Professor Wonderment's page

Honestly? I don't like them. Of all the concepts Paizo added onto 3.5, one of my favorites was archetypes.

Pathfinder archtypes are simple, versatile, and add a huge amount of flavor. Want your Gunslinger to be a roguish cardsharp? Mysterious Stranger. Like the skills and magic of Bards but don't like performing? Archaeologist. Want to command the undead with SCIENCE! instead of necromancy? Reanimator Alchemist.

Pathfinder archetypes are brilliant because they tweak and expand the flavor of existing classes to add a huge amount of versatility. They make it easier to play the exact character you want, and add another element of customisation.

And Starfinder archetypes can't really do that, because they aren't class-based. Suppose you want your Mechanic to be able to reconfigure their drone whenever they have downtime, rather than on level up, and you're willing to trade some power for that. An archetype won't be able to help you, because they have to apply to every class.

Class-independent templates are a good idea, but Starfinder already has those with themes. Archetypes as they stand just seem superfluous.

Eox is mentioned as having some sort of battle arena for the living to come and compete in.

Otherwise, I don't see much, but I'd surprised if violent sports didn't exist. If vidgamer is a viable profession, that means there's an audience interested in watching competitions. Add in healing magic and tech making injury a lot less perilous, and it would have to exist.

Well, that's interesting. I was thinking there were actual undead Pharasmins worshiping The Lady of Graves, because they view the undeath they no longer remember choosing as a sort of original sin they're trying to redeem themselves from.

Or that was an attempt at appeasement:

"Oh great Pharasma, I know our very existence is a mockery of your natural order, but we just wanted to let you know we are really, *really* sorry about that. I know we turned ourselves into abominations in order to escape Your grasp, but we don't remember doing that, so I don't think it really counts? So look, just give us a mulligan on this and don't destroy us or punish our souls for all eternity once we reach the Boneyard, and I promise this won't happen again. Amen."

Considering the changes to the magic system, it's an easier lore-adaption to translate the martial classes.

Akiton's 4-armed Shobhad probably still take levels in Barbarian.

Fighters don't really have lore, so are easy (and pointless) to translate.

Assassins are an easy fit for science fantasy.

Rangers with guns probably hang out on frontier planets, protecting settlers and guiding expeditions with their weird alien animal companion.

As said, Kineticist would fit easily, though they'd likely be nearly all Aether, with maybe a few Fire. Controlling the four classical elements isn't very science fictiony.

I'd say it's not so much that game designers don't want PCs to get flight immediately. Flight is a handy utility ability, one PCs normally start getting until level 5 or so. Like Voss said, a lot of low CR enemies in Pathfinder don't have the slightest way to challenge someone circling above them pelting them with arrows.

Personally, though, this sounds like something a good GM will houserule for you. You're clearly enthusiastic about the idea of winged species, flying races already exist in Starfinder to use as templates, and ranged weapons are far more common and viable. Letting you have a pair of feathered wings isn't going to break the game open.

A flamethrowers is handy for crowds, but swapping it out once the melee folk get in takes a move and a swift, and that's with a feat investment (or you could drop the flamethrower, but should you?}.

With more thought, I take this back. Simply making both weapons Called is a minor expenditure, so you *could* drop that flamethrower for free and simply call it back with a swift action.

Suede wrote:

Noodlemancer wrote:

Renata Maclean wrote:

You don't get more attacks, but the ability to wield more weapons (and tools) can make you more versatile

Most notably, however, the Fusillade feat requires your character to have 4 or more arms

The saddest part about this is that you need a separate action to draw each weapon. Even with Quick Draw, you need four swift actions (more than an entire round) to draw all four weapons, making it impossible to use Fusillade until at least round 3, assuming you spent the first two rounds mostly drawing your guns.

I don't know about you, but in any situation it's not rude to do so that I expect to get shot at, I'm going to already have my weapons out.

I'm just generally sad about how useless Quick Draw seems in Starfinder.

Outside of the ugly edge case of spending two rounds to draw weapons for Fusillade, only about 2-3 classes are capable of making any use of it in principle, and even that is situational, for everyone else it offers absolutely no possible benefit in any imaginable situation as soon as they reach BAB +1 (which is, at most, level 2).
You can't even Quick Draw and Full Attack or Quick Draw and Trick Attack in the same round - both of those are simply illegal by the rules.
I'm honestly not sure what the designers have been thinking.

Not to mention how easy it is to duplicate or supersede Quick Draw in a lot of places. Ysoki get a free (and slightly gross) version of Quick Draw, and a Kalasha or someone with cyberarms (admittedly higher level items) might never need to draw something in combat.

Most of all, though, Called is a mere level 1 fusion that gives you the effect of Quick Draw and protects you from being disarmed. I expect to see a lot of Called and/or Glamered weapons.

There's long been a school of thought about 3rd Edition, 3.5, and Pathfinder, that classes should be ranked not by survivability or damage potential, but by versatility - and thus, 9th level caster are the king of the system. A high level fighter may be really really good at killing things, but he's not much good for anything else, whereas casters can pull all kinds of crazy reality-altering shenanigans, and are probably even better at killing.

So speaking as someone who loves casters for their creative problem solving potential, I'm good with this, and hopefully this leads to a more balanced system. My Technomancer doesn't need Time Stop or Gate to be a badass.

Was thinking of using analgesics in a needler pistol with a melee weapon...No save... Flat footed target means -2 AC... and inability to make AoO. Easy debuff for a melee character? I dunno, still rolling the idea around.

If I'm reading this right, you shoot them with the needler, and when it hits the effect leaves them flatfooted so they can't respond with an AoO.

Unfortunately, that's not going to work. Attacks of opportunity are always resolved before the action that triggers them.

There's always the needler glove, but it's an advanced melee weapon. Which seems odd.

I like the idea of an Android that doesn't quite get proper slang and pejorative use, but tries and fails constantly, kind of like Sandra B&#$&*~ in Demolition Man.

I could see a scene such as:

Party plans to start a fight, android exclaims, "Time to physically abuse the livestock!"

....Human leans over and whispers in his ear

"...I mean, time to kick some @$$!"

"I'm here to consume edible adhesives and abuse livestock, and I'm all out of edible adhesives."

Rothlis wrote:

Ambrosia Slaad wrote:

Absolutely No to "it". Shirren are sentient humanoids with three genders. They are not things or constructs. "It" is insulting.

I'd actually think it better to come up with three entirely new pronouns for the shirren. Shirren have sperm donors, egg donors, and hosts that also donate additional genetic material. That doesn't really map well to human players' concepts, and so using he/she/they makes the shirren seem less alien. We as players shouldn't box/shorthand shirren neatly into masculine, feminine, and other which I think is what he/she/they puts in the minds of most players.

I think three entirely new pronouns works better. I think it also has the added bonus of letting the players attach their own concepts of personality and social/familial dynamics to individual shirren free of preconceptions and stereotypes based on 21st-century humanity.

Well im willing to guess that you are not a shirren it would be silly to assert that it wpuld be insulting as no shirren exist irl if i get a chance to play and not only dm as im my play groups resident sci-fi fan i will make a bug humanoid character that will refer to itself in the 3rd person with the word it

You don't need my permission to play in or GM your home games as you see fit, or to change the setting canon to meet your and your groups preferences.

But if you play in PF Society or SF Society games, you shouldn't be surprised if you encounter pushback from other players or the GM. You might also take a moment to consider that many LGBTIQ+ players/GMs might make negative assumptions about players/GMs who deliberately attempt to misgender character's specified gender identity. Even people in your home game likely have LGBTIQ+ friends and family, or are perhaps LGBTIQ+ themselves. Please be as considerate of other people at the table and their characters as you would wish them to be considerate of you and your characters.

Damn straight. If someone tells me that they're playing a Shirren host who was born a Shirren male, and they prefer to not be referred to with pronouns at all, then I'm going to respect that. I'm not going to argue over what their character is, because that's *their* character, just like I would expect them to not insist my Lashunta is really an elf. I don't get to control another person's character or their identity, and they don't get to control mine.

Rule 1 of gaming is don't be a dick.

Now, I could play a *character* who misgenders others, whether because they're an Android who doesn't comprehend gender or a jerky Vesk who doesn't care to learn about other species, but only if everyone in my group was conformable with it, and I wouldn't even try in SFS, because getting permission at the start of every module isn't a great use of everyone's time.

With all the sexual dimormorpism of lashunta I think a transgender lashunta might have quite a bad case of gender dyphoria.

Eggs for reptilian races give a different approach to have parents for same sex couples.

Perhaps like a lot of lizards, a female Vesk can engage in parthogenesis and reproduce without a male.

It's actually a pretty versatile ability. There's a number of fun things you can do with it. Velisruna already suggested having both reach weapon and a heavy weapon. If you're fighting melee opponents, you're a ranged attacker protected by a buffer of threatened squares, making it a pain for them to get to you without triggering an AoO. If you're fighting ranged attackers, you can get up close and force them to either waste actions escaping or trigger an AoO by attacking.

There's also a lot of interesting but situational new weapons that become more viable if you don't need to waste time switching them out. A flamethrowers is handy for crowds, but swapping it out once the melee folk get in takes a move and a swift, and that's with a feat investment (or you could drop the flamethrower, but should you?}. Got four arms? You can choose between your area attack or something precise for free, every time.

Play a technician. Use a taclash for trips and disarms, wield a doshko for sheer damage, and still have a hand free to catch disarmed weapons.

Finally, you always get to act in a surprise round, because four armed is forewarned.

I'll see myself out.

I'm thinking slotting Shirren into male, female, and host is the result of dual-sexed races trying to translate a radically different reproductive biology into their own social construct. Since neither "male" nor "female" are hosting, the only reason to assign one of the mating types as male or female is the "female" has larger gametes - and since the cells aren't carrying half the genetic material to make a full life form, they wouldn't even be considered gametes.

I could get into a whole thing of how mating type doesn't necessarily mean male and female, but the point is, Shirren have a very alien reproduction cycle, and the human(oid) response to new concepts is to establish points of comparison with established concepts, and that a Shirren "male" doesn't correlate to a human male, or even an insect male.

At level 1. At level 5 it's 14 14 16 vs 14 14 16. At 10 it's 14 14 17 vs 16 16 18.

You start with lower overall stats, but have much more and more
Balanced rather quickly.

Hey, you're right! I hadn't even noticed the changes to ability score advancement.

That makes relying on multiple abilities scores much more viable.

Sniping is totally cool. Being able to rain death down on unsuspecting enemies too far to counterattack is rad as hell.

Unfortunately, it's a tactic that only works in specific situations. Being indoors is a sniper's kryptonite. Pathfinder, and thus Starfinder, tends to be about taking the fight to the enemy, so you're going to be indoors a lot.

Still a cool ability, though. Being able to have Arcing Surge start on an enemy and then go in any direction you want makes it *much* more useful.

I haven't gotten to try a Solarian yet, but it's worth noting Starfinder's ability point system is harsher on MAD than Pathfinder's point buy.

In PF, an 18 and a 10 cost the same as a 15 & 16. In Starfinder, it's 14 & 14. If you needed three stats, 18,10,10 cost the same as 14,14,15. SF, it's 14,12,12.

Human Scholar Mechanic and her drone son. The drone is a growing child AI, and her and her android spouse's effort to build an offspring, with hopes that will eventually provide a way for androids to reproduce like biological races.

My party and I have been proceeding on the basis that they're slowly regaining skills they already had. The Investigator hasn't had any time to research new extracts - he's been too busy trying to not get eaten - so we all agreed he was remembering them.

Remember how in Knights of the Old Republic,

One of the things I keep trying to wrap my head around is just how much do they know?

Likewise, if the player has a backstory written up... How will that be reconciled with this forgotten life as a thug for Lowls? Should be interesting...

I'm creating roles for my PCs matching their characters. Thus, the already thuggish Kineticist was a legbreaker, but the bookish Investigator aided Lowls in research and some evil experiments.

Yeah, I think offering him a new character is the way to go. Fortunately, I have a fairly good idea of how to introduce a new PC and explain why they weren't with the others while keeping the amnesia.

That's a tough one. How well do you know the player?

Well, he's my younger brother, so I've known him his whole life, but that doesn't necessarily mean I understand him.

I do think the character type isn't really in his wheelhouse. He mainly loves playing Rangers, especially Urban Rangers, so a psionic character is outside his comfort zone. He hasn't used his Collective to heal or buff the other PCs at all, and at second level, his best ability is making people fall down. Next level, he'll be able to spam Drain Health all day long, but that's not necessarily interesting.

I may have pushed him too hard in encouraging him to stick with this character. I altered the plot so that his powers have a particular connection to the party's amnesia, and he may actually be the rhu-chalik impersonating a humanoid and not even know it, so I have a personal investment.

Andrew's GM here. My version of Juglan Rivercane had a two word vocabulary. The party became fairly passionate discussing among themselves whether he'd be worth using as a guide. On the shared Google Doc I made to track the NPCs, he has three times as many lines devoted to as anyone else, so apparently they liked him.

This is way better than all the copy/pasting I was doing. Thank you!

Mild spoilers for In Search Of Sanity. If you're in my Albuquerque group, don't read this.

---

So I'm running Strange Aeons, three sessions in, and one of my PCs is singularly uninterested and uninvolved. He's actually a huge cosmic horror fan, and prior to the game start was by far the most psyched about this AP.

He came up with an interesting character as well - an android who developed psionics as the result of a rhu-chalik getting interrupted reading his mind, giving him a mental collective (he's a Vitalist) and a dormant mental link to the Dominion of the Black (mechanically the Formerly Mind-Swapped trait).

He's played his android very well, too, giving him a disturbingly upbeat voice and occasional lapses in melancholy when Formerly Mind-Swapped produces creepy alien memories. One of best moments so far was when he entered the party Witch's mind to aid in a mental battle with the Witch's sentient Harrow deck.

On the other hand, he's been unhappy about quite a bit. He's consistently complained about not feeling powerful (I allowed him to swap his racial Int bonus to Wis, so he's a primary caster with a casting stat of 20). He changed his archetype between sessions without telling me. He also gets upset and loses interest if his powers aren't immediately useful. During the encounter with the Taxidermic Wings, he simply wandered off and started checking other doors. He was very upset when I ruled Dr. Losandro's mind was too damaged to extract information from (and that he couldn't really do that anyway). After the third session ended, he declared that he didn't care about the survivors, about the other PCs, about fighting monsters, or anything that didn't clearly lead to him recovering his memories, and he ended up storming out.

...

So, any thought or advice?

That's how my GM did it. Any touch spell to hit an ally was 10 plus ranged penalties. Plus, make sure they remember cover penalties and penalties for being in combat, if the player doesn't have precise shot and friends.

Yeah, I think that's what I'm going to do. Auto-buffing up to 100 feet didn't seem right.

So I'm gearing up to run Strange Aeons, and one of my players running a Cartomancer focused on heals and buffs, with the idea being that he can use his cards to deliver touch spells at range.

My question is, how is this going to work? I suspect since his allies won't be trying to evade, I should treat it as a flatfooted touch attack (taking range increments and other penalties into account)?