Shahnaz's page

I might've missed something but why does the Rogue get a +1 to Attack Actions on his Acrobatics and Athletics checks?

I guess they are meant to encourage you to get together with good aligned allies.

Aura of Faith is a poor pick if you have no good allies.

Litany Against Wrath works fine if you can get into the face of the enemy that you used it on in order to be able to punish it for inflicting damage on you.

Yeah, but every spells that allow metagaming to circumvent the problem is just bad design imo.

The way I read it, Litany of Wrath and Aura of Faith both requires your allies to be Good-Aligned for it to work. Considering that my usual party are mostly always bordeline murderhobos CN (With me as the LG holding them on a leash), why are there spells that work in such a way that you require two precise alignments for them to work? (Evil on enemy, Good on ally)

What ancestry is your character anyway? One of the Adopted Ancestry options mentioned above is for gnomes and the other is for humans, so depending on your ancestry you might be able to take one of those ancestry feats directly at 5th level.

Note that Adopted Ancestry on its own does not grant you a bonus ancestry feat -- it just lets you qualify for ancestry feats associated with a different ancestry.

Oh shit you're right. I'm a Goblin Paladin of Iomedae.

Then this debacle comes to a close. Flickmace just costs too many feats to be worth it for me.

Can you not select Unconventional Weaponry for a flickmace?

What difference is there between Adopted Ancestry (Gnome Weapon Familiarity) and Adopted Ancestry (Unconventional Weaponry (Flickmace))?

Unless you meant why I don't take it at lvl 7? In that case I just might, but I'm still reviewing my options. Taking it would mean having reach vs not having more HP, initiative, etc.

Untrained Improvisation, since that comes fully online at 7th, unless you have another plan for +Level to untrained.

I already have quite a lot of skills for a Champion, the rest are covered quite nicely by our Rogue.

Yeah, it is most certainly a feature from the playtest that has been removed.

I would play it the same way as the "Jousting" trait from the weapon category

Spell list is just that: Arcane, Divine, Occult, or Primal. It means a Wizard can't use a heal spell from a wand or staff, and Clerics can't normally use cast a fireball from an item. There's a trick item feat that lets you get around these restrictions.

It's not explicitly stated, but presumably a Sorcerer with a complicated bloodline (various feats) has added those spells to his or her list. Thus they can use an item with a spell that's not normally part of their spell list.

You don't actually need to know a spell. It just has to be one you could conceivably cast. Otherwise wands, staffs, and scrolls aren't worth the bulk it takes to haul them around. The whole point of scrolls in RPGs has traditionally been a way for PCs to cast spells they don't normally have. Like giving them a scroll of a spell they will need for the adventure, but aren't high enough level to actually cast yet, or a spell no Vancian caster would ever prepare yet will be worth casting just this once.

That's what I thought, but I wanted to make sure.

Thanks.

It says that you need to have the spell in your spell list to cast it, and that you need to be able to "cast a spell".

By spell list, does this mean just having the spell in your school of magic? Does not knowing the spell itself affects anything at all?

For example, if a Bard wanted to cast "False Life" with a wand, does he need to have that spell in his "known spells" list?

I find Canny Acumen more attractive, just remember to retrain it to something else at lvl 11 that is when you get expert at perception naturally with Ranger. Incredible Initiative is an option as well if your DM is not fond of retraining.

Flickmace is good, but I don't like the cost of spending one general feat and one Ancestry feat to get it.

Yeah, I thought about switching Canny to Incredible once I reached lvl 11.

What else would I go for at lvl 7 then? Incredible Ini instead?

I'm torn between the two for my level 3 Feat.

Canny Acumen (Perception) on one side will help my Initiative, and overall bad perception checks, while Adopted Ancestry (Gnome Weapon Familiarity) will let me access the Gnome Flickmace, which is a pretty awesome weapon.

Considering that I'm a Paladin (of Iomedae), which choice should I go for? Both seems really good, and I'm positive that I would take the other afterwards at lvl 6.

I'm overthinking it, I know.

Alright, thanks for the clarification.

It could be seen as very strong if you take the example of a Champion being able to react twice on the same turn (Before his turn comes up, then after his turn is done.)

I just wanted to clarify something real quick.

You get your actions and reactions back on your turn, but this also means that you have no reaction on the first turn of combat until it is your turn to act, correct?

A nice combo would be to get a Bear and use his support with the Flurry (And Hunted Shot) for some added DPR. Flurry helps with MAP meaning more chances to hit meaning more Bear attacks.

In this case you are seeing that a shield could likely absorb some 10-25 damage over some 20 rounds without even getting damaged, and perhaps 15-30 with a small risk of getting broken. Such a fighter could likely withstand another 20 rounds of that, before risk of shield being broken from critical hits becomes more significant, as well as damage from secondary attacks potentially mounts up to their being injured enough to need to retreat.

And then you pull out another shield.

This feels like a misstep when they transferred the spell from the playtest. I would definitively use Spell Atk for it.

While the 4 HP looks nice on paper and on low-level Characters, it feels like Charhide might be the overall best option defensively.

While making a defensive character such as a Champion, is it preferable to take Charhide over Unbreakable? The 4hp looks like a noob trap in the long run, while Fire resist looks to be a very good resist to have overall.

PS: Also, does Fire resistance work against Persistent Fire damage?

The gnome flickmace is absolutely the best weapon for champions and for one-handed-weapon fighters.

Except it force taking Human and it force Unconventional Weaponry.

the way i see it, while both grace and Oath offer quite flavorful and (in some cases/campaigns) impactful options, and while Aura of Courage is indeed very strong (so many monsters with fear aura...)

if you don't like them, you can always pick up a Domain power with those feats (if you feel you're restrained in your options)

alternative, you can always use those feats to add an archetype, like grabbing a few skill feats and skills and a Quick draw from rogue as an example, or a few (whatver list you want) Cantrips from sorc, or even more "fhgty stuff" from Fighter and basically lose nothing, since those 2 feats you mention, while powerful aren't "core" imo.

I'm still torn on the idea of archetyping. I love the options, but Aura of Courage is really strong.

Here's my idea for now: Build as Tanky as possible, getting the shield feats starting lvl6 and up. Still put points into Charisma to make it into an Intimidation monster with Demoralize (and the skill feats associated with it)

If I have a Rogue in my party: Make it a Goblin with Goblin Scuttle to allow him to get easier Flanks with me (Another reaction lol).

I'm starting to see it.

The problem is see is mainly in the early levels, you feel so restricted in the options (feats) you have, there's always one feat that is better than the others in every tree until lvl 6, where you finally have to make a decision for your character.

Lvl1 you have no choice to take the Reaction upgrade. You need to keep that LoH handy in case an ally drops, so no Deity's domain for you.

Lvl2 Either Divine Grace or Oath, nothing very impressive anyway.

Lvl4 Aura of Courage. No choice here, it's by far the best feat at this level.

I'm not fond of the new focus system. Sure, it's more healing over the course of a day compared to before, but I preferred having more options in battle rather than a ''Need to keep for resurrect'' Lay on Hands that you can only use once per fight until lvl 6 (which delays your tanking capabilities if you do take the extra focus point.)

Until you unlock more reactions per turn, I still feel the class is under-performing.

I think Champion is very strong. Their 'mystical' stuff has been toned back a tad (though you still get a lot of it), but their martial stuff is on par with Fighters in many ways. That's really good and powerful.

I'd like an example of that, because Fighters looks insanely stronger with a lot more options every levels (Also they reach Legendary Weapon prof, while Champions reach Legendary Armor instead.)

Cha being useless is a mechanical upside. It's not a great stat and not having to invest in it is mechanically good.

Lay on Hands being once every ten minutes is potentially 48 times more healing per day than three uses per day is, and you can get more uses readily enough if you want more than one per battle.

They heal less in combat but almost infinitely more outside it, and are quite good in a fight. I'm not really sure what makes you think they're weaker.

I agree with CHA being a bad stat, but it's what made paladins, paladins you know. Now that I can just put everything into STR and CON and make it into a beat stick feels like I should make a Fighter instead (Which is a lot stronger, and has a ton more options in his feats).

I want Champions to be good, but they feel underwhelming compared to the other classes. I'm still not sold.

Lost the multiple Lay on Hands per fights to a single Devotion spell per 10 minutes until lvl 6.
Lost the upgraded damage on martial weapons from Deific Weapon (Now only affects simple weapons).
Lost the ''Heal spell' via lvl4 feat.
CHA seems really useless now.

Did I miss something?

Will there be a way to get this edition through other stores outside of US or is the only way of getting it via pre-ordering here? I'm outside the US so shipping+customs is a pain.

I have a party of similar size (7 players) and I am running them through the exact same campaign right now. I can tell you from experience it doesn't get easier. I regularly do both options most people are suggesting. I increase the number of combatants and advance the CR of encounters to compensate and they still usually do quite well. Its very difficult to balance.

My group was level 3 when they hit the last boss of book one and despite increasing him to a CR7 the group mopped up the encounter disappointingly easy. In retrospect It would have been far better to throw in a few void zombies and only advanced him to a CR 6 or so as it would have divided the groups attention and given it a few more rounds to harass them.

In short if you want you challenge them your going to have to custom create each and every encounter. Add NPCs, upgrade single boss mobs and throw in mooks to boot. Single Boss NPCs are never going to be to much of a challenge to a group that large unless you up their CR dangerously high.

Yeah, they usually have more problems when tackling multiple enemies with 1 boss. I did add a bunch of Void Zombies with the Garraggakal and I was able to down one of them until they got lucky and crit him twice in a row (Didn't even get to drain life :D ).

The encounter that I killed a player was the Wraith+Void Zombies (I just packed them into one fight) where the operative decided to face tank all the zombies. With the wraith coming in and out of the tight tunnels, and their frontline blocking the way and unable to damage the wraith because of KAC weapons.

I don't really mind having to custom create every encounters, I guess I'm just a bit worried because half of them are veterans, and the other half are pretty new.

They are at the moldstorm now, 3 of them are affected by the Ksarik disease. I was thinking of skipping the Maddened beast to add more exp to the Stargazer encounter. For the sniper I thought about going full Tucker's Kobold on them, with pitfalls and traps and other annoying stuff like this.

Maybe give your big solo encounters/the boss dude in other encounters something like the mythic initiative from pathfinder?

It goes twice, once at it's normal init, and again at -20 from it's normal? It's like having two monsters, but simpler to deal with.

Yeah, it would make sense. I did think about giving it more actions but multiple turns per round would be great actually. I'll just need to be fair and not bash on the same player twice in a row.

It wouldn't fix the "blow it up with Supercharged out the ass" but it would give me manoeuverability around the field to place my creature in cover or behind soft covers.

If you up the number of creatures in encounters it will make a big difference on the challenge level. Action economy is a powerful tool for GMs and it forces players to think more about how they handle combats. Sure they could nuke one enemy down in a round, but then the other enemy at full health gets essentially a free round of attacking, buffing, or to call even more reinforcements. If the players spread their damage they might end the fight quicker but they're more likely to use up extra resources. I know it doesn't seem like it makes much of a difference but it's much more effective than number boosting.

The other way to make things more difficult is to lean towards a more Tucker's Kobolds approach. Don't use the tactics in the book, make your creatures smart and mean. Have them set up traps and hit them with guerrilla attacks that chip away at your party's health and resources. Make things chaotic and don't allow the party too much breathing room.

I have to be careful about increasing the number of ennemies since it leads to something very deadly: Boredom. Having to manage 8 players+creatures leaves you very little time to actually play your characters, and in some games it lead to cellphone browsing (which I absolutely hate), which is why I can't just double the number of enemies every time.

I like the Tucker's Kobolds, but I am still very new to Starfinder so my knowledge and options are still blurry on making the most out of every characters I have.

So obviously we have adventures built for 4 players, and you have 8. This causes many issues, including encounter balance, loot, ship combat etc.

Getting the balance right is always going to be tricky. If you just bump around the existing encounter, it's a little hit or miss. One might be too easy, one too hard, and one spot on. If you redesign them all from scratch, ok that could work but it's a lot of work and still some guessing. How smart the players are also factors in a LOT. Massing fire can really help.

My primary suggestion (which you may or may not have done already) is first and foremost: Own it. Make sure every player realizes that they're not what the module expects. You've made adjustments, but sometimes you're going to be wrong. They should give you feedback. You should give them feedback. If it's too easy, that's not fun. If it's too hard, everyone should be prepared to back up a round, or suspend disbelief when an asteroid falls out of space and kills a monster. The goal for all of you is to have fun. If that means a few "adjustments" on the fly during combat, and everyone's ok with that for the sake of fun, then do it. But it's really important that everyone knows. Sometimes people feel "cheated" when the DM fudges things around, but if everyone knows you're doing your best to solve a tricky problem, it helps a lot.

(This also depends a lot on your group's tolerance for body counts)

We are a "If I die, I die" kind of group, so there's no problems on that point. It also helps the new guys to cycle through different playstyles and learn from their mistakes. They know me, I'm a Dark Souls kind of GM, and they expect to die every time, which is all good as long as everyone is happy. Playing the Dead Suns AP is pretty soft compared to what I usually do, and my players are aware of that. Its also fine, because we have 4 completely new players to the tabletop genre.

But GMing for 8 players is hard. Any regular NPC in the AP is a complete wimp, and doubling the number hasn't done anything but prolong fights.

For 8 players? The trick is going to be more monsters, and more liberal use of AoE abilities. Something to get the players doing things besides shooting a target down every round.

Boosting a single monster's cr to match that size i find makes a fight more likely to be frustrating as players will be missing more than they might handle.

Well I actually only boosted their KAC and EAC by 1 CR to prevent those situations, but I upgraded its HP by 1 CR above to compensate being hit more.

But they deal so much damage in a turn with 2 techno casting supercharged that it's pretty much irrelevant. 2 Monsters instead would change nothing to that (I still want to keep the lvling up to par with the story, although I'm starting to think if it's such a good idea since I have to balance every encounter anyway.

Hey all.

I've been GMing a game for 8 players, and although the beginning was a little rough around the edges (killed 1 player so far), since they became lvl 4 they have been cruising through every encounters easily, even when I manually upgrade the encounters based on Alien Archive arrays.

We are at book 2, and they just blasted through a CR7 Ksarik in 2 turns like it was nothing using Supercharged and pewpews.

I understand that 8 players gives them a massive advantage when fighting singular monsters (even upgraded for a better challenge), but I didn't want to just double the amount of creatures in every encounters, because it would still be incredibly easy for them (I mean, most of the encounters deal 1d6+8 or so damage at best, which is laughable when you have an Envoy and a Mystic healing everything easily.)

Their next encounter is at the Stargazer, I'm not sure what to do. I want them to have a challenge, and it's not fun for me if they plow through everything like it's nothing.

So I've asked on the rules sections and realized there wasn't any rules concerning riding a Dragonkin even though they talk about it in multiple instances.

I have 2 players that wants to make a Dragonkin-Rider duo, and I want to make it as fair as possible for them without making them broken OP, but I'm not sure how to do it. I'll admit that mounted combat was never a thing when I was playing Pathfinder, DnD or SW, so my knowledge is pretty bad there.

-How should the penalties be for the Dragonkin? He's the one moving around with someone on his back, surely this would affect his AC, Reflex, Fly ability (Average on Dragonkin)?

-Should it be an armor upgrade slot for a saddle?

-The Dragonkin wants to be a Solarian, and since they usually do AoE damage, should it affect the Rider as well? (Supernova, Corona, etc) I'd say yes and it doesn't really matter much since the Rider is gonna be a Summerborn Ryphorian anyway.

-Rider wants to make a Mystic, should spellcasting be affected when riding?

-Should I invent a feat for the Rider to be able to ride?

-What can the rider do in the "Ride a Creature" from the survival skill section? Since his mount is a PC, I'd imagine he wouldn't be able to control its movements?

-If he melee attacks, does he uses any of the 4 squares that the Dragon takes to determine his Threatening range? I'd say yes.

There's more to ask I guess, but I want to start there and develop something more consistent.

But basically, there aren't rules to actually support this. There are barely mounted combat rules at all, before introducing a mount that is a character, so you'll need to improvise.

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. I'm not that good in creating fair homerules in that regard.

I'll go to homebrew next and see what I can do. Thanks.

Hey all, I have 2 players that want to make a Dragonkin-Dragonrider duo, and I was wondering how it worked. The rules on riding doesn't seem to tell how flying and the Dragonkin is affected by having a rider on him. So here are a few questions:

-How is the Dragonkin affected by having a mount? Does he lose AC, Reflex or anything at all?

-Can he still fly with Average mobility as if he had nothing on his back?

-How is the Rider affected? AC, Ref, Spell, etc. How can he make a charge attack (with a Pike for example) if the only way to move is when the DKin moves?

-Are attack of opportunities calculated the same way? One for the DKin and one for the Rider?

-I imagine everything AoE hit both regardless? What I mean by that is if my AoE hits only one square where the DKin is, it still hits the rider.

Their idea was to ride around casting spells, while the Dragon hits people from above with his 15ft reach.

Hey all, I have 2 players that want to make a Dragonkin-Dragonrider duo, and I was wondering how it worked. The rules on riding doesn't seem to tell how flying and the Dragonkin is affected by having a rider on him. So here are a few questions:

-How is the Dragonkin affected by having a mount? Does he lose AC, Reflex or anything at all?

-Can he still fly with Average mobility as if he had nothing on his back?

-How is the Rider affected? AC, Ref, Spell, etc. How can he make a charge attack (with a Pike for example) if the only way to move is when the DKin moves?

-Are attack of opportunities calculated the same way? One for the DKin and one for the Rider?

-I imagine everything AoE hit both regardless? What I mean by that is if my AoE hits only one square where the DKin is, it still hits the rider.

Their idea was to ride around casting spells, while the Dragon hits people from above with his 15ft reach.

Remember that Vesk get their special unarmed specialization at 3rd level regardless of multiclassing.

True, we forgot about that.

Cleave+Steal life?

Allright, I'll tell him. We were thinking about the Soldier dip at lvl 4 to make sure he gets the Weapon Specialization ASAP first. The 13 DEX is for Mobility pre-req.

and what about Cleave? Can he Cleave with Steal Life?

Hey all,

So one of my players wants to make a Muscle Mystic (I cast FIST!) and the idea is to use the Healer's connection to go and Steal Life while healing the team around him. I love the idea and wanted to make sure everything fits.

RACE: Vesk
THEME: Death-Touched
CLASS: Mystic (Healer Connection)

STR: 14
DEX: 13
CON: 14
INT: 8
WIS: 14
CHA: 10

Feat: Weapon Focus (Unarmed)

He wants to play the long game by reaching 18 in STR CON and WIS at lvl 10, and take a level in SOLDIER along the way for the Blitz and proficiencies bonus. DEX 13 is for Mobility to unlock other feats (I'm not sure where he's going with this TBH). He wants to get both Versatile feats and for his ranged weapon go with a Starknife (Thrown Weapon) with Called fusion.

I wanted to know: can he uses Cleave with Steal Life(Su)? The way the skill is written, it requires a melee attack against EAC, but it's obviously not a regular melee attack that could cleave around.

I guess it all depends on how much extra work you want to have adapting and handling combat.

Beefing up the CR of the NPCs would be the fast way, both backstage and during play - and the difference between a level 1/3 goon and a level 1 is significant. Some bad tactics and you'll end with dead PCs fast, and believe me, Starfinder combat is much deadlier than PF.

If you have the extra time and can handle the extra multitasking, I'd increase the number of mobs and give some of them class grafts. A surprise solarian in the middle of the gang members will cause quite a stir.

Starship combat is a different problem. Placing 8 people in the the only ship they get for the first book will be really boring. I'd say give them the regular ship for 5 or 6, and toss in a couple of racers or interceptors (Pact Worlds has some ready). You'll have to change the enemy ship of course, maybe even pick a new manufacturer.

At the second part the mobs are troublesome enough, so you might not need to adjust much. But with an 8 people party, I'd consider creating a "queen" version of the regular monsters, a miniboss for the map.

The class grafts seems like a great idea actually, I could put in some kind of harder thug, like a squad boss, without just doubling every encounters numbers.

I also like the starship idea, at first I was going to give them 2 shuttles, and maybe send 2 androids after them instead, but upgrading the enemy ship would be a better alternative. Only problem is that I've never used this starship system before, so i hope I won't overpower them too hard.

What bothers me the most would be the Garaggakal fight. Doubling it would be useless since they can simply focus them one at a time, and with 8 players they will drop fast. I thought about adding a few Void Zombies with it (or Akatas) to round it up, but I've heard people had problems with this fight as 4 PCs lvl2 vs 1 Gara.

Not to add to the chorus of "don't do it", but...

Can you find a second GM?

I can't. The way our group of friend is made, they want to play together, and if I were to split the odd ones in the group, it would be a group of 6 and a group of 2.

Hey all.

I'll be returning as a GM after a couple years off, and to get back on track I'll be using Dead Suns AP.

Problem is, I have 8 players. Everyone that I thought would choke when I proposed to play Starfinder didn't, and since Dead Suns is made with 4 players in mind, I'm stuck wondering how I could balance the encounters.

On my 8 players, 4 of them are completely new to tabletop rpgs, so I want them to have fun while being presented with a challenge. I'm not sure if I'll keep all of them with time, but for the moment I was trying to balance the encounters up until the Garaggakal.

I don't want to just double everything; even the boss aren't gonna be much of a problem if there are 2 of them if my PCs focus them one at a time. I'm also wondering how to distribute rewards for everyone.

I know 8 players is a lot, I'm expecting to lose a few over the adventure, but for the moment I'm concentrating on balancing the encounters/ rewards. I've tried asking Reddit to no avail: Everyone is telling me to not do it. I'm still set on doing it nonetheless; until I'm comfortable with the setting and storytelling and regain my old GM skills I just want to follow a story and not rack my brain over a homebrew setting.