Remy P Gilbeau's page

thflame wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

dnoisette wrote:

thflame wrote:

Why weren't Drow an option for a future race? That would have been my number one pick, as my favorite character is a drow.

This, I kept looking for Drow and couldn't even believe it wasn't available when I could not even remember what some of the races on offer actually were.

Isn't the Golarion canon that Drow are inherently evil in that they have been tainted by Rovagug and in case they somehow get over being evil and are cleansed of the aforementioned taint, they cease to be Drow?

Doesn't really seem appropriate for a PC option.

I disagree. ANYTHING should be an appropriate option for a PC. (Maybe with level adjustment.)

Not anything -- being a full deity (at the high end) or a creature with an intelligence score less than 3 or even non-existent (at the low end) probably would not be appropriate. Towards the middle, deep one hybrids are a "player" race with a crippling weakness that would make them unsuitable for nearly all campaigns.

But drow? Why not?

Well, because Drow isn't a race. There's not going to be a Race of Drow, because Drow is a Heritage. Unless Heritage feats get ripped from the game in their entirety (which I don't want to see, because I'm excited to see what Human Heritage feats for the different ethnicities like Ulfen and Varisian look like) then when you want to play a Drow, you'll take the Drow Heritage feat on an Elf.

I'm glad to see this. I've often felt the half-X races should be folded into their full blooded parents. This does so gracefully.

Ha! This is so cool. I love all of this. Primal Evolution may need a bit of a buff, though. The others are more flexible.

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Tallow wrote:

Perhaps Legerdemain?

I want this to be the word, but I know that no one I introduce to it will have a clue what it is.

Early D&D actually hugely expanded my vocabulary and I'm a smarter person today because I was reading D&D books as a kid. It's not like Legerdemain is some absurdly rare archaic word, I see it semi-regularly in other contexts and it would be fine here. That's the one they should go with.

No. No, as a matter of fact. It is pretty much exactly that. It is an absurdly rare and archaic word.Emphasis mine.

Also, what is the point of having Immunity to Critical hits if there is not HP?

Because you need a specific amount of damage to beat their Hardness and Dent them. You can't get lucky and hit a kidney with your dagger when attacking a trap door. If you're only able to swing hard enough to do 1d4+4 vs an 11 Hardness, you're not gonna be able to dent it, so let the Fighter with the Earthbreaker up to smash it to bits.

KingOfAnything wrote:

Link: Mark describing a cleric preparing remove curse in their 10th level slot.

Fair enough, sadly that is a 20th level feat, I still think 10th level slots and spell should be gained automatically

Disagree. Strongly. Miracle, Wish, and similar power level spells should not only be feat locked, but they should be narrative locked to the point where nearly no one qualifies ever. I'd personally prefer them be removed from the game entirely (No one should have, "I call my god up, and he sorts the issue for us." as a class feature) but I'll take locking them to level 20 only as a step in the right direction.

graystone wrote:

GentleGiant wrote:

Student of the Canon

I want a 'Student of the Cannon' feat. ;)

The Students of the Canon are at constant war with the Cult of the Headcanon. Just last week, the Students of the Canon had to embark on a journey through the ruins of The Great Shipping War just to stop the Cultists from performing the Ritual that would summon the dreaded “Highschool AU” onto Golarion!

Just imagine if they had failed . . .

“Seoni is running down the sidewalk with toast in her mouth. Dragon, her kawaii familiar, didn’t wake her up this morning and now she is late for her first day at Pathfinder Society High!

She bumps into someone and falls onto the ground, her toast nowhere to be seen. Who did she bump into? It’s . . . Valeros-sempai!”

. . . *shudders*

I didn't know I wanted this in my life till just this moment. Bye guys! I'm joining a Cult to usher in the end of all things!

I think we should all wait to propose "fixes" to the system till we see the system in total. Counterspelling as a Reaction is a feat. We have been given one feat and told there are many, many more. There's no reason that all the suggestions people are making and more aren't also feats that build off the original Counterspell feat that you can opt into if you want your character to be the ultimate spell breaker.

Wait till you know what the situation is, try it in it's default state, then propose changes after you've had table time with it.

I have no idea why people are getting bent out of shape over the shape of the orc. If they're gorilla like, cool. If they're pig like, cool. If they're anything more interesting than grey/green humans with bad teeth, seems like an upgrade to me. People banging on about racial profiling or some such like that's actually a thing. An orc is an orc. It's a bestial, murderous monster for killing at lowish adventuring levels. It's not a human, and is not a commentary on humans. No need for connections where there are none.

You have three actions in a round (and a reaction sometimes). Regardless of how many arms you have, you have three actions, so there you go. You can now play a race with more than two arms, because the new system doesn't care about how many appendages you have.

Finally, we get some basic information on Backgrounds. Background information, if you will.

Rangers really shouldn't have magic in the first place. It would be better if they just stripped the feature off them entirely rather than let them have whatever it would be called that you're proposing (the thing you're asking for is the exact opposite of what a spontaneous caster is). I'd prefer they not ever have access to spells through any means; feat, archetype, etc. It's always felt tacked on and is frankly a waste of design space. Rather than pushing the things that make a Ranger, like Traps, terrain use, Tactics, they instead burn page space writing Druid-lite spells that do the opposite.

When I play a PC or NPC dressed for combat, the character isn't dressed to emphasize or exaggerate their physical sexual characteristics. They are dressed to be competent and well-protected. They don't eschew their sexuality, but they damn well know that it's difficult to be sexy when you're maimed, dying, or a friggin' corpse. Dress appropriately for the job at hand seems a reasonable sound strategy.

That may be your approach, but my character, who's a front-line fighter (Swashbuckler, technically) and my definition of "the sexy male" fought through literal Hell wearing nothing but an albino Crocodile skin pimp coat, breeches, and some exceptionally fashionable boots, just so the devils could admire his awesome abs while he stabbed them, and it was glorious.

I'm sorry, but the majority of this thread has me confused.

There seems to be a lot of posts to the effect of, "Half Orcs are (typically) a product of rape, and that makes me uncomfortable, so we should get rid of them in favor of full orcs."

So, if I'm understanding correctly, the child of rape (who, like any other child, has no say in the circumstance of it's conception or upbringing) is objectionable, so you'd rather play as the rapist himself?

I wish for a cheap item that negates light sensitivity. There's already Smoked Goggles, which cost just 10gp and are non-magical gear. They make it so you get a +8 to saves versus Vision based attacks, and always count as averting your gaze. They impart a -4 to Perception and give everything a 20% miss chance. They are essentially sun glasses so dark you can barely see through them.

You're telling me they can make super dark glasses, but they can't make some much-less dark sun glasses? The only options for removing light sensitivity is through expensive magical eyewear, which I find to be ridiculous.

Just make some sun glasses, around the same price point as Smoked Goggles, that grant a bonus against light based hazards and attacks for races without light sensitivity, and get rid of the sensitivity for races that do, at the expense of while you're wearing them make it so you can't use either Dark or Low-light Vision. That seems reasonable for removing what is essentially an inherent -1 to Perception and Atk Rolls for certain races.

I happen to like my fantasy pulpy, tropey, and over the top. Chain mail bikini, "boob-plates", what-ever; they're all fine. Right along with the male armor that consists of loincloth, colossal shoulder pads, and sheer manliness (gigantically oversized compensatory weapon option).

If you don't personally go for that, you are certainly welcome to ban it at your own table. By all means, and more power to you, but lets not pretend censorship is ever a good thing. More facets receiving representation, rather than fewer, is always better. Lets have sensible, historically accurate chestguards, absolutely, but there's no reason there's not space for impractical nonsense beside it.

Yeah, no. Those are both awful suggestions. Missing is a bad enough punishment in and of itself without turning the Martial PC's into incompetent losers every time they encounter something dangerous.

I think alignment is important. As a DM tool. There should not be a line on character sheets for Alignment. The players should never know their alignment, or anyone else's. It's best used as an ear-mark for the DM to present monsters and peoples in broad strokes of "X values Y, and will typically do Z to accomplish it."

The class seems much more spread out, rather than front loaded like it was in 1e. Then again, all the classes shown so far seem a bit more stretched along their length, rather than everything jammed into the first few levels and then upgrading numbers from there as you level.

I'm good with Static HP per level. My table has been moving more and more that way as the years progress.

We started with the basic "roll, take what you get." years ago. Moved on to, "Half+1" and currently are using "Get half, roll half" where if you're a d10 class you get d5+5 so you're getting at least half+1. Might as well just take that last step at this point and toss rolling entirely.

Desna's Avatar wrote:

Interesting to note that the term "ancestry" has not completely supplanted "race". The term "race" is still used multiple times:

"You get 10 Hit Points from your race—more than the other races and MUCH more than the elves!"

This could also simply reflect that even the designers themselves have trouble remembering to replace the term "race" with "ancestry" every single time.

That might be an ovesight.

That's my thought too. After using "Race" for years, I'll allow a bit of cross-over during the transition period.

I can already see a scene with my PC's trying to chase a squad of Nimble Elves through wooded terrain. With such a large gap in movement capability, it really will feel like the Elves are ghosts. Hitting, running, and fading back through terrain while the Humans and Dwarves flail through the brush. I look forward to seeing how they deal with the situation.

Ya know, it's really annoying. I just get through telling my friends, "If it were Goblins, or no new Core races at all, I'd personally have picked no new Core races" but then of course my stupid brain has to start poking at me, "Hey. Hey. I know you juuuust finished saying a thing... but wouldn't this idea here be a fun character to play?" God damn it brain.

Vidmaster7 wrote:

^^that is what I keep saying. simply not enough information out their yet.

And we get that. To be honest, we are still hard at work wrapping up the current draft and getting it ready to print. We knew we had to give you an idea of the direction of the game, but we just do not have the time needed to absorb all of the feedback that a full release would invite.

It's a price we have to pay. An incomplete picture is better for most than total silence until release.

While I happen to be largely positive as to what's been shown so far, I almost wish you did keep it under wraps till release.

Having so many people clamoring about, "My napkin math/gut feeling (having been given only half of one single variable in the equation) show conclusively that old is better than new and new can never work." basically turns my forum reading experience into, "Is the post written by Paizo staff? No? Avert gaze to avoid no-save sanity damage."

Lord Mhoram wrote:

Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:

While I had made it as an offhanded comment, the "Adventurer who is funded through Patreon and live streams their adventures and escapades" character idea is becoming more and more crystallized :3

Stealing this idea.

Steal away ^w^

Also stealing, because that idea is too fun.

I still wonder if the emergence of the drift has affected the ease of access to other dimensions, such as making the drift a new transition boundary or barrier between the prime material and other planes. It would help explain why previous magical means for long range travel or communications are no longer as viable as they used to be.

I don't think anything changed, honestly. We're still pretty unclear on whether Triune made or simply discovered the means by which to access the Drift. There's a good possibility that it was there all along, an empty void that existed since the dawn of time. If so, the boundaries wouldn't change any when the Drift drives were gifted.

The other methods of travel (shadow drives, extra planar short cuts, and generation ships) that were used before the Drift drives are still possible, but they require a lot of things your average person isn't willing to put up with.

Shadow drives, which let you dip into the plane of Shadow and cover vast stretches of space quickly are still slower than Drift drives at getting around. They also pack all the unpleasant side effects of being in the plane of Shadows.

Jumping into the Ethereal plane, and zipping along using the power of your mind requires a few things that make it impractical for mass use as well; your speed is determined by your Intelligence and you also need to be able to get into the Ethereal plane in the first place. In other words, you need to be a powerful spell caster, preferably with an Int focus. Sure you don't age while you're in there, so travel time means nothing to you, but it's still passing outside. It's a trip that basically means you're leaving behind everyone you knew and loved forever, because they'll be dust by the time you get to your destination.

Generation ships are typically a last resort in any setting. Who really wants to spend the rest of your life in confined spaces with grandma?

There are things like Interplanetary teleport, but those have requirements that aren't always feasible eaither. You, again, need to be a high level spell caster, and you need to know where you're going. Not exactly ideal when you're just trying to go new places you've never been, nor is it terribly expedient when trying to set up a colony, when you're essentially limited to what you and a few people can carry in your arms at a time. It also means you're building a colony that will be highly isolated, with their fate resting on the mage capable of teleportation not getting eaten by strange alien fauna, or flora even.

Then enter the Drift drive; cheap, reliable, user friendly. Doesn't require years of training, can get anywhere quickly, can be hooked up to any size of ship you like, so you can haul massive amounts of cargo, no nasty shadow side effects, quick enough that you can always be home in time for Christmas-analog.

It's not a matter of the other methods no longer existing, or not working, it comes down to simple humanoid laziness. Drifting is fast, cheap, easy, and its side effects don't effect the primary user directly. Sure, once in a while, you tear off a chunk of Hell and have some angry imps gumming on the windshield, but your ship got attacked by weird stuff in the Shadow plane, and the Ethereal plane too, so you can't really even complain about it. Random encounters are just a part of travel.

Don Hastily wrote:

So, no full casters in Starfinder?

The lack of spells 7th level and above is one of my favorite things about Starfinder

Though seemingly, you can throw two 6th level spell slots and Resolve points together to get a 9th level spell.

102. DM - *rolls* What's your AC again? Ah, I was right. Yeah, he hits you on a 2.

Reckless wrote:

I'm extremely happy to see abilities that will be useful some of the time, leading to more variety of tactics. I'M always most pleased when something can be used with cleverness by my players.

It's pretty important when designing an at-will ability. An at-will ability that's too overwhelming can just turn a character into a one-note spammer of that ability, whereas a situationally powerful suite of abilities gives you a wider variety of play experience.

Ah, Hey there, Slumber Hex. Yeah, did you hear? Mark Seifter was talking about you.

Now this is exciting. They pull so many interesting ideas. Each time a new preview comes out, I end up thinking, "This is my class." only for the next one to be just as good.

IonutRO wrote:

While there is no requirement for worship, why would a god care about or favor a worshipper whose ideals and behaviour don't actually align with their own?

Maybe said deity is really, really nice.

Sarenrae for instance still gives spells to the Cult of the Dawnflower even through their warmongering religious zealots that believe entire nations must be cleansed by the sword. Actually now that I think about it that's what makes Sarenrae such a great and Good redemption goddess. You could possibly kill hundreds of people in her name and entirely pervert her dogma but in the end she'll always believe in you and forgive your bad behavior. Kind like my mom.

Anyways, Sarenrae FTW.

emphasis mine

So, essentially what you're saying, is that Sarenrae is Papyrus. Nyeh heh heh. I knew she was a cool dude.

If I remember correctly, in one of the preview streams, a technomancer was able to "overcharge" a weapon (a small arm, IIRC) and effectively transform it into a grenade that someone held on to for later. I vaguely remember that there are some other things overcharge can do, but I'm not super-sure about that.

The grenade-frome-extra-gun trick is actually a Mechanic trick. They can apparently throw them at people, or set them up as proximity/trip wire explosives. The Technomancer in that group was playing really boringly, and never did anything besides pew-pew magic missiles each round, but Technomancers can overcharge guns, making them do extra damage for a round. I've heard from people who did get to sit down with the class, that sometimes they'd just stand behind a corner and keep tapping the Soldier to turn them into an engine of death.

It's good to see that, even thousands of years in the future, the Caster is still standing behind his loyal BSF.

Here's my head cannon.

One day, Cayden and Torag come to the decision that they're going to have the ultimate drinking competition between the two of them. Other gods of an agreeable nature join in as the competition turns into the most roaring divine house party to ever happen in the history of the cosmos. Gods and Goddesses get so absolutely wasted that it bleeds out into the various layers of the cosmos, causing galaxy wide brain damage in all sentient races, resulting in the Gap.

The various Divines stumble to their feet after uncounted years of partying later gripping heads throbbing with god-level hangovers. Besmara's nursing a cup of coffee while wearing half of someone else's Divinity. To this very day Cayden is passed out in Shellyn's flower bed while the Goddess herself is trying dejectedly to put some semblance of her pretty home back together. Those stains aren't coming out anytime soon, darling.

In the spirit of, "Dude, where's my car?" and "The Hangover", Torag and Golarion are still missing entirely. Nobody has any clue where those two ended up.

I personally love it when authors tell me, "Hey, remember that thing I told you was true, and it's held true all this time, and shaped your view? Yeah, well... I was lying to you. It's not that at all. This is what's actually true*."

* I reserve the right to at any point reveal that this wasn't true, either.

A world I know every truth and detail about, a world with no more surprises, is a dead world to me.

Personally, I'm most excited about the Vesk. Raised from birth to revere conflict. Who, or what you're fighting for are trivial details, as is who you're fighting. All that matters is that you fight well, and your opponent was a challenge.

They are a race that needs honor like most races need water. But their honor is the honor of the battlefield; the honor of the victor. Using sneaky or underhanded tactics is perfectly honorable if you and those in your charge come out on top. A race that is keenly aware that their path could be cut short, they live their lives openly.

They see no point to veiling their emotions, good or bad. In either hate or love, a Vesk runs hot and fierce. They make sure their trusted comrades know they are cherished. Because they are raised to be keenly aware of the nature of battle they rarely let things remain unsaid even if this makes other races see them as blunt, or crude. You always know where you stand with a Vesk.

For those who care, there is a canon reason for why and how the Gap happened. We worked that out very early in our worldbuilding. It's in a file the Creative Director maintains.

I don't expect we'll ever go into details as to the why or how, because those seem unlikely to be the most interesting stories to tell (though it is literally not my decision to make). But if we did, we'd have kept consistency with that reason from the beginning.

... soooo, what I'm hearing is that if some enterprising young rogue were to break into the Creative Director's filing cabinet, we could have all the answers. Not that any of us would do that, of course. *wink, nudge* Say no more!

*begins humming Mission Impossible theme*

Aratrok wrote:

Drone Meld seems... amazingly bad. There might be some edge cases where it's worth using, like when you have a stealth drone but just getting your drone past an area isn't enough, but flying with it seems like really limited utility in a world with both jet packs and levitation where lot of the action happens indoors, and using it in combat is burning an entire round of actions to remove one of your team's bodies from the field to give yourself one of the abilities that body had. How is that even remotely a good trade, let alone one that requires investment from a limited pool of character building resources to get?

Given that Starfinder's action economy is fairly different from Pathfinder's, maybe having fewer bodies on the field isn't as big of a deal? We also have no idea just what any of those drone abilities do. I've also heard that the drone doesn't get a full suite of actions normally.

Indeed. The Drone/Mechanic team do not have two full sets of actions. The Drone operates on it's Master's initiative rather than it's own, and they share a "pool" of actions. You essentially have 1 full round of actions (swift, move, standard) plus 1 more move OR standard action.

Whether the Mechanic or the Drone takes the full turn, and which gets only the leftover bit is up to the Mechanic. So it's not like the Synthesis Summoner, where you were always better off having two bodies taking two full sets of actions. And while those very base powers (flight, stealth field, and armor) are called out, I would not be even remotely surprised if a good number of the other drone mods had Meld as a pre-req and added yet more bits of fun.

Benjamin Medrano wrote:

I'm going to try one last time.

To those of you who don't understand why I'm irritated about elves: Take your favorite race, I don't care what race it is, one with a history. Now, take it and base the entire society on the worst tropes of the race in media, save for a handful of outcasts, and have that be the society in the game.

Not following you still. Those 'tropes' are what makes that race a 'race.' If they weren't elitist isolationist blaggards, they wouldn't be elves. They'd probably be kender.

Lets not forget "arrogant to the point of extinction level self-destructive". That's also one of their defining tropes.

"There are over 38,000,000 orcs marching into our forest, but lets not ask for help from our allies a day's ride south. In fact, lets not even send them warning. There's like... a 121 of us. We've totally got this." ~every elf commander ever

Another character idea: a Shirren whose drone isn't an AI: its a robotic exoskeleton the mechanic created to keep their larva safe. Said larva is the one who is actually piloting the drone.

Because all little children age 2 and under should have access to a flying drone with a gun taped to it. I am absolutely making this character, and the big bad of the campaign will be child protective services.

The Drift was revealed by one god and very likely not created by it. There is nothing that says the rest of the gods are happy about it.

Personally, I'm pretty sure that the Drift is a cosmic scale life boat. The assumption is that entropy will eventually win out and the Devourer might just make that happen much sooner than any acceptable natural time frame. The Drift could be the next Material Plane, once it is done growing.

I'm half on board with that thought, and half for the tin-foil hat, "Triune made the Drift, and rules the Drift. She's letting mortals break off little bits of the other planes bit by bit, expanding her scope and power, until one day she owns all the planes."

Both are fun.

I know the first thing I'll be looking at converting over is the wizard, because it will fill the two biggest gaping holes in Starfinder, the prepared caster and the level 9 caster. The lack of both of these in Starfinder is almost enough to make me lose my interest. Well, that and the loss of iterative attack. Three of my favorite things in Pathfinder.

That's not a bug, that's a feature.

I'm tired of prepared casters, and especially wizards, sitting like gods on top of the pile with an easy answer for everything. It's about time magic stepped out of the spotlight for a bit.

Well this is now the first preview for Starfinder that has not left me thrilled. This is a min/maxer's dream, and while fine for organized play, seems like it will be a pain in the rump for more story-driven GMs. I understand that 20th level characters are supposed to be rare (hell, Characters above level six are supposed to be pretty rare), but with these stat bonuses, I get the feeling things are going to feel very "samey" for high level characters.

However I do seem to be the only dissenting opinion here.

Here's the thing though;(the reason this system excites me so much, your character GROWS in this game!

For someone who has played a lot of PF, that is an amazing thing. Pathfinder characters don't grow. They gain 5 measly points over their entire career, which all get jammed into their primary attribute. Your fighter, after racials, starts at level 1 with a 20 Strength. He could compete for the title of Strongest man alive at level 1, but outside of magical aid, he's pretty much at his peak right there.

In all the months and years of adventuring, he will gain no knowledge, no wisdom, he won't get any faster, tougher, or charming. He will get a tiny amount stronger, but not much. Not to the level someone who fights every day of their lives should improve.

All your improvements are magical rather than inherent until you start reading really expensive books at the end of your career. Starfinder characters learn and are shaped by their experiences, and they grow!

That is fantastic in my eyes.

QuidEst wrote:

Delightful wrote:

Any info whether Asmodeus is gonna be in the main 20?

Yes. He's not.

Oh well. He was just evil Abadar anyway so I guess it isn't that big of a loss.

Plot-twist, Abadar's been dead for a thousand years, and Asmodeus has been guiding Abadar Corp ever since, in secret. Abadar Corp is actually evil.

Blatantly wild idea; I want to be able to get in a dogfight with a Dragon using my ship. I hope they give Dragons a secondary, starship style stat-block for when you wanna tell a dragon to pick on someone their size.

This is a character I personally play. A half-orc Scarred Witch Doctor with the Shadow patron. While learning his spells for the day, he kneels before his tribal mask, cutting the symbols of his spells for the day into his flesh. Liquid shadow dripping from the wounds and slithering along the ground as he chants in orcish in a trance-like state. Whenever he casts a heal, the wound vanishes from the injured party member and appears on his own body, closing and adding a new scar to his vast collection. His bone-beaded dread locks reaching for people to deliver curses and spells of death, and his favorite spell, he lifts his hideous mask and black oily bile bursts from his mouth, forming a thick black ooze in front of him which bursts into hundreds of thousands of spiders, crawling and biting over his enemies.