Metaphysician's page

Personally, I think its a symptom of a general aversion to long range combat. Sniper rifles get overly nerfed out of a fear that being able to effectively snipe opponents from actual sniper range will break the game. A better solution would be to give more long range options generally. Sniping is not a game breaker if the opponent can fight back, via spellcasters typically having options with similar range, or automatic weapons being capable of emptying a clip to drop an AoE attack on a zone at extreme range, for example. It just requires getting out of the "close quarters dungeon combat is the only combat" design paradigm.

4. Sell Price

Yes, all setting lore suggests that selling (and purchase) prices should go up. Interstellar economic chains all but collapse during the early days of the Crisis. (The book even suggests that interplanetary commerce nigh-on collapses as well, despite only being delayed by 2 days in mechanical terms.)

Supply chains and economic networks don't exist in a vacuum, is the thing. If suddenly *everything* people were shipping from planet to planet gained a surprise added ~2 day transit time, that would cause the whole system to seize up for quite a while. If a component/ingredient is delayed, then whatever you were going to make from it is also delayed, even if you have everything else ready. Its not just components, though; its also shipping and warehousing capacity. If a ship is delayed, then finished saleable goods that were supposed to go on that ship have to sit and wait. And those goods sitting and waiting fill up warehouse space, so even deliveries or manufacturing that *does* happen may be stuck, because there's no room to store it. Its all friction, that makes more friction; thus it makes perfect sense that in-system economics would also more or less collapse for a few weeks.

And that is only looking at purely in-system trade. Which isn't the case in the Starfinder setting, since drift drives make interstellar travel convenient and fairly quick. This means that a sizable chunk of the trade network includes nodes and spokes that *aren't* just delayed by +2 days, but are just *gone* for the foreseeable future. That cargo ship full of raw materials, or that transport of finished goods, or hell that *ship* period? MIA, and has to be outright replaced before things can get functioning again. In a well-developed economy like the Pact Worlds, this may be a solvable crisis since there is plenty of alternative sources and economic activity that can be repurposed. For a more outlying world? Full on emergency, because they might not have *any* viable local sources, or spare ships. . .

The issue is that, fundamentally, Starfinder is a system where you *shouldn't* ever be able to ignore the level curve. Circumstance bonus are fine, but also are by definition *circumstantial*. If you are carrying the ability to defeat foes far higher than your level with you, its not a circumstance bonus anymore.

Or, to put it another way around: Star Wars is a setting where there are different power tiers ( essentially "Force User" or "Not" ), that are fundamentally separate; and where special resources might exist to allow someone in the lower tier to challenge someone in the higher. Starfinder, by contrast, does not. Everyone exists on the same power curve.

Instead of making it a random chance, I'd suggest turning the shutdown effect into a saving through. Otherwise, it'd serve as a comparatively cheap way to cripple even extremely high CR opponents.

Think about the lack of parachutes on commercial airplanes, or seatbelts on school busses. In both cases, the structural design is *intended* to compensate for or exceed the gains this equipment t would provide

Eh, in the case of commercial planes, its more that the designers rightly concluded that parachutes would be useless. Parachutes require skill that passengers won't have, and time to put on and jump that they *also* won't have. Any situation where parachutes would even theoretically not be useless, everyone would be better off with an emergency landing anyway.

( School buses are a somewhat more complicated case. There are real reasons why school buses theoretically are safe enough without belts, but at least some of those reasons might not actually be relevant decades later. The real underlying reason in practice is mainly "Getting dozens of kids to actually belt up would take too much time and grind the transport system to a halt". )

After my previous reply I thought of a counterexample: a simple "silent alarm" trap, such as one that pings security over comms when a door is opened. I wouldn't assume PCs have "observed" a triggered trap that doesn't noticeably affect them.

This is true, but. . . hmm. My inclination is to say that this type of thing probably shouldn't even use the trap rules in the first place. Its "just" the special effect for a particular skill challenge, not fundamentally different than "spotting and avoiding a concealed guard".

Pagan priest wrote:

People keep mentioning technomancer and mechanic, but those both need to be in the 1st book released.

As far as we are aware, those two classes aren't core for 2e.

Yes, which is a major design flaw for 2e. Its like making a D&D edition where "Fighter" does not exist in the core rules. "Character who is good with tech" is as core a part of the science fiction premise as "Character who is good with swords" is for a fantasy premise. Leaving it out as if its something unimportant is. . . not promising.

I would strongly suspect that creating an intelligent undead would be viewed as *muuuuuch* different, and much more restricted, a thing than simple zombie labor. If you sell your corpse, that in itself has no impact on the state of your soul, whereas turning your body and soul into an intelligent undead very much does. Its almost certain that turning a corpse into an intelligent undead would be treated legally with the same level of suspicion as infernal contracts: only legally tolerated if its *unambiguously and explicitly consensual*. So, no, if you sell your body for use after your death, you shouldn't find yourself unexpectedly waking up as an undead horror, not unless someone is doing something *very* illegal.

Re: tech advancement rates on Golarion, don't forget that the Starstone wasn't the only apocalyptic event to happen in recorded history. While I do agree that Pathfinder suffers from the classic "Writers Have No Sense Of Scale", they can gain at least *some* out of "well, things got blown up, again".

This, btw, is one of the reasons I really like the "Trails" series of JRPGs: their timeline is a *much* more plausibly-scaled fictional history. As an example, the time between the collapse of the prior civilization, and the present day? "Only" 1200 years, with several discernible stages of cultural change and advancement occurring therein, rather than Medieval Stasis.

I would treat permanent transformations as an Affliction, most likely a Disease. Permanently changing the species of a victim would be its end-state, instead of death. Assuming it isn't purely a plot matter, anyway: if the transformation can only occur voluntarily, or only under circumstances where someone is already dead, then you don't need mechanics, only plot logic.

That said, if the new species they are being transformed into wouldn't be a valid PC race, then I would strongly suggest treating it like death anyway: if the character suddenly gains the equivalent of several levels worth of oomph, they shouldn't remain under the control of the player.

Yeah, I would say that under ordinary circumstances, a trap going off is like a character making an attack: they are now exposed and observed. A PC doesn't need to make a detection roll, because they've already "passed" it.

I suppose you could have a trap whose operation is particularly cryptic, such that it can fire off without automatically revealing its nature. However, that would definitely be worth an extra rank or two of CR, just like if a given NPC were persistently invisible.

I don't think it will ever be an exact number of years, but I do think it's just enough years to avoid making a Paizo Modrenfinder setting.

On a Doylist level, its *definitely* this. So don't expect any more definite of an answer on questions like "how long was the Gap", not if they would negate this purpose.

That said, something to keep in mind is that the Gap is a period of erased knowledge starting at one point in time and ending at another point in time. This does *not* mean that there is any greater significance to what that starting point is. Its entirely probable that whatever erased all memory and knowledge had a given temporal "area of effect", and whatever that 'starting' point of the Gap was simple "this is where the effect petered out". There was no Watsonian intent to cover up everything between the Pathfinder and Starfinder era, nothing that happened just after the latest Pathfinder AP that needed to be erased.

( This is assuming, natch, that the *other* theory of the Gap isn't true, mind: that the Gap isn't a memory and knowledge effect, but a *destruction effect*. That is to say, knowledge of the time covered by the Gap is gone, because *that time is gone*, metaphysically destroyed. Though in that case the same principal probably applies- the Gap covers the area it does, because that is the area that got irreparably destroyed. )

I mean, sure, you do want to have a scaling bonus, not just spending skill points. However, this doesn't change that there are multiple classes able to fill each roll, in terms of being able to get the right bonuses. If you want 'Tech' covered, you don't *need* a Mechanic in your party- a Technomancer, Operative, or Nanocyte could also cover the role, and probably not just them even.

Yeah, I would lean to the idea that shifting into the Ethereal would be a tool for stealth, not a tool for travel. The Ethereal doesn't really have the kind of space-time properties that would make it a useful shortcut for interstellar distances. Yeah, you *could* build something ( because the setting assumption seems to imply that you can always achieve *some* kind of "speed arbitrage" from interplanar travel ), but its a poor option if you have any other available.

Which, as an aside: I figure that you could, indeed, make a drive that works off *any* plane. In practice, though, most planes simply never will have such a drive developed, because there's no advantage and/or the plane is too hostile. Nobody is likely to make an "Abaddon Drive" because the local gods and powers of Abaddon are uninterested in helping; and nobody is going to make a Negative Plane Drive, because tech good enough to shield your ship through the journey would be good enough to shield your ship through a visit to *anywhere else* much more easily.

Something else to remember is that the Pact Worlds aren't a monolith. Pact law would establish a baseline for the corpse trade ( ie, "No killing people to steal their body" ), but different societies within the Pact Worlds would have different rules and practices beyond that. This could range from "selling your body to a necromancer is 100% forbidden" ( the Burning Archipelago, most likely ) all the way to "not only do we have no local laws about the corpse trade, but we have no local enforcement of Pact laws on it, either" ( Akiton ).

No god worth mentioning is going to be the god of only *one* group of people, but sure. He probably has some reenactors amongst his following. Though IMO, the greatest number of Erastil folk in the Starfinder era are probably "colonists", as in the first-in settlers who populate an undeveloped life-bearing planet. It takes a certain kind of mindset to want to basically become a space farmer on a primitive world, one half "I am interested in living the space equivalent of an agrarian life" one half "I wanna get away from the big space city". Erastil would encourage both.

This and other niche followings, like the aforementioned historical reenactors? Not going to keep Erastil from being a minor god of much-declined prominence and influence, though. Some deities, thanks to their domain and personality, just take the sci-fi era hard in the teeth. Erastil is one of them. And I suspect Erastil can't help but old-man gripe about this, to any other gods that are willing to hang out with the geezer. *ahem*

I mean, its trading resolve points for spells, but with the same limits on spell power as any you'd otherwise have. Its a powerful ability, sure, but I'm not sure I'd call it 'broken'. Not when you are trading survivability with each usage. Note that it also requires a full action, so its significantly less useful in combat than your average normal spellcasting.

The bigger issue with Absalom Station ( and also the Idari ) isn't whether they can fit their claimed population. Its how they can possible possess their alleged setting importance with such a tiny population. In both cases I would add an extra zero to their population, minimum. They are big enough to have room for it, and in both cases they desperately need it.

My own rough sense is that the four key "roles" in Starfinder:

-Combat
-Tech
-Diplomacy
-Magic

You need at least one person in your party whose good at each of those things. If you don't, its going to leave a notable gap that you will feel.

Compared against the D&D tradition, there's no need for a "skills" person, because in Starfinder 'skills' are a broader thing. The ones that are actually critical to have fall under 'Tech' and 'Diplomacy', and the rest are more optional. There's no need for a "healer", either, because between the stamina system and tech, healing is ubiquitous. A healing-oriented Mystic isn't *useless*, but they are just one valid character to fill the 'Magic' role amongst many others.

I tend to imagine the standard way UPBs are stored is effectively "tanks", with them being extruded as needed. However, there really shouldn't be limited to a single such manner. I can just as easily imagine UPBs having a 'transport state' where they congeal into an appropriately-shaped solid form for easy handling. I can especially imagine the latter for when people use UPBs as hard currency. Sure, sometimes you might need to make change, but a lot of the time it might be easier to have a standard 'coin worth 20 credits' or 'card worth 100 credits', where the coin or card is literally made of that many UPBs in 'transit' mode.

Something to keep in mind: there may not be much official support for super high tier fighters ( because its a fairly niche demand ). However, if your GM actually *is* running your campaign like its Gradius The RPG, they probably will *also* be amenable to statting up or modifying some appropriate "super high tech fighter upgrades". 'Something something double the BP cost to reduce its size category by one something'.

The latter is probably the intended meaning, but I doubt the former will break anything. Yeah, you could save space in your array by forming a low level weapon that still Penetrates well, in order to break high hardness objects. . . but how often is that actually going to matter, and what harm would be done by being able to do so?

Honestly, I think Starfield would be a *bad* setting to try and adapt to Starfinder. Starborn powers pretty explicitly exist on a different level above that of mere mortal humans, and completely separate from the 'standard' progression system. Trying to mix and match within a party would be like having a Pathfinder party where only *some* party members get to use the epic rules, and for pretty much the same reason. Realistically, you'd have to decide on either an 'all mortal' party, or an 'all Starborn' party. . . and even the latter would be hard to do using the Starfinder chassis.

Yeah, you could rejigger things, make space magic more common and less powerful, maybe make some other types of phlebotinum more potent and more available so there are more options. However, by the time you have a setting that is doable using Starfinder, you won't really be recognizably Starfield anymore. It'll just be Starfinder with some Starfield easter eggs/references.

( If I had to adapt Starfield to an RPG? I'd probably use Mutants & Masterminds or some similar superhero system. Starborn get to use full supers rules and higher power level, everyone else uses agent rules and PL. )

I had an arc in my Starfinder game where the players were tracing the Villain Organization of the Game to Triaxus. They ended up fighting some terrorists who were trying to set off a hot war between dragons and not-dragons.

In general? Dragons are people. Very very powerful people, but still people. . . and not as untouchably powerful as they used to be. Sure, a dragon is a big and powerful, but so is a star cruiser, or a tank brigade. Which is why all but the most ancient and epicly-powerful dragons tend to tie themselves into social structures in some way. Unless your CR is significantly north of 20, you either are obeying laws set out by someone else, or setting out laws to be obeyed by others. . . usually that latter one way or another.

85. A one foot long rod made of rough white crystal, which radiates extremely powerful Transmutation magic if so examined. Any organic matter touching it begins to transform into salt. Non-magical inanimate matter converts at a rate of roughly one bulk per round, until the nearest contiguous 5' cube of matter is converted. Magical inanimate matter can make a Fort save, DC 25, to resist on a round by round basis. Living beings gain a similar saving throw, with each failure advancing them one step on Dexterity affliction track; once contact ceases they still have to make a saving throw each round, but only at DC 20, with the first success ending the effect.

The rod can safely be touched, moved, or contained by inorganic matter, particularly metal, and creatures not made of organic matter are immune to its effects. However, if the rod is exposed to a magical effect of spell level 6 or higher, or a Transmutation effect of spell level 5 or higher ( or equivalent, GM's discretion ), it begins to glow. Roll a d20 each round it is so exposed. On a 1, it absorbs the magical effect, and is empowered. The rod itself begins growing, reaching a height of approximately 100 feet within a day's time. Its influence now extends to anything within ten feet of its surface, and can only be blocked by a minimum of five feet of inorganic matter. Worst of all, any matter transformed by it now has the same effects as the original rod, making the transmutation fully infectious to the extent that there is available organic matter. Roll a d20 once per day; on a 1, this effect finally burns out- transmuted matter is now simply ordinary salt with no special effect, and the rod begins collapsing until it is once again left as just a one foot rod.

Something to consider: even at level 20, ship combat is built on a different scale of challenge ratings than ground combat. A one-on-one fight between two ships of the same Tier is meant to be 'Hard', equivalent to a ground combat with an enemy of APL+2.

Honestly, the problem I have with most current attempts at SMGs is that they are dubiously useful. Automatic is a pretty niche function, since its almost always better to do concentrated damage that might take an enemy out. Doing a weak attack against a large number of enemies ( and then having to spend actions reloading ) is going to generally hurt you versus other ways of fighting. Doubly so if you have any melee party members who don't want to be in the middle of your AoE.

My own design preference would be to give SMGs relatively high damage ( midway between 'normal' pistols and Longarms ), but also a high Usage Rate to go with it. The idea being that an SMG with a clip size of 20 and a usage rate of 4 isn't firing single shots at single targets, its firing bursts of bullets. Then, give them all both the Automatic and the Unwieldy ( 2 Hands ) properties. So, you can use them to spray and pray, but if you use two hands you can also use them to make multiple aimed attacks per round.

I can understand the desire to do things like "lock down time scales to allow for simultaneous onboard actions", but ultimately I'm pretty sure its a case of "You can't have everything you want". Its impossible to lock down time scales without also locking down distance scales, which would mean much more rigorously defining ship combat in a way that would make it either less useful or more a pain to run or both. Being able to define the size of a hex based on the needs of the situation is a positive benefit: it allows you to use the same engine to do open space combat, knife fighting around a mega structure, and everything in between. If you can't scale hex size to circumstances, that means you either need to restrict space combat to one set of assumptions, or you need a whole bunch of added rules to handle things closer in than "open space". Ship combat is *already* a clunky minigame, it doesn't need to be made clunkier.

That said, I do agree, it would be good to silo combat and non-combat ship functionalities. Players shouldn't be encouraged to sacrifice one to gain the other, because the ship *should* serve both functions in a campaign. Relatedly, there should be a list of basic functions, like escape pods, that are *free and default*. Unless there is a good *specific* story reason, players shouldn't have to pay for stuff that is either mandatory for the story to happen, or where the only function it serves is to make the GM's life easier. Escape pods especially fit this: Starfinder is an RPG, not a roguelike or strategy game. A ship functionality that gives the GM more ways to *not* kill the party is a positive good, as the default assumption should be "the GM is not trying to kill the party, because when the party dies the story ends".

emky wrote:

'Tis a good last hurrah for Starfinder. Shame to see Starfinder dying after this.

Let's see there are 2 more hard-cover adventure paths coming, at least 5 more scenarios for season 6, and season 7 will likely have another 16 or so scenarios, Then the playtest, then Starfindeer 2e...

Yeah. I may be skeptical of some of what I'm hearing about 2e, but to say "Starfinder is dying" simply isn't factual.

My rule of thumb: order of operations should *never* matter. If a character has Ability X, you should never need to care when they acquired it. Thus, best way to resolve? If something ever makes a previous choice redundant, the player gets to reassign that choice.

Yeah, people need to remember that the "1 bulk per 10 pounds" is a sidebar for a *reason*: its a quick and dirty shorthand for if you need to figure out the encumbrance of a random *item*. Its not really meant to apply beyond that, and even for carryable/equippable items its often going to be inaccurate.

The correct answer is definitely "Ask your GM".

My own ruling? Honestly, I'd just define it as working in microgravity, period. Your exact surroundings don't matter, all that matters is that you are floating around in zero G. If someone builds an anti-gravity chamber in a planet-side research facility, you can absolutely turn this power on there, for whatever limited value that might have.

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Karmagator wrote:

Sorry, but pretty much anything is a better solution than messing with player level. That isn't a solution, that's creating a problem.

Oh, I'm sure that we could come up with something that's worse.

Admittedly, I'm having a hard time thinking of anything.

3.x-style multiclassing and ancestral hit dice, maybe?

In game microtransactions. To play a 4 armed character, you must pay your GM $5 per session, and Paizo $30 per campaign.

Hasbro: "Write that down!"

Karmagator wrote:

Sorry, but pretty much anything is a better solution than messing with player level. That isn't a solution, that's creating a problem.

Oh, I'm sure that we could come up with something that's worse.

Admittedly, I'm having a hard time thinking of anything.

3.x-style multiclassing and ancestral hit dice, maybe?

Your not thinking hardcore enough:

Race Based Class and Level Restrictions. *eg*

I would *highly* recommend against mixed level parties, at least ones involving more than a minimal gap in levels. While in theory you can still calculate APL as normal and thus build theoretically-balanced encounters, in practice? If one PC is four levels above the rest, either the typical individual enemy will be way too easy for the high level PC, or way too hard for the low level PCs. Ditto for non-combat challenges. You just won't be able to get around the fact that one party member will have vastly more capable than the rest.

The most I would suggest as viable is a two level *temporary* gap, with the expectation that the lagging PCs *will* catch up ( because they get double XP until then, or only they get milestone advancement, etc ). And even that is mostly for cases where the players might want time to acclimate to new characters. Which, not coincidentally, is the one case where I've used mixed levels in a game I ran: campaign changeover, and most of the players wanted to play new characters in what was otherwise going to be a mid-level start. Starting their characters at level 8 rather than 10 ( along with designing the first "region" as a somewhat easier 'tutorial' region ) was a mercy to them, rather than a reward to the one higher level PC.

Honestly, my two main thoughts on this discussion:

1. As some people have already touched upon, while blocking and choke points and range control may be the primary defensive strategies in a melee-oriented setting, in Starfinder? The name of the game is 'cover and concealment'. You don't primarily keep your squishies alive by putting a beefy warrior in the way to block approaching hordes of enemies, you keep your squishies alive by getting them behind a wall. Which is to say. . . seriously, people- stop hanging out standing in the open. Unless you have a good reason to be exposed, you should *always* be kneeling behind an obstacle or hugging a wall alcove or otherwise reducing your exposure to enemy fire. Every +2 AC helps, and if some enemies just don't have LOS at all, even better.

2. The entire paradigm of "tanking" from MMOs is really inappropriate in the first place. A "tank" in Starfinder ( or most tabletop RPGs ) is not defined by their ability to mechanically draw aggro and compel enemy decisions. A "tank" is defined by *survivability*, having the armor or HP or whatever that allows them to take hits, and thus take risks. Why is this important? Because this allows a "tank" to engage in risky exposed actions that force the enemy to respond or suffer, as NPC forces *also* have victory conditions and things they are trying to achieve. A Soldier doesn't need some mechanical superpower to force Will saves on enemies, if they instead do things like "I am a heavy melee fighter with high mobility, I can just bum rush the comparatively squishy spellcasting officer leading the enemy force". The enemy NPCs don't focus on Soldier and shoot less at the Operative and Mystic because they failed a Will save; they focus on the Soldier because *he's trying to cut down their leader*.

My own opinion: the "style split" in Pathfinder 2e really doesn't transfer cleanly. You'd be better off with a new "style split" for the different philosophies of magic thousands of years later.

If you have to keep the four, because they are considered fundamental metaphysical differences? Mystic is Divine, Technomancer is Arcane, Witchwarper is Occult, and Primal doesn't really have an extant class using it because people just don't affiliate with untouched nature in the same way. :p Maybe the Evolutionist could be considered Primal I suppose, and there could obviously be archetypes that grant Primal-type magical abilities.

My own viewpoint: space hexes are *usually* big, but they aren't *always* big. Part of why space hexes don't have defined scale in real world terms is because, depending on the context, they may be bigger or smaller. If your own in the open, far away from any planetary bodies, each hex might well be thousands of kilometers across or more. However, if your in a cinematically-tight asteroid belt, or in orbit around a planet, or right next to a mega structure? You are in a place where mobility, line of sight, and line of fire are all variably obstructed, and this effectively limits the scale of action. . . and thus the size of a "hex".

The only hard limit, by this theory, is that one hex can never be smaller than the largest ship involved in the encounter. I can't see this really coming up, though, unless you are doing a Trench Run style encounter where one especially large ship is the *environment* for a ship battle.

For what its worth, I'm fine with "mix and match custom sexuality changes" being a thing in the setting. I just don't think it should come from the cheap off the shelf Serum. At least as I interpret it, the serum works by sort of "throwing a switch", which is logical enough an idea for a serum that you basically just quaff to use. However, if your trying to build a new sexual physiology outside what "normally" occurs in your species ( and with the understanding that "normal" is a bit of a loaded word )? That probably should require more involvement then just drinking a potion. You are doing an extensive redesign of your genetics and physiology in a way that would require a ton of customization and a lot of double-checking.

Or basically? This would probably be a thing where you pay a couple hundred credits to a professional, who uses their expertise to help you design your new body.

Honestly, without something explicit said otherwise, the most logical interpretation is that Nethys *didn't* go anywhere. He's not a "Major Deity" because he vanished, he's not a "Major Deity" because he's just not as important anymore. And why is he not as important?

Competition.

Back in the Pathfinder era on Golarion, if you wanted to be a mad scientist, even a relatively sane one? Your choices were pretty much "Nethys" or "nobody". Whereas in the Starfinder era, a would-be mad scientist has option- they could follow Yaraesa, or Eloritu, or Oras, or even *Nyarlathotep*. All major deities with high profiles and great influence, and all having the advantage of "Being more sane and predictable than Nethys". Yes, even Nyarlathotep: you may be getting into unpredictable deceptive eldritch horror nonsense, but at least you *know* that going in. Whereas Nethys is the super old school bad variety of True Neutral, where they are deliberately inconsistent with even their own motives and interests. You can't even count on him to be CE.

Given the availability of all these competing deities, Nethys almost certainly has far far fewer worshippers than he used to, as the only scientists or mages willing to follow him are the absolutely 1% most crazy who have the same "Sanity is an obstruction to my studies" mindset that he has. And having so many fewer followers and so many competing rivals, means the *other gods* don't have the put up with his s!*+ nearly as much. He's not as *necessary* as he might have used to be, and so get less leeway and a shorter leash. Which. . . honestly, probably has him throwing a hissy fit and more time in his lab muttering about "Showing them, showing them all", further reducing his profile.

Honestly, this argument is mostly reminding me about how annoyingly hard it is to find stats in Starfinder for "basic members of generic armed forces". Its like no one ever considered the possibility that you might need stats for infantry or ship crew of one of the baseline humanoid races, either as enemies ( because the players decided to tick off someone official ) or as allies ( because they have support from someone official ). Even now, you have to basically hunt and peck from a dozen different sources, and also do the truly bizarre move of taking a bunch of stat blocks under the 'Mercenary' label, and port them *back* into being regular military.

The Gap also needs to be powerful enough to prevent the Pact Worlds' deities, who by and large are not located in the Pact Worlds, from being able to help explain it and/or fill in lost history.

The issue is less the deities ( there are plausible reasons that a circle of a few dozen people might keep a secret ), and more everyone *else* filling out the planes who have regularly interplanar contact with Golarion. And note that, on the scale that would matter for the purposes of the Gap, "regular" ranged down to "every few centuries". In particular, every planar being whose part of a structure where "regular intelligence reports" exist? Is already going to know way more than enough to compromise the purpose of the Gap. It doesn't do any good to wipe out all memory of 99% of trivial everyday affairs, if all the info in the heavenly and hellish equivalent of the CIA Worldbook still exists on Golarion. . . because that stuff is the important stuff that would have people, *inside and outside the fourth wall*, wanting to enact the Gap in the first place.

The Gap pretty much *has* to be universe-wide, or else it wouldn't work. The Golarion System is a major region of importance on a planar level, and also once interstellar travel became possible, it should equally be an important region on an interstellar level. If everyone in the solar system forgot 500 years of history, but everyone who had contact with and knowledge of them elsewhere retained it? This would very quickly mean "None of that 500 years would actually be forgotten anymore", not without a direly implausible conspiracy of silence.

That isn't even counting how, if only Golarion got hit with the Gap, it would put them at a crippling disadvantage versus every other society that *hasn't* suffered such a disruptive event. This would require some major juggling to make sure no one would be able or willing to take advantage of such a moment of weakness.

Metaphysician wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

The field test is never going to get to the vanguard or evolutionist, those won't be in the playtest or SF2 core rulebook. We're getting soldier, operative, envoy, solarion, mystic, and witchwarper, it seems.

Wait, what? No Mechanic? No Technomancer? That feels like it *has* to be a mistake. Are you sure they just haven't itemized all the classes included yet?

My own expectation is that the Mechanic and Technomancer will be released as part of a tech-based Rules book within a year of initial release. So you won't have them instantly, but you should have them pretty early on.

That would be. . . almost incomprehensibly bizarre. Starfinder is a space opera setting, "figurative and literal tech wizard" is one of *the* most defining character archetypes for the milieu. It'd be like doing a medieval fantasy setting, and relegating the Fighter to a secondary supplement.

I am really keeping my fingers crossed that this is a miscommunication, because if not? It *really* doesn't bode well. The kind of design mindset that would lead to "Eh, who needs the Mechanic class?" would be highly likely to lead to all kinds of other really bad design decisions.

The field test is never going to get to the vanguard or evolutionist, those won't be in the playtest or SF2 core rulebook. We're getting soldier, operative, envoy, solarion, mystic, and witchwarper, it seems.

Wait, what? No Mechanic? No Technomancer? That feels like it *has* to be a mistake. Are you sure they just haven't itemized all the classes included yet?

If anything, a lone mech might be easier to handle than an extraneous ship. Just temporarily treat the one player whose piloting it as three levels higher than normal, and balance things thusly. Assuming 4-5 PC party, call it roughly equal to a +1 APL increase.

The main thing I'd worry about it class balance, since not all classes are equally effective against mech-scale opponents, depending on how tightly you interpret the rules. Imagine your fighting against a single mech as an enemy, appropriately balanced for a tough but reasonable difficulty. This could be a problem for the people on foot if they are, say. . . Envoys and Mystics, and find most of their abilities useless because they can't effect constructs ( ie, the enemy mech ) and/or need line of effect ( ie, and can't hit the enemy mech pilot ). OTOH, if the party Envoy *is* the one piloting your lone mech, while the people on foot are Soldiers and Vanguards? Not the same issue.

Michael Gentry wrote:

It seems very weird to recalculate the CR of a fight every time a combatant drops. That leads to all sorts of absurd outcomes, of which the Solarian's powers shutting down is not even the dumbest. Furthermore, as BNW pointed out, if you're going to recalculate CR every time an enemy drops, then you also should be recalculating APL every time a PC drops.

As long as the PCs are still rolling dice and spending resources and not taking 10-minute rests, then a CR 5 encounter remains a CR 5 encounter until the last space goblin drops.

I agree. But if you have a GM dead set on reading it another way there's nothing to really lean on that says that they're out right wrong.

There absolutely is something to lean on, its just not in the rules book. Its "Look, GM, you are making an idiotic ruling that is harming the fun of the game. Either stop a moment and reconsider whether this is a good idea, or I am leaving." Because despite pretensions otherwise, the GM is not God. Their authority extends only as far as the players allow it to extend.

As I've said many a time: a rules solution cannot fix a player problem. And the GM is absolutely a fellow player.

There is no BP-to-credit conversion, but remember that you *do* earn credits for completing CR challenges. And most if not all things you might do to earn BP, should probably also involve CR challenges and thus generate XP and loot. . .

This mostly just reminds me of my first and most universal house rule ever: I get rid of "Immune to Mind-Affecting". Mindless stuff is immune to telepathy and mind control and such, as a property of the Mindless trait. Anyone that *is* a thinking being by contrast? Can be mind-altered, even if they are an undead or a construct.

If the fight is "no longer significant enough" to count for the Solarian's powers, it should also be no longer significant enough *to keep running*. GMs are *also* not supposed to run fights that aren't meaningful challenges.