Nerdy Canuck's page

WHAT THEY SHOULD REALLY DO IS SAY THIS:

1) All prepped actions go off just before their trigger (as traditional).
2) If the trigger was a spell being cast and it has a cast time of 1 action, then it still goes off, but AFTER the prepped action (assuming the spellcaster hasn't been dropped). If the casting time is longer than 1 action, it is interrupted and fails.

At which point you have to add even further exceptions for Attacks of Opportunity (which explicitly do happen before the triggering action), which is not good.

It may not make sense to you, but might be because you're over-focused on an edge case that (a) doesn't really come up in practice, and (b) is actually pretty easily handled by creative use of the surprise round rules.

Also, the door counts as a purely defensive action, so it gets to happen first. One way to think about it is like this: The rules allow for blocking, but not for you to land your punch before your opponent's punch as a reaction to it. Effectively, it's an assumption that a purely defensive action is just a tiny bit faster than an attack.

The problem here isn't the rules, so much as the way you're framing them for yourself.

Nerdy Canuck wrote:

Nothing in the rules permits for rewinding cause and effect like that - once the door is closed, your action has had a consequence and simply is happening.

Nothing in the rules says anything at all about what happens when your action is negated before you can take it, hence the timey whimey ball.

You cannot simply declare one side unevidenced and therefore wrong without producing some evdience for the other side.

Cause and effect has already happened at that point, can't rewind it. If your action becomes impossible, your action doesn't happen.

HammerJack wrote:

That, or an actually defensive readied action like "if they start shooting I'm going to slam this nice, sturdy door."

Which kicks off the timey whimey ball of you've shut the door because they shot now do they have to shoot the door or go back in time and shoot someone else...

They're now making the shot either against the door, or the same target but with total cover. Nothing in the rules permits for rewinding cause and effect like that - once the door is closed, your action has had a consequence and simply is happening.

Metaphysician wrote:

Ixal wrote:

Tiberius1701 wrote:

I want plenty of civilian ships like cargo haulers, mining ships, research ships, cruise ships, repair tugs, etc. I also want internal maps with them all. And some additional component options.

You would need to expand the starship rules for that as currently civilian ships would be no match for the PCs autoleveling starship (and also wouldn't stay civilian for long if the get their hands on one) and there is no non combat use for starships.

So in the end you are, at best, left with some deck plans to use during adventuring and thats not what most people who buy a starship book are looking for.

Um, what?

1. Why would "civilian" ships need, intrinsically, to be a match for the PCs? The PCs having a better ship than J Random Space Trucker just means. . . they are a bunch of heroic PCs of decent level, while he is J Random Space Trucker. The heroes are *supposed* to grow beyond the ability of random civilians to challenge them.

2. This is simply false. What, exactly, do you think people use to transport people, move goods, repair and salvage damaged ships, explore strange astronomical phenomena, and do all the other things that exist outside combat? Wishful thinking?

1+2 Why do you need stats for such ships, especially ones you can't simply throw together? There is no instance except maybe very constructed fringe cases where their stats would be needed when the PCs interact with them.

Yeah, this is not a system where random low-level stuff remains meaningfully threatening when you get to high levels; at a certain point, those civilian ships might as well be using tissue paper as hull plating.

Looking forward to the CE devastator mystics worshiping Saranrae as part of that fringe cult.

I mean, yeah, the rules allow it.

But the text also gives the GM a ready-made justification to say "no, you can't do that".

Even considering spell casters in a world of guns, I still don't get it.

Automatic spell failure on getting hit is the thing I think you're missing.

Readied actions to attack upon spellcasting would automatically shut down basically all casters; they can't function if the attack goes off before the spell, because readied actions become an extremely easy near-perfect counter.

If you make a change to this, you need an explicit exemption for spellcasting, or you've completely broken spellcasting.

"Dr." Cupi wrote:

Important note: NPCs/Monsters do not follow the same creation rules as PCs. If you want a CR 10 creature you build a CR 10. It is inadvisable to attempt to build off of a previous creature.

I wouldn't say its *inadvisable*. Just, you don't start with the actual stat block, per se. You start with the appropriate stat line for the CR you want, and use the monster stat block to determine which special abilities to take.

When the thing you're trying to apply is a race/class combo, though, you're easily better off just applying the appropriate template grafts.

The alternative is having a far, far more complicated combat system, where avoidance and armor are two completely separate mechanics applied in different steps, just for one thing. The occasional oddity like shields taking damage after resistance is totally worth it for the game actually being playable.

There are games that do this, and they are certainly playable, but they're typically dice pool games - which means that there is a far more meaningful difference created, overall. There is something very different about opposed rolls where a +1 is a five percent difference versus, say, rolling 3 dice against 15.

Wait, does that mean the gods listed in the Connections entries for the Mystic are "more guidelines than actual rules" to quote those pirate movies (I hate having to do this, it's a good quote but Johnny Depp is a Terrible Person(tm), yanno?)? You can pick a connection even if your god of choice isn't on its list?

You do not, as a Mystic, require a god at all, and there are absolutely no rules around gods and Mystics. So, yes, they're really just guidelines.

The closest thing to a rule on this is that deities "rarely" grant connections that don't fit their ethos, but you don't even need to get your connection from a deity in the first place. The book example is that as the god of freedom, Weydan is unlikely to look kindly on Overlords - but there's really no reason for that god to take issue with a Star Shaman.

Wouldn't be a bad place to drop a couple dedicated divine classes, though.

Frankly, I think the Mystic's "divinity-optional" approach is a way better approach for Starfinder's setting.

As there are presently no dedicated Divine classes, a dedicated Gods book seems very unlikely.

There are class features that can increase the number of attacks you're able to make.

Fear only works on CR8- enemies.

And it comes online at Level 7, so it is useful for a little bit (and can be replaced later).

It became somehow secluded from the rest of the universe just in time to be used for an Urban Fantasy system?

A cheap "all common languages" translation program would be pretty far out of line with existing translation items, like the Envoy's Mouthpiece, costwise.

Tie its performance to computer Tier, making a computer that can run it well while also being portable a pretty pricey asset.

Nerdy Canuck wrote:

Nothing in the system that makes it that way, far as I can tell.

Skittermanders?

An entire species using weaponized politeness and helpfulness in order to take advantage of an invading force's honour code to prevent true colonization?

Also, have you read about how Skittermander Whelps eat?

Nothing in the system that makes it that way, far as I can tell. If you're not down for the tone of the published adventures, you could always come up with your own...

I think the more accurate question is which weapons would make sense for it.

Raia of Jabask wrote:

I'd say it also worth noting that a significant percentage of the scenarios do allow mission briefing, followed by purchases, and at least 24 hours before you get to the actual site. In that case, fusion seals are a viable choice.

They're not really. You won't be popping them on and off your weapon for long before you have to upgrade your weapon and then your collection of fusion seals won't help you.

Thats IF you can tell which ones you need from the mission briefing. Which isn't always a given.

The implied scenario here is an NPC providing fusion seals for the sake of the job they're asking you to do, not the party carrying around a collection of them or anything like that.

Nerdy Canuck wrote:

(a) These weapons are worthwhile, in which case every extra-arms option has instantly become more powerful from a presently balanced state, or

(b) These weapons are not strong enough to have that impact, in which case they're overall weak enough to be a non-option.

I'm pretty sure you can imagine a proper middle ground.

This is cause and effect. There is not a middle ground. The second these weapons hit "nice", the second they're worth taking over any of the "standard" weapon options, they have made existing options more powerful.

Yeah I'm with SuperBidi on this. Paizo writes niche and circumstantial stuff all the time, so that's really no excuse why it would be impossible to write four-arm weapons.

If you think it's impossible, try telling me with a straight face that serpent lasers are more than a joke weapon.

Serpent Lasers are pretty clearly not meant to be a meaningful option for PCs, no.

Making these things similarly not worthwhile, and thus effectively a non-option, would be a way to go - but I've been assuming that the idea was for these to be a meaningful option, making Serpent Lasers an inaccurate comparison.

Having said that, I'm pretty sure Serpent Lasers are there to be an NPC option (and they're a much lower-interaction thing overall, because they're not interacting with existing racial bonuses or anything like that).

Nerdy Canuck wrote:

SuperBidi wrote:

These weapons would be easy to create

No, no they wouldn't.

Clearly, you have the right to dislike the idea of 4-handed weapons and chances are low anyway for anyone in Paizo to ever read this thread so I don't think it will have any impact.

Still, I really would like to know what you dislike about this idea. To me, you seem to have a bad gut feeling about it.

Either:

(a) These weapons are worthwhile, in which case every extra-arms option has instantly become more powerful from a presently balanced state, or

(b) These weapons are not strong enough to have that impact, in which case they're overall weak enough to be a non-option.

Systems interact with each other; a change in one place ripples out to impact other areas of the game.

It's less of a "bad gut feeling" and more of a "I see where else in the game this would impact".

BigNorseWolf wrote:

By the time you have the cloaking field aren't you taking 10 to stealth things and thus auto succeed on any stealth check to trick attack against cr +7 or lower?

Core Rulebook, p. 133 wrote:

Unless you have an ability that states otherwise, you cannot take 10 during a combat encounter. Also, you can’t take 10 when the GM rules that a situation is too hectic or that you are distracted, and taking 10 is almost never an option for a check that requires some sort of crucial effect as a key part of the adventure’s story.

Operatives have an ability which states otherwise - Specialization Skill Mastery.

Taking 10 in combat, and thus on Trick Attack checks, is 99% of the point of that feature.

These weapons would be easy to create

No, no they wouldn't.

Nerdy Canuck wrote:

Question: Is there an actual rule mandating that Braille and written languages require two different language slots?

I know Vlaka get a tactile language, but it seemed pretty clear to me that that was meant to be a tactile equivalent to sign language, allowing blind and deaf Vlaka to communicate with each other.

Oh, how can a blind Vlaka communicate with sign language? He'd have to use Braille.

Braille is text. What I'm referring to is a form of "sign" language that's based on physical contact, which is how a blind person can communicate with it - because it's tactile, rather than visual.

This is actually a thing in the real world - it's a way for people with both visual and hearing impairments to communicate.

Question: Is there an actual rule mandating that Braille and written languages require two different language slots?

I know Vlaka get a tactile language, but it seemed pretty clear to me that that was meant to be a tactile equivalent to sign language, allowing blind and deaf Vlaka to communicate with each other.

Nerdy Canuck wrote:

Thrice Great Hermes wrote:

CorvusMask wrote:

So I've been playing Shin Megami Tensei games(devil survivor in particular) lately and I came to think about witchwarper and other wacky upcoming classes, so I started to think: "Wait, is it already possible to do this in Starfinder?"

(for reference, common thing in SMT and its spinoffs is that someone made "Demon Summoning Program" which as it says, summons demons. It basically simulates same steps and magical chants as actual demon summoning rituals, but obviously much faster in easy to use form :p)

I'd guess it wouldn't be possible in Starfinder currently because I'm talking about sort of thing you could do even if you weren't caster yourself, you'd just need to use the program instead of casting any magic. I guess you could play technomancer who does this, but that'd be just the flavor wise.

It wouldn't be that hard to set up.

Starfinder has Summoning rules, i believe that they introduced in the Starfinder ARMORY.

What you need is a hybrid item commuter that casts the summoning spells.

They were introduced in Alien Archive, and what you can summon is pretty limited.

What's the item?

Sorry, for clarity, I meant that the summoning rules were introduced in AA1. The Armory does introduce the Elemental Gem, though, which is a consumable item that is limited to summoning an elemental of a single type as though casting the spell, as well as the Summoning Grenade, which summons a predetermined creature from the spell's options (which, again, are limited - you don't summon any creature of a given CR or anything like that; it's mostly just templates applied to the base elemental).

In order to pull this off, his character would need to be aware of the creature's location - this can be accomplished with blindsense, or a Perception check to pinpoint the creature with an imprecise sense. Otherwise, the character does not know where the creature is located in order to target the grenade.

The player who suggested a perception roll to pinpoint the creature with, say, hearing, was correct per the rules; the relevant section is on page 260.

At lower levels (especially given the 10% sell-back value in SF vs. the 50% in PF), cost is a limiting factor. If I recall correctly, this was a level 1 mystic wearing level 1 flight suit armor who had "something" (that I don't recall) occupying one of his hands and wanted to have the option to shoot/cast/cover/etc. with the other.

Fair, though for what it's worth, I can't find a rule in Starfinder stating that casting spells requires a free hand.

Ascalaphus wrote:

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Because you don't want to have clearly the best weapon be the reason to pick a race, or everyone will pick that race.

Why should it have to be clearly the best weapon?

A weapon with high requirements for use needs to be commensurately more powerful or useful to make those requirements worthwhile. For example, an Unwieldy weapon has some serious drawbacks, but it generally does more damage or hits more targets.

A weapon that can ONLY be used by someone with four arms or expensive high level augmentations should simply be better than other weapons, or nobody would bother.

This is all game logic stuff. There's no reason to make a weapon that nobody would use, and the Starfinder philosophy is generally against creating weapons that only a few characters CAN use.

Another way to understand this is that in terms of balancing things, everything should fit into a sort of power budget (or at least, that is one way of approaching balance under the hood). Things like damage or hitting multiple targets - that is, anything that makes the weapon better - would spend from that power budget. Some things, like the Unwieldy feature or a requirement of 4 arms to use something, effectively refund some of that power budget.

Assuming that the power spend/refund of everything is correctly understood, having unspent power budget would mean that an item is underpowered, while going past power budget would mean that it is overpowered. In either case, that item is effectively not a real choice, which is something you pretty much always want to avoid design wise.

The original question came up when a PC spellcaster at my table was wondering whether he could have a hand free to cast spells while still possibly providing harrying/cover fire without having to drop/draw firearms every other round, or if he could just use a 0th-level spell and stop micromanaging his action economy.

I mean, that's actually exceptionally easy, given that small arms are one handed.

Pick up an integrated weapon, like a retractable spike, and you can even have a small arm for Harrying Fire et al, always be armed for melee and able to make AoOs, and still have a hand free.

But that whole point is probably moot since I don't think Starfinder even requires a free hand for spellcasting.

Maybe I'm blind, but I cannot find in the rules that you can mix traits from multiple races at all?

The rules prevent it at Polymorph 3 and lower, with Polymorph 3 having a specific rule against it. That specific rule is absent from Polymorph 4 or higher.

Metaphysician wrote:

If a heavy weapon is too heavy to be properly used by someone with two hands, its going to still be too heavy to be used by someone with the same strength who has four hands.

So, if a weapon is too heavy to be properly used by someone with one hand, it's going to be too heavy to be used by someone with the same strength who has 2 hands?

And why do we get 1.5 times strength to damage when using a longsword with 2 hands in Pathfinder?

4 arms = twice the strength of 2 arms. You can hold far bigger weapons. That's basic anatomy.

That's not remotely how anatomy works. "Strength" is about all of your musculature, not how many arms you have.

In any case, this isn't Pathfinder, and characters with more arms have the same Strength range - including the same carrying capacity and the same required Strength score for certain weapons.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Dracomicron wrote:

None of this actually addresses the legitimate rules questions about the limitations of needing a free hand

for the third time, it's. In the video.

Finally watched it. They were awfully hesitant to say. Used terms like "I think so..." implying that they weren't ready to come down with a solid ruling after reading dozens of pages of arguments on the forums.

Or perhaps not being in a position to make/issue an official determination at the time.

Literally everyone has weapon specialization; it's part of the system's basic math. If you started changing that, you'd have to start making changes across the entire system to accommodate for that.

Do not change it without really, really, really knowing the system well.

Nerdy Canuck wrote:

Again, no - they have a higher minimum Strength, but the same maximum Strength as humans.

Vesks and Gnomes have the same maximum strength, so all Vesks should use tooth picks as weapons of choice?

A Vesk and a Gnome with the same Strength score don't find the same object to have any difference of weight.

HammerJack wrote:

They do, if they're issued when a mission is being planned, not 10 minutes before everything goes crazy.

If you know how they're going to go crazy sure, but when do we ever get that kind of notice?

It's more of a "hey, can you go take care of this thing for me, these will help" situation - not helpful for being surprised by something, but helpful if you have some time to prepare anyways; saves the party having to spend wealth on a solution to a short term problem, basically.

I'm not speaking rule wise. I'm speaking lore wise. For a Kasatha, a Longarm is as light as a pistol for a human. Kasathas can dual wield greatswords.

Again, no - they have a higher minimum Strength, but the same maximum Strength as humans.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

If thats your idea of a light machine gun I want to join your gym.

It uses half of his hands, so it's a Uzi for him. He should be able to trick attack with it.

Erm, no? Having more arms doesn't change the body mechanics of what you do with those arms.

breithauptclan wrote:

Transmission89 wrote:

Ok, so I’m confused by this as well. If I can transfer fusions as I want, why would I ever purchase a fusion seal (ignoring the cost difference)?

Welcome to Starfinder. It really is a good game. But there are a couple of gotchas.

Also, don't start a 1st level character with an ability score of 17.

And if you do like the idea of fusion seal items, see if the GM will houserule transferring the fusion on them to a higher tier fusion seal the same way it works for transferring on weapons. That at least mitigates the cost problem.

Oh no, I get that they are hideously expensive,

I guess what I meant was “what is the intended purpose of these fusion seals in the game if a regular infusion does the same job?”

I can see it in world-building terms - they make sense for organizations to be able to equip their forces. They can also be a handy way to have an NPC provide a particular fusion for some specific purpose in a campaign, like Illuminating or Merciful.

Lethallin wrote:

I would say yes on your question, you'd both get to smack them.

A follow up question though, if you're riding your drone and the drone leaves a threatened square, who does the enemy get to AoO? The rider, drone, the enemy's choice?

attackers choice

Perhaps more thoroughly, it would seem that both the drone and the rider trigger the conditions for an AoO, but the threatening creature chooses which of those triggering events to spend their reaction on. But once that decision is made, strictly speaking, the target is locked in.

This also means that the rider still provokes an AoO if the drone takes a Guarded Step.

Sound about right?

CorvusMask wrote:

So I've been playing Shin Megami Tensei games(devil survivor in particular) lately and I came to think about witchwarper and other wacky upcoming classes, so I started to think: "Wait, is it already possible to do this in Starfinder?"

(for reference, common thing in SMT and its spinoffs is that someone made "Demon Summoning Program" which as it says, summons demons. It basically simulates same steps and magical chants as actual demon summoning rituals, but obviously much faster in easy to use form :p)

I'd guess it wouldn't be possible in Starfinder currently because I'm talking about sort of thing you could do even if you weren't caster yourself, you'd just need to use the program instead of casting any magic. I guess you could play technomancer who does this, but that'd be just the flavor wise.

It wouldn't be that hard to set up.

Starfinder has Summoning rules, i believe that they introduced in the Starfinder ARMORY.

What you need is a hybrid item commuter that casts the summoning spells.

They were introduced in Alien Archive, and what you can summon is pretty limited.

Nerdy Canuck wrote:

However, giving skills that much grey area also means there will always be situations where something like a rules forum won't have answers because it's ultimately up to GM discretion, which is... Exactly where we currently are on this.

Is anyone actually arguing that someone with profession chef can't turn a bunch of tomatoes some dough and some cheese into a pizza?

I don't think you have legitimate table variation here i think you have paranoia about potential table variation.

There are simply no rules surrounding it.

And the Life Science skill would work just as well, as it's explicitly the skill for crafting food.

This sort of thing is why i dislike how ultimate intrigue (and it looks like 2e) handles skills.

Skills need to be open ended to cover a wide variety of situations because the skills that are there cover just about any mundane thing a person can do.

Don't worry about the crafting section. You're a chef, you can turn food into meals. That's what it does. You have survival you can turn shot (hopefully not sentient) wildlife into food.

However, giving skills that much grey area also means there will always be situations where something like a rules forum won't have answers because it's ultimately up to GM discretion, which is... Exactly where we currently are on this.

Nefreet wrote:

There is no miss chance with Mirror Image, tho.

The chance that an attack misses you because it hits an image... What is that normally called?

Mirror Image wrote:

Whenever you are attacked or are the target of a spell that requires an attack roll, there is a possibility that the attack targets one of your images instead. If the attack hits, roll randomly to see whether the selected target is real or a figment.

Miss chance is otherwise used exclusively to refer to percentile rolls as with concealment, is it not? IE, it's a case of this being a rules term rather than a "common understanding" term?

It's the same thing with the Healer connection - because Multilevel Spells include the lesser versions, they have to replace the lower level version when they give you the higher level one.

Yeah the thing is, if the whole party is doped on passive perception, they will (speaking in terms of probability) see less than if they're all rolling.

... No, because they're still rolling when they think to. But players don't actually have to ask for the check to be able to notice things. In practice, it works out quite well - you're still rolling any time you're actively looking for something, but you don't get screwed over by not having asked.

The rules do permit salvaging things toward creating similar things, at the DM's discretion - though this is starting to sound like something where the solution is more of a narrative thing than a rules thing. There aren't actually rules around establishing the food supply for a colony, so...

I don't know how they implemented it. Should be done carefully. For example:

Five PCs all have a +1 Perception. There's a DC 12 to spot hazard and the GM makes secret checks for the players. If they all roll, each one has a 50% to pass, so the chance that they don't notice is 0.5^5 = 1/32th. Not likely at all. If the GM makes all of them Take 10 though, they're guaranteed to all fail to spot the hazard.

If you're going to Take 10 on passive perception, you should give the best perceiver a bonus for each other PC, to make the odds more similar to when all of them would have rolled. Maybe a +2 for each one that's almost as good, and a +1 for all of them that could have (with difficulty) succeeded themselves.

In 4E, it was quite simple - your Passive Perception was your Perception bonus +10, as though you were always taking 10 on a Perception check. This didn't prevent you from asking for a Perception check - it only prevented you from missing something pretty easy to spot because you forgot to ask for one.

Worked pretty well in the games I played.

Boojumbunn wrote:

BigNorseWolf wrote:

You can craft with a relevant profession skill. Profession cook would definitely be the relevant skill for making food.

HMMmmmm.. Ok, where do you see that?

At a GM’s discretion, an appropriate Profession skill can be used for a narrower range of items. For example, a character with Profession (weaponsmith) might be able to make technological, hybrid, and magic weapons and weapon fusions, but no other items.

Source Starfinder Core Rulebook pg. 235

Life Science is also explicitly used for crafting food and drink - mentioned both in its section of the Skills chapter, and page 235.