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Sounds like my mystic. I got heavy armor from Star Knight, so I had it starting at 2nd level, but the extra Con at 5 was a big deal. Before then I was dropping multiple times a fight, even in heavy armor. Mk1 upgrade is now in Con as well. Between those two increases that's effectively an extra hit I can take from whatever. My armor is nothing special right now, but I'm glad I have it instead of light armor since my Dex is garbage anyway.

Enhanced resistance at 7 has also helped a ton. I actually put off getting my first upgrade so I could get a speed suspension, and once we found a jetpack it improved my mobility significantly. So all of that is really good stuff.

Can someone remind me why the PCs can't just fly to the top of the Spire in their ship? Sure the Chariots get chased off by the dragon, but there doesn't seem to be any reason why they can't just land the Sun Diver up there and yell at Nysteryx to come fight them.

The book says it's supposed to be a "covert" mission, but why? Once they start shooting people someone's gonna get on a comm and tell the dragon. It feels like they started with the second half of Rogue One and took out all the interesting parts. I might have Nysteryx show up early and start intermittently breathing fire into the building. Her troops are largely immune, right?

I had Taeress set up a lunch meeting with Nib in Asanatown. Nib was in Asanatown doing an interview with a local news station about DCI. The interview took place while the PCs were on the linecrawler and during that time Zeylan took control of the news station and announced his coup.

That's genius. If I run this again I'm using that.

It's tough. Frankly it seems like a distraction from the actual storyline. There's no real reason to go there except that a "plot compass" points them there and there might be useful tech? Meanwhile there's an actual war going on that they are definitely not participating in. As they learn about the dungeon they may even decide that the Eshtayiv is more important than General Khaim and the Malikah - since they haven't directly seen what she's up to yet.

It's frustrating that such a cool dungeon - and this dungeon is great - got such a poor integration into the AP. We had a fantastic time with the adventure, largely since my players don't mind being on rails a little bit. The design of the dungeon is really fun, and it tells a cool story as you explore it. The battle with Lod Coster is really my only problem with the dungeon itself.

I would warn GMs that they need to figure out what to do with Ilvatri if the PCs decide that they're not gonna attack him. He's a jerk, but he's also happy to tell them anything they want to know about Ezorod as long as they defeat the colour. Once they have that handled, there's really no reason for them to fight each other. Feels tacked on to have him just "get bored and attack". My group decided to fight him since they had a couple PCs dying from the Touch, but they could have just gone home.

Lod Coster is a solo caster enemy in a tight confined area. He's gonna get into melee immediately. He's got a spell that is supposed to be used to push enemies back out of melee, but it provokes opportunity attacks when he casts it.

My party saw him, bum rushed him, and he flailed ineffectually with his staff for a round or two before they dogpiled him. I recommend that GMs running this encounter figure out a way to make it work better for him. I imagine that if he had gotten the mind blast off in a surprise round that could have changed things, but they spotted him as soon as they got down the stairs so there was no chance for that.

I like the brightly lit ritual idea. Between the mirror room, the flame wall room, and the three keys they'll have plenty of opportunities even without going back to the ship. I think what I'll have them do is that they'll have to bring all three keys to the mirror room to do that rest.

I might put a clue or two on the lower level so they have to decide if they want to backtrack to do the ritual or press on to try and finish the dungeon. Make it an interesting decision instead of an automatic "get out of Ezorod free" card. Pretty quickly they should find a clue that they can fix the curse if they win the dungeon, then later they'll get the one that tells them they can spend some time soaking up some rays in the mirror room. Make it cost something too, though I'm not sure a straight SP cost makes sense. Maybe they have to take a level of radiation, which is why they need the three keys instead of just going to the ship and opening a window shade.

So about the Eshtayiv's Touch...

Two of my PCs got it and don't have access to the remove affliction spell. Should I just tell them "Sorry about it, but you're undead now"? They've got a polyfluid grinder in the ship, but nobody can make a spell amp that high level. They also haven't bothered to buy any of that spell since they cost 3000 a pop.

There's no such item in the adventure either, so the PCs have to just keep going until the end right? I'm wondering how to give them the info that if they can free the Eshtayiv they'll be cured. Of course, this is all thrown off by bringing Amaldrel with them to take the place of Ilvatri. Maybe when they leave there's a moment where the Eshatyiv is momentarily freed, just enough so that the affected PCs can shake free - assuming they've survived that long themselves.

This is presenting a rather thorny problem for me, since the two people affected by it are the party tank and healer, so the group will be pretty ragged by the time they get to the Color and Ilvatri at the end of all this.

Halfway through Book 4 with six players. I haven't really changed much in the way of loot for the campaign, but a couple of the payments from various people and institutions were increased per player.

So far I haven't been keeping track of WBL or anything like that, but nobody seems to be complaining yet. They seem less well-equipped than our Dead Suns group does, but nothing detrimental.

I like your explanation for the whole thing and don't really have anything to add, plot-wise. It's what I'm gonna use if my players ever bother asking about the connection between Ezorod and Noma. It's pretty unlikely given that they're mostly concerned with not getting burned to death by the flaming undead that ignore fire resistance (right at the level most PCs get access to resistance too, very frustrating for my PCs).

The description of the being in C6 is pretty close to the descriptions of shoggoths generally and Yog-Sothoth more specifically. In fact, that's what I went with in my game. Yog-Sothoth, being an Outer God, sent agents to Noma after trapping the Eshtayiv.

I am running the AP for a party of 6 and I think they're just gonna mow over the encounters as written.

Any ideas on how I can buff this up for them?

My party is six and I haven't buffed anything for them I wouldn't have done for four. This module isn't as blatantly deadly as some of the others and that's fine. Eos club they did have some resource management issues. They got through most of the first level and had to decide if they wanted to rest at "home" or in the haunted room. Home could mean the Brass Dragons could regroup, but the haunted room they could be discovered. They rested in town and I added one more pack of Brass Dragons to the lower level. Added some flavor during a fight about how these were the guys they were told to watch out for etc. There were a couple of good battles in there. Monchulla was great, the metalhead mechanic got combined with a group of soldiers because the party split themselves again, and Meiji was very concerning for the group as well.

For the Bloodshots, I definitely had Mama and Kato together. The encounter is much more dynamic that way. I ran this a couple months ago, so I'm trying to remember all the details, but there were at least one or two other enemies there. Surviving Bloodshots from earlier encounters or Big Tola or somebody. There was lots of movement and skirmishing, since we've got a party with lots of different ranges and squishyness levels. Fast melee, slow melee, short ranged, long ranged, area attacks, etc. So the levels and obstructions really worked nicely in that fight.

My group ended up buying Cryo-Generics though. Anyone have any ideas what to do with that going forward? We're currently in Sun Divers about to go to Noma, so there's some time to figure out something interesting.

Prestine and the Solar Flare are pretty clunky. I didn't bother with the flare, but I like yours better.

Prestine was tough. We had an engineer with sleeping problems who was initially intrigued but decided it was hooey and said so in front of all her customers. She got upset and dragged him and the other PC (the rest were all shopping elsewhere) inside to have a stern talk with them and shooed them out the back door.

The one I had a harder time with was the biker gang. They tried to mess with the party pilot, and since this whole AP is light on starship stuff, I was hoping this could have been a good place for an enercycle chase. It just ended up being a back-alley brawl though. Not terrible, but also not as cool as it could have been.

Anyone here notice that the base Sun Diver is over its PCU capacity? I think it has the shields costed as if they were 120s instead of 240s. Current PCU cost is 193, power core only has 175.

Also, I think you did great by having them crash land on Noma. This means that they have a very desperate situation trying to get the ship repaired. It'll cost them quite a bit to get enough siccatite to put the thing back together, which is kinda fine. They didn't make poor decisions, so there's no good reason to TPK them. They had some bad luck, which is always a danger, and now it costs them to remedy the bad luck. It happens.

If they decided to fly the ship past Noma to see what else they could find, that would be worth TPK. If they decided to try to ram the anomaly instead of using weapons or escaping, that would be worth TPK. If a bunch of protocites eat them when they get out of the ship, that's probably worth a TPK. I dunno, I think you did the right thing.

That's what I should have done. He was immediately bum-rushed by the vanguard, and by the time he was able to get out, the rest of the party caught up and he was completely surrounded. Some extra goons would have been nice.

For music, Coheed and Cambria.

Their records tell a story about a galactic war between necromantic mages, angels, and genetically engineered robots with cosmic powers. There are prophecies, spaceships, viruses, prison planets, and huge space battles. A main character gets possessed by a ghost and crashes his spaceship. An angel cuts off her wings to join the hero in his quest. Characters are betrayed and thrown in the radiation mine.

There's intrigue, action, romance, and cyborgs. It's everything I want my Starfinder games to be.

Can't help but notice that Zeylan Trinipol, the boss of the adventure and dude on the cover, can't actually do his listed tactics.

He's got a sniper rifle, and is supposed to do trick attacks with it, but definitely doesn't have Debilitating Sniper. Even if he did, the pistol is better with the range penalty because of trick attack.

Did I miss an errata somewhere that says operatives can successfully use sniper weapons?

It's worth noting that while pilot characters will have things to do in this AP, it's not really geared towards starship combat. There are moments where you'll shine, but you won't get the best bang for your buck compared to the first three APs.

We're about to go into Laubu Station and I forgot to add the psychic suppressor from this thread to the Breath of Embers. My PCs are definitely in a "shoot first, ask questions never" mood when it comes to Space Nazis. One of them is a brakim (and the players just finished Against the Aeon Throne) so he's not at all interested in a peaceful solution.

They haven't rested though. They did the entire Breath of Embers and fought a bunch of Collective troops in the streets before heading to the station, so they're effectively out of spells, biohacks, resolve, etc. I'm interested to see how those two elements combine. Will they just kick in the front door or will they try to be more circumspect because of their diminished resources?

One thing I'd love to see in player's guides is definitely how much starship combat is gonna be in the AP.

We've got a guy who took the pilot theme in Dawn of Flame. It's not quite as bad as the shobhad in AAT, but there just aren't as many opportunities for that character to shine.

I'm pretty sure Signal of Screams has more starship combat than this AP.

AAT, Dead Suns, and (presumably) Attack of the Swarm all require starship combat. Dawn of Flame does not.

We started tonight and our party is ridiculous. They're definitely towards the murderhobo end of the spectrum, and a little silly...

The characters all have one word names too. Some have an actual name, but everyone just goes by their callsign.

So we have:
Stampede, elven gunslinger - an elf of few words, but many bullets (elf combat expertise envoy lawman)

Mate, copaxi techno with a dark past and a drinking problem (copaxi outlaw)

Brain, ysoki genius mechanic and his doshko-wielding combat drone "Pinky"

Apex, aka "The Grenade Tossin' Kid" (human bombard soldier pilot)

Fixer, rubberman escapee from the Star Empire (brakim boundary vanguard)

Doc, Android genetech who is definitely voiding his warranty (xenometric maraquois android biohacker pilgrim)

So far, everything is going great and I can't wait to see how everyone plays going forward.

I'll be starting this campaign in about two weeks with a couple of the modifications from this thread.

Anyone have any recommendations for ways to foreshadow General Khaim and the Malikah? That's always a priority for me when I run these.

Name: Lola (Jessica Scarnetti)
Race: human
Classes/levels: barbarian 9 (5e)
Adventure: Asylum Stone
Location: Black Keep
Catalyst: Dark Rider's axe
The Gory Details: I rewrote some parts of Asylum Stone when I converted to 5e. One of the things I did was to have the Dark Rider come after one of my PCs, Lola, while they were in Kaer Maga. After dealing with some family drama where we learned that she was secretly a Scarnetti, they assaulted the Black Keep and came to the final showdown with the Rider. Lola charged in and was immediately overwhelmed. To try and escape, she dived into the Whispering Well and hid while the rest of the party tried to distract the Rider. Unfortunately the well kept showing her visions of her beheading at the hands of the Rider. When she came out to try and make a final desperate attempt to defeat the Rider, he turned, drew his headsman's axe and slashed Lola's throat open. As she lay there trying to survive the grievous wound, he removed her head with one final stroke.

I'm a brand new Society GM and reporting is easily the most opaque part of the whole process. This issue right here is a great example.

Please cancel my Pathfinder AP subscription. I'm moving to Starfinder.

If I subscribe to all the Starfinder physical books do I need to also cancel my Society subscription or will it automatically become free?

The characters from Coheed and Cambria's new album are my favorite pop culture Starfinder characters right now.

Nostrand (aka Creature): Human Outlaw Envoy
Longarm proficiency, higher Dex than Cha, expertise in intimidate and disguise. Under no circumstances is he allowed to take any improv that prevents surprise mechanically or thematically.

Nia (aka Sister Spider/Glass Widow): Human Icon Operative (add a little technomancer when she becomes Glass Widow)
Daredevil specialization, ranks in engineering and computers (add sciences when GW), profession (administrator)

Otto (aka Colossus): Half-orc Mercenary Soldier
Bombard style, profession (gambler)

Other characters:
The Warden is totally Azlanti.
The Windows are akashic mystics.
My head canon for Vaxis is that he'll grow up to be a Star Shaman.

I want to start running Starfinder Society games but I have a number of questions.

Firstly, I've tried to join NWPFS a couple times and haven't been able to join that forum. Everyone I've talked to says that's the first place I should go if I want to run Society, but I can't access it.

Secondly, what I really want to do is more like an "open table" concept than fully public games. I'm hoping to build a community of new gamers out of people in my neighborhood, not just attract people who already play Starfinder and know the scenarios and have all the books. This year I introduced a group of people to RPGs, and since we played at a bar we got a lot of attention from people in the neighborhood. That campaign ended and to replace it I want to run Starfinder, and I've had lots of positive interest. Because of how many players I expect to have coming through week after week, I wanted to use the Society framework to track everyone, but it's not very accessible to new or casual players - my target audience - if they have to buy a Core Rulebook and carry their chronicle sheets around.

I thought about just pretending it's a private game, and handling everything that way, but since it'll be in a public place with the ability to walk in off the street and into a seat, I wasn't sure if that was allowed. It's also in a bar, which I wasn't sure if I could do either.

Anyway, how do I make this game happen?

I want to hit the following points:
-Game at this bar because it is a neighborhood gathering place
-Accessible to new players without requiring $50 and a login just to sit down
-Able to keep track of characters across multiple scenarios and groups
-Easy structure (SFS scenarios, as opposed to homebrew or APs)

If I can get these it's a bonus:
-Players can take their characters to other SFS tables
-Develop more regular players to play APs

I feel like I'm rambling, but I'm just not sure if I'm interpreting the rules of Society right or not since I don't know anyone to talk to.

TLDR: I want to run a game at a bar for whoever shows up in order to create a new community of players out of the disparate people I've run into over the last several months of running games in this neighborhood. Is SFS the right tool for this, and if not, what would work?

My party almost died to the sewer ooze, handled the goblins nicely, avoided the optionals in that room, then avoided the quasits too. After that they got sneaky and sent their goblin to scout ahead. They were almost able to avoid the elite gobbos, but someone's armor clanked so they hid around the corner to the skeleton room - but didn't actually go past the threshold so the bones didn't wake up. Then, because they had purified the pool (the rogue turned out to know all about Pharasma) they got past the statue. They were able to sneak up on Drakus and took him out with some difficulty. Then they locked themselves in the room, looted it, and snuck out after they determined that the remaining goblins weren't watching.

So the encounter labeled "trivial" ended up being the most difficult. The encounter they went to great lengths to avoid - the elite goblins - ended up being the most interesting. And the deadly choking sand trap and the evil idol ended up protecting them. My party is all brand new to RPGs, and they were down a player as well. So we did it in one session, nobody died, though they ran out of healing and nearly died a couple times.

I want to build my own dungeon with their encounter building guidelines and see how it feels, but this felt more swingy than I would have liked. At least goblins die easily, but still.

I've been out of the Paizo loop for a minute, but I'm looking to get a case of minis for my new campaign. It'll feature lots of goblins, orcs, kobolds, and other relatively basic humanoids at the beginning, along with plenty of animals.

Should I get one of the newer sets, or a couple of the Goblin sets, or is there another set that works particularly well for this kind of thing? Should I look into the pawns instead, since I'd only be able to get one case of minis until the end of summer?

Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

My account doesn't seem to have my society number attached to it. Tanis was able to find it for me, and I used it all weekend at Paizocon, but it doesn't show up on my account here on the Paizo site. The number is 447508.

Thanks for your help.

Paddle and Fringe!

IMC they fought two copies of Scorizscar with max HP and took one out each round. It's getting ridiculous. Next up is the last dungeon of the module. I'm worried about Jerribeth and Vang. Spellcasters are my weakness as a GM, and these two need to really bring it.

Name: Scorizscar
Race: Woundwyrm
Classes/levels: Dragon
Adventure: Demon's Heresy
Location: The woundwyrm's lair, Area L
Catalyst: PCs

There's precedent for some of this, actually.

Yeah, it comes out something like +22/+22/+22 3d6+23 etc, after bull's strength and haste (new spell for lvl12) with mythic PA. Swift for another one. Drops any PC right now except our guardian.

edit: thought I added his haste spell, but it was there all along!

This is awesome. I was about to sit down and do this myself, so thanks for saving me a ton of work! I gave him one more level for my group, since they've got an extra person. 12 is a nice break point for him, since PA goes up at that level and all of his saves go up as well.

FWIW, there is literally NO downside to Beyond Morality. You always count as whichever alignment is most favorable to you, so holy word, blasphemy, etc, never affect you.

Just gotta jump in here to second the tzitzimitl. That creature is sick and wrong and I love it.

Our Sacred Shield is AWESOME. They're smack in the middle of book 2 right now, and neither paladin has a real smite (the other is a redeemer), but it hasn't mattered too much.

Aldarionn and Samy both hit the nail on the head. The NPCs in town didn't get to high level because they didn't go on this particular adventure.

Kingmaker and Skull and Shackles really reward the GM and the players for taking it slow. You get to add more adventure in, and you play around more in those lower levels that are so much easier to GM for. I'm actually running both Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous right now, for the same group, and they like Kingmaker because they get to play around and explore and get to know the setting and NPCs, but they like Wrath because they're cranked all the way up to 11 and blow stuff up.

Now if you look at the world as if the APs were happening as they came out, what you get is several groups of high level adventurers around the world that have all appeared relatively quickly, but not really as many as you might think. The group from Reign of Winter might not be on Golarion anymore, the Jade Regent group might be in Minkai or somewhere else not near the Inner Sea, and the Skull and Shackles and Kingmaker groups might not even be important yet. So you could populate your world with these guys, or maybe not.

So my players, being rather clever, figured that they could drop really heavy rocks on the roof of the Garrison and/or stone shape a hole in the ceiling and come in that way instead. Gonna skip the details, but it worked. They have stone shaped their way (with a scroll they bought for the purpose) into Deradnu's room from the roof and that's where we stopped the session.

My question is, does this cause a problem, story-wise or CR-wise? Obviously, the inhabitants are going to come running up the stairs once the alarm gets raised, and Jeslyn and Deradnu are not going to be pleased with a bunch of adventurers melting holes in their walls. The PCs are also still level 3, since there are five of them, so it might be a little overwhelming when every tiefling in the place comes running upstairs. Finally, they're missing almost every opportunity for devotion points.

Should I change anything, or just leave it as is and let the natural defenses of the Garrison handle them? Will it matter if they don't get the devotion points?

My group is just about to finish book 2, and this campaign is definitely on hard mode, even with 5 PCs. Figure out how you're going to deal with weather/terrain, travel, foreign languages/cultures, etc as a party. You need some good social skills, you need good knowledges, and you need to be able to account yourselves well in combat.

One of the most important things you're gonna need for this campaign, however, is buy-in. If you're not interested in playing THIS campaign, there aren't lots of opportunities for PC-specific side quests. Within each book, if you come up with something (one of my PCs is getting married to an NPC they've met, for example) run with it, but don't expect to be able to really go back to earlier places and characters unless you bring them with you.

I have a helper GM! He's learning how to GM and characters are his strong suit anyway, so he's playing some/all of whichever NPCs are gonna be hanging around at any given time. Helper GMs are great, I recommend them whenever your game needs it.

IMC Millorn got banished by the crusaders for "fraternal relations" [sic] with dretches. He's mostly harmless, but goes on constantly about how great demons are and how he's discovered the right spot to tickle a dretch to make its stinking cloud go off.

Since he's too low-level to set off detect evil, they just figured he was misguided and took him with. I think I like the idea of the hallucinogenic fungus though. He'll settle down when they finally get him upstairs, I think.

Gorbacz, I believe that's pronounced "Jigga". Or sometimes "Hova" in certain dialects.

Yeah, the map folio is very pretty, but doesn't really see tons of use past book 2. Two of the three maps have been awesome for me in Shackled Hut so far, because I can just point at various places and the players understand where everything is, but once they leave Irrisen, the two Irrisen maps are suddenly obsolete.

Haven't gotten to Maiden, Mother, Crone yet, so I can't tell you if the Iobaria map is useful at all. I wish they had included a map of Triaxus though.

Yeah, we brought in a couple of new PCs after a death and they were both bearing the mantle of the Red Rider. Since they came in at different times, the story was that they each thought the other one had died and that they were the last one left from their previous party. Imagine their surprise when they found each other. They had an awesome "bro-ment" together upon reuniting, made more awesome by the fact that those two characters, both male, are played by the two women in our group.

Everything being mentioned here is totally true. We're most of the way through book 2 now, and it is much easier than book 1. Shackled Hut has so far been much easier than Snows of Summer, but I'm looking ahead at 3-5 and those appear to be Hard Mode.

Book 1 is on pretty hard rails, but it's an AP. That's what most APs do, so the GM really has to get the party personally involved. For that mater, the players have to want to be there. In my campaign, we've got an Order of the Staff cavalier that is super excited to be working for the Queen of Witches, the Spellbreaker inquisitor that HATES witches and loves that they get to hunt down the biggest witch in Irrisen, a bounty hunter who chased a former PC through the Winter Portal, and a pair of bumbling old mages that want to rescue Baba Yaga so she can teach them Real Ultimate Power(tm).

Also, I think a lot of people who have problems with this AP are running into the fact that Snows of Summer is one of the weaker books in the AP. Unlike most APs that start out ok and get worse as they go, this one has a weak start, but ramps up quite a bit. Maiden, Mother, Crone doesn't have a great reputation on these boards, but I like it. Frozen Stars has great RP opportunities. Rasputin Must Die! is easily the best part of the AP, but that might be my Rasputin fanboy showing. Witch Queen's Revenge isn't quite as good as the previous two, but the right GM could really make it pop.

TLDR: If you're playing, make yourself care about the Witch Queen, one way or another. The books get better after 1.

Musketeer starts with a gun as well. And it's not a broken one like the gunslinger and holy gun start with.

As for the regular monsters, I've got tons of "normal" monster minis running around. I just thought it would be cool to get the specific ones for the AP.

Thanks for the help!

Do these come with bases or not? It's unclear from the description, but it sure sounds like they don't and you have to get the bestiary box to get bases. I would love to get these to fill in the gaps for my reign of winter campaign, but if i also have to get the bestiary box, that might be a little too much for my tender wallet.