Sturstryk's page

Organized Play Member. 1 post. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 1 Organized Play character.


RSS


I've been working on a conversion of Dragonstar (the old 3.0 Fantasy Flight "D&D in space" campaign setting) to Pathfinder before Starfinder came out. The FTL drive system they used was called "starcasting", which utilised technomantic devices called starcasters to allow an entire starship to 'teleport' as the spell (technology can't break the laws of physics, aka go faster than light, but magic can).

I basically set it up such that starcasting requires calculating and inputting coordinates for a destination, which requires a successful Physical Science roll and several minutes to do reliably, though I also came up with rules for calculating a starcaster jump on the fly. This allows FTL jumps to feel more like Star Wars, with the possibility for high-stakes space battles/chases where the PCs are trying to hold off enemy ships while the science officer desperately tries to make the calculations for a jump. Because calculations become much harder the further away you're trying to go, it means that the crew can decide if they want to play it safe by making multiple smaller jumps or risk longer yet fewer jumps. It also means that a ship's interstellar speed is more directly tied to the skill of it's navigator ... and there are still higher-end starcasters based off of the 'Greater Teleport' and 'Planetary Teleport' spells.