Rhyltran's page

My package seems to be stuck in the USPS or UPS as Package Acceptance Pending. I know that this is on their end and not your end but they told me to contact you anyway (which is odd really since it's on their end) and felt like giving a head's up. It was supposed to arrive thursday but it has been in the same location since the 6th. Nearly a week now. Like I said, I know this is their end but just following instructions.

Looks like it got all sorted out. Thanks. :) Will keep you all updated if things change.

My package seems to be stuck in the USPS or UPS as Package Acceptance Pending. I know that this is on their end and not your end but they told me to contact you anyway (which is odd really since it's on their end) and felt like giving a head's up. It was supposed to arrive thursday but it has been in the same location since the 6th. Nearly a week now. Like I said, I know this is their end but just following instructions.

Rhyltran wrote:

Hi, this is my order number. I know that it says you typically ship in up to 11 business days but what puzzled me is the money being sent to you was pending in my bank account but now it disappeared. Just checking to make sure the order is okay and nothing funny happened. Cheers!

Hi!

What you are seeing is the authorization for the order. When an order is placed, we immediately authorize your card to ensure that it can be charged when we ship your order. An authorization is a non-monetary transaction that merely checks with your bank to ensure that the card is valid and has sufficient funds. No money is charged to the card until we ship your order. Everything on the order seems to be good to go, so it should be on its way to you shortly. Please let me know if I can assist you further :)

Not at all! I am patient and this is exactly what I wanted/needed to here. Thank you so much for the quick reply wasn't expecting that. :)

Hi, this is my order number. I know that it says you typically ship in up to 11 business days but what puzzled me is the money being sent to you was pending in my bank account but now it disappeared. Just checking to make sure the order is okay and nothing funny happened. Cheers!

You should get Hurtful once you have Dread Rider (Cornugon Smash too, but Fell Riders are one of the few classes that want Hurtful before Cornugon Smash).

Hobgoblin racial ability bonuses are suboptimal on a Str build, but you are likely aware of that.

Yeah, it's unfortunate but something I've already accepted. Between spirited charge and some equipment fu I should be okay regardless. I can see how Hurtful and Cornugon Smash on top of the Fell Rider abilities can lead to some excellent synergy. I just don't know what to replace. I could easily replace wheeling charge and move Hurtful earlier in my setup and everything else get bumped up a bit later but what do I replace for Cornugon? If this was going to level 20 that'd be fantastic (get them all) but unfortunately 16 is the latest we're going.

1. Power Attack/Escape Route (Tactician Feat)
3. Mounted Combat/Trample (Fell Rider Bonus Feat)
5. Ride by Attack
6. Spirited Charge (Cavalier Bonus Feat)
7. Hurtful
8. Skill Focus, Ride (Order Bonus Feat)
9. Improved Overrun/Distracting Charge (Tactician Feat)
11. Furious Focus
12. Dreadful Carnage (Cavalier Bonus Feat)
13. Greater Overrun
15. Horn of the Criosphinx

My changes. Removed wheeling charge.

So currently I am joining a campaign that is Pathfinder only and I have decided, since it's a hobgoblin military style campaign, to go with the fell rider archetype mostly for flavor. My current build looks somewhat like this.. (Campaign is supposedly going to go for 16 levels but we'll see.)

1. Power Attack/Escape Route (Tactician Feat)
3. Mounted Combat/Trample (Fell Rider Bonus Feat)
5. Ride by Attack
6. Spirited Charge (Cavalier Bonus Feat)
7. Improved Overrun
8. Skill Focus, Ride (Order Bonus Feat)
9. Furious Focus/Distracting Charge (Tactician Feat)
11. Dreadful Carnage
12. Wheeling Charge (Cavalier Bonus Feat)
13. Greater Overrun
15. Horn of the Criosphinx

This is my feat build so far.

We are also using 20 point buy. Stats look like this..

18 Strength
14 Dex
12 Con
8 Int
8 Wisdom
14 Cha

After racials (+2 Dex, +2 Con)

Took Bandy Legged Racial trait and replaced sneaky with fearsome.

Skills: Handle animal, Intimidate, Ride

Traits: Armor Expert, and Reactionary.

Also I toyed with Order of the Cockatrice but just couldn't give up that juicy Order of the Sword mounted mastery bonus.

Any thoughts? Any advice? Anything I might have missed? Something I could do better? Please lend me your thoughts and criticisms. :)

Posted this in GITP but didn't get much feedback, decided to try here. If still get low feedback then I'm assuming this is a good setup and rolling with it. Thanks in advance!

Rhyltran wrote:

You're probably better off focusing more on debuffing than ranged buffs. Now, of course, you could have an injection glove as your off hand to provide battlefield buffs in melee since it doesn't require a roll to hit and the ranged buffs only for emergencies but I don't think it's viable long term as a primary gameplay strategy.

You don't need an injection glove to buff your allies in melee. You can do that automatically.

An injection can be injected into a willing or unconscious creature (or yourself) as a standard action, as long as the target is within your reach

Ah! I missed this! Thank you. :) This makes multi-weapon fighting with two injection pistols even more ideal.

Having played a biohacker, they're hardly useless when not using their injections. They have nearly full BAB levl accuracy with injection weapons and they can dual wield pistols or shoot a long arm. At level 8 they do full level damage dual wielding with those pistols and hurt.

I never ran out, but for easier fights I didn't burn the good stuff either.

From playtesting biohackers at all levels.. I actually agree with this. Personally buffing is the weakest thing they can do in the game. Biohackers are fully capable debuffers who have higher odds of hitting their enemies than their allies. Not only that but Biohhackers are capable of considerable amount of damage over the course of a fight and this is especially true in a "Boss" fight if they want that "Boss dead." Between Super Serum (only at level 20), heart stopper, and bleeding injection they don't even need a long arm to do damage.

When I playtested, the only ally I had any problems hitting was an AC maxed Vanguard. I still hit on a 13+ under the assumption that I didn't get the flat-footed benefit. I think that many of the critiques are armchair theorists and not people actually playing.

Bonuses to hit for biohacker, especially early on, usually provide really good chances to hit on allies but eventually AC keeps going up while your bonuses to hit don't scale anywhere near as effectively. This means as you approach higher levels the odds of you hitting your allies becomes less and less. Even in your scenario, while it is a vanguard, you have less than a 50% chance to hit the vanguard. Flat Footed provides a -2 to AC so effectively you are hitting at a +11.

It is only going to be more difficult from there. I played a game where we went from 1-20 and our players had anywhere between 37-42 AC by the end. This isn't armchair theory but actual gameplay and I can tell you that unless you take the theorem to increase your attack by +3 and have at least a +8 from your dex you aren't going to be reliably hitting your allies.

You're probably better off focusing more on debuffing than ranged buffs. Now, of course, you could have an injection glove as your off hand to provide battlefield buffs in melee since it doesn't require a roll to hit and the ranged buffs only for emergencies but I don't think it's viable long term as a primary gameplay strategy.

Not attacking you but I have the same concerns based on a campaign that actually reached the highest level range. :)

P.S. That all being said Biohackers are fine debuffers and can really put down the hurt on an enemy. This is probably their strongest suit so it might be intentional for them to be less reliable at ranged buffs.

One nice thing about the str route is there is a full line of advanced injection weapon ice daggers so their damage dealing is probably the best out of bio hackers. If you did you would probably need to pick heavy armor for your first feat. Dwarf would be a solid option too if you want more diversity of what weapon you are using but between pain claws and ice dagger thing they would have plenty to work with without ever bothering with advanced melee prof.

To be quite honest as the class is written right now I would make the argument that a melee biohacker is superior to a ranged biohacker. Especially with the difficulty hitting your allies as the AC situation scales at higher character levels.

It depends on what you're looking for.

Soldier is good (Sharpshooter style, probably) and is probably the most reliable.

Mechanic (exocortex) can also do pretty well with an energy longarm and the Overcharge/Improved Overcharge/Superior Overcharge trick chain. Especially when using a Sniper Scope (from the Starfinder Armory book).

A high/max-Dex technomancer with Longarms Weapon Proficiency/Weapon Specialization (Longarms) and the Harmful Spells, Spellshot, and Widened Spell magic hacks will probably do less damage to a single target, but can do more total damage vs. multiple targets. A Sniper Scope and the aimed fusion will be helpful for hitting targets.

If he is talking about alternative to soldier and not necessarily better I'd also recommend a drone Mechanic in this regard. In terms of raw damage it can beat out the Exocortex Mechanic especially if the party has an Envoy.

Level 20 Stealth Drone with 15 BAB +5 dex bonus is 20. Weapon focus 22. Coordinated assault +2 for +24. With an energy longarm can hit 35 AC on an 11. Flat footed enemy is hit on a 9. Can reduce that number to 8 if you're using a hover drone. I noticed Drone Mechanics are usually left out of equations and are underestimated. Only using level 20 data to show that a drone scales pretty well.

It's no soldier but I think in terms of range damage might be the second highest DPR. I know people did calculations early on but many of those only gave +1 to coordinated shot rather than +2 (which it turns into at 17) and didn't factor in things like flat footed AC or Party Buffs. Have, say, an Envoy with Get 'em and you can comfortably full attack with the drone.

Only responded the way I did early on because he asked for better than soldier and right now clarifying what I meant on the Drone. You'll also have the advantage of having plenty of other things to do that don't include combat.

Now as Dragonchess pointed out:

Exocortex is amazing if you want to boost your party damage and not rely on full attacks. In terms of single target damage you can do some pretty nifty damage with a heavy weapon and the overcharge tricks.

His technomancer build seems pretty amazing for AOE damage. Not that familiar with technomancer but it makes me want to try that out.

P.S. I love how helpful this community is and without the bickering other RPG forums has back and forth. :)

Rhyltran wrote:

This is very thematic but I think there might be an issue. I know some players who would probably rather stay dead than play an alternate reality version of themselves under the grounds

True, though I could also never get a player to cast reincarnate.

They would rather stay dead and role-up a new character.

I've had groups like that and I'm like that myself. I usually see death as a finality. Gives more weight to character death. Especially in Starfinder where it's very hard to die to begin with.

I was wondering what class would be the best to optimize damage with long-range weapons. I know that the Soldier's gear boosts can increase damage, but is there any other build that would be better?

Better? No, that I'm aware of. Soldier is going to be king of long range damage. If you asked about melee I would have said Solarion but to be fair I don't have any experience with long range Solarions. A drone Mechanic can do considerable amounts of damage and rival a soldier but only at the very early levels then that gap closes quickly.

Over the holidays, I watched two Big Bads try to bring their dead loved ones back by searching different dimensions and finding a happier one where they lived. (One was on TV and one in the movies.)

** spoiler omitted **

One is definitely a witchwarper, the others, maybe not, but should this be an ability the witchwarper has, either as a capstone or a high-level spell?

It could work much like reincarnate, but deceased characters are pulled from other dimensions where they didn't die.

What do you think of this? Is this something you want to be able to do?

I think it's an ability that fits the witchwarper and seems to be a popular theme.

Since the spell list is not out, maybe this is something already in the works, but since reincarnate is on the list, maybe not? Hmmmmm.

This is very thematic but I think there might be an issue. I know some players who would probably rather stay dead than play an alternate reality version of themselves under the grounds "Then it isn't really my character and my real character is really dead." Mechanically it won't matter but from an RP perspective it does. On the other hand this could lead to some interesting development where a person has an excuse to RP the character slightly differently. After all.. it isn't really his/her original character.

I get that their chance to hit their allies shouldn't be 100% but as someone who has experienced the level 20 range (we had a campaign that stretched from level 1-20 I see an issue to properly hit their allies in combat at the higher levels. While most campaigns never make it there a few do and it'd be nice to address this issue.

So correct me if I'm wrong but we have a theorem that gives +3 chance to hit allies, they have a +2 from using injection weapons that stacks with + 2 from weapon focus and a BAB of 15. You also have allies being flat flooted for another essential +2. This adds up to +9. So 24. Plus 8 dex if fully optimized takes your chance to hit an ally to 32. This means we hit an AC of 42 on a 10 and AC 40 on an 8. Anything higher (which is possible) and we have less than a 50% chance to hit.

This is specializing entirely on hitting our allies and going full optimization to do so. Is there something I am missing? Because according to this math (which might be wrong I admit) it looks like not only is the theorem required for party support but so does full optimization. Ally AC is always higher than enemy AC and enemy hit chance is higher than party hit chance.

At level 20 our party had between 37-42 AC but we saw ways to push that a bit higher.

That is correct, unfortunately.

Thanks. A player was inquiring and I was pretty sure that's the case but just wanted to check.

Can Cybernetic Bridge allow a Drone to take a Personal Upgrade to boost one of it's stats? I'm assuming not because it specifically states you must select an augmentation that is in one of these categories arm, brain, ears, eyes, hand, legs, or throat and I believe Personal Upgrade isn't any of them but it's own special category. Is this correct?