Pspritechologist's page

if anything, I would just increase the flat penalty if your PCs/an NPC is in light armor by 1 or 2... Losing dex entirely for NPCs can be as much as -8 at level 10, which is an incredible penalty that means all of your players can full attack and expect to land both shots, possibly even if they are level 7.

All good points, I'll consider changing it to something like that, but maybe I'll just do away with it in the end. Thanks for the advice.

By adjusting DCs, I mean making it so that someone with max ranks, a half decent ability score, and a class skill can... maybe 60% pass a check. Adjusting the high end down from 100% is of course a trial and error adjustment that I'm still dialing in myself.

I'm afraid I'm not quite sure what you're getting at, sorry. Could you try explaining it in a little more detail?

Whatever works for you works for you. Personally, I like the idea that my handgun at level 20 does as much damage as a MBT's cannon, and that technology is worth as much as it costs to equip a small army. Part of the fantasy and all that.

To each their own, of course :P

Have you considered buffing non-magical healing instead?

It's also a very different pace of play if your characters have to pull back and rest up in the ship's med bay instead of pushing through with some quick spells/serums of magic nanotech. So if you can adjust the pace of play it seems okay. It's just that spells affecting only stamina seems... like such a downgrade to the spell that it might as well not exist.

In combat healing is perhaps even less useful than it used to be in PF1. If you're healing out of combat, well there are only so many situations where you can't take a 10 min rest instead. If you're running into those situations often, well you just made the mystic with mystic cure mandatory. It not being mandatory is a plus side of starfinder's system.

The way I see HP is that once you start taking points out of it, you're in a bad way. An average fight should end with you taking little to no HP damage, it just tuckering our heroes out, but when they start losing HP? That's when they're in danger of actual injury, long term ones. That's why regaining hit points is so hard, it's physical injuries that take time to set, maybe they need a cast, or stitches, that kind of stuff. Unless, of course, you've got a healing serum, which will set your arm right back in place. With all that, this take on HP, in that you really don't want to lose it, I feel makes healing items and spell all that more useful, where now they can provide a cushion you can't really get anywhere else, to prevent you from actually losing those vital hit points. This is just my personal take on it, of course, and it's how I'd like to run my games.

The characters I've seen in heavy armor tend to be the melee damage monsters that can destroy difficult encounters solo (they'll be screaming I need healing afterwards, but they can do it).

So, penalising the squishies for not being as DPS heavy just seems odd to me. Unless you want to give every character free proficiency and then let them chose between mobility restricting heavy armor and light armor?

The way I see it is that it's just a hand waive rule that might as well say "Any prepared character can hold their breath in space." It clearly doesn't make sense in world, as some of the armours it would apply to are archaic, but it's there so people don't need to worry about it. There's nothing wrong with that, but space is an element that I find interesting, and hand waiving it's survivability is something I don't super want. That being said...

Lifesupport: I would go with Garretmanders suggestion: reducing it to 1 hour/level and even maybe make it a armor upgrade. This would make more sense.

You can then take some special armors (e.g. the EVA/D-Suit) which come already with a lifesupport system for free.

I do actually really like that idea, where no armours include life support (unless obviously intended, like space armours) and it's available for all of them as an upgrade. I think that's a really good mix of keeping it accessible, while sticking with the theme I want to go with. Thanks for the suggestion :).

I like some of your approaches (especially the economic as this bothers me A LOT, too).

I'm glad to hear that :)

I think my biggest question as I glance through these... Have you played starfinder before? If not I would be very wary of changing things as thoroughly as you have here without play experience. House rules tend to be best written from experience and not guesswork....

Thanks for the in depth response! I appreciate the analyse into them a lot, and you make some good points...

First, I have played before, as I mentioned this will be my second game I'm running. A lot of the rules I came up with are based on issues I observed during my first game, the largest of them likely being the skills. As for your input, your largest issue seems to be with the Flatfooted change (which is funny, because that's not one of the ones I thought I'd have to come back to). I get what you're saying with it, I was trying to sort of swipe a bit of how it works in Pathfinder, as I really like the concept of being high-Dex meaning you need to actually be on your toes. Do you have any suggestion as for a way of implementing it without breaking anything?

Skills: We have a rather small group, and there are some definite Skill gaps already, but it's not something I'm too terribly fussed about. This is one of the biggest changes that came from my experience in the game, as my last group was comprised of a Mechanic, Technomancer, Mystic, and Envoy all of whom ended up taking Culture at one point or another during character creation because "I guess it makes sense..." 4 of my 5 players were genuinely unsure what Skills to take, simply because they were so overburdened with points. Meanwhile, the Solarian in the group, playing a not-so-smart-but-good-talker captain, by level 5, had ended up splitting his pitiful number of points, just to get even a handful of Skills. It's something I really do not want in my games.
That being said, the point you make about changing DCs is very smart, and something I briefly considered. The main issue is that I haven't got a way of controlling what my players put their points into, and so if they do decide to specialise in something, should I just let them be god-tier at it, just so the ones who don't specialise are capable? In theory, I love the idea of lowering DCs so that splitting points is more viable, I was disappointed initially when I read how Skills work in Starfinder, as it seems like it would be mostly the same if you simply picked Skills at first level, and they all got a +1 as you levelled up, but I see this solution as just pushing it further down the line, where now you don't need to put all your ranks in, but you'd be silly not to.

Economy: You may consider it cosmetic, but it is for sure one I'm willing to put the work into. The idea that, as adventurers, they amass enough wealth to rival entire civilisations is just all off for me. One high level gun costing enough to staff a small army just doesn't fit for me. Plus, consider the effects the economy being more grounded in reality will have past cosmetic, it makes it more relatable, where Credits mean more to the players who have them. I know a change like this obviously isn't for everyone, but my players have had a generally positive reaction to it so far.

Computers: The change is mostly because two of my three players don't really have computers, or much technical know-how, for that matter. It's just a little weird that you can get a basic computer for so much less than a normal one to me. I think computers are awesome thematically, and maybe this is just a point of view from someone who understands the inner workings of computers, but I'd like to see some more interesting choices with them. It's already inspired some more interesting decisions from the one player who uses them. I mean, are you the kind of person who gets an Android, an Apple for twice the price, or a weird phone no one's ever heard of, but allows you complete access to it? This goes along with changing the economy, where I want my players to have a little more spending money away from guns costing a ridiculous amount more than anything else in the game, so that they can consider a pricier option, even if it doesn't make much sense.

CMD: I'm not too worried about it, no one I'm playing with is even a throw away from a power gamer or rules lawyer, and even if they were to a degree, it's being able to grapple a single enemy in a fight. If that had a destructive effect on my game, I'd feel like I'm running it wrong :P.

Life support: It's more-so that I don't see a reason to claim that my Shobhad's traditional Shobhad armor has a space suit built in. Also, I don't mind penalising light armor, that's almost kind of the point, heavy armor seems to have so few things going for it...

Crafting: I'm not banning anything, I just don't know what I'm doing. As with a lot of the other rules, we don't have anyone with Engineering, so until that happens, I'm not too worried about, I just feel like I want to do something a little more interesting. I might back down on it, not sure yet.

Healing: In the setting of Starfinder, it seems to me that doctors are supposed to be necessary. I mean, the rules go on and on about how you heal, limiting it greatly, adding feats and strict items to squeeze just a little more health out of it, and then give you a spell and item that hand waives all of it. They feel super out of place to me, and really just s$@+ all over doctors. In my experience, I've had far more people looking forward to being a doctor than I've had people hoping to be a Cleric, and it's just sad that it might never actually come up. It also seems odd that there's so few ways to regain Stamina during a fight, so I feel this rules really does work out well. This way, doctors will have a tangible impact on a group, and actually feel useful, while magic healers still fill a slot that you can't fill many other ways, able to keep people going throughout a fight.

Again, thanks a lot for taking the time to think about all of them =D
I hope you have some more to say about all of this

I'll be running a Starfinder game here in a bit, my second so far, and my players and I are all very excited. I've been making a list of house rules for the game as we all prepare, just things that I think will overall make the game a little more enjoyable for our particular group, and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions, or glaring flaws with them that I'm missing. Any advice is appreciated :)

Just as a note, these rules are not designed to be the most balanced or strict, we play a rules light game and things are subject to change both in the future, and just on a case-by-case basis.

I've copied the list to a Google Doc here, since it was large and poorly formatted on the forum. A couple notes for some of them:
Skills being overhauled refers to this, all Classes have had their Skills per level set to 5, then modified by *half* your Int modifier. I feel like this is a good way to fix the problem of Solarians and Soldiers not knowing anything, while making it so Envoys and Operatives are actually specialised, essentially normalising Skills across the board. I have not considered how this affects Operatives balance wise as we do not have one in the game. I will cross that bridge when I get to it.

As for the crafting and languages rules, I was tired :P
Any tips there would be nice as well.