Perpdepog's page

No. It's way too easy to destroy items and weapons now. Magic items don't have increased hardness. So you could have a level 20 suit of steel armor and it will get wrecked if hit. So I don't do it. It's cruel.

I always thought that was a curious change. I mean, I can get why it wasn't implemented, if you're not intending weapons and armor to be targeted very often then inserting a section on how hardness or HP/BT increase with runes is more bloat text than helpful rules, but it was still a nice storytelling tool. Why are there so many ancient magical weapons rattling about? Because the process of making them magical enhances their durability and makes them better able to withstand the passage of time.

I've toyed with re-implementing the increase in hardness based upon runes, but as indicated above, the juice mostly isn't worth the squeeze. Perhaps we'll implement it as a one-off rule if the party are ever fighting creatures that can destroy armor, because that really, truly does suck. It'd be a different matter if weapons and armor of an appropriate level were easily replaceable, like if we were using ABP, but not otherwise.

I'm gonna give it a bit. I certainly expect Operative to get its subclasses looked at again. I don't necessarily expect the sniper specialization itself to get a change, but we do have the possibility of getting a a sniper rifle with different traits that isn't available at low levels.

Even with the class losing its move-on-reload ability, the end result still works a lot better for the barathu sniper I played in the playtest. Grab the traversal move-on-aim feat, and now they can aim, fly, shoot, and reload.

I wouldn't mind some more action compression or a two-shot sniper rifle for flexibility, but in the meantime, I'll keep my eye on special ammo and hope for an ammo-crafter archetype. Reloading every round does provide some benefits after all.

I hope we do see Operative's subclasses get another looking at. Not so much for Sniper in my case, more for Close Quarters. Its feature is kind of anemic compared to some of the others and it's the Operative specialization I most want to play.

I can't really see much of an issue with it either. We've had basically the same functionality in PF2E with the shifting rune since the game's inception, and it's not upset anything.

I suppose that the solarian, under this paradigm, would be able to also swap their solar weapon's handedness, but ... eh?

And if you're concerned about the game being stretched by someone gaining access to a level 6 rune at level 1, don't forget that the champion's Blessing of the Devoted class feature grants them ability to apply a shifting rune to their own weapon starting at level 3.

Honestly my best guess as to why the solarian doesn't copy other weapons is more to do with damage types. The Starfriends may not have wanted the solarian to have access to the energy types SF2E weapons can utilize, and the vast majority of the melee weapons solarians would be using are in PF2E, which I could understand them not wanting to lean too hard on. Though their omition does feel extra strange considering solarians use the PF2E rune system in all but name.

I do feel like maybe they should have given you an extra class feat with cycle at the levels arraignments used to be at.

I'm in agreement there. Kind of why I made the thread; it feels weird that solarians get no real expansions to their core things as they level. Yeah, they get feats, and their feats are neat, but their Solar Manifestations don't grow stronger as they level or anything like that.

I'm currently toying with giving solarians a Fighter's Flexibility-like feature, call it Personal Cycle or something, at about levels 9 and then 15-17. You get a bonus solarian feat when you hit those levels, with the caveat that the feat interacts with atunement in some way. Then you pick a mode, and that feat is only useable in that mode.
Take two feats linked to photons and you are a radiant solarian, for example.

Paizo's sourcebooks have a PDF file by chapter option for download. Hopefully that will be an option for the new AP hardcovers as well.

I'd be shocked if they didn't. File-per-chapter downloads are also available for the Pathfinder Adventures, which are single books.

Mangaholic13 wrote:

9) Oh, I just remembered: Weapon in Starfinder use upgrades rather than runes, unless the weapon is Archaic (i.e. from Pathfinder). You can still upgrade a weapons item bonus to attacks and bonus dice to damage, you just need to use a somewhat different upgrade system.

I would also mention the upgrade slots on weapons. I'm not entirely sure what those are equivalent to. But since you get them as early as level 0 items, they are at least faster to access than Weapon Property Runes.

Same goes for armor.

The upgrade system is equivalent to Pathfinder's. It is just given as a package rather than having to get two separate runes. The difference being that you can't create a +0 Major Striking weapon like you can in Pathfinder. The Starfinder upgrade system forces the typical PF2 rune progression.

The upgrades are a half-step between PF2E's runes, and firearm accessories from Guns & Gears. Some of them, particularly the hybrid magical/technological ones, act a lot like what we'd think of as runes, this is where you find the extra damage upgrades, for example, while many of the purely technological upgrades offer more utility and are often, but not always, lower level.

There's also the swappability to consider. PF2E's runes require a day to swap and transfer between weapons and armor, while SF2E's upgrades can be swapped with ten-twenty minutes of work.

My main guess is because Ricochet was originally more of a Destructo Disk-like attack, and dealt force damage rather than bludgeoning or slashing. They must have decided that force damage was too good for a cantrip to deal, given how infrequently it's resisted, so they changed it and forgot to have another look at where it would thematically fit.

According to Redrazors, the person who makes Pathbuilder, Starbuilder 2E's current estimated release window is some time this September. IIRC you can find more on their Patreon.

Jason Chapman 97 wrote:

Everyone, thank you for the comments! Y'all have verified my assumptions. If I have time before next Wednesday I'll try to roll up a sorcerer (again) and see if I can get anything fun out of it.

If you want to blast stuff, Sorcerer is great. If you take Oracle archetype you can get some useful extra stuff like Foretell Harm, too.

Quote:

Is there anything better than pathbuilder2e? Character creation is really overwhelming, especially at 18th.

Wanderer's Guide is the other free builder. I'm not sure it's better, but it's laid out differently and might suit you better.

Pathfinder Nexus and Hero Lab Online are both paid options, and given that you're not sure you are interested in the system right now, I really can't recommend spending a bunch of money on them. Pathbuilder is the go to because it's "good enough" for most folks and doesn't require spending a bunch of money to get going.

High level play has a lot going on, and you're playing on hard mode trying to start there. I'd really suggest something lower level. I had new players starting at 11 and that was a challenge, and 18 is even higher!

Agreed. I'm not sure it's Pathbuilder so much as making a high-level character for your first trip into the system is going to be a bear, no matter what you do. The best advice I have there is to take it as though you were building a character from level 1. Pick your options based on what looks good to you at that level, rather than what you think can synergize with other things down the line.

Perpdepog wrote:

The point about quirky is well made, I think. Narrative Declaration had a grey as one of their PCs when they ran through "Junker's Delight" in SF1E.

His name was something like Ulioo--or something like it, I can't find it written down where I can read it--and he was a silly lil guy who flew into Pact Worlds space from a distant mothership to prep the solar system for invasion.

Then he landed his ship in a no-park zone, got it impounded, and adventures with the others to stump up the cash to pay off the fines.

He's a very silly and fun character, and I think something of a fan favorite. I could see the Starfriends trying to thread the needle of greys in that way; representing and playing up this cultural divide and friction between the greys who really only know their own society, and buy into their own hype, and the greys who communicate with other species and adjusting to the wider galaxy as something more than spooky pairs of eyes looking out of the dark.

As the main video editor for Narrative Declaration, I'm really glad that Uliu-451 (his name plate, minus the numbers, on the video version is right below his animated avatar!) resonated with you!

I'd love to see the ancestries the team played in Junker's Delight (Ramiyels, Moyishuus, Wrikreechees, SROs and Greys) brought back into SF2E so we could run it back with that team again. But totally understandable to try and prioritize other ancestries with more interesting stories to tell before them.

Yeah, I figurd it was there. Sadly doesn't do me much good, I'm blind so the actual images on the streams are a nonstarter, including name plates, but everyone in my friend group loves that lil goofus.

I also think, as ancestries go, grays have got enough to try homebrewing an ancestry should you want to. Give them a feature or feat that allows them a limited form of their phasing ability from 1E, expand it with later feat support, give them a few feats linked to things like telepathic communication, removing, or maybe restoring memories, and you've already got a nice grab bag of concepts to build feats from.
And of course there are the ever-present "you can cast spell X" types of feats, though they'd bleed into memory and telepathic stuff, I suppose.

As has already been said, trying to directly port a character from 1E to 2E is a huge headache. I speak from experience that trying to help my players do such just results in a lot of friction on both our ends. If your GM wants to try PF2E, you're probably gonna have the most fun time trying to take it for what it is, and not try to put PF1E square pegs in the PF2E round hole. I'd recommend trying new characters, searching the game for something that appeals on its own merits, and playing from there.

I've had some moderate success converting characters when I ask myself what their absolute core gimmick or feature is. Sometimes it's in their mechanics, and sometimes it's in their high concept. Then I'll try to make a character in 2E that fits that specific thing as closely as possible.

My 3.5/PF1e dry lich cleric, Drybones Jones, wound up being an elemental sorcerer with the mummy archetype in PF2E, for example. His core thing was blasting people with gnarly spells, and hating water. I made him a sorcerer with the primal list, which has the most on-theme blasting spells, and asked a GM if I could convert the mummy's fire weakness to a water weakness, perhaps increasing that weakness because Water is a less frequent trait to put on damage than Fire. The Remaster has thrown a rench into that character concept because I don't know how to poach Harm anymore--Crossblooded Evolution works very differently now--though Drybones may work better as a mystic now, instead, or possibly an oracle. I'll have to revisit him sometime.

So I was thinking about the trait limit on Solarian Weapon (how you only get two, and two-hand d10, and reach count as two), and I had an odd idea:

What if, whenever the Solarian's weapon proficiency increases, you add +1 to the trait limit for Solarian weapon?
Meaning at 5th level, you can now have 3
At 13th, you have 4
And finally, at 19th, you have 5
I don't know, what does anyone else think? Sound good? Sound bad? Sound like "who cares"?

Oh hey, parallel design.

I've been thinking of something similar, actually, though I ended up with four traits instead of five. I figured the unique critical abilities of a solarian weapon were OK for level 5, so you instead get an extra weapon trait at 13, and then another at 19.

I also considered tying the newly acquired traits to your solarian DC increasing, so you'd instead get one new trait at 9, and then a fourth one at 17.

I'm not sure which I'd implement, if any, because I have another idea to spice up the solarian and I'd rather not have the two ideas crowding their similar levels.

Soldier is a really interesting class. The way it plays is really simple, "make enemy save against big weapon, don't fall down," but it's got lots of interesting little complexities under the hood that I am appreciating more and more as I learn more about it.

Like the fact that, while it doesn't advertise it super strongly, a soldier is a great switch-hitter. Only your Primary Target feature requires that you use Dex to hit, so a strength soldier who mixes it up with a big melee and heavy ranged weapon is super viable.
Likewise, soldiers can kind of ignore weapon proficiency, I think? If I'm remembering correctly your DC with Area weapons isn't affected by your weapon proficiency, so soldiers can use all the advanced Area weapons and just be concerned about their Primary Target attack. I mean, I'd obviously prefer that they had some method of being proficient with those weapons and it's a bit weird they're not, but it's still cool that soldiers have that flexibility.

They gain a bonus against magic, yes. That translates to about a 15%-ish increase in effectiveness against spells because of how the math shakes out, likely more because they're most often going to be the big boss of a given encounter.

I think I might have accidentally helped given OP the impression that they weren't coming back, I made a big post about it a few weeks back.

Justnobodyfqwl wrote:

I think Greys are in a kinda awkward spot right now for Paizo. They're a very classic alien archetype, exactly as tropey and archetypical as Lashunta or Vesk. But in 1e, they kind of don't have any lore or culture. They're hardcore, explicitly leaning into the adventure they were made for, and their role as "spooky mysterious evil guys". That's already kinda limiting for roleplay in itself, but...

The adventure they're made to tie into...is NEVER going to be revisited by Paizo in ANY way whatsoever at all. A tropey throwback to genre fiction and schlock that just so happens to be entirely built around two simultaneous conspiracy theories that have had VERY RAPID cultural turnovers in perception.

So....what do you do with them now? The obvious answer is just "Idk, make new lore for them unrelated to Threefold Conspiracy, it's not like THEY'RE the part people have a problem with". But I think the fact that doing anything with a Grey would involve just making up a whole new ancestry... probably means they'll be on the backburner for a while.

And it's a shame! There are very few universal pop culture aliens the same way people will immediately understand an Elf or Dwarf, but Greys are one of them. They're honest to God cattle abducting, UFOs and Lasers, disappearing little big headed freaks. Who DOESNT want to play as one?

If I have to guess what'll happen to them, I think the current SF2E team really likes quirky and funny stuff. I think we'll probably see a reimagined Greys that leans into the idea that they're harmless and quirky, in a way that makes them seem off-putting and strange to Pact Worlds aliens. Maybe they have big eyes and abduct people because they're naturally inquisitive and curious, but don't know that studying people without speaking freaks out other aliens.

The point about quirky is well made, I think. Narrative Declaration had a grey as one of their PCs when they ran through "Junker's Delight" in SF1E.

His name was something like Ulioo--or something like it, I can't find it written down where I can read it--and he was a silly lil guy who flew into Pact Worlds space from a distant mothership to prep the solar system for invasion.

Then he landed his ship in a no-park zone, got it impounded, and adventures with the others to stump up the cash to pay off the fines.

He's a very silly and fun character, and I think something of a fan favorite. I could see the Starfriends trying to thread the needle of greys in that way; representing and playing up this cultural divide and friction between the greys who really only know their own society, and buy into their own hype, and the greys who communicate with other species and adjusting to the wider galaxy as something more than spooky pairs of eyes looking out of the dark.

Dash of Herbs (Rage of Elements pg. 34)

Dash of Herbs can grant new save attempts against diseases and poisons, similar to another kineticist impulse, torrent in Blood (Rage of Elements pg. 38), except that Dash of Herbs can potentially cause the affliction to worsen.

I think Dash of Herbs should have the same clause as Torrent in the Blood where "on a failed save, the condition doesn't worsen."

Not germane to the thread, but it always makes me smile when I randomly hop into a thread, see a post from PlantThings, and they're talking about plant things.

Honestly, I don't think it gets much more "horror monster" in PF2E than the brainchild.

Think of the brainchild as the most horrifying version of a collective imaginary friend you can, well, imagine. Each one is unique, meaning that, even if your players know about it, they may not know how to defeat this particular one. Each one also comes with a built-in mystery, and mysteries are a good way to help with horror in games like PF2E where it's a lot harder to pull on other horror levers, like depriving the characters of resources or competency. You can give the party multiple encounters with the brainchild throughout the story because, naturally, it's not going to be happy about people sniffing around, trying to find its weaknesses.

Also, not for nothing but it's level 11, which is a good upper bound for a one-shot. That means that, depending on length, your party will likely start the adventure at levels 5 to 7. This is low enough for singular, scary monsters to feel threatening, especially if they have horror minions like the animate dream, or some kind of undead, but is still high enough that your players get access to some options and toys, and can more easily make characters distinct from one another, even if they are filling similar roles, or playing the same class.

Are they going to keep the Adventure Path branding, I wonder? I mean, if they are releasing APs in a single volume then they are functionally similar to, if longer than, the Pathfinder Adventures line of modules.

I'd also be interested in finding out whether or not reptoids and grays are coming to SF2E. I've been looking forward to both. Grays because, well, I think grays are neat aesthetically, and my first and only SF1E character was a gray, and reptoids because I was looking forward to seeing how Paizo might try divorcing them from those antisemetic routes.

Also I like the apparent cultural trend of reptoids connecting more with their cover identities than their distant leaders, flipping the middle claw to whatever nebulous plans they have, and having wholesome families.

Presumably it'll be cheaper to ship one larger book than three to six smaller ones though.

I'm not sure how I feel. On the one hand, I like that an entire AP can be in one book, something that is much more doable with the new three-part format. On the other, it feels weird thinking of Paizo not having an AP releasing every month.

strangely despite how much SF seems to imply it wants you to carry a variety of weapons, not really. Weapons are priced like their PF2 equivalents.

Yeah. I mean, it's theoretically possible that the overall amount of wealth a given character is meant to have each level will be higher than PF2E, and that's how you justify having multiple weapons at the ready, but I'm betting that won't be the case.

I know SF1E partially got around this issue by just not having weapons gain to-hit bonuses, so while the damage of a backup weapon may be less it'd still be as likely to connect, but I'm not sure that's going to work in SF2E.

I think you're mixing up some numbers.

A) The earn income table on Lorespire for SFS is not the one you use for crafting. In Society play, you usually attempt to earn income using a task 2 levels lower than your level (It's possible boons to change this up may later become available like how faction boons can in Pathfinder Society). When crafting, you use your a job of your level to reduce the cost of the item even if it's a low level item. You also have 6-7 days to work at reducing the coat of said item, since it only takes 1-2 days before you get to make the check.

Just to clarify here, you can craft anything of up to your level, but don't *need* to use your level as the level of your crafting task. It just needs to be somewhere in the range of the item's level and your own level.

And while I don't know about SFS, Squark is right that Earn Income tasks are not guaranteed to be of your level all the time. Having that flexibility on difficulty and payout, as well as access to items in places where you may not otherwise have it, is the main reason to be a crafter. You're not really going to get super ahead of the WBL curve by doing it, though.

You could also exclude conjuring genies at all. The way you describe this ritual it's almost as though you are creating an elemental, not pulling one over like you may do with Planar Servitor, formerly Planar Ally.

If the intent and flavor is that you really are just mashing a lump of elemental energy and quintessence together, and then being nominally in control of the thing that makes, then excluding intelligent creatures, like genies, or claiming that they haven't got access to their wish-granting magic is perfectly reasonable. I'd probably go with excluding genies, myself, just to make things simpler.

You could also allow any elemental to be created, but drastically lower its intelligence score to represent that it is more of an elemental construct, not yet entirely with a will of its own, rather than a free-willed creature.

More open handed weapons, like a energy blasting gauntlet or a shoulder mounted cannon. obviously low damage, and probably needing a manipulate or concentrate trait to be balanced, but yeah, something like that just screams future tech to me.

My kingdom for a wrist-mounted shotgun.

It looks good to me. I'm a big fan of the creature creation rituals and this looks in line with them.

I think the main thing to look out for is that elementals may have access to spells, though I can't recall any offhand that do, and that's more advice for the table than the ritual itself.

I'd personally make it so there are actually six rituals, one for each element, like how Create Undead has a specific ritual for skeletons, one for zombies, etc, but I don't think it's strictly necessary.

Why would you think this when the only reason to redo these books is to make substantial changes?

That's not actually true. The reason to redo these books is to get them into the ORC and out of the OGL. Changes are nice, yeah, but like everyone is saying, this isn't going to be like Player Core; they are still going to be constrained by the original book's page count and copyfit. Expect changes on the level of the gunslinger and inventor, not the oracle and witch. Whether or not you consider the gunslinger's changes substantial is up for personal interpretation, but that's about the level of alteration we can realistically expect from a book that is functionally a reprint rather than being compiled wholesale.

I'd like to see some weapons be reintroduced that feel weird because of their absence. I'm thinking primarily of the zero rifle, which isn't present even though we have a zero pistol, and also a laser rifle and laser pistol to show us the pattern.

Hi there,

PAZ42 wrote:

If the answer is "no" to question 1 and "yes" to question 2, it seems odd that weapons that use batteries improve their capacity, but projectile weapons do not.

my answer would indeed be no to 1 and yes to 2.

Since energy weapons can "hold" batteries up to their grade (pg 254 player core).

My explanation for energy weapons somewhat scaling in "magazin" size while projectile weapons don´t would be that higher graded batteries have a higer energy density which allows to store more energy in the same size of a battery.
And shrinking projectiles might render them useless.

There is a slight increase in bulk when you start going to higher-capacity batteries, so not quiiiiiiiite the same? I think it just goes from -- to L though, so not really much of a difference unless you're carrying loads of batteries around with you.

Also I admit to a certain degree, that some projectile weapons might be able to simply hold larger magazines. But these do not exist (yet ?).

But if there were differten sizes of magazines you would need an additional entry for every projectile weapon with the largest possible magazine size (just imagine a semi-auto pistol holding a 100 shot drum magazine if no limits would exist).
So not scaling magazines might be the easiest way to go.

My guess is that, if/when we do get larger mags for projectile weapons, they'll either have fixed increases, so the next-highest increases mag capacity by 2, or 5, or 10, or they'll work off percentages, like 20%, 50%, 100%. I also imagine they'll be bulkier than batteries are, but ultimately hold more shots.

You could maybe take one of the levels out of the Gauntlight Ruins in Abomination Vaults and use that? Just make it its own dungeon rather than part of a larger complex.

I'm super down for a chronomantic spell school.

Might I recommend Summon Irii as your 8th-rank Incarnate spell instead of Clockwork Devotion? Irii are beings expressly tied to the timestream, and it's also a rare spell, which makes it feel a bit more special.

Also, have you considered looking at SF2E's spells at all? Cantrips like Injury Echo would really fit a spell school like this; there are a few other time-based spells in SF2E's Player Core, though I can't think of them offhand.

Basically what the title says. Has anyone heard what happened to the solarian's Stellar Arrangement class feature and why it was removed? I mean, they seem powerful enough without it, and I know the former arrangement abilities are now feats, but I did like how they let you personalize your solarian a bit more and choose which aspect of the Cycle you enjoyed most.
I especially liked how they gave you things in the mid levels. Solarians don't really see any expansions to their core gimmick in the midgame and it makes their progression feel, not weak, but a little light on sauce, if that makes sense? Like most martial classes have some feature that shows up around levels 8-9, and sometimes another that shows up around levels 14-16, that expands their core feature a bit.

I think Eldritch Bond and Wild Bond need some errata, even beyond Perpdepog's excellent point, above. Or, at least, Wild Bond does, because it is just empirically worse than Eldritch Bond.

EB grants two abilities, from the list; WB grants only one, although the list of possible abilities seem roughly on par with each other. EB bumps up the number of targets to 5, and increases number of damage dice for granted attacks, at level 4. WB has the exact same - at level 5. One of EB's options is a ranged attack; WB only has melee options.
The only thing that I can see that "balances" WB is that is lacks the Concentrate and Manipulate traits, which doesn't feel big enough to justify it being worse is nearly every other way.

Oh, those are also some great catches; I wonder if Eldritch Bond was meant to be the bond formula going forward but Wild Bond wasn't updated to its layout.

Player Core, p. 377, the Eldritch Bond and Wild Bond Epiphany Spells grant new unarmed attacks, and increase the damage dice of those attacks, but never increase the Tracking value of the attacks. This creates an odd situation where, to gain the full benefit of the spells a character needs to be wearing hardlight handwraps with maxed out Tracking upgrades but no damage dice-increasing upgrades.
(Admittedly, if they did have damage dice-increasing upgrades on it would still enhance the new unarmed attacks.)

I want to see an archetype that interacts with wands in a big way.

Huh. I wonder if Arazni ever got her old organs back that the Knights of Ozem snuck out in attempt to destroy her (the Bloodstones of Arazni)? Or if they are still out there, and represent a possible tie to her / weakness to be exploited / source of mythic power / potential new horrible way the knights could use to betray her all over again (because she's not as 'good' as they want her to be)?

I think this question gets answered in Claws of the Tyrant, but I haven't looked all the way through it yet.

Also consider that focus fire is one of the best tactics to use for any group of combatants that wants to win the fight. You are effectively further incentivizing the enemy team to focus fire.

In some cases it is a good idea to use Group Taunt. If you are fighting a bunch of lower level enemies, or if you are fighting a group of intelligent enemies that are already trying to focus fire on a less defended ally.

In some cases it is not possible. If there is only one enemy in the battle, Group Taunt will be useless.

In some cases it is available, but may be a bad idea. If there are two equally dangerous enemies in the battle and you have another frontliner party member who has the aggro of one of the enemies, you don't want to draw the attention of both.

I think it is that third scenario that indicates that this is better as a class feat than a mandatory class feature. Group Taunt is better for some party compositions than others. If your Guardian character is the only front line defensive character in the party, yes the ability is fantastic and nearly mandatory. If you have a sword and shield Fighter or a Champion in the party, then your ideal tactics are not to draw all of the aggro onto yourself. Picking one of the other really nice level 8 feats would be a better choice.

But all of that is answering a different question. That answers the question of 'is there a reason that you would not want to take Group Taunt?'

-----

The answer to the question of 'why is this a class feat instead of a class feature?' is because of class feature budget.

Most of the class's abilities that they gain from class features are given at level 1. Most of the rest of the abilities that are given at higher levels are given from a subclass rather than the core class.

The vast majority of core class features at levels higher than 1 are math boosts, generally in the form of proficiency increases. There are also some math boosts that are not proficiency, such as Powerful Alchemy.

There are very few core class...

While I am in the same camp as others in this thread, I also think Group Taunt is better off as a class feat rather than a class feature, I do want to point out, for the sake of completeness, that many times a class' features are built with an eye toward expanding their gimmick in some way. The Rogue's Double Debilitation expanding from Debilitating Strike, for example, or the Barbarian's Mighty Rage piling more damage on their rage. You could also maybe include tangential abilities, like Raging Resistance, on as well, given it also looks to make rage better and something you always want to do.

In that light I can at least see the world where Group Taunt is a class feature, expanding the number of enemies you can pull with your taunting gimmick. To be honest, I see Intercept Attack as the more iconic guardian class feature though, so I'd more expect to see something that makes that ability more effective as a class feature... Which we arguably do in how guardians get more reactions to use it with.

A maybe useful framing device: Alkenstar clockwork mechanisms are milled; Thassilonian clockwork mechanisms were something closer to 3-d printed (perhaps "grown?").

This is how I've tended to imagine it, too. Thassilonian clockworks were likely assembled via magical processes, while Alkenstari clockworks were constructed because magic was unreliable. That design philosophy is going to trickle into the finished products, with a much greater level of complexity allowed for in Thassilonian clockworks, I imagine.

I like the imagery of them looking almost grown especially. Cracking open a clockwork from Alkenstar probably looks super confusing and complicated, but still recognizably a machine. The mechanisms in a Thassilonian clockwork, in contrast, are probably packed in so tightly and with such intricacy that you could mistake the movement of gears and cogs for the rise and fall of living tissues.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

zimmerwald1915 wrote:

Spamotron wrote:

With the asterisk that Deities are influenced by their worshipers in some fashion.

For example Baba Yaga figured out how to ascend to godhood millennia ago but refuses to do it because she wants nothing to do with a worshiper connection.

Pretty sure that's just because she finds supplicants annoying at the best of times, and imagines/hypothesizes that prayers would be worse. Not because she's afraid of worshippers affecting her personality.

It's also part of Baba Yaga's style that if you come to her to make a bargain, if she vaguely approves of what you're after she will offer you what you want for a price that is fair from her perspective and astronomical from anybody else's (and if you pay it, she keeps her word). But having to do this for a very small number of people who have the temerity to ask Baba Yaga for something, and having to do it for a potentially unlimited number of worshipers is something entirely different.

Part of her likes rendering incredibly cruel vengeance on a party who has wronged someone who is paying her an exorbitant rate, and she'd be sad to give it up entirely. Like it's a core part of her role in folklore that "sometimes she helps."

Also, the people who approach her generally risk a lot just to do it. People that resourceful and/or desperate might actually be worth the trouble. If she ascends, people can bother her whenever they like. She's not obligated to respond to any of them, but the flood would be a pain to manage.

Besides, she's at a point where she can play on a basically divine level without being bound by those rules. Why surrender most of the freedom if you already have most of the power?

Insert Lex Luthor Quote, "Do you know how much power I would have to give up to be president?"

Player Core, p. 273, the Loudener is a purely technological upgrade and is lacking the Magical trait.

This could totally be intentional, but I figured I'd mention it anyway in case it was an error. It breaks the pattern of the damage-enhancing upgrades being hybrid tech items so it stood out.

Though, there is another concept I've been musing. You see, the benefit of the Starfinder upgrade system is that each weapon can host a number of upgrade slots that are easy to swap without spending money, but at the cost of making magical rune-equivalent abilities compete with more mundane upgrades.

What if Paizo simply made all Weapon and Armor Runes into upgrades and added the Tech trait, and then focused on writing the more tech-themed abilities that compete with them instead? Some runes are already just converted into upgrades anyway. All you gotta say is they figured out the technology to concentrate the magic previously stored in runes into magitech components, the same way they innovated scrolls into spell gems. Can even make a single general-use upgrade, call it a Runic Converter or something like that, that simplifies this process.

Given that the weapon fusions are costed the same, and at the same levels, as their runic counterparts, that seems pretty doable.

I've never really considered Arazni's arc to be a redemption story, mostly because I question just how much agency she had in a lot of the bad stuff that happened to her, and the bad stuff she consequently did as a result.

Concussive tends to go on wide round musket balls (or wide cylindrical breaching slugs), while pointed, narrow profile rifled bullets get just flat piercing damage.

I've noticed that too. Feels like a good candidate for a mod, one that grants a weapon the Concussive trait if it doesn't have it already.

I know I am not the first who has noticed this, but the definition of 'Gun' in Operative is a bit too loose.

Operative wrote:

Gun: Any ranged weapon with the analog or tech trait.

It includes thrown weapons.

So I went to look through the list of weapons that shouldn't be a gun, but are. I was expecting to only find thrown ranged weapons. I found that there currently aren't any thrown ranged weapons. Only some thrown melee weapons. So things like a Knife or an Aucturnite Chackram qualify as guns when they are thrown.

So then I looked to find any weapons that should be a gun, but do not qualify as a gun.

And found one. A Shobhad Longrifle is not a gun. It is a ranged weapon, but it does not have the Analog or Tech traits. At least not according to AoN.

That is correct. I double-checked in the Invasion's Edge Player's Guide because the AoN was missing information, chiefly the damage dice the gun has when the Fatal trait kicks in, but that part matches. The rifle hasn't got the Analog or Tech traits.

I'm in agreement with Justnobodyfkwl about why it may look that way. They copied the weapon over from its original appearance in a PF2E AP and forgot to add the relevant traits. You can tell because of the identical costs, as well as the fact that the long rifle has the Concussive trait, which many projectile weapons in SF2E are lacking for some reason.

Speaking specifically from the point of Starfinder, a good litmus test to determine sapience is the presence of a soul. Souls are quantifiable things that can be observed in Starfinder, so if something can communicate and interact with its environment and possesses a soul odds are it's sapient.

I'm not sure how universal a law that is, though. I don't know if anacytes have souls, for example, even though they are described as having sapience and self-determination.

If it helps we know we are getting rules for drones in Tech Core, or whatever the book with the mechanic and technomancer is going to be called. Some commertially available drones for doing flavorful roleplay tasks seems likely.

Perpdepog wrote:

Starfinder Player Core, p. 122, the example mystic has an incorrect feat.

It suggests taking the Eldritch Bond feat even though it has the Healing connection, and Eldritch Bond requires a connection with occult spellcasting.
Less important, but still notable, is that the example mystic suggests taking Heal as a spell in your repertoire even though the Healing connection grants it to you already. Perhaps it is meant to have Harm, instead?

im wondering if i should repost the list of found errors for SF2 Player core as this one was already found there under mystic in this thread. getting immediate buried vibes. i mean the list has gotten a fair bit bigger from what was gathered from things i and others have found beyond these forums but i cant edit it after 2(?) hours.

I'd recommend it. I looked through half your list, but then it did get buried for me. It also looks like the most centralized and cohesive list of errata candidates we've got so far, and having all our issues in one spot helps the devs who decide to read this thread.

Starfinder Player Core, p. 122, the example mystic has an incorrect feat.
It suggests taking the Eldritch Bond feat even though it has the Healing connection, and Eldritch Bond requires a connection with occult spellcasting.
Less important, but still notable, is that the example mystic suggests taking Heal as a spell in your repertoire even though the Healing connection grants it to you already. Perhaps it is meant to have Harm, instead?

Perpdepog wrote:

That's correct. They're basically high-tech versions of the same sorts of runes from PF2E. They're a bit of a pain point for me, honestly, because the upgrade system in SF2E lumps straight damage boosters, like the element modules, in the same slots as things that are essentially gun accessories, like bipods and uniclamps. SF2E's got stiffer competition for those slots than PF2E does, meaning more flavorful upgrades are more likely to get left out in the cold.

IIRC in Pathfinder 2Es first year a few people ran the numbers on monster HP and came to the conclusion that the developers assumed that every martial damage dealer would have at least two damage enhancing property runes.

Not everyone agreed with that conclusion. But when Alien Core comes out it might be interesting to do a similar HP analysis for SF2E and see if people think the same.

It would be. Honestly the more time that goes by the more I wish some limiter had been placed on a damage booster, or that it had its own slot or something.

Virellius wrote:

CastleDour wrote:

Hellknight PCs will put Sorshen to justice sooner or later!

Hellknights removing the lawful and enduring ruler of a sovereign nation on her own soil?

On someone else's soil. Sorshen's soil is about 500 miles south of the realm she's currently ruling. Which she is doing by right of conquest.

Is that a stipulation the Hellknights are likely to care about? If conquering people and taking their stuff is deemed unlawful, well, I have some bad news for the Hellknights viz the nation they're based out of.

Granted, the rationale of "It's lawful when we do it" is the exact level of hypocrisy I'd expect from the Hellknights.

In Player Core, p. 85, the borai "Beliefs" section refers to "the Song of Silence," a philosophical outlook "... which teaches that undeath is the ultimate goal of life and that one’s mortal life is simply a trial run for undeath."

Is this the Starfinder incarnation of Pathfinder's Whispering Way? They have some pretty serious overlap--both are interested in undeath as the next stage of existence, even if the Song of Silence is much more chill about how one gets there. Their names also both evoke the idea of sound, or rather lack there of, and, ya know, they're also both alliterative.

Are there any other references to the Song of Silence, or of the Whispering Way, folks know of in earlier Starfinder lore? I'd be interested to find out if my hunch is correct and the Song of Silence really is the evolution of the Whispering Way or not.