In general, I like them, though personally I would make all of them use every ability slot for consistency, but that is just my personal preference. Also a note on soldier that about how to treat class level for the fighting style would be good. Feel free to add my technomancer to your list (just a blurb of credit please ;) Mystic Archetype:
2nd: Choose a connection. Select 2 0th level spells known. You can cast those at will. You also learn the 1st level connection spell. You can cast 1st level spells once per day per 3 levels (minimum 1). Wisdom is the key attribute for these spells. 4th: Gain the first level Connection power for your chosen connection. 6th: Learn a second first level spell from the mystic list. You also learn the second level connection spell from your Connection. You can cast it once per day per 5 levels. 9th: Gain the 3rd level connection power of your chosen connection. 12th: Learn an additional 2nd level spell from the mystic spell list. Learn the 3rd level spell connection you can cast third level spells once per day once per 8 levels. 18th: Gain wither the 6th or 9th level connection power ---
2nd Level: Gain Technomantic Dabbler as a bonus feat, even if you don't meet the prereqs. 4th Level: Gain a 2nd level magic hack 6th level: Learn an additional first level spell with technomantic dabbler. learn a single second level spell. You can cast it once per day per 5 levels. 9th Level: Gain a magic hack of 5th level or lower 12th level: Learn an additional 1st and 2nd level spell. Learn a 3rd level spell you can cast third level spells once per day once per 8 levels. 18th level: Gain an 8th level magic hack.
I would like to see an archetype created for each class to act as another version of multi-classing. Basically giving you a taste of a second class to go with your main. Example Technomancer Archetype: 2nd Level: Gain Technomantic Dabbler as a bonus feat, even if you don't meet the prereqs. 4th Level: Gain a 2nd level magic hack 6th level: Learn an additional first level spell with technomantic dabbler. learn a single second level spell. You can cast it once per day per 5 levels. 9th Level: Gain a magic hack of 5th level or lower 12th level: Learn an additional 1st and 2nd level spell. Learn a 3rd level spell you can cast third level spells once per day once per 8 levels. 18th level: Gain an 8th level magic hack.
quindraco wrote: No, don't. What you have is great. The only upgrade I'd consider would be allowing a maximum of 1 heavy weapon per non-turret arc, to match capital ships with capital weapons - don't let a Tiny ship have a linked direct fire heavy weapon, for that way lies madness, and larger ships suddenly become useless. That's basically what I was planning. The upgrade would grant a single weapon non-turret weapon to be upgraded to heavy. But like I said, I want to do some testing with what I have before I get to that. Need to build some test ships at different levels. Here are some of the system upgrades I am looking at adding to the fighters. I haven't figured out a BP cost for these, but they are currently limited to 1 per ship (and in this case are themed to match my players specifically). Advanced Comm Suite (Squadron Commander only)
Autothrusters
Deep Scan Subroutine
Linked Targeting Assist System
Remote Repair Drones
Targeting Relay
SirShua wrote: I noticed that too. My party hit level 2 before they got their loaner ship in the adventure path (which had a coil gun on a turret). I upgraded the ship, and threw a second coil gun on the turret and linked them. That 8d4 business was terrible for the enemy. Oh man, yeah I imagine it would be. I mean that was a pretty one-sided fight to begin with.
quindraco wrote:
I had actually forgotten about that rule existing (though it doesn't seem to work with starships as RAW). Interestingly it actually comes pretty close to my own calculations (mine being just slightly ahead on skills) That said the control modules are absolutely terrible at attacking it seems. (Also in this case the AI is based on the pilot level and not the tier which is good since fighters are going to be several tiers behind the players. In this case the AI's are effectively NPCs in the second crew slot that just happen to be computers. quindraco wrote:
That's part of the advanced shenanigans I'm working on. Basically a set of system upgrades that allow sharing certain crew actions, or making them more feasible in a single pilot scenario. Here's an example:
quindraco wrote:
It's definitely going to be interesting. The real question will be if it completely invalidates the swifter fighters and interceptors. I'm also looking at an advanced upgrade that will later improve the base frame's abilities to handle heavier weapons but I want to test how these go first.
So I'll be kicking of a military themed campaign soon and I'm really looking to have the players be fighter pilots instead of a shared ship. With that in mind I have some home rules I'm looking at implementing to try and make it work. First off to address build points to spend, I'm using the section in the CRB to give each player a single ship of a specific tier. Player tiers are calculated per this formula APL - (Number of PCs - 1). For values less than one, the progression goes 1, ½, ⅓, ¼. This results in more BP spent than a single ship, but a lot of that is on redundant pieces so that's probably fine. Second since action economy is the real killer for single man ships, each of their ships has a single generic AI that can fill the pilot, gunner, science, or engineering role as needed. This gives them two actions per round and the possibility of performing a minor action (likely usually snapshot). The AI has a flat skill bonus progression in all piloting, computers, and engineering of roughly equal to a player with it as a class skill, full ranks, and a starting ability score of a 10, but increasing it at each level based increase. One player will be deemed the squadron commander and can perform captain actions for other player within the squadron (but not to boost the AIs). That is the core of the system that I will be testing prior to the campaign. I'll report on my findings as testing commences. I also have some advanced options unique to my campaign. I'll share those once I have sanitized them and solidified them. I also created two custom frames that break some of the rules. Meet the Bomber and the Gunship. Each are tiny ships with the ability to mount a single heavy weapon (of the appropriate type), though at the cost of having no ability to gain additional weapons in their front arc. Gunship
Bomber
The Starfinder Pawns are pretty great and affordable is you can get away with cardboard standees instead of minis. Otherwise you're goona have trouble finding accurate representations of most things until the minis from that kickstarter ship. If you want actual minis here are some suggestions though: *Reaper's Chronoscpes line has a decent variety of some common scifi tropes that could be handy for player characters *If you need groups of similar minis to match humanoid enemies, Mantic's Deadzone and Warpath minis match the aesthetic and are reasonably priced for minis. Usually $20ish for units of 10. The enforcer pathfinders might work well for the human gang members early on and plague victims might work for the undead later on *For non-humanoid beasties, it might be best to look for a fantasy equivalent. Reaper would again be my go to here. The Akatas are pretty close to blink dogs for example. Space ships depends on how fancy you want to get. You can find bulk cheapo plastic spaceships on Amazon that could easily work.
Also after checking a few different levels, it is fairly reasonable (WBL wise) to have 4 identical small arms 2 levels below yours while still maintaining at level light armor. And in a "real game play" sense, fighting against humanoid opponents will likely make it trivially easy to get a matched set of decent guns. My party sold off nearly a dozen Azimuth laser pistols during the first part of Dead Suns for example.
quindraco wrote: You can already see some of this in the Mechanic class, where they have to pay for their own weapon(s) as well as their drone's (and Hover drones pay an exorbitant up-charge!). This isn't true though. Errata has already said drones always use weapons that are designed for small/medium creatures. While I like your two Lightning feats, the updated multi-weapon option is crazy. Allowing a 4 armed race to full attack with pistols at no penalty is nuts. Something I would like to see would be
Endbringer Devil - Too Cool, will play a heavy role in my rebirth of Cheliax homebrew adventure Aeon Guard - Faceless empires are always nice to have. Barachius Angel - Tech angels are pretty cool. Assembly Ooze - useful, but terrifying Dragonkin - I like me some playable dragons. Can't wait to see the skyfire legion archetype Anhamut Inevitable - Nanite guardians of the drift. Nifty. Nuar - a cool take on a minotaur analog The Swarm - gotta have the zerg... er vord... er space bugs Grays - good creepy mysterious enemy. can't wait to see an AP focused on them Skittermanders - cute and fluffy!
David knott 242 wrote:
I've considered putting together some charts for adjusting CR on the fly. Seems like this would be a good place to potentially test it as a theory
Metaphysician wrote:
Technically the Healer Mystic's Lifelink ability ignores stamina, but I think that is about it.
Metaphysician wrote: One of my PCs is a Vesk ex-athlete, whose ( unnamed, we suck at names ) sport was basically "Rugby, with no cards and a ball that can explode". It is also canon in my world that Eox is the center of the reality TV industry in the Pact Worlds, this certainly includes some sport/competition based shows. How about Blastball. Simple, evocative, accurate. We haven't talked about Eoxian sports yet, but we have made Eoxian Screech Metal a music genre. It is made entirely by various sounds of screeching metal. It's not very popular off-world.
starlite_cutie wrote:
That's okay. The Vesk fumbled the roll in my game (pretty much the only way to miss) and the drifting ended up dropping the grenade on him and his boss...
Soldier is definitely the better way to go for melee oriented. Interestingly, Spellthrower seems to work with melee weapons (that actually surprised me), so you can do the same thing with a level 2 melee weapon. With either the Merc or Scholar theme you could do: 16 STR, 14 Dex, 13 Int OR 18 STR, 12 DEX, 13 INT OR 16 STR, 12 Dex, 12 CON, 13 INT and be pretty well off. As a note, I don't think Nuar are legal in SFS play without a race boon allowing them.
Another option would be to let them salvage it, but talk to the players out of game about it so they only ever take one out at a time (likely they can't effectively crew two ships anyway). Let them keep it and upgrade it to match their tier. It would still take time and maybe charge them a chunk of money they can't afford, but with the option to do a job for the mechanics repairing it to cover the cost. Then let them have 2 ships, outfitted for different types of missions, and choose which they take.
Two primary options: Soldier with Engineering skill (It's class at least) or Exo-cortex engineer. Soldier options: Start with an okay int (13 would be my recommendation). Then pick you specialization. Arcane assailant lets you self enchant your weapon for some special abilities as "Inventions". Alternatively you could go Bombard for a more goblinish approach, but it lets you make a free grenade every time you rest, and later on powers up your heavy weapons. Barricade is a pretty nifty engineering feat for level 1. At 5 you can pick up "Technomagical Dabbler" if you have 15 int (hence the recommendation of 13 Int) which gets you access to a few low level spells for minor effects. Gear wise, start with a Tactical Acid Dart Rifle for your main weapon. As soon as you get a spare 360 credits you can get the spellthrower fusion which will let you use your gun to cast Spell Gems, giving you access to a huge variety of one-shot special effects. Exo-cortex mechanic is much more straight forwardly an engineer, but with some soldier-lite abilities (including better Profs and a built in targeting matrix to help make up the BAB).
Umbral Reaver wrote:
That's a really cool concept for a class and meshes well with what the existing fluff. Also the class sounds really cool mechanically. I've been working on boosting the power armor. Mostly this involves adding later "Marks" of existing power armor to provide a progression where one can use the same basic chassis, but with better base-line stats, but also adding a few new ones in as well. I'm also adding a new theme and archetype to go along with it. Here is the archetype if anyone is interested. Machine Warrior: Machine Warrior Archetype
For some warriors only the most advanced armor will do. These machine warriors push the limits of technology, utilizing powered armor to become one person armies. They are able to out last and out gun average powered armor users. Most machine warriors are soldiers or mechanics, their natural talents lending them to the role. More militant technomancers and mystics may pick up the path, augmenting their magical prowess with solid fire power and ironclad defense. Envoys acting as military commanders may take up these talents to better lead from the front. Operatives and solarians are the least likely to follow the path of the machine warrior as their natural talents tend to clash with powered armor. Iron Skin (Ex) 2nd Level
Hard Point (Ex) 4th Level
Iron Giant (Ex) 6th Level
Threat Tracking System (Ex) 9th Level
Multilock Targetting Array (Ex) 12th Level
System Overload (Ex) 18th Level
Archpaladin Zousha wrote:
Biggest problem with this is Acts 2 and 3 take place back to back without leaving the drift rock in normal structure. Consider moving both Fugitive and Claim to after Dead Suns concludes.
So in my game, the players ended up making friends with Jabaxa, but were reluctant to storm into the Fusion Queen itself. While they were following up a secondary lead into some more info about the Hardscrabbles, the Downside Kings raided the Level 21s and took Jabaxa prisoner. That got my players ready to storm the club.
AlgaeNymph wrote: Suppose I'm from a primitive world and I interplanetary teleport my way somewhere advanced. What's the exchange rate of gold to credits? My initial intuition is that it'd be 1 gold for 10 credits, but is there any better information to go with? I did some math across each level comparing WBL guidelines to come up with my calculations. Across all 20 levels it averages out to about 2 credits per gold. Alternatively, you could look at a single level snapshot of when this occurs and come up with the exchange rate for that level. This even could make sense if the character only ditches some now and saves the rest for later as exchange rates can fluctuate. Full spreadsheet here: Google Sheets
The Mad Comrade wrote:
That's what relatives are for...
kaid wrote: One thing I was questioning when I was reading the archtype stuff the other night is do you only lose the various things on a level where the archtype gives you something or do you lose things like mechanic tricks even on levels where the archtype does not give you something special? You only lose features for levels where the Archetype is replacing.
Wrath wrote:
The Starfinder team has acknowledged it is an issue and will be addressed. Source: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2uizv?Space-combat-skill-DC-progression-issue#1 5
The Mad Comrade wrote: A key ability score of 14 should net you a minimum of 3 (1 minimum +2 key ability modifier) while a 16 gets you 4 at 1st level. Level advancement does not get you any more resolve until 4th level (5 resolve w/ 16 key ability score), then 5th level comes along and bumps the key ability score to an 18 (total of 6 resolve w/ key ability score 18) and again at 6th you gain another resolve point (3 from half-level +4 from key ability score for a total of 7 RP). There is a good chance you are putting your personal upgrade into your key stat as well at around level 3 so that's another bonus resolve.
Ran some baseline numbers: Baseline assumes the attribute starts at 10, increased every level (as it is at least a tertiary attribute), and is a class skill. Focused is assuming a 16 starting in the relevant attribute, is increased every time, putting your strongest personal mod in it, skill is class and picking up skill focus (or possibly a class bonus) for the skill by level 5 but otherwise unassisted (IE no computers). Most characters are probably going to be somewhere between the two.
Easy checks are DC 10 + Tier x 2. Medium checks are DC 15 + Tier x 2. Hard checks are DC 10 + Tier 3 2 At level 20 DC 50, 55, or 70 vs +27 baseline, +34 focused At level 15 DC 40, 45, or 55 vs +22 baseline, +29 focused At level 10 DC 30, 35, or 40 vs +16 baseline, +22 focused At level 5 DC 20, 25, or 25 vs +9 baseline, +16 focused At level 1 DC 12, 17, or 13 vs +4 baseline, +7 focused For a Baseline you go from needing 8+ to being impossible without computer assistance for an EASY task. Focused goes from needing 5+ to 16+. So maybe we aren't expected to always have a top tier ship. How far do we need to lag behind to maintain roughly the same chance of success? Scale towards baseline:
Scale towards focused:
Based on this analysis, it seems it would be most optimal to keep you ship tier at around 70-75% of your APL. Alternatively for a house rule, change the scaling to be 1.5 x tier for easy and medium checks, and 2 x tier for the hard checks.
EC Gamer Guy wrote:
Also being in cover stops Attacks of Opportunity now!
bookrat wrote:
Feat trees still exist but have been said to be much shorter. Most feats only have stat and BAB requirements, and maybe a single prereq feat. I suspect the Big 6 are completely gone. We already have confirmation that weapons and armor no longer have numeric bonuses (only "cool" effects) and you get far more attribute increases over the course of your career. They have announced that you can purchase up to 3 different attribute enhancing upgrade with money (+2, +4, +6 each to a different stat), but they don't compete for "slots" with other items. As for spells, that I can't tell you.
|