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On a bit of a tangent, I could see there being a lot of cultural misinterpretation and assimilation, like how Taco Bell doesn't represent traditional Latin American food, or how you can't find anything like Chinese food in China, or how Japanese people preorder their KFC weeks in advance for Christmas and have potato & mayonnaise or roast beef & gravy pizzas.

"This isn't at all like how it's made on Vesk Prime! I prefer mom's bloody meat slabs."

"No way, these are great! These bloody meat slabs are perfectly marinated in Vanilla Coke and WD-40! It's the best Vesk restaurant on Aballon!"

"It's okay, it's just not the same..."

Garretmander wrote:

If the PC is 27 years old they could have easily been a celebration baby.

Why would they celebrate the BEGINNING of the conflict instead of the victory?

Maybe you are playing a Vesk?

The 10% buyback rate sounds about right as a BLENDED percentile. I think that's the best way to look at it. I also don't blame people who think otherwise; if you don't work with used items in a retail setting on a regular basis you wouldn't have this perspective.

Here's a real world perspective/example:

I work in a comic store. A big part of the business is taking in peoples' old collections, it's how comic stores keep an inventory of back issues.

If someone walks in with a copy of Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars #8 (1984,) I'm going to give them great value for it. It's a hot book that has decent value ($30-$80 raw depending on grade) and if put on display, will move over a weekend. No risk, easy money, would probably give upwards of 65% retail value, depending on condition.

If someone walks in with a copy of Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #1 (1992,) I'm going to (politely) send them away without even making an offer. There was half a million of those printed, nobody's asking for them, we have probably a few dozen sitting in storage. It is literally worthless. [Game mechanic note: THIS IS NOT DIPLOMACY-CHECK RELATED. If you're the sweetest sweetheart or the most cunning businessperson in the galaxy, I'll still tell you this is a worthless item. And it's not just me; you could take that book coast to coast and anyone who would pay you more than 50 cents is a fool or a sucker.]

Now it's rare that a person brings in just one comic to sell; usually they have a box or collection of boxes.

So what's the value:bulk ratio? About 10% of comics in any given collection are interesting/valuable. Huh. Funny how that works out.

(OF COURSE there are exceptions, shrewd resellers who only collect value, and cheapskates who only collect bulk, but again, they work out to 10%)

I think the way to look at it in-game is the same way: 90% of the items you bring in are going to be worthless, 10% of the items you bring in fetch top dollar. Even if you sell your stuff off one-at-a-time, the game can't take that into account, but over the course of your adventuring career, it should balance.

So there's a Triaxian holiday coming up, and it only happens once every Triaxian "year," so it's a pretty big deal. One of the bigwigs there (dragon maybe, but doesn't have to be) wishes to punctuate his banquet with a rare delicacy.

Unfortunately, a key ingredient for this dessert is a gland from a dangerous beast (ice wurm, desert beetle, supershark, etc) and the PCs need to travel to a dangerous locale to wrangle the beast before the big day arrives.

Complicating the matter is the fact that the beast is scared off by anything as large as it is, so the PCs need to dock their space ship and go hunting by jetski/dune buggy/motorcycle.

Also complicating the matter is the fact that there is a group of indigenous people who regard the great beasts as sacred (unbeknownst to anyone, of course.)

So the PCs are in for traveling to a fantastic planet, exploring a fun environment, hunting a huge monster, getting in a vehicle chase with locals, maybe fighting them, and maybe dealing with some moral quandaries. All on a time sensitive schedule.

I left the exact details vague so that they could be plugged in as best suits your story.

I'm not sure if you're looking for things that are written by the Starfinder team as canon in the system or inspiration for how you could conduct Kasatha in your home games; but if it's the latter, you could probably take some inspiration by one of the sci-fi's most influential desert societies, the Fremen from Dune.

Some things you could lift from the Fremen:

-The idea that water is sacred. All water expelled by a body gets reconstituted for reuse; to not collect your water is considered wasteful and immoral, and crying is reserved for very very special occasions; the dead are collected for their water content, and if you best someone in combat, you own that body and the water content therein is a prize; asking someone to hold/carry your water supply (or otherwise be a temporary custodian of it) is akin to a courting ritual.

-Their homeworld has an apex predator that is worth confronting because it provides a valuable resource and/or ceremonial purpose. [In Dune, this is the sandworm, which provides both the spice and their crysknives; in Iron Gods it's inferred there's a giant "desert nautilus" that lives on Kasath, this could hold a similar meaning, maybe this is where they fashion their spinal swords from?]

-Everyone has a traditional knife, and major personal conflicts are settled by personal knife duels; the upside if you kill your opponent is you win the conflict, but then you're saddled with taking care of their family, you killed this family's husband/dad, that's your responsibility now. [This meshes with their proclivity towards melee combat, and the Spinal Sword equipment item entry in People of the Stars, and their traditional clan-based society.]

I haven't picked up Dune in a while, and there's definitely other gems of inspiration you could lift that I'm forgetting.

Think in terms of films that have one main protagonist; Indiana Jones for example.The player provides Indy, and you're going to need to provide everything else. That includes a narrative that plays to Indy's strengths *and* proclivities. Sometimes he needs assistants, sometimes he doesn't. Make sure you give Indy an attainable goal, and don't put any insurmountable obstacles on the pathway to that goal. Don't deus ex machina too many obstacles, then you're just playing with yourself; Indy needs to feel like the protagonist at all times.

Humans are half-dwarves. They're the progeny of elf & dwarf parents, but then we started breeding true. Also explains the comparatively short lifespans; we're mutations of nature that were never meant to be.

Sounds like you are going for a character concept similar to "Bane," as first seen in the comics, not the films. Ideally, comic Bane functions like a PF barbarian, or mutation fighter, he's tough, gets the juice flowing, and gets tougher. I would say that the best SF analogy would be an exocortex mechanic, or an armor Solarian with more defensive revelations, as solarians also go from physically capable to "lit up" (no pun intended) during combat.

I like the idea of an Android that doesn't quite get proper slang and pejorative use, but tries and fails constantly, kind of like Sandra B&$&#+& in Demolition Man.

I could see a scene such as:

Party plans to start a fight, android exclaims, "Time to physically abuse the livestock!"

....Human leans over and whispers in his ear

"...I mean, time to kick some @$$!"

So is everyone going to be a space bum, or is there another reason no one includes basic housing expenses with their initial purchases?

Everyone's just going to sleep in their ship; it'll be like everyone is the space equivalent of those camping trailers you see parked at WalMart

"Hey rat guy, help me fix the shields!"

"Ysoki!"

"No it's not ok! We're gonna die!"

Doesn't almost every space movie have a scene revolving around tension created by a lack/need of environmental equipment?

- The final scene in Alien when Ripley has to put on the suit & blow the alien out the airlock

-Matt Damon getting his helmet cracked & his pod station eventually failing in The Martian

- The scene in 2001 when Dave doesn't have the proper equipment but has to make the leap from his pod to the airlock on the main ship

- The end of Total Recall when Arnie's eyes are bugging out before Mars is terraformed

- Guardians of the Galaxy: Quill makes the risky attempt to save Gamorra's life by giving her his faceplate, and then Michael Rooker shows up just in time to save them both

- WALL-E; when the bad robots try to jettison the boot plant and WALL-E and EVA have to go out to space with a fire extinguisher to save it

- Star Trek: First Contact; when Worf has to go fight outside the ship and his suit gets damaged, he needs to do a field repair with dead Borg parts

...and many more that

It would be a shame if we didn't get the opportunity to provide tense and dramatic scenarios for our players, and I'm glad that we have those chances.

Also, a lot of the phonetic alphabet is common use nouns, that's the point. If someone has never heard of a 'thassilon,' it doesn't function.

It's like when someone tries to make up their own phonetic references on the spot and they end up sounding silly. Words need to be clear, consise, and unmistakable.

Don't overthink it. If it's too flavorful, it could lose functionality.

There is no unreasonable number of free actions, just unreasonable players.

The problem doesn't lie with the actions, or the number of them; it has to do with players attempting shenanigans.

This is unfortunately best handled in a case by case basis.

My example to anyone who tries to impose a hard blanket limit is this: one of the viable free actions listed is talking, but an unreasonable player could effectively filibuster the game by never shutting up. One free action shuts everything down. One.

Just tell your players to be reasonable.

If it's a sleep over, you should plan it somehow so you do two thirds of the adventure the night before and one third the next morning. This way you can pause the action during a time when the characters need to camp on the road, and then you can figure out a way to interrupt the rest with an overnight monster ambush by actually waking them up.

AIR PIRATES!

In my experience, I don't think I've ever heard a PC describe themselves as an adventurer; however, if you see a mercenary, a witch-hunter, a preacher, a thief, and an explorer roll into town, what do you call them?

Answer:

How can art be evil?

I understand that unhinged people could find inspiration in art to commit atrocities; that being said, unhinged people could find hidden messages in their alphabet soup. That's not the soup's fault.

In our society, we have museums with evidence and depictions of atrocities, not to inspire, but to remember the victims, try to understand why, and raise awareness to prevent similar events in the future. People make movies and paintings about war and the Holocaust and other things, so it is possible to make art of evil content without evil intent.

I realize that in the context of the gamespace, this art of evil content *was* created with evil intent, but that's still not the art's fault.

I would think that destroying the art would serve to decrease awareness of the actual problem (unhinged people,) and that devotees of Sheyln would work to preserve it (and maybe the site it is on) as a tribute to fallen souls, and how art can be a tool and a weapon, and just like tools and weapons, hold no fault of their own and must be handled with respect for the power they contain.

Sorry if I got heavy earlier with the war talk, etc. These comments bring up some deep philosophical ideas that I believe are worth exploring.

P.S.

Failing that, another teammate should be able to take you down if necessary. AKA The Tony Stark way.

Improved iron will and your teammates take skill focus.

Gotta do it the Scarlett Johannson way.

This answer is always going to be "it depends on your table narrative."

If you're looking for classical narrative examples, they do exist.

Many people have brought up super-teams full of characters who know each others' identities and work together fine.

Let's explore some other ideas in this thread:

**Can vigilantes who don't trust each other work together?** There are multiple examples that exist regarding this idea, especially since trust isn't a binary idea; the concept of trust is a wide gradient of grey that changes over the course of two peoples' (or characters') lifespans.

When Superman and Batman first met, Batman didn't trust Superman at all, and used coercion to leverage his assistance. Batman approached Superman and said, "I strapped a bomb to an innocent person; if you don't help me I'll blow them up." It turns out Batman wasn't lying; he strapped a bomb to himself, which he revealed to Supes after their coordination. It was an unhealthy start to their alliance.

Another story of characters who didn't know each others' identities is of Spider-Man and Black Cat. Black Cat started as a criminal, met Spider-Man on the street, grew romantic, and eventually gave up crime to patrol the city with Spider-Man. They trusted each other inasmuch that they worked together fully in their alter egos, but they didn't fraternize outside of their costumed life. In fact, their "work" chemistry was so strong, when Peter finally got the nerve to let Black Cat into his personal life, she was repulsed; it was *Spider-Man* she had the hots for, not *Peter Parker.*

**Revealing his true identity can be harmful** Again, there's a wide range of examples, and I think Spider-Man stories have explored almost every outcome of this idea. Peter has gained allies, lost allies, his family has been attacked, his villains have been reformed; we're also seeing these ideas played out again with this generation's new Spider-Man, Miles Morales.

The results of revealing your vigilante persona to your social peers or your social persona to your vigilante peers will have varying results.

I think the best modern example of paladin behavior is Chris Evans' portrayal as Steve Rogers/Captain America from the Marvel movies.

Cap always fights for the little guy (having previously been a little guy,) is always willing to lay down his life for his teammates or those in his custody, and fights for freedom, liberty, and justice. He's an icon, and he knows as much, and attempts to maintain a high standard of character that matches his public perception.

That being said, we see him use guns and kill people, he conducts covert missions, and he even fights the very government that endorses and empowers him. He went "rogue" against the government in Winter Soldier, and we'll see more of that in Civil War. That's because Captain America always follows his ideals; his code. If Captain America is fighting the government, it's because **the government** has stopped has stopped helping the little guy, stopped representing freedom & liberty.

Regardless of the landscape, Captain America is the *absolute* moral center of the Marvel Universe. Marvel never writes anything Cap does as being off that center. In the comics, he frequently fights other heroes, or leaves the government, or leaves the Avengers and forms an underground "Secret Avengers." In each of those scenarios, [not from mine or your perspective, but from the perspective of the Marvel editing office] Cap is *right* and the other party is *wrong.* If I picked up a comic and saw Captain America blow up an orphanage, my initial thought wouldn't be 'Cap's evil and he's a terrible person,' it would be 'there must be a really, really good reason he did that, or there's an impostor running around.'

Also, that doesn't mean he can't get mad, or go for a beer after work, or can't pick up a girl and have a good time, or tell a lie to protect somebody (including himself.) He's still human.

Whenever I'm playing a paladin, I always ask myself, "what would Steve do?"

Don't need magic items to store undead; regular closets work just fine. Most people already have a few skeletons in theirs.

The removal of racial class restrictions. Dwarf wizards used to blow my mind. Also, elf paladins.

D20 initiative. I used to enjoy the previous system, with weapon speeds and spell casting times, but man did it take forever to get through a combat round.

I enjoy the D&D adventure system series of board games; Castle Ravenloft, Wrath of Ashardalon, and Legend of Drizzt. They play like cooperative dungeon runs and can accommodate one to four (or maybe more) players. The monsters are programmed with a set of parameters so you don't need a GM.

Treat it like the infinity gem in Guardians of the Galaxy. Nobody has the money to pay for it, or everyone is scared to own it (technic league will come knocking eventually,) or it has to go to the authorities to get vaulted, so nobody else can ever use it.

City of Heroes.

Yor Hunter From the Future.

I'd like to add my thoughts on gaming experience, if I may.

Some of these thoughts will be about the gaming experience in a generalist term, and then I will tie them into Pathfinder specifically afterwards.

Firstly, I think it is important to recognize that a successful gaming experience isn't something that someone can quantify, and that the definition of what a successful gaming experience is will vary from person to person, based on what the player's goals are.

Let's take poker for instance. Poker is globally played and understood. Aside from the objectives of the rules, what could potentially be a player's reasons for playing poker?

Just off the top of my head (there might be more...)

-A player might be in it for the money. "Successful gaming experience" is directly proportional to the amount of financial winnings the player walks away with.

-A player might enjoy the feeling of winning. "Successful gaming experience" is related to the player's ability to be better and beat his opponents (regardless of financial payout.)

-A player might enjoy the intricacies of the game. "Successful gaming experience" might equate to being witness to the ebb & flow of how each hand plays out, regardless of whether that player wins the hand or not.

-A player might enjoy the social aspect of the game. "Successful gaming experience" equates to going out with the guys and playing some cards, regardless of skill or victory/defeat.

Chances are, most poker players are a combination of these four factors, and depending on the person, various levels of these factors all contribute to their specific "successful gaming experience." It's this variance in these factors; that's what adds up to make every player an individual.

So how does this translate to Pathfinder?

Again, we see that different players will have different recipes for success in their brains. (Side note: these varying recipes are also what causes most player/player conflicts.) There are many components to the Pathfinder game which all could potentially have their part in formulating each players' recipe for a successful gaming experience.

-Players trying out new builds (creative expression)

-Getting together every session with the same people (social aspect)

-GMs building worlds and stories to share (both social and creative)

-The thrill of combat simulation or the intrigue of character immersion (mechanical vs. roleplay game styles/elements)

There are others, to be sure.

The important thing is to recognize that each person will have different personal goals and expectations when they sit down at the table together. Successful gaming groups are groups that can work together to achieve these varied goals. There are no wrong ways to play, just complimentary or conflicting players and styles.

Personally, my primary focus is the social aspect. I love getting together with the same people every week, and our interaction is focused on the game. No worries about conversation topics getting to awkward or inappropriate; we're all there to have fun, and that fun has a structure to it. Secondly, I like having a vehicle to express my originality. Whether I'm GMing or PCing, I get the most fun presenting original ideas the the group that remain memorable after leaving the table.

Lots of people have good contributions to this thread.

Matt Thomason: You know what game did a good job instilling panic like you said? XCOM: Enemy Unknown. It never feels like you have enough resources (time/money/manpower/equipment) to get comfortable. It's always a matter of asking yourself "which objective gets left behind?"

Mortag1981 & Lurk3r: Combine their two ideas.

For example, the PCs are given a task. Their contacts suggest two possible avenues of progress: one is easy and guaranteed, but slower; the other is difficult and risky, but much quicker. After the goal is reached, based on which method they took, explain what further tasks they are unable to accomplish based on the time they took.

We ran a game like this in our group last year; if you're going to GM this style of task resolution, it is important to build a timeline chart detailing the series of events that will transpire, and a list of how fast the PCs can do various tasks. That way, you can keep track on the timeline what the PCs were doing, and which events have expired and are unavailable to be completed.

The Muppet Movie?

This is slightly off-topic, but anyone interested in the history of RPGs (and what happened with TSR, WotC, and Paizo) should try to find a copy of Designers and Dragons by Shannon Appelcline.

I'm not sure how easy it is to find a copy currently, but it's a massive book (about the size of the PF CRB) which is a history book detailing the RPG industry company by company.

Highly Recommended.

16) A chuckwagon, painted with yellow and purple flowers, full of pacifists who implore the PCs to rid themselves of all weapons and join the group on a magical journey spreading the gospel of non-violence and singing songs peace and love. If made friendly, they might share their narcotics.

You know the best way for 14-year olds to get faster at simple math? Practice.

Don't give them a calculator. Don't take this practice away from them, and praise them when they get correct answers.

You need an organic room. Something that looks like you're inside an organism, all pink and squishy and pulsating. If the PCs start poking around too much in there, antibodies come to attack them.

P.S. that sounds a lot dirtier than I intended it to. Honest.

Turn his common room into this

A couple of different thoughts come to mind...

A) Why do your players wish to constantly switch characters? A part of me feels that forcing them to continue to play characters they do not enjoy playing drains the fun out of the game, and that if swapping characters creates fun and engagement, than it is for the best. A different part of me feels that if they are so likely to switch characters, is that because they do not have any agency with their current characters. Do you give them agency? Do you help make their PCs unique and memorable? I find players have greater investment in their characters if you do things like refer to their characters by name, not by "Jill's wizard" or "the elf dude;" give the PCs meaningful relationships with NPCs, and let the PCs reputation precede them. I wonder if increasing player/character investment will help to alleviate your problems.

B) The person running the game (AKA YOU) gets to decide how new characters are introduced into a game, both regarding the crunch and the fluff. There are a lot of ways to mitigate players abusing character death:

* It's your game, just lay down the law & say "no you can't make the second guy the same as the last."
* Level penalties
* Gold/Gear penalties
* Repuation/RP penalties (the local NPCs/rest of the party don't know/trust the new guy in town)

C) Is it possible that your players are of a mindset that the concept of recurring characters/personalities is completely alien to their style of play? Maybe they don't care at all that their guy has a name and a backstory; maybe they don't have any interest in building a history with a team of like-minded PCs that can share stories and emotions. That's completely fine; that just means you need to change the way you approach things:

*Maybe they just like scenarios and when the module's done, it's done. They walk away from the characters, rewards, story, everything. That's fine. When planning a game like that, you just need to give the criteria: "OK guys, next time we're going to start a story that takes place in a city, you guys need level 7 characters, build them with usual WBL and the usual ability generation methods, this story should last approx. 3-4 sessions.

Two things to consider:

1) If you can foreshadow a little bit, named items will have more character if they have a specific utility. To use previous examples, your party could be bombing around with +3 weapons all their own, but if they have to travel through the trollmoors, they'll be happy they found Inferno, the Trollbane. Happy enough that someone could grow attached to it, like one grows attached to an NPC.

2) If you have a person who makes & upkeeps the party's magic gear, get them to spin some personality into the gear. I had a character make a cloak of resistance +1 from a pelt that was from a previous animal encounter that almost killed the recipient and some of the recipient's silver hair, which was used to stich in some runes or some such. That became *THEIR* cloak. Later, a different party member found a regular plain old clock of resistance +1, and it wasn't anywhere near as cool as the one that had history built into it.

Where in the Pathfinder rules does it specify how experience is awarded for traps?

Like others have stated, if you're looking for rules regarding conception and pregnancy, these only currently exist in 3PP 3.5 products. Also, as stated, let the buyer beware.

As for figuring out genetics, I would suggest using a punnet square to determine the possible outcomes. One parent is half-elf, so it could be represented by H(uman)E(lf); the other parent is sylph, which could be represented by H(uman)A(ir element.)

Running the square with HA down one side and HE down the other, you end up with 4 separate (and therefore equal opportunity) outcomes, each with an (obvious) 25% chance of occurrence: Human, Half-Elf, Sylph, and some sort of Air-Element/Elf hybrid. Depending on one's interpretation, this could also be a sylph, which would change the outcome percentages to 25% human, 25% half-elf, and 50% sylph.

In case it would come up (it hasn't yet,) gender options shouldn't deviate from 50/50 male/female.

I played a tiefling alchemist, and it was a ton of fun.

While I did focus my character on high dexterity and bomb use, I quickly learned that the strength of my alchemist wasn't to be optimal at one thing; it was to have ***The correct answer for every obstacle.***

-I took the force bomb, confusion bomb, and stink bomb discoveries, so once I did a successful knowledge check (or trial and error) against an enemy, I just had to pick their worst saving throw and exploit it. We were clearing out a large dungeon full of giants like it was squashing bugs. All we did was have my guy lob force bombs and knock them all on their butts and everybody ran in hit them when they were down. I once even got lucky and stink-bombed a large shadow dragon that was meant to be a big fight at the time. All it could do was move away and barf.

-I did a lot of scouting/reconnaissance with beast shape II. Nobody pays attention to animals scuttling around doing what animals do.

-A lot of good utility formulae on the alchemist list: invisibility, see invisibility, spider climb, disguise self, fly, tongues, water breathing, freedom of movement, the list goes on. There are very few obstacles that stand in your way. Remember, it only takes a minute to prepare an extract, so keep those slots open.

-Twin Form saved my life.

-Spontaneous Healing also saved my life.

All in all, I think my alchemist was the most fun I ever had with a character. The great thing is, the alchemist I built was just the tip of the iceberg; I hope I get the opportunity to make another alchemist in the future. Thanks to the archetypes & discoveries, the possibilities are endless. I would like to make a vivisectionist/master chymist strength alchemist, but a mummification/zombie alchemist would be fun too.

Try one out! Get an idea of what you want to do; the alchemist can probably do it! And he does it... WITH SCIENCE!

Well, the Entangled condition states that "an entangled creature moves at half speed, cannot run or charge..." and rules under Hampered movement state "When movement is hampered, each square moved into usually counts as two squares..." and "You can't run or charge through any square that would hamper your movement."

It seems that a creature suffering from the Entangled condition is experiencing the same restrictions as a character traversing terrain that causes hampered movement.

The inability to take a 5-foot step should be part of those restrictions.