Perses13's page

An electrostaff definitely seems awesome and wouldn't feel out of place in whatever Tech Core is called.

Jim Butler gave some more details on that further here. Hopefully they'll eventually find a way to ease their concerns without killing off player reviews.

I'd describe it as Gamemastery Guide sized myself but you do you.

To manage your expectations, people have already started getting their copies of GM Core and are saying that its strictly GM facing, with no new player options beyond variant rules and vehicles.

Great, now I want to play an Awakened Tyrannosaur in the Starfinder equivalent of an F15.

Just a heads up since this confused a friend of mine. The Single File download option is just the PDF of the adventure booklet, while File by Chapter download includes the various pawns, maps, and pregen downloads.

Nethys doesn't usually cover playtest material until it releases officially and the book with Mechanic & Technomancer in it will not come out until sometime next year.

Looking at my copies of Shades of Blood, I see only one mention of Godsrain in Shades of Blood, and its not player facing.

Empires Devoured should work fine for Starfinder 2e. The main things that changed during playtest were the PC options, not the GM side of things or the underlying math, and I don't recall reading anything that referenced player abilities.

I know some of the lower level playtest adventures had issues with creatures with resistance to physical or fire damage being really hard for most party compositions to deal with (since low level ranged weapons don't have a lot of damage output and do fire or physical). Level 10 characters have a lot more options, so that should be less of a concern.

Yeah when I ran Outlaws I used the Impossible Lands rules for Wellspring surges and they worked well.

Don't want to derail this thread too much, but

If the solution was just quietly removing the longbow's mounted restriction, my champion of Erastil would be very happy.

By the time this thread was started this question had already been answered elsewhere.

Related to the Core 20 discussion: we changed it up, because the spotlight on deities is just different this edition. The change there doesn't mean that Sarenrae is less powerful or important to people in the setting, just that she's not as "in focus" by the metaphorical camera that we have for stories we want to tell this edition.

I've seen others hope for a Divine Mysteries style book for Starfinder and I think that would be a great spot to talk about these three deities in Starfinder.

As for the Burning Archipelago, did the Galaxy Guide not mention it? That's really where I'd expect it to come up.

I do remember reading that although a whole section of the city has an Anti-magic zone, the AP says there shouldn't be any feeling that a spellcaster would be at a disadvantage in the campaign, which just seems odd.

PF2 retconned a bit of the dead magic stuff from PF1. The main emphasis in PF2 is less that magic doesn't work at all and more that magic is unreliable in the Mana Wastes. There's rules for it in Impossible Lands. Personally I like that more than dead zones.

You're not alone in feeling odd about that in the AP. That was a fairly common criticism of the AP when it came out, especially as the Impossible Lands book hadn't come out with rules for Wild Magic. It makes sense from the perspective of not wanting to disappoint people who want to play their favorite class, but it doesn't give mechanical support to the lore and so puts more work on the GM.

Sniper's Advanced Exploit is actually an improvement from the playtest. But that's because it largely did nothing in the playtest since it just didn't increase MAP. Which as pointed out by the OP, rarely comes up because of action economy.

THE BAD: Operatives had their action compression kneecapped considerably, and Snipers REALLY feel it more than everyone else. Most other Operatives won't even need to reload before a single combat is over, but as THE reloading Operative, that free stride REALLY enabled your play style. I talked a lot about how the smart thing to do is rarely sit still and keep aiming and firing- and that's good, because that doesn't even sound fun. But it IS what you're pushed to do more now, because you just straight up don't have that mobility anymore!

So I think it's kind of a little bit of what everyone has been saying so far. While the class isn't as inflexible and beyond help as OP might make it sound, I would absolutely agree that it was heavily impacted by the changes to the Operative in ways that aren't immediately obvious.

I also have some practical experience with a sniper operative in the playtest and this is basically how I feel about it too.

You comparing this to the Star Wars box sets reminds me I should see how this compares to my Alien RPG scenario box sets. The second I saw this product my brain jumped to those since those also have tokens, pregens, weapon/item handouts, and maps.

Pathfinder 1e doesn't use ORC, that's only needed for 2nd edition content, so you're fine just using the OGL if you're sticking to PF1 stuff.

Yes, all firearms are ranged weapons.

Phoebe Bane on bluesky mentioned void elves being in the book as an expansion for PF2 elves, along with Formians and some sort of playable ooze ancestry.

Also bear in mind that the 3-action doesn't get the increased healing of the 2-action version. That's a common misreading I've seen as well.

The non-selectiveness of Heal and Harm's 3-action version means that they don't get used often. 95% of the time its the two action.

However there are 2 scenarios where it becomes super useful:
1. You have multiple party members at 0 hit points, so healing enemies still is a net positive because it gets multiple people up.
2. All enemies on the battlefield are undead and all party members are living and need healing or vice versa. Especially if the undead are weak to positive.

In Murder in Metal City, the Khizar's petrified heritage mentions having a Strength of 16.

The Seedpod Lure feat also references deploying the lure as a move action.

Yeah, there's a bunch of undead companions, including a zombie and skeletal servant that can be humanoid.

This seems like a clear case of "The PF2 example doesn't exist in SF2, we need to copy in an SF2 example" and the editing process didn't catch that the SF2 example didn't make sense.

Starship combat rules similar to 1e will not be in either Core book (they're earmarked for some future release), so I doubt there will be starship building rules either since those were pretty tied to the combat rules in 1e.

RAW all the followers are living humans. You can get skeleton (at GM discretion since its rare) with the Leader for All feat, but currently there's no way to get a non-skeleton undead follower.

Of course you can always homebrew an option for that. And considering there's undead animal companions there may be undead followers in a future release.

Haven't had it this month but when that happened to me in the past I contacted Customer Service and they fixed it.

One of the main issues with the one-off ancestries in PF2 like the shoony was their low number of options. 4 ancestries and 13 feats total, and none above level 13.

If this is a one-off for ancestry options, both ikeshti and shobhad have triple the number of ancestry feats shoony got, and more 17th level ancestry feats than some core PF2 ancestries currently have.

The opening post made me realize I'd never looked at what PF2 GM Core had to say about traps, and it turns out it does seem to agree with you on Simple Hazards. "In isolated encounters where the PCs have plenty of time to recover from hazards’ effects, simple hazards can feel more like speed bumps than true challenges. But when combined with other threats, even simple hazards can prove perilous."

Granted that's in the section on encounter building rather than the Hazard section, but it largely matches up to your initial criticism of simple hazards.

Looking at GM Core, about a quarter of the simple hazards in GM Core do impose debuffs that can last for more than a 10 minute rest (ex. Hallucination Powder Trap, Pharaoh's Ward, Poisoned Lock)

So I think your argument for what simple hazards should be has more system support than you think.

I found this blog useful since it lists a bunch of PF2 creatures that are thematic to Starfinder.

The pregens in Nova Rush are the same as the ones published for the playtest. You can find full sheets for them and descriptions of their abilities on this page.

There also will probably be official pregens using the Player Core rules in the next month or so.

Trip, the map's usage is held in one hand, so its way too small to cover a commander's table.

I was curious so I took a look at a map of the Peak District (UK) I have. It has a scale of 1/2 inch to the mile and is slightly smaller than the Arcane Map (covers 56 by 38 miles).

I think the best American comparison would be a USGS 1:100,000 scale map.

I fully agree the map would be incredibly useful for an army. Just knowing heights would be good information and every army would try to get one. And I'm in agreement that 7th level is a little too low, this should probably be at least an 11th level item to be on par with scrying instead of clairvoyance.

However, things this map would not show: Forest hunting trails, current weather conditions, ford locations of rivers, whether bridges have been fortified or destroyed, enemy supply caches, etc. Local guides or scouts would still be needed.

I get being worried about it invalidating scouting. However, some other factors to consider:
In the book, the item's rarity is Uncommon.
The ability to reveal troops is a once-per-day activity that has the detection trait. Otherwise its just a map with a "reasonable amount of detail".
The granularity goes down to "troops", which is then up to the DM. Personally I'd say anything PC party or special forces sized wouldn't qualify. The item also doesn't even say it has friendly or enemy identifications.

You mentioned Pearl Harbor. The US military had radar stations that detected the incoming Japanese planes, but due to the military expecting friendly planes that day, security procedures, and miscommunications, they weren't reported.

To use a practical example, the largest dungeon level I've seen in a Paizo AP is about 350 by 350 ft. If you double Xenocrat's proposed map size to 36 inches, that whole dungeon level on the map would be roughly the width of a credit card.

To follow up Finoan:
2. There's nothing in Swarm Eidolon to forbid this from what I can tell. Dispersed Form Eidolon can't make Strikes, but Swallow Whole doesn't make a Strike, its an action that has the attack trait. Its an interesting interaction for sure, but you'd need to be level 11 for reasons Finoan mentioned. Also the size limitations of Swallow Whole still apply.

4. Yes, I don't see any mention of weakness to Splash for Swarm Eidolons. The swarm trait says that "typically" a swarm may have weakness to splash but that's not a hard rule enforced by the trait.

5. That seems correct to me since Swarm Eidolon's dispersed form can't make Strikes and Eidolon's Opportunity makes a Strike.

While Vrolikai definitely seems to be the replacement level 20 demon for the Balor, I was under the impression that Imvath was their replacement in terms of theme.

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

I think that is because to us Warfare is just martial combat. I don't think we thought there was not going to be a difference between the two. To me Warfare is more Fighter feats or Ranger feats focused around warfare and fighting. At least to me it is one of those, it feels more like that then just a war book.

We are at the point in KM that war between armies becomes more prevalent, so what I hope this book has is rules to integrate characters in war scenarios, since atm the war rules and the combat rules are disjointed.

On first read, the skirmish combat rules do seem like they integrate player characters into large combats well. I haven't seen how well it works in practice yet though.

You can get it here.

This post mentions that it'll be available for play on the 22nd, so I expect it to become available today.

I could also be reading too much into a one time change.

I don't know how many feats for natural weapons there are but there's over 20 heritages that give unarmed attacks so there's plenty of precedent. Warrior Automaton for one example.

To answer the OP's original question:
Jotunborn were made by the gods to be the shapers of creation. After creation was finished the gods sent them to a subplane called the Fray. There they live a nomadic lifestyle following insectoid creatures called iivlars which produce silk. A few of them also pop back into Golarion whenever there's a natural disaster to fix creation.

Mechanically Jotunborn are a Large ancestry (with one heritage allowing you to be medium) with boosts to Strength, Wisdom, Free, and a Charisma flaw. They have the ability to glow with dim light thanks to the silk they weave into their skin. Not having the silk is the sign of being an outcast from jotunborn society. They have 5 heritages that generally have to do with the character's role in Jotunborn society (Warrior, Animal Keeper, Sage, Plane-Hopper, Weaver)

Their ancestry feats largely revolve around animal caretaking, creating things, grappling and being planar travelers. Plus the usual ancestral lore/weaponry feats

There were two feats that stood out to me. The first is a feat that's a copy of the Minotaur feat that gives reach as a stance. The other was Jotun's Boost, which lets you pick up a willing ally and toss them 25-30 feet (and strike as reaction) for two actions.

Sure.

From what I can tell, the main difference between what the class archetype gets and what a normal innovation gets is that your class DC progression is better. You get Expert at 7 and Master at 15 instead of 9 and 17.

My experience is usually the PCs will take care of turning things into an evil campaign, you don't need published material to directly cater to it.

Also I recommend reading Battlecry first instead of playing this weird game of telephone with its contents.

You should have gotten an email in the last two weeks about how your order is authorized and pending shipping.

I got excited by that, but those are the sanctioning documents, not the adventures themselves.

The Impossible playtest stated it was "for an as-yet-unannounced book to be released in 2026".

Also there's no way they'd do another mainline release this year when Monster Core 2 is coming out in November.

Magus focus spells don't interact with spellstrike because casting them recharges your spellstrike. Focus fang is really nice for this because if you don't have to move you can Focus Fang and then spellstrike as your three actions without MAP on a turn.

They also don't meet the spell attack roll or saving throw requirement of spellstrike.

Basing it off of Sustain could be cleaner. That may cause some order weirdness with River Carving Mountain but that doesn't seem like a big deal. I'll have to think about that. Thanks for the feedback y'all.

But not allowing Tumble Through, either?

I was torn on that but eventually decided that if the developers added Tumble Through to be a move action with style then having Stride as a move action serves the role and Tumble can be safely dropped. Striding while dancing is stylish enough for me, and there is precedence since that's how Uncontrollable Dance works.

Perses13 wrote:

I'm also in the camp where using using Tumble Through to just Stride feels wrong to me.

After reading this thread, I'm simply going to house rule that Dancing Invocation is a one action ability that lets you choose one of Step, Leap, or Stride and then Sustain as two subordinate actions. This solves the problem of enabling quickened strides or other subordinate actions, while allowing for the developer intent to include strides without mandating Tumble Through strides.

Thats, .. that would cause it to not work with longjumps or any other activities that included these movement actions though?

Yes that's correct.

I'm also in the camp where using using Tumble Through to just Stride feels wrong to me.

After reading this thread, I'm simply going to house rule that Dancing Invocation is a one action ability that lets you choose one of Step, Leap, or Stride and then Sustain as two subordinate actions. This solves the problem of enabling quickened strides or other subordinate actions, while allowing for the developer intent to include strides without mandating Tumble Through strides.

For the conditions, don't forget that confused, paralyzed, and grabbed also reference flat-footed/off-guard.