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Are you asking for 1st edition? It seems like it. Please make sure to state that next time, as 2e is the current Starfinder edition. ;)

In this case, yes, your assumptions are correct.

Just to make sure: Weapon Focus only benefits the attack roll vs. 5 (plus cover). Grenade Mastery would benefit the DC.

Just a status update. Still working on the conversion, got half of the first booklet done.

Also uploaded a new file for corruption (whops, reuploaded old one, now fixed. Changed the Eerie Perception feat to grant darkvision or even greater darkvision, as I used old SF1 conventions before.

You are absolutely right, weapon proficiency doesn't affect directly Area Fire or Auto Fire. This is intended (shown here [back from playtest]), as those weapons are less about the accuracy and more about how to make those AoEs more deadly, which classes with high class DC usually understand.

Yet features like Weapon Expertise will still affect the damage of those weapons, and therefore your weapon proficiency has an indirect effect. Or primary strike, when you are a soldier and you are actually making strikes while doing AoE.

Does the strike you roll from Primary Target do damage separately from the area effect or does it merely adjust the saving throw on a hit?

It does damage. Otherwise, it would state so, or would ask for an attack roll instead of a strike.

Usually, handle both items the intended way. We're talking in Rules Questions, not in house rules or homebrewing here.

I would use that for my home campaign mostly myself, as bombs were made with the intention of a primary target and some splash effect at best. However, I'd allow to use reusable grenade shells for properly crafted bombs.

PS does require ammunition, if the weapon that uses it requires ammunition. It has no rule to overwrite or circumvent the general rule.

Expend

This indicates how much ammunition is consumed with each ranged Strike you make with the weapon. Anytime the weapon is fired, the ammunition in its magazine is lowered by the number indicated. Other abilities might cite the use of expend as the amount of ammo required to complete the action.

Consumables are destroyed upon use, so technically you may be able to use a Primary Target strike, but then the grenade is done for and therefore nothing left to use the AoE with, which may be an interesting rule interaction. Not sure about that though.

Consumable

An item with this trait can be used only once. Unless stated otherwise, it's destroyed after activation. Consumable items include serums and magical consumables such as spell ampoules and spell gems. When a character creates consumable items, they can make them in batches of four.

Just a random thought, but going down that route was fun. PF2 Alchemist is almost like the Biohacker, as long as we exclude the bombs.

Now with Guild of the Grave World, we got a little weapon... the Needler Pistol (though it is missing statistics like what kind of ammunition and proficiency) of the Wight Scientist.
So if we treat needles as projectiles and replace the bomb proficiency of the alchemist with "injection weapons" instead, it's already possible to play a rather SF1-like biohacker, with elixirs and poisons for the Boosters and Inhabitors.

Of course, an actual Biohacker would probably diverse quite a bit I imagine, but I wouldn't be suprised if the alchemist (as a craft-oriented class) would serve as a chassis anyway.

Yeah, I totally just added something in my head when reading verdant. Too many systems with too many similar rules, I assume. Yup, Khizar need to breathe, therefore the petrified should better stay home until there is an armory book or such.

No Khizar needs to breathe due to their verdant rule, therefore 95% of what the environmental protection actually covers rules-wise is not needed. The only rules that may come in play is the minor bludgeoning damage and decompression in a vacuum, and whenever a rule gets specific, this part of the vacuum is never mentioned. It's only in the parts that could also be just fluff text (like "Every type of modern armor has built-in environmental protections which, when activated, protect you from the vacuum of space" just to go on about the breathing parts and never ever mentioning the damage anywhere).

The other issue is understandable, being born into having thick skin without ever learning how to use it efficiently seems horrifying. Same for plated vesk. What are the parents thinking!?
Those poor souls are driven into careers that take combat too serious. Without it, the blood-thirsting vesk may have followed their dream and become a florist instead, bringing joy instead of death to others...

RAW, you can't use overwatch for area fire, as other with primary target, there is no specific that beats the general rule written in there.
Including the unwieldy clause in the text may be simple future proofing (writing a rule in a way, with still non-existing rules/mechanics in mind).

To be fair, a lot of the soldier feats seem kinda wonky whenever it comes to area weapons, as the trait itself and the "you can only fire these weapons using area fire" often conflicts.

Made an adjustment in my working document. Instead of taking damage (and doomed), the target can become Drained 1 on failure or Drained 2 on critical failure if they don't want to increase their corruption.
First idea was to make it more in line of the mechanic (as RP were more healing reserve and healing is cheap in SF2, so counteracting makes sense), drained does come with bigger consequence for those who don't want to fall into the shadow, buahahahaha!

Also thinking about pushing the level by a lot to just have to make it rule-wise nigh impossible to counteract Shadow Corruption within the Signal of Screams AP (like level 15 or even just 20, as Dr. Gragant is *that* good at her work).

Hi there, I'm currently working on convert the SF1 Adventure Path Signal of Screams into 2e. When I'm fully done, I plan to make it public, but in the meantime, I will need some help here and there, or at least some more eyes.

Let's talk Shadow Corruption now. Here are the original rules. For the 2e version, I had some core ideas.

1.) Make corruption a condition with a value (to interact with other rules).
2.) Make manifestations akin to Archetypes, grouping them together
3.) Every even corruption value, the PCs will get a manifestation, using the Free Archetype rules as a basis
4.) Try my best to somehow rebalance the benefits and demerits into 2e, like cutting all "roll twice and use the better result", stuff about Resolve Points, etc.

I made a draft (Google Drive) and I hope you could help me to finish it, by giving some feedback. Most of the fluff text was copied from Nethys though.
I used https://scribe.pf2.tools/ for the formatting and stuff.

I also needed to add a feat, as there were only 15 manifestations and 16 seemed to be ideal. 4 Archetypes for 4 players, each having 4 feats and with the fifth, they get to be NPCs anyway. :P

Thank you!

Baarogue wrote:

where has Boost been clarified as single Strike only?

I don't know that it has officially, but primary target and various soldier feats is written in such a way that it makes it impossible for a soldier to apply boost to an area attack. So it seems likely that applying boost to an area attack if you've taken the soldier archetype and whirling swipe but haven't taken the primary target feat is an oversight.

Yeah, the "attack" part of the boost description is confusing there. Would it be "strike", all would be clear. For now, it would include any action/activity with the attack-trait.

For dedication soldiers: Normal soldiers "can" make a primary attack, they don't need to, so every soldier could decide to forgo the boosted strike for boosted AoE-damage instead.

So I halfway expect that the boost-trait gets the errata. ;)

STR is applied to the damage of Whirling Swipe.

The damage is not determined whether you do a melee or ranged attack, but by the weapon type.

Damage rolls for melee weapons and unarmed attacks typically add your Strength attribute modifier.

Melee damage roll = damage die of weapon or unarmed attack + Strength modifier + bonuses + penalties

That's why traits like "thrown" had some text added to it to specify the rules (turning the weapon to a ranged weapon to apply other rules to it, yet retaining the STR-mod to damage).

Area-Fire does not change the weapon type and all strange things (like melee weapon having no range) are covered by Whirling Swipes itself.

First sentence is just fluff (ingame explanation how things might work). Nimbus Block would state, if Nimbus Ward would affect the shield in any way. It only allows you to use Nimbus Ward as free action and Nimbus Ward states that *you* gain the resistance.

As I've finished writing a cinematic starship scene just now, I'm also looking forward to tactical rules, mainly because I can push some work towards the players then... :P

I think we could get 2026 even if we get the playtest at the end of the year. I think the math they used in CSS is fine, as it uses standard creature rules.
The real challenge would be to make general applicable actions for each starship role that don't use their entirely own rules, which was one problem of SF1 starship combat.
The only role that "progresses" the fight was gunner, after all, for most fights. The rest more or less only had the task to support their gunner and/or disrupt the enemy's, after all.

What I like about CSS is how you can also add victory points into the whole encounter to change the tide of battle, demoralize the enemy, or work towards objectives.

So having rules to build starships for CSS would already be very welcome, especially with different technologies. Especially on the GM side as well, as Azlanti Ships should have some specific traits/rules to show how much more they include magic into their ships, etc.

In PF2 a week of rations are 4sp, and as sp = credits for many cases, run with 4 credits when in doubt and outside organized play.

Tbh, I think it's just an oversight that they aren't included, as the camping set does have them included.

The solarian is my favorite class, I think having it my first SF-class in 1e did a lot.

I'm a bit sad, that the need for CHA is gone, but I guess Paizo really wanted a STR-based class to cover all ability scores in the Player Core. Just a bit of personal disappointment though, now onto my feedback on the class.

As usual, it's hard to analyze a PF2/SF2 out of context and it would need several SFS-sessions or adventure paths to get a feeling how the devs wanted the game to be played and therefore put the Solarian in good/bad-terms within context.
I can also think that a lot of PF2 bias is easily sneaking into one's judgment, as there are many small differences between the two games that can change a lot of how the game feels to play (like how weapon and armor upgrades can be easily changed and therefore parties can adapt to several situations at higher play with little trouble).

I try to get PF2 out of my brain, ignore the playtest (as this is what we got), and list some thoughts of the class.

• This class can fluently change between melee and ranged combat, as its signature ranged weapon doesn't need a hand to use.
  
• It only uses one action from going totally unprepared to fully usable (by calling all manifestations)
  
• It's the only SF class that has something like reactive strike from the get-go
  
• It adds to the vanilla Strike additional effects
  
• With the two modes, most feats and abilities are doing double-time
  
• That also means, this class has a treacherous high skill floor, as swapping between modes is always an action (though feats allows to do it while doing something else)
  
• Graviton rewards understanding of the battlefield and foresight
  
• Photon rewards risk management
  
• Using only one mode may seem easier, but limit feat choices and combat options
  
• Having the right mode for the moment takes some foresight and there is no emergency button to correct a mistake
  
• This class has the tools to be a great midrange combatant. Survivability, fluent change between ranged/melee, crowd control, mobility, and even some damage peaks.
  
• There are several feats that compete with higher level ones, especially as they scale by level (which is one benefit of having supernova and black hole as two different feats with their own cooldown)
  
• The lack of a subclass makes me want to create one via feats, but if I reject that urge, it can be a very versatile class that has great tools for many situations and good ones in basically every other.
  
• You need Solarian Crystals for flare and weapon, but whenever your main weapon gets a better one, you can put the old one in your secondary weapon
  
• The class lacks a intuitive playstyle, as it may have too many combat options, depending on the build. Be it picking up ranged enemies, chaining down melee enemies, going into the midst to clutter them all and/or explode into their face. All other class start with defining features (like get 'em, the network, aim, primary target, and the quantum field) which makes players wrap their ideas about these key abilities. The solarian gets a toolbox without a direction, and most of these tools are substitutes to already existing general items with just a little twist to them.
  
• Despite the high skill floor, I don't think it has a higher ceiling than other classes.
  

I could probably list more, and I could also list a lot of things I would have handled differently or would have loved to have (like having reforge solar weapon a single action that can be used every 10 minutes instead), but now to my feedback to the original question: Is the solarian undertuned?

If you look for damage, yes. If you look for field control, also yes. Yet it fits nicely with the other classes and if you can make smart choices in combat and during leveling, it does pack a lot of punch.

Thank you for your experiences. So if I summerize it, it'd be something along these lines:

• Free Archetypes are in general horizontal power, so in many cases they player have more options, but won't be outright better at what they do anyway
• be beware of the archetypes and options that do give more vertical power, like more HP due to multiclass resiliency feats or feats like acrobat dedication, which grants legendary acrobatics in the end
• having no restrictions on archetypes can encourage powergaming behavior
• in most cases, the game experience was better with FAs
• Introducing them later may be better when having players with little to no PF2

Thanks for your insights, I think I will probably include the FAs later in the campaign then, when the kingdom gets to lvl 2 (which should be PCs around lvl 5), and will try my best to find fitting ones depending on the leadership role of the PC and the kingdom (as a Thaumocracy may including spellcasting archetypes viable), though I'll try my best to steer away from multiclass archetypes whenever possible.

I will probably open another thread for feedback on concrete choices of archetypes later then.

You can have a familiar or pet, but not both. Because animal companions function much differently, you can have both an animal companion and a familiar or pet.

The cavalier's mount is a companion, same as the beast master's companion (as it's noted in the dedications). Yet the beastmaster's dedication circumvent that rule:

Contrary to the usual rules for animal companions, this feat can grant you a second animal companion. If you ever have more than one animal companion, you gain the Call Companion action.

But as we explore it further, you can only have one companion at a time. So unless both companions won't fulfill a specific niche, it's not as effective as you might think.

Only via Lead the Pack at 16th level, you can have two active companions at once.

Hello,

I'm about to start my first adventure path in PF2 (GMed some oneshots and I'm rather experienced in many other systems and do play in PFS sometimes), and stumbled upon the free archetype rule. Considering, that it'll be my first PF2 campaign, I lean towards to play as strictly as the rules to learn how they actually work, however...

I want to GM the remake of Kingmaker, and the idea to combine the kingdom's leadership roles with fitting archetypes makes me consider that stance, especially as this would enforce that the right PC is doing the job as they learn new abilities from it as the kingdom grows (using the kingdom level instead of the character level to see how many archetype feats they would get).

So before I decide, I want to learn your experience with the Free Archetype Rule, my more experienced PF2 players and GMs and how much it broke your games or made them better in your experiences.

Had a rule discussion with a player here (both lawyering ;)) and wanted to get more insight on this, as we will still play several Adventure Paths of Starfinder 1, and I couldn't find much about this topic and less that's definitive.

Here the ability first:

Inspiring Combo (Enhanced, Ex) - 2nd Level

You have learned to synergize your combat actions with acts that inspire your allies or adapt to the current tactical situation. As a full action, you can both make a single attack and use one envoy improvisation you know. The improvisation must be one you can use as a standard action, move action, or swift action. You choose in which order to resolve these actions. Once you use this ability, roll 1d10 and subtract your Charisma modifier; you cannot use this ability again for a number of rounds equal to the result (minimum 1 round).
(...)

Now let's assume the result of the roll is 1 round. Does that mean that this ability can be used next round again as in tactical rules it states:

When the rules refer to a “full round,” they usually mean a span of time from a particular initiative count in one round to the same initiative count in the next round. Effects that last a certain number of rounds end just before the same initiative count on which they began. Thus, if a spell with a duration of 1 round is cast on initiative count 14, it ends just before initiative count 14 on the following round.

For me, it reads like it could be used immediately in the next round, but the "cannot" of the Inspiring Combo makes the player think otherwise. Any insight, official ruling I oversaw, or the like?