Star Dragon Caith's page

Hello -

To begin, I am not sure how wands and metamagic feats interact. I assume that you cannot use metamagic with a wand normally, though I believe there is a feat or class feature that allows that (it escapes me exactly what). However, if the Magical Lineage trait and a +1 Metamagic Feat are combined, would it be possible to apply a metamagic feat to a spell cast from a wand if the effective level increase was +0? How would that even work? Thanks for reading.

Familiars now only grant the wielder an additional cantrip or spell slot, or allow them to deliver touch spells. Considering it takes a class feat to take a familiar now, why would anyone ever do so? I am starting to worry about PF2.

Trolling the rules, it seems there are some of the classic options for Necromancy School Wizards - fear, HP drain, death stuff - but no way of summoning Undead? What's that all about?

I'm not a big fan of Resonance for the reasons stated. I'll probably be going without it as well.

The Raven Black wrote:

Some players actually want to play the LG Paladin as the knight in shining armor who strives to uphold his code even though he is a failible mortal. They love the class as it is in the PF1 CRB

How does your dismantling the class with the ardor you describe helps them telling the tale they want ?

You wanna play a 'knight in shining armor'? No problem! You want a code? No problem either!

My question would probably be…
why this code? why shouldn't you have the ability to, well role-play, and make your own? Doesn't have to be complicated.
Just write up 4-5 "rules" that your character follows (don't steal/lie/punch below the belt/etc or what every your character wants to focus on). Heck you could even make your code stick strictly to an "alignment concept" (ie your old fashioned paladin code cleaves closely to LG. You just smack on the "alignment tag" that you feel your particular code represents the most closely…).
Heck we can even sit down and discuss how your character came to his/her powers. If they are a part of a group of likely minded champions or a solitary loner or a 'chosen one' or whatever!

What I'm trying to communicate here is that your idea for your character should be supported, by making the rules, requirements and restrictions wide enough to incorporate those ideas with a little fuss as possible.

I wanna be able to say to the player, who hands me this code:

1. Clarity in mind and action - “To say” and “to do” is the same thing; once one's word is given the act must follow.

2. Never betray your trust – One's word is a sacred and unbreakable bond that should be kept to the point of death.

3. Never leave an ally nor the undeserving bystander to die – You are a protector first and foremost and laying down your life for the sake of others your sworn duty.

4. Be ever vigilante – Never let down your guard and be ever mindful of your surroundings, but do so in a manner that never disrespects your words or action....

That's all well and good if you're working with a GM who is willing to go through this kind of a character creation process.

If you're playing PFS, any kind of convention game, a game at a gaming shop, or a game with a DM who just doesn't care that much about character-driven stuff, you're SOL. However, when you walk in with a Paladin, all this stuff is canned and supported by the rules.

TL;DR Most GMs won't go for that.

and the warpriest sucks both as a class name and a class

Huh? I don't understand this at all. Warpriests are awesome, and allow for exactly what the Paladin purists want - Paladins as Paladins, and other types of divinely-powered warriors in their own category. They also happen to be very effective as a class. The Warpriest is the shining jewel of the Ultimate Class guide, whose classes were uneven in quality and power.

My critique is of the seemingly complicated, large numbers, fiddly design (that Trinkets preview was not pleasing to read). Lots of moving parts, and the obvious new shiny thing of this edition being the 4-tiers of success system.

This is a total tangent, but I agree that my players will end up getting lost on the degress of success system. There was a time I thought something like this would be pretty cool, but now I can see it will probably be overly complex for your average roleplayer.

pennywit wrote:

3) Will bards be able to defeat opponents in dance battles?

Yes.

Does that make Starlord a Bard?

A while ago the gear preview made think of Touch AC, and how it (perhaps needlessly) complicates combat, especially now that saving throws are in the limelight in a new way. Do we really need attack rolls for things like Searing light, Acid arrow or Disintegrate, since Ref saves already kind of take care of that? How many effects are there in the game that have to actually hit your body but not your skin? For example, acid must seep through your armor, and I think your leather armor and shield *should* protect you against flames. Disintegrate needs to "hit flesh" to work, I think, since it only affects organic material (IIRC).

I want to open this topic for discussion because I think Stephen's idea of granting circumstance/temporary bonus for these effects (that actually need only hit your TAC) should cover it. How many of these effects that justify TAC as a mechanic does even exist in the game?

"When used against an object, the ray simply disintegrates as much as a 10-foot cube of nonliving matter. Thus, the spell disintegrates only part of any very large object or structure targeted. The ray affects even objects constructed entirely of force, such as forceful hand or a wall of force, but not magical effects such as a globe of invulnerability or an antimagic field."

Is it just me, or is a meager +3 not that impressive? By fourth level it is the smallest part of your total bonus, after your level and skill ranks. That +3 is lost in the shuffle by 10th level.

Hello -

Is the Assassin Prestige class worthwhile vs just making an assassin-y rogue? It seems like you lose a little BAB, and of course rogue talents. In return you get some minor bonuses and some neat stuff that doesn't kick in until higher levels. And death attack, of course. Many of these things don't seem super useful in the course of a regular game of D&D. In this case, however, we'll be playing a City campaign, so I might have the opportunity to use a lot of these abilities. Thanks for your opinions.

TL;DR: Earth and Golarion are different places.

On happy old Earth, morality can be deemed as subjective and relative - we can't say for sure that there are gods, so we can't say for sure what they think about our actions. Therefore there's no moral authority on Earth.

On Golarion, the gods are very very real. They have very static opinions on acceptable behaviors. The alignment system determines how you ALIGN with the different gods.

Without that system, the gods become much more gray, bland, and indistinct - or unimaginably complex to deal with, capricious even. Some people prefer that. And those players and GMs are free to chuck out the alignment system (as SF has mostly done), and play a morally gray game.

For the rest of us, the alignment system is an important tool to interact with the gods, to remind us that they are real, and our actions are being judged by them.

TLDR; stop hyperventilating and speaking for everyone.

Yeah. No. We live in a world where morality is relative because we don't know if there is a God or not.

Golarion is a world where gods are very real, and have very significant opinions on morality. In Golarion, morality is NOT subjective. Full stop. Therefore, alignment is important, as it defines what gods you are offending, where, and how. The alignment is critically important for understanding what gods you ALIGN with. So get off your high moral relativist horse and also calm down, because you are free to play without the alignment system. The rest of us would like it to stay as is.

wait wut

PCs have an annoying level of unnecessary detail for a GM. My enemies usually have more flavor than fluff. My PCs never notice that my enemies consist of three stats and 1-3 special attacks, many of which I make up on the spot. They do, however, notice that my combats are wicked fun. I have exactly 0 problem with NPCs having simple or different stats than PCs.

Vote here

Vancian is confirmed at this stage, but what kind of casting did you want? Why did you want that type of casting, why not the other kind?

I'm seeing a lot of people wanting Arcanist / 5e style casting so I'm wondering if there are people that are quietly contempt with the Vancian style casting or do the people just want Arcanist / 5e style casting.

I would have liked to see the Arcanist / 5e style casting but I'm not sure what would happen in regards to the Bard's and Sorcerer's spell casting if this were the case.

I would definitely prefer they go with Arcanist style. Especially if we're only ever getting 3 spells per day of any given level. I think going another step into a magic point system is a bit too flexible.

Honestly, I could care less about item creation...I want to build adventurers, not craftsmen...

I could understand the resonance system for expendable/consumable magic like wands...but for things like magic rings? boots?

Just seems like they are trying to strip away yet another layer of character customization.

I want to build Craftsmen. I think Item Creation has been the weakest part of D&D/PF since time immemorial.

Problem with this is if you ever lose that +x weapon your martial just got gimped. I dont mind weapons having magical effects thats fun and cool, but when they become necessary to function its a potential disaster.

I had a GM who was obsessed with rust monsters/demons/mephits/horses. Every couple of sessions he was trying to churn magic items. It was truly obnoxious.

My great hope for PF2E is the retirement of generic magic items such as +1 swords and +1 armor. These items are boring as hell and just create an arms race where you need to have a certain bonus level to keep up. I would prefer more interesting items, and remove the stacking of bonus abilities such as having a vorpal firey human bane sword. If you want multiple effects you have to carry multiple swords and change weapons to adapt to the situation. I think this would make the game much more dynamic and interesting. And don't get me wrong, I love having those things, but I think it's bad for the game. Magic items should feel rare, powerful, and unique, rather than a commodity. I'd still be fine with, say, a weaker version of weapon types, such as a Greater Firey sword and a Lesser Firey sword.

On the opposite side of this, I hope this get rid of all 'generic' magic items aka +1 sword, +1 armor, generic AC bonus items. Boring 'must have' items that simply add numbers. I know that a +1 sword is the most classic item in D&D, but I think it's time to lay the concept to rest in favor of more interesting items.

Drama. You're waiting to decide on the basis of a blog post for a system that won't even be in testing until August? Maybe you should go see someone and get some chill pills. If you have this much anxiety over a class in an RPG you need some perspective.

As the GM, you're always free to veto these items as you see fit. My group finds tracking food and water taxing and I have ceased to bother. I just tag them for upkeep(at the cost of whatever I feel like - that's the cost of laziness!) about once a session.

Does it take a full round action to make a Fortitude save after being petrified by a Gorgon? I believe a saving throw does not take an action. Also do you get a Fortitude save the first round when you are petrified by the breath weapon? Say the Gorgon goes before you, do you get a Fortitude save to shrug off petrification on your turn?

"Breath Weapon
A gorgon can use its breath weapon once every 1d4+1 rounds to create a 60-foot cone of green gas. Those caught in the area of the gas can attempt a DC 21 Fortitude save to resist the effects, but those who fail the save are immediately petrified. This petrification is temporary—each round, a petrified creature can attempt a new DC 21 Fortitude save to recover from the petrification as long as it is not caught within the area of effect of the gorgon's breath weapon a second time while petrified. A creature exposed to the gorgon's breath a second time while already petrified becomes permanently petrified, and can no longer attempt to make additional Fortitude saves to recover naturally. The save DC is Constitution-based."

Multiclassing has not been good, in my opinion, since 2e D&D. I would love to see more options open up for multiclassing characters. Although Pathfinder has many options for reflavoring a character via archetypes, they often feel tacked on - and are mechanically so much worse than other classes, or give up too many essential class functions, that they are nonviable.

Please, let me play a rogue/wizard that is actually good! Thanks.

Necrodemus wrote:

My player took the priest mystic with healing connection because he wants to be a healer. He doesn't want to be a buff/debuff off-tank combat medic. He wants to be a healer.

And since I don't want to tell anyone that their character concept is useless, I'd much rather fix it, so it works.

Despite my earlier contention about this concept (I still wish it would die in a fire), if that's truly what he wants, I think there should always be options. I personally know people that loved staring at their spell book and casting complete heal every 30 seconds in EQ. I think they're crazy, but luckily the world takes all kinds of people and my opinions don't actually matter.

I think the way you're doing it is going to bog down combat, but I've never played Fate Core, so maybe I'm wrong. Therefore, to fix it, I think the following would be better (or at least, easier to manage for him and you).

1. Do away with stamina as a concept entirely. Everyone gets what is listed for their class (hp+sta+con) as hitpoints.

2. Resolve points can be used between combats in a 10 minute rest to heal hitpoints at the same rate they normally heal stamina (so they won't always take them back up to full health, they'll just heal X amount per RP/10 minute rest).

3. Inspiring boost heals hitpoints at the same rate it normally heals stamina. (In case someone decides to play an Envoy)

4. All mystic spells and abilities are the same.

5. Any healing from any source that goes over current hitpoints acts as temp hitpoints for up to, say, 1 minute (essentially whatever is enough to last through a single combat). This is to keep him from wasting juice healing too early.

I still don't think he's going to get what he wants, really. I honestly don't think he'll ever have the juice to spend all his actions healing. He's probably still going to have to do something else at least some of the time or sit on his hands for half of every combat. But I think that's as close as you can get without bringing...

I think you'll find this is a solid compromise, OP. I think making people choose between HP/Stam is just going to slow down the game and bake in some unnecessary considerations.

Find a crate of grenades pull one's pin place gently back in packing crate run away or kick out open airlock.

Improvised torpedo!

This whole thing is weird.

Hence, interesting!

Literally just hand-wave everything you don't like/understand and you'll have a blasty-blast.

For example, I am not enforcing at all detailed charge tracking. I tell my players to fudge it and arbitrarily tell them when they are probably running out of ammo. They think it's a fine compromise in lieu of tracking every shot. However on a roll of a 1, the current cartridge always explodes. It works out decently well. We are easing into ship combat. We will probably never use the full rules.

I'll also state that starting Starfinder characters are more interesting, more durable, and have more customization than base PF characters, or even Level 1 characters with 5 years of fluff tacked on. It is unreasonable to expect a game that is less than a year old to stand up to a game that has been out for 5+.

It's your choice, but I feel like you're not giving it a fair shake. Which, granted, you're only primarily hurting yourself, but griping on the boards like this might turn people off the game for no good reason. And that hurts Paizo.

Jimbles the Mediocre wrote:

I think it depends on who gets the first shot, really, since both groups are capable of massive damage. Yes, Pathfinder's 9th-level casters have (much) more powerful spells, but Starfinder's casters have 3/4 BAB and access to Starfinder weapons. Any weapon, given a couple feats. Like the paragon x-gen gun, which deals 9d12 + 20 damage with a single shot. Take a full-round action, and you get 18d12 + 40 damage (before any buffs or class abilities or additional feats). Energy weapons would probably target a Pathfinder caster's touch AC, so you have a decently high chance of hitting in exchange for a bit less damage.

Honestly, I think a soldier is more dangerous to a wizard than a technomancer and might win if she gets the first shot off.

While forcing the two systems to interact without any conversion is probably not the way to go, wouldn't this spell completely annihilate the soldier?

That's kind of the point! How would it look if we did force interaction between PF and SF. It's obviously not balanced for every day play, but as a curiosity it shows the differences between the systems in an interesting way.

As for Winds of Vengeance, I wonder if energy weapons would count for that, as wind doesn't really affect lasers/light based weapons. Otherwise, yes.

And, as written, it would deflect ballistic starship weapons, missiles, and even nukes.

This discussion has ranged in opinion from 1/3 cost to same price for a box of 12

Also you’re the go, you can hand them out like candy if you want

Yeah I don't think handing out too many grenades is going to throw your game balance out of whack. Give them 1-2 per 3-4 encounters and they should be just fine.

I haven't read the entirety of this thread so I apologize if consensus has already been reached.

I'm GM'ing the Dead Suns adventure path (we're in book 2 right now). I think grenades are definitely too expensive and want to lower the cost.

My current WAG is 40% of book cost.

Does that seem a reasonable reduction? Or will they get enough grenades from their enemies so that it really doesn't matter much?

Seems to me like it would be good to limit it by availability and make the cost scale as a % of WBL equal to the WBL % of a Level 1 grenade.

Either way, I built a spreadsheet to look at costing for SF grenades. There's a weird spike mid-level.

Starfinder Grenades, Analyzed

With Starfinder, casters have been dramatically renovated. I'm wondering how they would stand up against the mighty Wizard or Cleric of Pathfinder?

Theory time! A duo duel:

20th level Technomancer and Mystic

vs.

20th level Wizard and Cleric

Preferably this would be a comparison of Core SF vs. Core PF. Any builds will be accepted if you wish to go that route - no third party materials please.

Who do you think would win and why?

Solution: Give out fun Utility items as bonus fluff, and let your PCs spend their cash on their own items. Only count weapons/armor towards WBL budget. Problem solved?

Every planet except maybe Akitosh should have some kind of orbital defense matrix. Now if you're somehow teleporting the nuke directly into the BBEG's base...that's hard to defend. Also consider, however, that while a nuke vs modern materials is pretty much a done deal, Starfinder materials are much more resilient. So a nuke might only deal some damage.

Another way they could have handled this is giving the Healer Connection a way to either Restore resolve or act as a Resolve battery. A few extra Resolve per day would be useful without being overwhelming.

There are a lot of threads about solarians in combat with a lot of differencing opinions, math, and comparisons but one of the things that seems to be really missing from anyone's notice is the weirdness of how their skills and skill related class abilities work.

Am I the only one that has noticed that the solarian has a lot of skills and skill based class abilities but only have a 4+int mod for skill points?

Am I the only one that thinks this makes these class features DOA? or at least really hard to capitalize on?

Has anyone found a way to increase the efficiency of these class features while not ignoring how MAD this class is?

Very good at some skills. If you want to be good at those skills you have the option. Otherwise you are free to ignore those bonuses.

Every time I make a character and look at the grenade section, I can never seem to justify the costs.

Are grenades ever really worth it? Or is that money pretty much always better spent elsewhere?

Do not seem worth it for the cost. Buy better equipment.

As there are a number of different types of combat drones in the AA, what's to prevent a PC from creating one? Other than the entries in the AA not having equivalent entries & thus costs in the equipment section. It doesn't seem too far fetched that a Mechanic can just build additional drones. Obviously there's a game mechanic/balance issue, but honestly 0 fluff problems.

Your thoughts?

(question arose from https://www.reddit.com/r/starfinder_rpg/comments/7rinll/whats_your_opinion_ on_pcs_fixing_broken/)

The reviews seem to indicate that there is a lack of content, and that much of the work is left to the DM. Is this accurate? Should I temper my expectations when comparing to the (thrilling success that was the) original PF Bestiary?

Welp, seems to be that Starfinder has revitalized Multi-classing. There are lots of cross-class synergies, and losing most capstones doesn't seem like it's going to hurt as much as in PF. I've got a dozen multi-class builds roiling through my head, and I can't even figure out where to start!

So what's yours? Either mechanically or narratively, what is your favorite multi-class combination in SF and why? Tell me about it! Feel free to share a list!