Mayuri's page

Happy New Year to all.

As we start the new year, the Onboarding Committee is asking for your help. Specifically, we need your feedback.

We're asking that you think about what would help you onboard new players, GMs, VOs, or lodges today to PFS/SFS and what tools would have been helpful to have when you first started with PFS/SFS. Our focus currently is on PFS2, but we will be using this feedback and what we learn to guide us in creating tools for SFS2 as well. To that end, please take a moment to fill out the anonymous survey we're using to capture feedback.

This community input is crucial to giving us direction on what we should be working on in the eyes of the people for whom these tools are being created.

We thank you in advance for your time and for participating in this community survey.

I've been thinking about this for a bit, and there was some discussion around it last night on the lodge Discord server.

When a player builds a character in SF1, they're not necessarily always building a character optimized for a Starship role. During sessions as a GM, there's normally a "well, you've got the best bonus in this skill" or "I don't have any relevant skills for any role but Chief Mate or Gunner" moment. As a result, players can sometimes feel stuck.

This is where I started thinking about the change to the rules to more closely mirror how PF2 does things. It would be helpful, though I understand it would likely be a major undertaking for the development of the system, if skill feats and combat feats worked in both personal combat and starship combat roles, with the feats describing their benefits in each situation vs. having to select different feats based on whether you're attempting to optimize for Starship vs. Personal combat situations.

That having been said, not all feats have to work in both situations, but those that make sense to benefit both calling it out would be a step in the right direction.

Does this mean we could see stats for an Iconic Precog sanctioned for OP use?

I'm currently beginning my prep to run this scenario online this weekend and I've run into a hitch.

On pgs. 21 and 25, in the Ruined Valley encounters, neither the Skeletal Vesk nor the Skeletal Pahtra show an Initiative listing. Should they be Initiative 0, or was this an oversight?

Unshakeable Belief for Dvimnix mentions being able to use either Bluff or Sense Motive against Trick Attacks, but no skill bonus for Bluff shows on the NPC. Was this an oversight, and, if so, what should the Bluff bonus be?

I need some feedback on this as it’s a touchy subject.

There is a player I GM for who’s nerfed their character to be the best at everything, and, quite frequently at the table, they will announce that the auto succeed at either an aid another action or at specific skill checks. As high as the bonuses on the character may be, however, I am of the mindset that you don‘t take an action at all unless you roll (or announce taking 10 or 20, when permitted to do so). This came up in a big way when running SFS 2-12, when they announced an auto success where their maximum roll would have been below the scenario stated DC.

With that said, how would you handle this? Am I right to force the roll or to announce taking 10 or 20, especially if there is suspicion the player may not be being honest about die rolls?

I went into this week at my scheduled SFS game knowing I was going to play the Vanguard. I had high hopes for the character, based on the write up and discussions prior to playing the character. But, it did not meet up with the excitement I initially had.

That's not to say the class is bad. It was a combination of things - my build when putting points into attributes, as well as spreading out my skill points (which I also tend to do) vs. dumping points only into specific skills. I did not get to try out a shield, but, having read through how they benefit a player, that was not an option I found particularly exciting. The other problem during my game was my dice were cold, so my rolls left me disappointed with what my character was able to do. The other piece of this is that we played 1-26: Truth of the Seeker. Due to the "boss fight" at the end, the Entropic Strike (plus my melee weapon having Fusions on it to then make it count as magic for purposes of DR) made me one of the few characters able to damage the BBEG, even though the amount of damage was extremely limited.

As for feedback on the character class and my thoughts on shields, in general, here's what I came up with:

1 - Limiting the Entropy pool to the attribute bonus makes it less likely to be able to be effective. Going to either Level + bonus or 1/2 Level + bonus would make more sense to me (since I did not max out the Con score, I had an Entropy pool of 2 maximum, which was completely on me).

2 - The saving throws leave the class very vulnerable to anything but FORT saves. At low level, or if you do max out CON, FORT is your only good save, meaning you'll have to burn Feats in Iron Will and Lightning Reflexes, or to purchase magic items to bolster your saves in order to not have the most pathetic saving throws possible.

3 - Entropic Strike could be better, whether by doing better damage at lower level. Solarians start out at 1d6 with theirs. If the low damage is kept, thought may want to be put into that damage being on top of melee damage dealt instead of being so low, as that may make it less likely to use either the class or the ability, even if that becomes a special choice the player can make at higher levels for the damage to be in addition to their melee damage. Or, a different option could be that specific weapons may need to be created for the Vanguard class where the damage stacks by design.

4 - The Entropic Strike may also benefit from being able to do full damage against enemies that would traditionally take half or no damage from melee. Based on the "boss fight" mentioned above, I could do a maximum of 3 points of damage on any Entropic Strike. When I ran through my Entropy Pool, since there were two of the BBEG's favored targets in the combat, making me not its chosen target, I ended up just going to my melee weapon (a Tactical Greataxe with both a Thrown and a Returning fusion on it), where I could do more damage, even though it was also halved, by rule.

5 - As previously mentioned, I opted not to try out the shields. Having read through the mechanics, although it makes more sense, in a way, than an automatic bonus against all enemies, even if you are not facing them, I would personally rather see something akin to the shield option becoming a feature the class gets whereby they tweak their armor in such a way as to gain a shield on one arm and then having the bonus apply, or, it being a specific kind of force field. The shield functionality taking up a hand makes using a shield a better choice if you're playing a Witchwyrd, Skittermander, Kasaatha, an augmentation for additional arms, or an augmentation for a prehensile tail. That was why I opted not to use a shield, since I wanted to use a two-handed melee weapon with the character.

Overall, I like the potential the class has. I just believe there are some tweaks that would make it even better.

I had a question posed to me by a player in a friend's Starfinder game, and I saw nothing in the rules to lean on for this. So, I'm turning to the collective mind here for answers (though my own feeling is that the answer is no).

The question posed is this: is it possible to multiclass as a Mystic by adding a Mystic with a different connection as the other class?

In a nutshell, what it boils down to, for me, at least, is whether the connection is considered part of the character class (again, my thought being no).