Ramoska Arkminos's page

I just wonder which is the companion, the humanoid or the quadruped.

Also, after seeing the cute plant creature my players started to wonder if this is Starfinder or Pokemon and whether this is going just too far :D

I was reading the first books magic items and noticed something interesting regarding Dawnflower Melange:

"Cafes near the Radiant Cathedral are often filled daily with Sarenite clerics enjoying this beverage while talking about the confluence of science and religion."

They must pay insanely well to the clerics if they can afford 475cr drinks daily just for refreshment :D I better keep this quiet or my PCs will probably try to rob the clerics...

*Throwing money at the screen*

Well, we finished the AP few weeks ago and everyone really enjoyed it. In the last book there were a few things that the players didn't enjoy, including the final Boss fight. I'll write our experiences so others may prepare for them better than I had :)

The players took the see invisible -spell ampoules which the boss dispelled. They had one left so basically the only one able to see the boss was their soldier. After killing the other creatures only two creatures were playing actively: the soldier, who was soaking around 75% of bosses damage with his Energy Resistance, who was shooting Serovox, and Serovox attacking him with Explosive blasts. Others were taking ready actions and trying to pinpoint Sevorox every time they attacked. This took ages since Sevorox could be invisible for 26 rounds (used 2 greater invisibilities) and got boring and repetitive quickly. Even a shirren can't see Serovox since they fly and there is no atmosphere so no vibrations to detect. Only reason Sevorox was killed in the end was because of lucky crit that took them under 40 HP which, according to tactics, made him get down and the team melee solarian hit him for around 100 damage.

After this they looted Serovox and found the Electroencephalon Command Key. I allowed a mysticism roll with DC40 which they made and realized what the item was. Instead of destroying it they threw Sevorox in Null Space Chamber and secured the key. After getting back to Absolom Station they gave the NSC and the Key to Ambassador Nor who was extremely happy about it.

The spaceship battle felt quite dull also, since the other ships barely got through EoBs shields and EoB did triple crits on pretty much every shot, disabling them in few rounds. With the +10 to rolls they pretty much hit automatically.

One noticable thing was also the fact they did not get any credits when getting back to the station. Maybe it was left for the GM to figure out but since they brought Serovox in I had a good reason to give them 50k from Eoxians, and also gave some from Starfinders since they had been paying them earlier in the AP. Luckily the group had looted pretty much everything (they even had a few kish warriors corpses from the landing platform for scientists) so after selling everything (for 10%, except for relics) they got around 160k. And no, they had not been to Absolom for the few last books since they thought they are pressured to get to the Stellar Degenerator.

So everything went well in the end and the group definitely wants to continue with these chars so homebrew it is from this forward and Azlanti Empire will have to wait for them to want a new start.

So what if my players don't want to board the Empire of Bones and instead stick to the plan from book 5? Or board the Stellar Degenerator and try and use it to shoot down the Empire of Bones?

I understand that an AP can't account for everything, but a sidebar about these options would have been nice.

All that aside, seems like an epic ending to the story!

We just played this moment last week. Many were thinking about boarding the Stellar Degenerator but I mentioned that the tech-savvy chars know the alien device is so huge they would probably take days, even weeks, to even find a way to power the engines, let alone fly with it. After this the players also did the math that they only have a few hours before the Corpse Fleet comes there too and even the portal might close and trap them there, so they ruled out that option.

Also, it's so massive that ramming with it would probably not work since even the supercolossal ship is faster and could probably evade them.

Just a few tips that helped me in the same situation :)

My F5 just broke. Will start clicking the refresh button with my mouse. No rush, really. I'll just hold my breath until I get the PDF...

I want to know when others get the PDF so we can start discussing this book!

I'm refreshing my mail and digital content list all the time but the PDF just does not appear. Must be a fault somewhere *keeps smashing F5*

So, any news on this one? :P Getting nervous with this silent treatment :)

First of all, If I click "Community" and try to go to forums, why am I forced to click a section? Why am I not able to just click the forums-text and get to the Community / Forums / -section?

Same goes for My Account. You have to select one of the few there are under the list, then go to the main page and then to Downloads etc. Why not make it possible to just go to My Account straight away?

Also under Downloads I keep wondering why are the SF AP volumes seperated like this:

Part 1 is under "Paizo Inc.: Starfinder Adventure Path"
Parts 2 and 3 are under "Paizo Inc.: Starfinder Adventure Path Dead Suns"
Part 4 is under "Paizo Inc.: Adventure Path Dead Suns"

Inconvenient and clutters the view since they are the same AP.

While commuting to work this morning one more thing came to mind for the GMs to think before running:

Oh, and one more thing: The loot in Star-Eaters Spine in area B6b has a pair of injection gloves that I could not find from the books either by hand or by PDF search. Only similiar thing that came to mind were the Painclaws in AP2. Since those were devourer-specific it seems logical that these are the ones you find, any comments or ideas on this one?

Been running this for several sessions and next step will be the Marrowblight. However, the story simply assumes that the characters will go find her by foot. I'm fairly certain my players will start to look for a chopper/hovercar or something like that rather than walk (hell, people don't even walk today, why would they in scifi-future?) which will pretty much destroy the coming ambush. Any good ideas to either steer them to walking or getting them to understand why you can't rent a flying vehicle in a scifi-setting? :P

Another near-catastrophy came with Necrografts and the necrotic weapons, since after reading this:

Adding even a single necrograft to a living body causes the
recipient creature to gain the necrograft subtype. Abilities,
items, and spells that detect or identify undead reveal
necrografts (identifying only the augmentations as undead,
rather than the recipient creature as a whole).
Creatures with this subtype are also damaged by spells
that damage undead, and can be subjected to other undead-
specific effects. If a spell or ability that does something
other than deal damage would not normally affect such
a creature, but does affect undead, the creature can be
targeted, but it gains a bonus to its AC and saving throw
against the effect equal to 4 – the number of necrografts it
has (to a minimum bonus of +0).

The players started wondering about weapon-powered temp hitpoints since almost everyone took at least black heart and necrotic weapons say

Undead creatures targeted by a weapon with this property not only

take no damage from the cold but also gain temporary Hit
Points equal to the weapon’s item level. These temporary Hit
Points last for 10 minutes, until expended, or until the undead
gains a larger number of temporary Hit Points from a necrotic
weapon. A creature can benefit from only one source of
temporary Hit Points from a necrotic weapon at a time.

But since the text points that items can detect necrografts but only spells and abilities are said to affect them otherwise. At least I decided to rule it like this until otherwise stated somewhere :)

We continued to the Star-Eaters Spine yesterday and I ran into a strange thing on the book.

Veolisks special ability Void Gaze does not specify any action needed, so according to core rules it requires a standard action. However, the effect of the gaze ends on BEGINNING of the victims next round. So basically there is no effect? Since the effect ends before the victim can do anything. And without the possibility to confuse the enemies effectively the Veolisk is not much of a threat to level 5 group I decided to run the power as a passive power that works on anyone who is actively facing the Veolisk. This made the encounter really interesting, especially when a Solarian hit a teammate for 25 damage and a few spore-effected PCs spent half of the fight gazing to the void doing pretty much nothing. They won the fight but this way it was a challenge.

Anyway, any ideas how the power SHOULD work since I could not find any reasonable answer RAW?

Typically, overcoming an enemy, regardless of means, gives you the same XP award. The encounter says that if the PCs succeed in defeating the Rusty Rivet in starship combat, the captain surrenders. Provoking them into a fight and defeating them a second time shouldn't yield additional XP.

So, defeating the ship/crew in combat or through social skill use generates the same award 2,400 XP. If they manage to do it without fighting them in tactical combat, they gain an additional 1,600 XP story award.

That's how I'd rule it, anyway.

Yeah, this is how I usually play these also and how I'm going to play it here, but the wording made me wonder how it was intended to go. Personally I like it if the players can find a way to avoid solving everything with guns and try to make it as rewarding as the other option somehow, even though diplomacy often means no loot :P

That's sort of what I'm doing. I'm converting Jade Regent into Starfinder, with the caravan being replaced by a BattleStar Galactica type refugee fleet. (And maybe we'll actually have a second session, but my group can be erratic.) I'm just making it several systems, and only need to come up with some reason why they can't just ride a drift beacon back to the Pact Worlds (beyond "big nasties can follow us back there, and the Pact Worlds can't fight off ANOTHER invasion").

Break the drift engine? Make the ship use some other means of FTL-travel? Or just use some kind of strange magical disturbance that obscures the Absolom Station beacon, or possibly interferes with all Drift Beacons and makes longer jumps unaccurate/dangerous?

And then again, if the characters are not Pact World -aware, even if they could jump to Absolom Station their people might think the Signals origin is a wormhole/star/something dangerous and for that reason they just don't want to jump there. There might be some expeditions sent but since the return trip would take years no-one has ever returned and the people think they died or were destroyed.

Reading this thread I think I must live on another planet.

I don't go online, I am online on wifi always, in my house, in my job, in bars and cafes, in large sections of my city with public WiFi, even on the bus, and failing that I have 4G with enough data to handle a webapp easily.(I live in Ireland)

You read my mind. I have wifi in almost everywhere and 4G/LTE on phone if needed. Charging is possible pretty much everywhere, and if there is not a socket you can always plug it to the laptop you are using and charge it from the USB port.

I understand some peoples griefs on subscription/data package model but that has nothing to do with the fact the software is online. I for one prefer the HTML5 and everything being always up-to-date on every machine I am, be that a work laptop, home PC or a phone/tablet.

I love it how some people really think things instead of just scraping the surface. As these potions (appearance/sex change) go, main discussion in my group was how much more interesting swinger parties would get... And yes, everyone in our group is 40 years old +-2 years :P