that flat-footed to the attack means that the enemy can't take reactions based on the attack (but still could for, say, your movement).

This isn't a GM applying a house rule, but a totally reasonable interpretation of the language. The phrase "against your attack" was actually added in the errata for the most recent printing, so some GMs have changed their minds on this based on the addition of those words.

The last few games I've played where this came up, the GM ruled that the enemy gets an AoO, so definitely be prepared to roll with it if future GMs rule it that way again.

The problem with this interpretation is that it is the wording of "against the" is being applied differently in one situation than another. If the ability says "Flat-Footed against the player" is it stating that all effects of Flat-Footed apply to that player. The same should apply to "against the attack." If the application is "against the attack" then all aspects of that condition should apply during the attack, which is not simply the attack roll. If a caster has an ability that makes a target "Flat-Footed against next spell" then the target is Flat-Footed in every way against the next spell that caster casts and only the next spell the caster casts.

The reason for the change from the first printing was so that the Flat-Footed condition wasn't applied the movement phase of Trick Attack, and only the Attack part of Trick Attack

It was good that you did not call out the GM by name, that's an important factor in having a civilized discussion. However your post comes off a bit hostile, especially in the first and last sentences.

I will admit I was a little salty about as this happened in the last game I played at PaizoCon, and needed to vent a little. This is because this ruling of the GM appeared to change the rules specifically for Society play, or it was the GM in question taking someone else's house rule and applying it to all their Starfinder games because of their authority within the Organized Play organization. That is why I brought it up here and not in the general SF rules question forum.

I also wanted to ensure there was a post about this on the forum should this issue come up again on some other table. I'm not a vengeful person or wanting to poke fingers. I just wanted a clear, concise, mostly emotionless expression of an issue that I feel should never have come up.

Thank you for settling this issue.

This came up in during a session during PaizoCon this weekend and it kind of set Me off. I was playing an Operative during a SFS adventure and I was kind of stuck too close to a mob with reach. My Operative uses trick attack to make an attack on the monster with their pistol, and wildly succeeds the trick attack roll. This should apply the Flat-Footed condition and all the effects of Flat-Footed should apply, which is a penalty to their AC and no reactions for that attack. The GM insists that I take an attack of opportunity for the attack because its with a ranged weapon, even though the creature should be flat-footed for the attack. Apparently he has heard it from some big-wig in Starfinder Society Organized play that the rules as intended are that Trick Attacks at melee range with ranged weapons still provoke because of some Operative Exploit which is only tangentially relevant.

We go to break and he apparently when to check with that bigwig and gives the following exploit as the reason why this has to be the intended interpretation.

Uncanny Shooter (Ex)
Source Starfinder Core Rulebook pg. 96
Level Required 6
Your ranged attacks with small arms do not provoke attacks of opportunity.

First of all, usually when a feat or class ability changes a general rule, or affects a rule that could be easily misinterpreted, it provides an explanation of what the original rule is so you can compare the result. This does not.

Secondly, my interpretation of this exploit is that it is for when you fail the trick attack (it does happen) or if you get too close and want to full attack the mob with a small arm. It is not supposed to be an exploit you need in order to not provoke an AOO from a successful trick attack.

Please resolve this for me so I know what the rules actually are if they are not present in the book, or others do not have to suffer this misinterpretation.

Since there is no faster than light communications, there is no galaxy or even intersystem internet. Once you leave a system, you are essentially cut off from the pact world for what could be months at a time, and should not have access to core world infospheres. Once in the vast, you are at the mercy of whatever infosphere equivalent they have, if they have anything at all.

you are missing an easy one on the pre-Armory options, a basic Glamour Fusion for your weapons. Most of my characters have at least one Glamoured weapon. Handy for getting a weapon in and out of a security checkpoint