Mr Jade's page

Ravingdork: That analogy doesn't hold up, as I'm not arguing that superior ships shouldn't be harder for an inexperienced pilot to fly, but how does changing these that absolutely impact none of the piloting systems make it harder for the pilot to fly. It doesn't even require that the party improve their ships, as the rules state:

When the characters’ Average Party Level increases, so does

the tier of their starship...

Meaning that a ship that is fundamentally the same (changes that do not impact performance or mass) handle differently, as does ships that are literally the same. According to the rules, if the party levels up between two ship encounters, the DCs for flying the exact same ship are now harder. That makes no sense.

Piloting checks should be based on the ships' equipment, so engines, computers, base frame, etc. rather than the arbitrary tier.

Even assuming that extreme maneuverability would make a fighter harder to control, how does only changing something that doesn't affect mass at all, like installing a better computer when the tier increases, decrease pilot effectiveness?

A pilot of given rank 10 can somehow pilot a ship of tier 4 better than tier 5, even though the only difference between the two is a better computer. That doesn't make any sense outside of abstract gamey-ness.

As noted elsewhere this isn't a system problem, it is a tactics problem. D20, Shadowrun, Traveller would all have the same problems with those tactics. Snipers with those tactics are also a limited use specialty. Try those tactics clearing a building or in the corridors of a starship, and see how well they work. And that has been well over 50% of what I have seen in scenarios.

Aside from the new Disney films, Stormtroopers and Clonetrooper engage at close range. This is also beside the point.

Making ranged weapons shorted ranged helps with the issue, and that's just a fact.

Obviously clearing a ship doesn't work well for snipers, which is a problem too, because most of the time the combat is either/or. You can't effectively use the snipers or ranged specialists in the same combat as melee specialists.

The Captain is a very critical role in starship combat. Science Officer adds little, but it wouldn't take much to make them effective, have them use the scanners to "target the weak spot" on a ship, doubling threat range and adding to a critical roll, or increasing damage on that ship. Lots of solutions.

I'm not really sure why you couldn't run space fantasy style games in the vein of the older Star Wars flicks. I haven't found any real stumbling blocks in that particular direction. Small crew ships, much like the Falcon, are one of the places that the ship rules succeed. Fleet actions and multi-heavy/capital ship combat is...a great deal more challenging. I find it a lot easier to fit SF classes to a Star Wars style game than PF classes (which are very clearly built for a cinematic European medieval setting).

We ran into a few issues with the Star Wars-esque simulation in that they wanted to run a small squadron of individual interceptors, which isn't supported by RAW as far as we could tell. A Falcon/smuggler style would work pretty well, but they wanted to ramp up and have a more military style Star Wars ship combating Star Destroyer analogues if not a squadron.

Again, I don't think that SF is bad ipso facto, just that what the groups consistently wanted to do didn't gel with SF's intended design.

This seems like more a tactical change needed than any particular issues with Starfinder.

And I agree, like I said earlier it has "an issue that d20 systems have had with ranged vs melee damage". We played d20 Modern for a while, but kept consistently running into this issue too.

My suggested solution would be to emulate Star Wars in this design, purposefully make ranged weapons very short ranged. You don't really see Stormtroopers engaging at a distance, nor Clonetroopers, etc.

But it is Pathfinder in space. Pathfinder ship combat rules are terrible too. And outside of that, its very similar to Pathfinder.

I'd disagree vehemently. Dual HP systems, large shifts in class design and philosophy, a large magical overhaul, and many more small changes.

Starfinder is definitely not Pathfinder in space. It definitely wasn't meant to be. There are a high number of similarities, but at the core, we as a community need to be clear about this point.

I know that I was no aware of it being a radical departure until release, and none of any of my gaming groups did either. I don't know if we just missed the memos or if it wasn't communicated clearly. I don't really care to blame Paizo, so ultimately it doesn't matter.

I think that SF has a place, but I just don't know where. It doesn't do a good job of simulating anything heavily involving ships or vehicles, and in my experience combat is difficult to balance well.

To the melee/ranged issues, my PCs and my opponents use a lot of verticality when it comes to range and this presents many issues, as simply does the sheer range at which the PCs can engage. In one of my games I had two soldiers that both went sniper, and would choose to accurately engage enemies at 1,000 or more feet. Even for an operative moving at 45+ feet per action, or sprinting at 225+ feet per round, that's still 5+ rounds in order to get into combat, and often my players were sprinting at 80 feet per round.

I can see it as a very abrupt shift from Pathfinder. I think my group had a softer landing since we spent some time going over expectations prior to the first session so they jumped right in to using cover and single attacks. But also, the kind of game it defaults to excludes some styles.

I don't mind either of those changes, it was more the radical shift in casting and the dual hit point system. We were also trying out 5e at the same time and just found SF to be a relatively more unpolished and unfinished system.

We also are having some real difficulties managing ranged and melee damage, because half the party specced to be extreme range and the other melee, magnifying an issue that D20 systems have had with ranged vs melee damage.

As for Starfinder, aside from the ship system, what is off putting for your players?

I think we have a couple of issues.

1. We didn't expect the level of overhaul that occurred going from PF to SF, in that we were originally engaged in a PF campaign that we decided to port into SF via time-travel adventures. The transition was more abrupt than expected so that game ended up trailing off into the mists. Even after that it caused some friction for two of my players, the sum total differences I mean, and they are no longer interested in SF.

2. I was sold on a different concept than what was delivered. Most of us like the older Star Wars movies, and the thought that we could have similar adventures was very stirring to us, however like above the classes were quite a bit more different from PF than expected, and the entire ship system was extremely underwhelming, so much so that the next game that I ran (for a different group of players) ended up dying too.

I'm not really sure the exact game that Starfinder lends itself to as a Pathfinder in space wasn't it, and so wasn't high flying space adventures either. I guess if you are looking for a ground-based system like Pathfinder, but set in the far future you'd be good, but we'd rather just play Numenera if that is the option.

I don't follow your charts.. I mean, at level 1, 1 rank, 3 ability mod, 3 class skill, 1 class bonus feature (bypass, operative's edge etc.) Gives a +8 vs at highest a DC 16. At level 5 that should be at least a 14 against a DC of 22. Before computer or captain.

At level 1, I'm assuming a +7 before computer vs a DC 16. It continues from there. Adjusting the number to a +8 before computer only adds a flat +5% to every data point from there on out.

And the captain can add a +2 to any one person per round, so again, that just adds a flat 10%. That none-the-less still ends in very bad numbers without having a computer to add to you. If you want the captain to succeed at giving you a +4, he would need to roll on the without computers chart, meaning he is increasingly likely to fail also to do so.

The numbers still are not balanced, because in the most munchkin of cases, you are still becoming progressively more incompetent.

My players do not munchkin, so their numbers are lower than this better than average set of chances.

My issue with ships comes more from, the game pushes for these designs with lots of guns in all the arcs but the BP and Power Core limits coupled with generally small parties means almost everything will be built with one or two large turret guns and nothing else. This removes most of the need to maneuver around unless every fight has weird space clouds and asteroids everywhere...

And on a more minorn note, the sense of scale for ships is really weird. Large ships should have lots of space and probably either more expansions bays or expansion bays that do more when on a larger ship. I just looked at the deck plans for a Large ship from the AP and it's actually much smaller than the Medium ship the PCs have. More of an annoyance than anything else though, the BP and PC system is more frustrating.

The scaling absolutely makes no sense. Why can't a 300 foot ship carry 8, 20 foot interceptors? No reason at all, aside from nonsense RAW. Why does a 15,000 foot ship max out at 40, 20 foot ships, meaning that in a straight line the ships take up 5% of the ships entire length?

The entire ship building system is incredibly flawed, because as you said, you need a PC to effectively man a gun, and the way that the BP and PCU systems work, synergized with the number of players, tends towards only a few, powerful weapons being equipped and the rest of the points being put into other systems because you cannot effectively utilize them.

The fact that ships also have artificial minimum numbers without giving them roles is beyond annoying too. Why does a bulk carrier need 20 men to run it? Modern supertankers often do not have crews that large.

Are you using the corrected DCs from the FAQ that lowered everything a few months ago? I thought the hardest checks now were 15+ (1.5x tier) and those aren't all checks, just a few. Also, they clarified that you get class feature bonuses for skill checks, just not attacks in ships.

1. No, I downloaded the rulebook again today and am using that copy, so I assumed it would be updated with any errata.

So recalculating based on a 1.5 x tier gets you two new charts, this first one where it isn't awful, but you still become progressively more inept.

The one where you can't use the computer, which is a fair assumption for many ships, is still bad.

Even with the fix: Why wasn't it added to the Core Rulebook PDF and why does it still not work?

Maybe I'm approaching Starfinder from the wrong perspective, but I love a good sci-fi RPG, especially one that has a lot to do with starships.

Starfinder, unfortunately, seems to be rather weak in this area. Some of the scaling issues bother me, specifically making a light carrier isn't really possible, because the hanger bay just cannot fit on ships smaller than gargantuan, the increasing difficulty of combat actions as you level up, and the gamey "can't cross BP with credits".

As I said above, starship combat doesn't really work in Starfinder, in that as you level up, it becomes increasingly harder to successfully pull off skill checks. For example, balancing shields requires a DC 15 + 2 x tier level check to succeed.

Let's take a sample tier 4 ship with a 4th level science officer. He has 4 ranks in computers, he gets a +3 bonus, a +3 from his stats, along with a computer that adds +3 to his check. So he must roll a DC 23 Computers check to succeed, and is rolling with a +13 bonus, he succeeds 55% of the time. The ship is currently spending 8% of it's BP on the computer.

Taking this same ship across all levels/tiers, and keeping the same computer budget means that we generate a curve of success chances. It ranges from 60% at level one, all the way down to 5% chance of success at level 20. I have baked in better computers, ranks, ability point increases, etc. Here's the chart.

Now, this trend could be countered by picking up skill focus and magic items to boost your ability scores, but that will cap out at a total +5 over all 20 levels, so you end at a 30% chance of success, still down from a high total of 75%.

All in all, the fact that it becomes progressively harder to succeed is very irritating from a starship combat/roleplay/utility point of view. You average losing ~2.5% chance of succeeding per level (but this is a bit false, there are just some levels where you don't lose any chance, but most levels step it down by 5%).

Lastly, this doesn't take into account the need for multiple crewmen to be using the computer's bonus, but unfortunately again, the math just doesn't work out. You have to double the amount of BP you are willing to spend in order to make it to where a single other player can gain that bonus. Here is the success rate without the computer's bonus.

To put it another way, without paying at least 16% of your budget, only a single player can have the bad chances above. However, it simply isn't possible after level 15 for 3 players to gain the bonus, even though Engineers make a DC 15 + 2 x Tier check, as do Captains.

All in all, the math of the crew actions work poorly, as does many of the features of the starship design and creation.

I love pugwampii.

Also, as far as sorting goes, I was just hoping for input into what people actually find fun/challenging/interesting.

I didn't really know about the cold conditions, but I just wanted to raise the banner and let people know about the hot ones.

Congrats on finishing up!

That ranchy place wouldn't be Heifer International's ranch, would it?

No, it's a place in Hot Springs.

From the Core Rulebook: (spoiler to save space)

Now, not to go all anecdotal on everyone, but I'm totally going anecdotal. I live in Arkansas, and work at a summer camp teaching a variety of ranchy-things. Neither I, nor my kids, who spend 10+ hours in the sun, have ever fallen unconscious. Temperatures are routinely above 90 degrees F, and have gone over 110.

I just don't know if Paizo doesn't know about how the South is during the summer, or if this is a deliberate (if silly decision.)