Pagan priest's page

Killer Klowns from Outer Space!

The tanker and haulers, correct?

So, have you seen a 40' fuel tanker truck or railcar?

That has an equal cargo capacity as one of the tankers starships. Heck, let's be generous and assume a tanker can haul double that, that one of these 40' tank cars is equal to a single cargo hold. But going off the capacity of cargo holds as described in the CRB, you aren't fitting much more than that.

It's a game, not a simulator, so this is definitely not something I would want them to prioritize over game mechanics, but like I said it takes me out of the game every time I think about it.

Edit: All that would take to make me happy is some descriptive text that bays get bigger as your ship does, so the capacity of a large bay is twice that of a small bay, or something like that. No real need to put rules text on it, but adding something to this chart would be a good place to do so:

Starship Scale

I decided that the starship system just did not work as written. It is fine for the small, adventurer sized ships but totally fails once you start getting into the bigger warships or freight haulers. I have not quantified it yet, but my solution was to look at the function of a ship, and it has the capacity needed to do that job. So a heavy freighter (size large) has a cargo hold able to hold the equivalent of 80 to 100 of the 40' shipping containers, and it also has 8 expansion bays so it can be customized. The carrier (size gargantuan) has a flight wing with 4 or 5 squadrons of size tiny craft, plus a pair of shuttles along with the crews necessary to maintain all of them and a flight deck crew to launch and recovery them, and then it has 10 bays for customization. And every ship size huge or larger has 1 or more small craft for moving people and cargo from planet surface to orbit.

But that's just me applying my real world experience to a fantasy game.

Oooh, my designs turned out great! :D

I love the operating theater with a blood stained floor.

These look really good, and useful as well. I just feel a little sorry for any of the patients in either one: none of the patient rooms have a bathroom, and there are only 5 total from both sides.

Tectorman wrote:

Pagan priest wrote:

Tectorman wrote:

...

and let's not forget that it just lists the people currently running it not their replacements and other extra people in the ship waiting for their shifts plus the amount of advanced computers to help run things so just because it lists a low amount of people there could be more cause we list the WHOLE crew for aircraft carriers not the ones on duty at once

They would need more than 200 just for flight ops.

And I'm not saying they wouldn't also be exercising those better options. But that would be in addition to those lesser options, not in place of. Remember, this is my attempt to provide a rationale for why the ships would be bigger while the crews would be smaller, by saying that the space is taken up by, for example, not the ship's water reclamator and atmospheric reconstitutor, but the fifty water reclamators and seventy atmospheric reconstitutors per person, with spare parts enough to make another few hundred of each (also, per person).

And remember, an SF ship is only 1d6 days away from Absalom Station IF they have a working Drift drive and IF they have working thrusters for once they get into Drift space and IF they don't get a random encounter along the way.

Except that for a ship of war, the first and foremost consideration is its ability to perform its mission. A battleship needs to be able to hammer away at other ships without taking too much damage in return. A destroyer needs to be able to prevent missiles or small craft from reaching the capital ships, or escort convoys, or suppress pirates, etc. And a carrier needs to be able to carry small craft. Life support for the crew, even the crew itself, exists to serve the mission. Extra capacity on the water and atmosphere recycling, sure, maybe enough to support 150% of the expected maximum. But not multiple redundancies. The crew will be in space suits during battle, so air is not an immediate concern. Perhaps a full day's expected usage of water, and enough air in compressed storage to replenish the ship once or twice.

Then too, none of these ships should be going into battle alone. A modern U.S. Navy carrier battle group includes the carrier itself, a supply ship, a cruiser, and a couple of destroyers. (Plus an attack sub, but no one is supposed to know that they are there.) If battle damage damages life support, the surviving crew can be evacuated to one of the other ships while repairs are made.

I think that to a large extend, we are talking at cross purposes. You are looking for a rational to justify RAW, while I am stating how I think the rules should be changed to better reflect the way things are in the real world, extrapolated into a science fantasy realm as if it could be done in a straight forward manner.

It's like Bruce Wayne's line about Superman in BvS; if there's even a 0.00000001% chance of those factors contributing to stranding them away from help, simple prudence demands that they treat it as a 100% certainty.

Ah, man! Spoiler warnings! I haven't seen that yet.

Pagan priest, the length for starships is in feet. not meters so the length of a carrier is between .38 to 2.8 miles.

I think that carriers in the sense that we use in the modern day are not highly supported by the current rules. Hopefully, more will come out about carriers that would give the game more options! Personally, I am also looking forward to rules supporting commanding a fleet, I want to be an Admiral!!

Sigh. Mentally shifting back and forth between Starfinder and Traveller.

You're not wrong, but remember that you're saying "could". SF ships "might maybe can" do all of those things, hoping nothing goes terribly wrong enough to seal the ship's doom. But what happens when a modern carrier completely runs out of food? They get more shipped to them. "Less than a planetary diameter", remember? SF ships that run out of food in between star systems are vastly (pun loosely intended) worse off. So for all that they "could" rely on recyclable air or hydroponically grown food alone, there are probably volumes of textbook examples in every flight academy in the Pact Worlds explaining how many different reasons why that's a bad idea. So, repetitive, repeating, redundant, repetitious redundancy at minimum.

"Could" only in the sense that might be better options, including magic, that I did not mention. If those are the best available, then any combat ship would be using all of them. For air and water, other than magic replacement, there is no real option other than recycling with stores to replace battle damage losses.

As far as a modern carrier that ran out of food, 1) the captain would be "allowed" to retire just about immediately, 2) the carrier would radio the supply ship that is accompanying the battle group and arrange for a couple of hours steaming along side for underway replenishment. However, I would not say that that being only 1 planetary diameter or less from resupply is very helpful. That carrier may be a week or more away from any port from which they could be resupplied. A SF ship is always within 1d6 days or less from Absalom Station.

Pagan priest wrote:

Kittyburger wrote:

VoodooSpecter wrote:

OK But I'm just going to say it here because one thing in the interview read to me as a bad misconception. They are NOT good on space ships as we currently stand. The game is presently completely lacking any kind of stealth system for starship battles, and there's all kinds of amazing third party stuff that has come out that blows away the meager offerings we've seen so far. New hulls, new hull sizes, new modules and systems. So that's not accurate. Starships aren't in a good state where they just don't need any more content. There is so much more creativity to be plumbed.

I think more important is how utterly AWFUL the existing charts are on the size and crew complements of the ships. A 3,000 meter deep-space dreadnought bristling with weapons ranging from laser self-defense nets to weapons of mass destruction should NOT weigh the same as a modern Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. It just SHOULDN'T.

A modern aircraft carrier, with a length of only 333 meters, has a crew of 5000 and carries 90 aircraft. A gargantuan SF carrier at 2000 to 15,000 meters (1.24 to over 9 MILES)only has room for 200 crew and a maximum of EIGHTSixteen tiny spaceships???

In all cases and under all circumstances, a modern day aircraft carrier is never more than one planetary diameter away from a ready source of air, water, food, fuel, and other consumables. Running out of any one of those is an inconvenience at best compared to running out in the middle of the Vast. So the Starfinder-verse may be running on the assumption that each individual person needs a WHOLE lot more redundancy allocated to them across all the possible consumables, resulting in starships much larger than aircraft carriers fielding crews much smaller.

Air and water are recyclable. Food could be grown in hydroponics, and supplemented with freeze-dried, concentrated, or fresh as circumstances dictate. Modern carriers use nuclear reactors, they only refuel once every couple of years.

One significant difference between modern and SF carriers is that modern jets take a lot of fuel, whereas the SF craft have a power core similar to that of the ship, thus have no need of refueling. In all versions of the RPG Traveller, ships require HUGE amounts of fuel to jump between stars, yet a Traveller carrier still has many more fighters than a modern carrier. I'm not positive, but I don't think that any of the published versions of a carrier in any edition of Traveller exceeds a mile in length.

Pagan priest wrote:

A modern aircraft carrier, with a length of only 333 meters, has a crew of 5000 and carries 90 aircraft. A gargantuan SF carrier at 2000 to 15,000 meters (1.24 to over 9 MILES)only has room for 200 crew and a maximum of EIGHT tiny spaceships???

I think it's possible to install two hangar bays in a gargantuan starship for 16 interceptors, but i get what you are saying.

It's probably for simplification reasons.

Maybe the article in Dead Suns #6 about larger than colossal starships adresses this?

Oops. I meant to say 16. Really.

Oh, I am sure that it was done for reasons of simplification, I just don't think that is a good enough reason to short change carriers by so much. With 16, it is practically too small to even be used as convoy escort for piracy suppression. Maybe 8 to 16 squadrons of fighters or interceptors, but that is still rather small for the size of the ship. I am thinking somewhere above 200 small craft.

Of course, this is not a ship for PCs, unless they are captains or admirals in somebody's navy.

VoodooSpecter wrote:

OK But I'm just going to say it here because one thing in the interview read to me as a bad misconception. They are NOT good on space ships as we currently stand. The game is presently completely lacking any kind of stealth system for starship battles, and there's all kinds of amazing third party stuff that has come out that blows away the meager offerings we've seen so far. New hulls, new hull sizes, new modules and systems. So that's not accurate. Starships aren't in a good state where they just don't need any more content. There is so much more creativity to be plumbed.

I think more important is how utterly AWFUL the existing charts are on the size and crew complements of the ships. A 3,000 meter deep-space dreadnought bristling with weapons ranging from laser self-defense nets to weapons of mass destruction should NOT weigh the same as a modern Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. It just SHOULDN'T.

A modern aircraft carrier, with a length of only 333 meters, has a crew of 5000 and carries 90 aircraft. A gargantuan SF carrier at 2000 to 15,000 meters (1.24 to over 9 MILES)only has room for 200 crew and a maximum of EIGHT tiny spaceships???

Let's start wondering about the description, shall we?

Quote:

Want to play an intelligent, multi-legged centipede? An emotionless, mask-wearing mollusk? and Uplifted Bear?

Not gonna lie, I want to take that "uplifted bear" and make a character called "Yogi" or run around yelling "only you can prevent forest fires". Can't wait to see them.

...

Winston, who lives under the name Mr. Saunders.

Pagan priest wrote:

I miss the versatility of the 2nd ed specialty priests. War priest, inquisitor and cleric cover part of it, but I would like to see the possibility for someone with less armor & combat capability and more skill & special power type abilities.

Ditto, although the specialty priests that did exist were not particularly balanced with each other, let alone other classes (ooh, this one lets you multi-class with wizard, as a human, and cast your wizard spells in plate armor! And this other one lets you tell if someone is lying and has way less spells and armor than a standard cleric...).

There's a part of me that wants totally on-theme clerics for each deity, and another part of me that shudders at the notion, particularly for a setting with more than a half-dozen or so gods (or mostly just one for each alignment, like Dragonlance or the Scarred Lands).

Since most settings have dozens, if not hundreds of gods, including entirely new pantheons of gods with oft-overlapping areas of concern for different races and regions and cultures, you'd pretty much have to create dozens of different sub-classes of 'cleric,' with some very different warrior-clerics for gods like Iomedae and Gorum and some also quite different types of cloth-caster 'white mages' for gods like Shelyn and Nethys, and all sorts of stuff in between.

Yeah, balance was always a problem. Of course, in a rational setting, not all of the specialty clerics would need to be balanced as an adventuring class. Some Gods would expect Their clerics to stay at home taking care of the worshipers and not gallivanting all over the countryside, kicking down doors just to slay the monster and take its treasure. Murderhobos need not apply.

Forgotten Realms had two books with information on the deities from that setting. Every pantheon in the world, and if I remember correctly, every God from every pantheon, each with their own write-up, and a specialty cleric for each. It can be done, it is just a question of being worth the trouble.

I miss the versatility of the 2nd ed specialty priests. War priest, inquisitor and cleric cover part of it, but I would like to see the possibility for someone with less armor & combat capability and more skill & special power type abilities.

Pagan priest wrote:

The Mad Comrade wrote:

Asgetrion wrote:

The Mad Comrade wrote:

Speed Factor got use a lot more than weapons-vs-armor-adjustments did IME. It was no small part of why longswords were the most popular melee weapon of choice (SF 3 IIRC). A two-handed sword was monstrously slow to swing (SF 7?).

Combine a SF 3 weapon with a -3 speed adjustment from Dex and you have a character launching their first swing on initiative+0.

Longsword had SF 5 and two-handed sword had SF 10. Daggers (SF 2) and short swords (SF 3) were weapons of choice vs. spellcasters in my group, since you would automatically disrupt their spells if you dealt any damage. :)

And don't forget that your weapon's enchantment bonus also impacted SF, so it was not uncommon to have longsword wielders who also had init +0!

*checks over a Venerable Character Sheet

*almost chokes on the dust cloud

sunblades were truly awesome that way. grins

Except if you were closing the distance, the longer weapon went first.

That was 1st Ed AD&D (and space to wield weapons effectively), not 2nd Ed, right?

Though 2nd Ed PO Combat & Tactics added all sorts of weapon rules.

On the Str and Dex to damage, I hope they don't allow any ability modifier added to damage for weapons that you load, or you have the ridiculous 5th Ed situation where a character with a 16 Dex can go around blowing commoner's heads off with a blowgun.

I was indeed referring to 1st ed.

As far as killing commoners with a blowgun, why not? Put a dart in the jugular, and he bleeds out very quickly. Not exactly blowing his head off, but almost as bloody.

Asgetrion wrote:

The Mad Comrade wrote:

Speed Factor got use a lot more than weapons-vs-armor-adjustments did IME. It was no small part of why longswords were the most popular melee weapon of choice (SF 3 IIRC). A two-handed sword was monstrously slow to swing (SF 7?).

Combine a SF 3 weapon with a -3 speed adjustment from Dex and you have a character launching their first swing on initiative+0.

Longsword had SF 5 and two-handed sword had SF 10. Daggers (SF 2) and short swords (SF 3) were weapons of choice vs. spellcasters in my group, since you would automatically disrupt their spells if you dealt any damage. :)

And don't forget that your weapon's enchantment bonus also impacted SF, so it was not uncommon to have longsword wielders who also had init +0!

*checks over a Venerable Character Sheet

*almost chokes on the dust cloud

sunblades were truly awesome that way. grins

Except if you were closing the distance, the longer weapon went first.

Pagan priest wrote:

It is a flavor thing more than anything else. If I am creating a character around a Robin Hood type theme, using a composite bow is just not right. Then too, a primitive group might be able to harvest the right trees even if they can't manage the layering involved in a composite bow.

Thank you for the clarification. Since the flavor of these weapons seems very important to you I hope that bows both compound and self, can come with strength to damage as a core choice. For me, I've seen Pathfinder weapons as not really that closely tied to actual historical weapons. Consider the well known (on these boards at least) discussion about the longsword.

Unfortunately, I learned the game before I learned about swords, so the nomenclature always seemed normal to me. But, back in the day, there were quite some arguments raging about banded mail and fighters with more hit points than a rhino.

Pagan priest wrote:

I hope that this is the edition that fixes a problem that has existed since 3.0, and that is only composite bows being eligible for strength bonus to damage. Especially in a world with many magical materials, it ought to be just as easy to create a strength longbow as it is to create a strength composite longbow.

It's possible that I'm not understanding what you mean by "eligible for strength bonus to damage", but in Pathfinder 1, slings and thrown weapons where both methods of ranged attacks that got str to damage. The problem I suppose was that the attack roll was made with dex and then str was added to damage, but the same is true for composite bows.

Thrown weapons had problems with action economy, since reloading a bow was easier than drawing another throwing weapon. The cost of magic weapons prohibited throwing weapons too, there where magic items, feats, weapon enchantments (returning) that helped, but it was quite complicated and it's been a long time since I really looked at all of the PF1 throwing weapon options.

Slings probably had fewer obstacles, but they had lower damage dies, and reloading was still too slow compared to bows

It is possible to purchase a non-magic composite longbow that allows you to add your strength bonus to the damage. It is not possible to purchase a regular longbow that allows you to add your strength bonus to damage.

Composite bows, long or short, get their capability by layering various materials together, so that on the inside of the bow, you have materials that resist compression while the outside is made of materials that resist expansion. By selecting different materials and using different thickness of material for each layer, you can make the bow require a greater effort to pull, thus giving your strength bonus to damage.

Self bows, log or short, are made from a single material, usually wood. Their capabilities are based on the wood chosen and the thickness of the wood. English longbows were made from Yew trees, which will act as a natural form of composite bow due to the differences in characteristics of the sapwood and the heartwood. The longbows recovered from the Tudor ship were examined and found to have pulls of 95 to over 100 pounds.

Since this is a fantasy game, there would be many more choices of possible material to make self bows. Darkwood? Mithral alloy? What ever the material, it should be just as possible to make a self bow for strength as it is a composite bow.

It is a flavor thing more than anything else. If I am creating a character around a Robin Hood type theme, using a composite bow is just not right. Then too, a primitive group might be able to harvest the right trees even if they can't manage the layering involved in a composite bow.

Earlier, people were mentioning the possibility of weapons of being better or worse against various types of armor. If you really think that this is a good idea, try and find a 1st edition Player's Handbook. It had tables giving weapons bonuses or penalties based on how likely they were to hurt someone wearing each type of armor in the game. Of course, the tables always had the problem of ambiguity: AC 9, is that a guy with no armor holding a shield, or is it a guy in leather armor with no shield? This problem persisted all the way through the table, right up to plate mail and shield, AC 2, since each number except AC 10 and AC 2 could be made by having a lesser armor and a shield, or just the next best armor.

It was the removal of tables like that that first convinced some of my friends to try the brand new 3rd edition.

I hope that this is the edition that fixes a problem that has existed since 3.0, and that is only composite bows being eligible for strength bonus to damage. Especially in a world with many magical materials, it ought to be just as easy to create a strength longbow as it is to create a strength composite longbow.

I think that for my campaign, I'll stick with my initial thought of separating the Pact Worlds out with no more than two, maybe three worlds max in a single star system. I can enjoy science fantasy, but the science-y parts need to be reasonably science-y.

Not to mention the river running through the asteroid belt.

...
I mean, the asteroid belt itself makes sense...

Okay, my copy is out of reach at the moment, but doesn't the river specifically say that it was formed with magic? It's no worse of a breach of reality than habitable domes in the Sun.

Perhaps you have just described the beginning of the chain of events that led to the annihilation of Golarion...

Hmm, did they ever say to WHICH Fall they were referring?

Pagan priest wrote:

Well, there is a creature in the Bestiaries whose description starts out with "Come from distant stars to protect unprepared worlds from cosmic horrors..." Starfinder cannot possibly be complete without the Flumph.

Last night as I was picking a friend up from the airport, I had the sudden realization that Starfinder may well be my first and only opportunity to play a Flumph. I'm thinking:

Flumph

+2 Dex, +2 Wis
2 HP
Small aberration with the "Flumph" subtype
Move 10' land, 25' fly
Natural Weapons - 1d3 acid & piercing + x1.5 level specialization at 3rd level
Darkvision 60'
Stench Spray- cause Sickened for 1d4 rounds, DC 10+primary ability+half level, usable once per 10 minute rest.

I thought about a flumph character too,while writing the post. Just need a good substitute for hands.

Well, there is a creature in the Bestiaries whose description starts out with "Come from distant stars to protect unprepared worlds from cosmic horrors..." Starfinder cannot possibly be complete without the Flumph.

Aseroth_Blackward wrote:

It should be able to do lethal damage, least in my mind.

Then let it do lethal damage. If it makes sense in your universe then change it. I see it like this... "Are you really going to try and hit me with your fists human?" I hope to understand one day how in a universe with highly advance tech, people still want to use their bare fists to do lethal damage.

Just kick him in the face.

It is, as usual, very attractive. Maybe someday I might be able to find a use for it. Probably not. The temporary mock-up image had me very excited, that was an image that I could see being used pretty much every time the party entered a space station.

Fall is long gone, and the end of Winter is nigh. When I saw the new format rolled out, I rather expected to see the SRD to be part of it.

Love the book, it is exactly what I was looking for. However, is the errata available yet? I have noticed a few mistakes, like the feat Pantheistic Blessing, I cannot find the spell-like ability mentioned as the benefit anywhere in the book.

I do believe that I shall be using this when I GM. Thanks.

Steve Creech wrote:

Books should be shipping from the printers around the end of next week. Distributors should be seeing them the week after that. :)

--
Steve Creech

So... should we gather with torches and pitchforks at the printer? Or the distributor?

Well, I guess the pitchforks have to go back into the shed. I just got an e-mail saying that my copy is ready to pick up.

Hooray!

Books should be shipping from the printers around the end of next week. Distributors should be seeing them the week after that. :)

--
Steve Creech

So... should we gather with torches and pitchforks at the printer? Or the distributor?

A +5 long sword, made by the Jester of the Gods. Anyone who used this blade had their clothes and armor take on the appearance of a clown suit.

Thee was a known powerful magic sword, named "Waycleaver" able to cut through stone and allowed the wielder to cast Passwall three times per day. Also in existence, but less well known, was the Halfling made "Wheycleaver". It gave the wielder a +2 on making cheese.

Traveller big ships are a LOT bigger than the "big" ships of Starfinder. Many more heavy weapons per ship, and many more fighters carried on the ships that carry fighters.

Traveller ships do not need a beacon to go to a location.

Well, the Starfinder main page still says that it is coming in Fall. There is less than three weeks of Fall remaining...

I like this, something else to consider, would a particular drive require a certain computer model?

The basic minimum computer already seems a higher tech level than what is normally available in Traveller. I don't see a need to add more complexity to what is a fairly simple system just to have the complexity.

Thematically, I like the idea that certain drives are only compatible with certain kinds of ships. It forces people to make real choices about prioritizing what they want to have, rather than always tossing on the "best" parts.

Ways of splitting it include...

>Size-based, where bigger ships can have more powerful engines

>Culture-based, where certain creators use certain types of drives

>Prestige-based, where you have to get on good terms with Insert-Power-Figure to be allowed to install certain equipment

I could probably come up with a few others given some time. XD

Well, RAW has a maximum ship size for faster engines, so that to get an engine rating of 5, you are limited to a ship no larger than Medium. All versions of the Traveller rules that I have seen, the minimum ship size to have Jump Drives is 100 dTons, which is about 1400 cubic meters and would likely be the equivalent to a size category Small ship in SF.

This would make things a bit different from the Star Wars movies, where we see fighter craft using hyperspace travel. Putting both of these together, Tiny ships cannot have Jump Drives and only Small or Medium ships can have the highest Jump ratings.

The books are in the hands of the printers. As soon as they come back, they will be shipped to distributors, which then are shipped to retail stores.

You should be able to go to your local store and preorder it to ensure that they are getting a copy.

--Steve Creech
DragonWing Games

I shall begin nagging them mercilessly until they acquiesce.

Pagan priest wrote:

My first thought after reading the SF rules for the Drift was to drop them and use Traveller Jump Drives (plus the possibility of having some form of jump gate as well). That would also make it easier to use the Traveller Domain maps that I have.

Please keep us informed on what you end up doing with this.. if you need help with anything I would be happy to help, I am fluent with Classic Traveller, GURPS Traveller, and I co-authored Traveller for Hero

Cancel Delete!

Well, I haven't co-authored any Traveller material, but I do have experience with Classic, Mega, GURPS, T20, and Mongoose. I think that the necessary first step is to move firmly away from Traveller's hard science rules for things like the size of jump drives and the enormous fuel requirements.

So, as a first order approximation:

Minimum ship size = Small
Engine rating = parsecs traveled per jump
Minimum PCU = engine rating x 25 + 25 per size category.
(small: +50 large: +100 etc)
Cost (in BP) = engine rating x 5 x size category

Is there any further news about the expected release date?