Shar Tahl's page

Is this being released at GenCon like most major releases have been?

I will need to cancel my subscription to SF Adv Paths

Thought I was losing my mind for a moment until I realized this was for second edition.

Quick question for James

I have a player asking a question on Second Skin armor. Here is what was sent. What do you think?

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Currently my character has heavy armor with one upgrade slot. Could he also wear Second Skin (light armor) underneath the heavy armor to get an additional upgrade slot?

If so, could he use those two upgrade slots to "integrate" a weapon requiring two slots?

I would think RAW, yes. RAI, not sure. GM call, surely.

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I will need to cancel the three items I had for pre-order in my sidecart. How do I do that? I can see the order number of 7613673, but no buttons

Thanks!

I was maybe going to try a battle royal style one shot. Do you happen any bulk sets of characters that are the same level floating around?

I hadn't looked through that AP yet, since I has still not finished Signal of Screams. That is a pretty cool mod, and would fir nicely with a dark elf visually.

ok. Thanks!

In the Numeria adventure path, the players found a lot of these goggles with different lenses. One was a brown lense that helped those with light blindness. Is there anything like that in starfinder? I didn't see any, but I could have missed it. Want to if it can be mitigated.

Thanks! Not likely, but I was told by my wife I am too soft on the group and need to stop pulling punches. Since the final battle is coming up, I will try to play to win. lol

Does a targeting computer negate the chance to hit an image from a target that has Mirror Image?

I may come up with this situation and I want to get some input.

Lets say a character is paralyzed for 4 minutes during combat, then they are killed while there are still a couple minutes left on the paralysis. Then the healer immediately casts breath of life and raises them back.

Are they still paralyzed?

That's where large creatures need to be thought long and hard about by the GM when it comes to PC race options. I exclude them in my games because of building logistics and going though doorways and such. If they really have their heart set on it, I would say you houserule a spacefaring version that is on the upper end of medium, similar to the Nuar size (8 feet) and have the mods be something like +2 Str +2 Wis (for being more traveled) -2 dex.

awesome! thank you. We will be have a character creation session in a month of so, and I would like the players to not be crippled with lacking skills in an important area

Thanks for all the tips! I will defiantly read through it again, especially since this one has lots of mechanics I have not used before. It's Dead Suns book 6. Running a potential scene with chase rules is going to make me nervous. That's a lot of on-the-fly stuff happening fast

I'll be the first to admit, I am not the greatest GM. Not for a lack of rules knowledge, but more of the general anxiety I have normally. Players doing things that are "outside the box" usually throw me off when running a module/adventure path. What are some best practices to prepare better for a game night? What are some example of what other folks do when getting ready for a game?

Seems there may be a niche for a 3PP to put out some PDF modules to test the waters.

Will there every be modules put out for Starfinder(other than a SFS scenario)?

Got a friend who hasn't had a chance to game is several years(busy family life) and can't commit to our adventure path group, so I was going to run a module on a virtual tabletop with a couple others to give him a chance to play some games again. This module sounds pretty good, so I am going to give it a shot. Anyone that has run this have advice on what level to run with a party of three? going by the fact it is listed for 1st or 2nd level characters, I would think three 2nd level should work.

How do these all interact with each other? I have a player asking and I am not at a place where I can access the rulebooks at the moment(work). Want to see if there are already established answers before I go trying to start working it all out.

I will be starting this AP in a couple months after we finish Dead Suns (just hit book 6). Are there any specific party needs that will make the adventure more enjoyable, or any races or classes that will have a hard time?

Ok, then the players won't be hosed on their stats for the next adventure path. Learning experience and attention to detail! It was also a factor of the VTT software and where I had them put the stat totals.

Thanks!

Do the increases of the level ups at 5 10 etc effect whether you get +1 or +2, or do you use the unmodified value to determine?

Example

Character has 14 dex at level 7, gets a Mk II upgrade to add +4, giving a total of 18. At level 10, would it go up +2 because of the base, or +1 because it is now 18?

This is an awfully long argument about something that looks pretty clear cut. Readied actions are interrupts that take place a moment before the action they are prepared for.

Example:

Player declares they are readying a ranged attack in case Monster casts a spell.

On its turn, Monster starts casting a spell.

This triggers an interrupt and allows Player to attack before the Spell action of Monster.

This attack hits and causes damage, thus causing spell failure.

That sounds like what I read on the card before, except it had an error and didn't mention the "10+" part, which I think the pathfinder crit deck did too.

Thank you!

I seem to have misplaced the rules card. What was the formula for the saving throws?

From a word count standpoint, it makes more sense to just state a single side, since squares and cubes have the same length on all sides. a tiny ounce of math will be needed to convert to square/cubic feet.

Nice list on that Wiki. I will have to scan through that on a break

I am running an adventure where there would be no nearby civilizations at their current location, so races for any filler characters to replaced dead characters would be nearly non-existent. The SRO is one could be in storage that could come back after several millennia. On this note, I want to create one of each class that are based on famous robots and droids from sci-fi franchises. Looking for assistance on famous movie or TV droids/robots

R2-D2 : Small SRO, Ace Pilot, Mechanic(exocortex)
C-3PO : Medium SRO, Envoy, Xenoseeker
K-2SO : Medium SRO, Mercenary, Soldier(Sharpshooter?)

I think one thing that could balance things are having tiers or levels on starship upgrades like the equipment does. Then you could place the recommended limits of not purchasing things more than 2 above your current tier. This way, you don't have a tier 9 medium ship with a power plan like a battlecruiser

One homebrew solution my gm came up with was making it so a turret can only rotate one arc from where it fired the previous round.

So if you fired at a ship off your port side. The next round you couldn't fire it starboard side (but you could hit something forward aft or port again)

In most combat scenarios it didn't actually change too much but it did reintroduce tactical positional and gave players a little more interesting decisions.

That is a very neat solutions. I really like that! It removes the unlimited arc aspect, but still gives it 3/4 arc versatility. It is also something to RP seeing the way the turret is facing and keeping out of its range that turn if you win the piloting check. It would also encourage them to have more than just a turret for a weapon. Since we are on book 5 of the adventure path, I will still run core RAW until we finish and start the next adventure path.

The one thing I did shoot down was their "Nuke Mobile" with tac nukes in all 4 arcs and the turret. That was what they came up before the death sphere when they were 6th level. I just flat removed nukes from the game unless a special enemy has them.

What are some ways I can get my players to be a little more creative with starship builds? They have found out that you only really need three things; Big power core, Big shields and a big gun(s) on a turret. If you maximize those three, the pregen enemy ships get plowed through. It removes the tactical facings completely when you have a turret that doesn't need facing, which is one of the biggest parts of starship combat. It makes the combat very bland and just going through the motions. My knee-jerk thought is eliminate turrets on PCs and enemies. Wondering other folks thoughts on this.

I was wondering, since all the materials have been out for a bit, what races beyond the core would been considered to have significant advantages over the core races? Thinking about this just in case I start a new pathfinder campaign and want to allow most races, but would not want someone that completely overshadow the other players, if that would even happen.

I don't see any other reading of the race rules that would prevent it from having a medium sized str score of 21. It is reliant on the GM agreeing there is enough moisture on the air to sustain that form. Not sure how game breaking it is, but is does move out of the scope of normal character races.

Just to see it on paper in standard form, with the assumption of taking theme with +1 STR:

Str: 17 (+4 for medium sized)
Dex: 10
Con: 8
Int: 10
Wis: 12
Char: 12

Here is the build that is plowing through the encounters in the adventure I am running. This is a Tier 7 variant, but they basically are maxing power plant, shields and all-in on linked dual heavy weapon turret. On the side, they kept most of what the ship came with and added a max DC smugglers compartment. The turret has enough firepower to blow through enemy shields in a single hit, while their own shields would take at least 3 hits without re-balance to punch through.

Ship XLSX sheet from OneDrive:

Tier 7 Ship

They had originally had a "nuke-mobile" with tactical nukes on all 4 sides and a flak cannon in the turret, but that just seems to not really fit the world and would be disruptive to the story.

I ended up reducing the armor to free up BP, then boosted the power plant and increased forward weaponry to give it a significant forward punch but left all other weapons as they were. This would give them incentive to keep themselves tactically positioned and give them a decent threat for any errors in tactics or getting one up'd by the opposing pilot.

Shar Tahl wrote:

Dragonchess Player wrote:

Shar Tahl wrote:

My question would be, is there a limit per tier on how big a power core and how strong a shield generator a ship can have? This shield for instance that they have is bigger than the one the same Eoxian Battleships use.

There is no explicit limit based on tier. However, there are limits based on the size of the ship for power cores and practical limits based on the number of build points/PCUs when balancing against the other ship systems.

Yeah. The power core is the second best a medium frame can handle and the shields do not have any limitations on ship frame. Everything is within build guidelines. The player that is the pilot is doing the ship designs and he is very good at optimizing. From what I see looking ahead, all NPC enemies will be mowed down without any danger.

My advice would be to alter enemy ships in kind. As a GM its up to us to maintain challenge. While some encounters should be trivial to reward the PCs good choices make sure the ones you want to be meaningful have the impact your going for. The rules work for PCs and NPCs alike so up the arms race were needed to keep them in check.

I probably should. I tend to sometimes feel altering things to make them harder is being mean, but maybe giving them trivial encounters that just fill time is worse. I am an overly nice GM

Shar Tahl wrote:

My question would be, is there a limit per tier on how big a power core and how strong a shield generator a ship can have? This shield for instance that they have is bigger than the one the same Eoxian Battleships use.

There is no explicit limit based on tier. However, there are limits based on the size of the ship for power cores and practical limits based on the number of build points/PCUs when balancing against the other ship systems.

Yeah. The power core is the second best a medium frame can handle and the shields do not have any limitations on ship frame. Everything is within build guidelines. The player that is the pilot is doing the ship designs and he is very good at optimizing. From what I see looking ahead, all NPC enemies will be mowed down without any danger.

I am having what seems like a potential issue with a PC starship. I don't see any design flaws with the rules, just an extremely powerful ship build for ship to ship combat.

Here is a breakdown of the major ship components in questions when they were Tier 7:

Power Core: Pulse Orange (250 PCU)
Shields: Heavy Shields/360 (90 points per quadrant)
Weapon: Two Linked Particle Beams (8d6 damage each)

All components on the ship are within the thresholds for Build Points and Power Consumption

This build methodology has proved to be overpowering for all encounters from the modules. For example, the Tier 6 ship enemy had 17 points of shields per quadrant and weapons that could do 3d6 and 2d12 to any one quadrant. So this enemy could do an average of 24 if they hit twice, which would be 4 rounds to punch through the shield. The would receive 40 damage on average from the linked cannons hitting, doing 23 points of hull damage a hit (1st Critical threshold, 2nd and 3rd on the second hit). This enemy had no chance at all.

My question would be, is there a limit per tier on how big a power core and how strong a shield generator a ship can have? This shield for instance that they have is bigger than the one the same Eoxian Battleships use.

Does supercharge weapon work on analog weapons? It's description seems to imply it effects energy based weapons.

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The NPC ship lists a gunnery check of +10. The reference NPC is the space pirate from First Contact, which has a BAB of +1 and Dex Mod of +4 and is level 1. How are they getting +10 to attack.

One big problem my players have is how low the gunnery checks are for the players when compared to other stations.

The rules for item hit points (Pg 409) do not conform with the rate drones hit points increase, so the rules for Tensile Reinforcement would not make sense in this case. What would be a fair way to apply this?

1: +10 HP
2: +5 HP
3: +1 DR

These seem to be a proficiency category. I have a few questions about these two

1: If someone is proficient in long arms but not sniper weapons, would they take a -4 to all attacks with a shirren-eye rifle or would it be better to just have it lose the Sniper property?

2: Do the special weapons need proficiency each or just a blanket Weapon Proficiency(Special)?

I have a player with a combat drone with the Skill Subroutines Mod. This gives it skill ranks equal to the PC level and the ability to use the skill on its own. The PC chose engineering as the skill. The drone can use this skill without direct control being needed.

It seems reasonable to me, that the PC can give the drone a command, like keep diverting power to the shields. This would free up the party of four to take up the other four stations and have the robot be the engineer doing that one function. Every time using divert power to shields as the PCs take their actions. Would it also be reasonable to have some conditional instructions, like if-then statements, to have something like If the shields are full already, then divert power to weapons. Would this be reasonable for an 8 intelligence robot? I probably will allow this for them, since it would be fun for them, but just wondering others thoughts on this.

I am GM-ing the Dead Suns AP and have had the PC using this spell a bit as a tactical spell to distract. I was just wondering about the scope of this spells effects, in regards to complexity and when the will saves are given.

Do all NPCs that view it take their will save right away, or do they only get it if they try to interact with it. I know this is built off of silent image, which is quite powerful when used in the right ways. Just not sure if there are any differences in concept, since once is an illusion and one is a hologram.

There is a pre-made ship that has a listing Recreation Suite (HAC/Gym). Do the rules allow for a multi-purpose suite? Each of those(HAC and Gym) have different power demands, but same BP.

Here are the relevant items for my question

- the party has a medium ship with weapons in all four quadrants and a turret( five total ).

- four party members, set up as on of each for Engineer, Gunner, Pilot, Science

- Rules state "One gunner per weapon mount"

Can they only fire a single shot from a single weapon each turn without penalty since there is only the one gunner in the party?

What are all their options in this situation?

Per the rules, it is two rings only. It doesn't say you are limited to this because you have two hands. It is a flat limit of two rings. Rings go on fingers, so there are ten possible locations, but still a limit of two rings

Feat in question:

Sap Master:

Benefit: Whenever you use a bludgeoning weapon to deal nonlethal sneak attack damage to a flat-footed opponent, roll your sneak attack dice twice, totaling the results as your nonlethal sneak attack damage for that attack.

Does a slam attack count as a bludgeoning weapon in regards to the specifics of feats?

Cancel this. Found my answer in the rules. For reference, I will list the relevant part here.

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Snipit from Sneak Attack class feature:

With a weapon that deals nonlethal damage (like a sap, whip, or an unarmed strike), a rogue can make a sneak attack that deals nonlethal damage instead of lethal damage. She cannot use a weapon that deals lethal damage to deal nonlethal damage in a sneak attack, not even with the usual –4 penalty.

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