The Human Diversion's page

What will you do if Paizo has taken that consideration and decides to let the removal stand?

I've already taken the action of no longer playing PFS. I've also stopped purchasing Paizo products, and I am strongly encouraging everyone I meet and game with to do the same.

Sebastian Hirsch wrote:

Do you mean communicating as a retailer, or communicating about a retailer?

As a retailer / brick-and-mortar store.

When it comes to the RDU area of North Carolina, four stores are affected by the recent events unfolding.

While players and other organizers have been expressing their concerns here and elsewhere, I am just wondering what the best method / point of contact a retailer should employ to also express their concerns.

A wee bit of background; I was a former VO in the Raleigh area, and I quit about a year and 1/2 ago because of the actions and attitude of our regional coordinator.

Paizo's refusal to address this in a way that makes me feel they don't care about their customers/players is hitting the local gaming stores more than you know. I've more or less quit not just Pathfinder Society, but Paizo as a whole over this; I refuse to partake in Pathfinder Society until changes are made. I've also convinced all 6 players of my weekly gaming group to do the same, and I'm cancelling all my Paizo subscriptions as well. I'm not the only one, either, I know of at least a dozen other players who have done the same.

When I quit, I pretty much feel my comments to management were briefly read and discarded, and when I brought that fact up I was more or less told, "oh, we'll see you when your attitude changes."

Stupid Personal Anecdote Time (SPAT)

Back in the days of Living Greyhawk we had a local player who was having some personal issues; family, work, etc. He was an avid LG player and seemed to use it to escape. My guess is that he was so invested in gaming and it meant so much to him that he was mortified to fail, and thus would often fudge/cheat his dice rolls. He used tiny little dice, would roll them quickly and pick them up and then call out the roll. Rarely a 20, but almost always between 13 and 19.

As a GM, I didn't give a hoot about his personal life; there were between 3 and 5 other players at the table and his character never failing anything, on some level, took away from the other characters. I bought 6 sets of very large dice, all different colors, and asked that players roll out in front of them so I could see them (claiming bad eyesight).

Lo and behold, he started getting a more even statistical spread on his rolls. All was well with the world ...

... except a GM at a major convention discovered that his preferred D20 had a 19 where the 1 should be and he was banned. And then he died of a heart attack a few years later.

Ioun stone?

As with many things, it depends on the GM.

In a distributed/worldwide campaign where you never know what the GM will be like, it's nice to have trapspotter so you never have to remember to say "I'm looking for traps in this square ... now in this square ... now in this square ... now in this square"

I'm just curious how other people design encounters. I'm running a long campaign (every week for over a year now) and my planning methods are rather scattered. Typically I think of something while I'm out on a walk, speak my idea into speech-to-text in my phone, and then take those notes once I'm back home and try to put them into bullet points.

The problem arises in that sometimes I keep my notes in text files, but sometimes I try to arrange them in a spreadsheet with appropriate columns, and sometimes I just drop the text files in a folder hierarchy on my laptop.

Do any of you have any sort of de-facto planning method for encounters? I'm thinking I want to lean more toward a spreadsheet with columns like "encounter type" (I.E. social/combat/skill), "location", "related plot points", "other notes", "NPCs involved"

How much of a head start do the bad guys have?

about 5 minutes.

A bit of background; I'm running a home game where the PCs came across a patrol of bad guys and last session ended with a few of the patrol members "getting away" in mountainous/foothill terrain. The PCs stated they're chasing the fleeing patrol because having them report back to their main army is really bad.

So I'd like to have an encounter that sets up a chase-like atmosphere without going through the rules for a chase; I want this to be longer than a quick dash through some obstacles, think something more along the lines of Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas following the Orcs to rescue Merry and Pippin.

I was pondering maybe do a skill challenge-esque type setup where they need to make 5 or 6 total successes before 3 failures and at least 2 or 3 of those successes need to be survival (tracking) checks.

I'm also pondering throwing a trap in there that the patrol pre-set in case they were followed that will do more to slow the PCs down than damage them.

Any other suggestions/hints for running this?

thank you in advance.

Voss wrote:

Starfinder is pretty much SW Saga with the serial numbers filed off.

No. No it's really not.

It plays very differently in a lot of ways.

I absolutely agree with Ravingdork here. I run a campaign using Saga Edition, and while there are some similarities (D20 based, space-opera) there are a lot more differences. If I had to describe Saga edition, I'd say it's halfway between 3.5 and 4.0 - you have feats and talents, but they often have a "once per encounter" limitation. You have very pared-down skills. You don't make saves, people make attacks against your defenses. The big thing I learned about Saga Edition early on was "full cover" is your friend. It's crazy easy to die outright from a single crit, so using cover can often avoid letting an untimely roll of a "20" from the GM ruin the party's day.

I love Saga Edition, but I hate the space combat, so I'm basically stealing StarFinder's space combat in my Saga Edition game from this point forward. I'm even trying to come up with a conversion system for Saga Edition ships into StarFinder ships.

Does this mean stealth/cloaking systems are completely non-plausible in Starfinder?

I'm actually in the process of doing the same for Star Wars. My plan is to take all the ships in the Saga Edition CRB, and most of the ships in the TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance video games and convert them over.

My sticky point so far is converting speed in the various games to speed in Starfinder.

Metaphysician wrote:

The problem being, that makes even low radiation an immediate mortal peril. That doesn't fit the definition of "low radiation" by any common measure.

Is it the least dangerous of the types of radiation? Because that sounds like a common definition of low to me.

I think it's more along the lines of this;

in common thought (including the medical imaging techs and nuclear scientist types I know) "low radiation" is often synonymous with "acceptable doses," I.E. the amount you get from background exposure or an X-ray or a long high-altitude plane flight.

Maybe what we're looking for is a Starfinder definition of what "low radiation" is.

DMMWolf wrote:

@Xenocrat Fair enough, and I only used Lead because it was something people would understand not that it Had to be lead.

However, if a standard suit of body armor is enough to block low radiation Then I would say low radiation in SF terms is on par with an area of manageable Fallout. Explain why we cannot shield our Starships against it. I have already had someone talk of buying Level one Skinsuit armor in mass to shove into the walls of a ship as anti Radiation Insulation..... And for the life of me I can't see why they don't have a point.

You can shield your ship from radiation. That's why the effects on the crew are only light from a tactical nuke going off a few dozen feet away.

Reminds me of a certain miniseries ...

ADAMA
Radiation levels within norms -- the hull plating kept out most of the hard stuff.

Ok, I'm not wanting to convert Saga Edition to Starfinder ... at least not all of it. I like Saga Edition personal combat, I like the feats and the defense mechanics ...

What I do want to convert is the one part of Saga Edition that I think they really dropped the ball on; space combat.

The Saga Edition writers even want so far as to say space combat was meant to be a "highly cinematic approximation." That really should be translated as "a muddled, unexciting experience meant to handwave."

So I'm wondering if people out there have done any conversions of Starships and Skills from Saga Edition?

It doesn't seem like that daunting a task, so I'm more than happy to jump into it, I just hate reinventing the wheel.

The Human Diversion wrote:

This isn't a something Paizo is likely to deliver, but I'd like a list you can sort that details all the changes between Pathfinder and Starfinder. After playing our first few adventures, we noticed that we were looking up rules we were 100% sure about in Pathfinder but may or may not have changed in Starfinder, thus bogging combat down tremendously.

Maybe I'll start it as an online sheet ...

I will see if I can find it, but there is a cheat sheet for this in one of the blogs.

EDIT: Cheat Sheet

Thank you! I appreciate you finding that and posting the link!

This isn't a something Paizo is likely to deliver, but I'd like a list you can sort that details all the changes between Pathfinder and Starfinder. After playing our first few adventures, we noticed that we were looking up rules we were 100% sure about in Pathfinder but may or may not have changed in Starfinder, thus bogging combat down tremendously.

Maybe I'll start it as an online sheet ...

I'm guessing the 2 minutes to take 20 accounts for individual pieces of information, but if you're trying to research a topic there may be specific timeframes presented within the adventure itself.

Otherwise it's a bit silly to say you can be an expert in any topic in 2 minutes.

If perusing the Internet is any indication, there are tons of "experts" out there just from reading a few webpages and maybe the Wiki article.

The U.S. Revolution nominally started over taxation. ;) Wars start somewhere for some reason ...

My point ... because sometimes I do a horrible job at making it.

Obviously the answer to this is the trade federation

Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.

Because taxation of trade routes and blockades are what I think of when I think Star Wars.

My fiance ran a group of us through the first quests last night, we had at our table the pregens;

operative
mechanic
soldier
technomancer
mystic

There were some gaps in the skills with that group. None of us could really do much socially, although the soldier was ok at intimidating.

The combat in the first quest was certainly not easy; some bad dice rolls on our part led to us having our technomancer blow a resolve point to stabilize at 0 hit points, our soldier down to 2 hit points, and our mystic having to pull out a few stops.

The combat took a while because at the table we had a group VERY familiar with the Pathfinder rules (a PFS author, a former VC, and a former VL) and for almost every rule we were going back to confirm/look up to make sure it did or didn't work like it did in Pathrinder (I'm thinking there needs to be a cheat sheet with ALL of the differences between the two somewhere out there).

The space combat was somewhat new to all of us, and very much reminded me of BattleTech without the terrain with its better pilot going second and weapon firing arcs and damage tables and the like. It was also very slow going since we were new to it, and not nearly as fun as the ground combat, but I'm hoping that will change with familiarity to the rules.

Ouachitonian wrote:

Isn't lightsaber anything objectively cooler than regular anything?

Not always. My lightsaber spoon keeps evaporating the broth of every soup I try to eat with it.

Every broth you vape

I'll be flinching at you

Pandora is your friend.

Pandora will take a "seed" song and create a playlist from it.

Want lighthearted, whimsical, with the occasional dark streak? Use the Harry Potter theme as your station starter.

Want tense, action-about-to-happen, focused? Use the theme from Bourne Identity as your station starter.

Want emo evoking with lush orchestration? Try just about anything from James Horner (I recommend Legends of the Fall, personally, but Trek 2 or 3 are both good).

Want pulp adventure with a pops orchestra feel? Michael Giacchino is pretty good for that.

There's a lot of examples in sci-fi for androids/human-like machines;

Beta Unit from Last Starfighter
Ilia from Star Trek 1
Data from ST:tNG
Cylons from BSG reboot
Bishop from Aliens

And just like that list being diverse, so are the abilities and makeup of androids.

I say play it how you want without breaking the rules.

To break away from this nonsense, let's do this: ask me anything about magic/spells. I'll look through the relevant chapters for the answer.

I noticed there are not different sources of magic, are there different schools?

How prevalent are curative magics?

Hey, Star Wars SAGA is making a comeback!

It's a shame the books are out of print and some are well over $100 on Amazon or Ebay (and that's used!)

We know there is magic and energy blades and robots and FTL... you may have to par back on some of the magic to give it the feel but yeah, i would say from what they have released so far you should be able to Star Wars the crap out of Starfinder.

So as an avid Star Wars fan who has run many thousands of hours of Star Wars RPGs (starting with West End Games back in the 90's, and through D20 Star Wars and finally ending with Saga Edition), I can tell you I asked this same question, and I fully agree on the new Star Wars RPG - it sucks.

If you want Star Wars specific, I would recommend checking out Saga Edition. It was released about 6 months before D&D 4.0, and had a lot of 3.x flavor and a little 4.x flavor; skills were either untrained or trained. There are 3 separate defenses and no saves. Most force "powers" are use-once-per-encounter sort of thing. It was basically most of the good stuff about 4.0 without completely railroading you and feeling like an MMO with pencils, paper, and a tabletop.

The only problem with that is Saga Edition is out of print, and is STUPID expensive. I own the core rulebook and 4 supplements, but at this point in time I'd have to spend $80 or more to buy any supplement, and that's off E-Bay or Amazon with used quality.

So that being said, I'd LOVE to be a part of anyone's conversion of Starfinder to Star Wars.

There's different levels of weird. There's creepy weird (Freddy Kreuger, Evil Dead, Tim Burton). There's Avant Garde weird (Steve Martin, Wes Anderson, Yuppies from NYC). There's offbeat weird (Monty Python, Douglas Adams)

It all depends on what you want to go for.

So just a little background, there was a Wikipedia article on the Silk Road today, and I pondered just what exactly that road was, and who exactly traveled it and pondered on what the Fantasy RPG equivalent might be.

Awesome answers, everyone, keep it coming please!

What kinds of things would people find on a typical Fantasy RPG road? I'm looking for a random encounter table that doesn't necessarily have to be combat-oriented, but combat is fine.

So far I have the following:

• Major trading caravan
  
• Small trading caravan
  
• Governmental caravan
  
• Single merchant
  
• Religious caravan
  
• Entertainment Troupe
  
• Refugee family
  
• Party of adventurers
  
• Band of soldiers
  
• non-combat Military caravan
  

Any other ideas? My personal thought was when I get enough things on the list to make a few different 1-100 random encounter charts, like low/medium/high level each of "highly-travelled road", "lightly-travelled road", and "rarely-travelled road"

Guys the event is three weeks away and you already have the product. This could have been handled A LOT better than that. I have volunteered an significant amount of hours volunteering with red cross, scouts, and multiple other groups and entities. This smells very much like using the children this is supposed to help in a weaponized manner against people who quite possibly do not even know this going on.

And if you believe that an entire organization that has routinely supported both the gaming community and the charities(quite a few actually) is to be written off and tarred and feathered for a screw up, then don't LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT.

I get where you're coming from, but when people are upset, drawing a line in the sand and basically saying "you're either with us or against us" doesn't really solve the problem at hand. I think both sides stepping back and then reaching out to the other to find out why things are the way they are might be a better option.

Does my experiences with Paizo staff (both voluntary and paid) dampen my expectations and hopes? Yes. Does that mean I'm going to wash my hands and give up on them? Not at all. I'm also willing to work so that Paizo central understands where I'm coming from and I'm going to keep an open mind so I can understand better where they're coming from.

I think based on past lacks of communication this will be difficult, though.

I'm far down the food chain but I strongly get the impression that there is a (perceived or real) lack of communication and responsiveness between the top and the grunts.

I certainly get this impression as well. I have voiced my complaints about certain things to Tonya and have gotten what felt like a canned response defending what was already in place. It honestly left me feeling like my opinion has little worth to Paizo, and certainly dampened my enthusiasm for the campaign and the direction it's heading.

Okay.

On to a different question: As a Lvl 6 NPC, how does Meyanda afford her +1 Inferno Pistol?

At that level an NPC should have no more then 4,650 gold in equipment (Her CR is not adjusted for "extraordinary resources").

However, her ranged weapon is

5,000 for Inferno Pistol (it is not timeworn).

300 for Masterwork

2,000 for +1 enchantment.

So at 7,300 gold, it is -by itself- almost twice what she should possess.

Related to this, it is budget busting for the character who gets the weapon, as it is larger then a normal share of treasure at 4th Level (indeed it is larger then the total wealth they should have according to his/her wealth by level).

Because she's an NPC and adventure paths don't always have to follow NPC average/preferred gold tables? She has a back story involving a much bigger power, maybe she acquired it through service to that power? Maybe she found it inside the ship?

Lots of different ideas, pick what works best for you.

Close enough for state work. Just use whatever.

Having worked for government on both state and federal levels, that's totally amusing to me, but I was just trying to validate my frustration and disappointed feelings from the TPK.

Gotcha, thanks.

The adventure has the particular monsters completely fleshed out (minus CMB/CMD of course) early in the adventure, and then references those same monsters to be used later. I played recently at a table where the GM used the adventure statblock for the first encounter, and then used the bestiary statblock (significantly harder despite same CR) for the final encounter and it ended in a TPK.

Is this just a one-liner that references a standard monster, or a full statblock in the scenario?

Is it a season 0 scenario, or more recent?

Season 0 that references a standard monster but says they have X hit points, where the bestiary says they have Y

I've heard in the past that the printed adventure takes precedence, but I wanted to confirm that.

Adventure says, "(4) goblins, 3 hit points"
Bestiary says they have 6

For example, monster in the adventure has X hit points, monster in the Bestiary has Y hit points, what's the authoritative source?

Thanks

Description states, "any horse or pony you ride gains the benefit of the Fleet feat."

Does this apply ONLY to horses and ponies?

I'm going to be in a party of six playing Giantslayer, and 4 of the 6 players have already said what they want to play;

Aasimar Cleric of Iomedae
Hunter with big cat companion
Half-Orc Paladin of Shelyin
Kobold dex-based fighter

That leaves my fiance and I to choose how to fill out this group.

I've pondered playing an insane gnome gunslinger who uses a medium musket and thinks elaborate plans involving explosives are always the best option. My fiance was thinking something arcane, but is pretty open.

I'm not completely set on the gnome, but it seemed amusing to me.

Thoughts?

Gaming coordinator here, don't let the con's odd website scare you off. Should be a lot of fun with Doom Comes to Dustpawn and True Dragons being offered

Can you boost their int score? If a paladin mount at 11th level has an int of 10 or higher, do you still need ride checks?

Adaptive for composite bows.
Phase locking if you don't want your foes teleporting away
Limning if you're fighting things that like to use magical concealment

I was at MACE, a gaming con in Charlotte NC, this past weekend with my fiance. We sat down for a table of "Horn of Aroden" and the con coordinator comes up with a young lady of around 12 and asked if she could play. I was apprehensive, because I'm nervous around kids and the coordinator said "This is her first gaming character, she made it herself with her father's help."

It turned out she and I were both playing bards so I got even more nervous over that, but once the game got rolling she was a trip. Her bard and mine were making bluff checks like crazy and feeding off each other's energy. My fiance, who has worked with kids in the past, did a great job helping her with her character sheet. The table was all-in-all quite fun and she liked it enough to ask about regular PFS gaming in the area.

Made me proud to see such a good experience with someone who I had a lot of doubts about.

Played this for the first time today, and was rather surprised at some of the encounters for level 1 ... DR? SR? Seemed a bit rough for an adventure meant to attract new players to the game, especially if the group has only 3 or 4 players and doesn't choose the best characters for the encounters.

Despite this, I had fun, lots of Ghostbusters jokes were made. I'm inspired to make a character named "Peter Venkman" now, but I just need to decide what class to make him.

My apologies for the thread necro, but ...

The kestros is an oddly shaped sling used for launching darts.

The word sling is most certainly in the description.

Oracle with the Nature mystery make good mounted characters, too. The fact that you have an Int 6 mount means that your mount can learn any feat, instead of just the restricted animal companion list. You may want to take a 1-level cavalier dip, though.

By 10th level, and perhaps earlier, the paladin's mount is int 6

I have an 11th level Pathfinder Society halfling paladin on a dog and he's been lots of fun to play. I took the shining knight archetype. It's got some nice features, but the biggest is at 3rd level any mount you ride gains your divine grace bonus and you don't take armor penalty checks to ride.

If you want to do max damage you'll certainly want to use a lance and take mounted combat, ride-by attack, and spirited charge. Eventually I'd recommend power attack and wheeling charge. You can take a hit to wisdom, it's really only boosting your saves and as a paladin you have good saves anyway. Int doesn't have to be high either unless you need skill points. I'd personally aim for a 20 charisma by 8th level through a combination of level bumps and gear, and you'll need a strength over 13 to use power attack. With gear my paladin has the following stats at 11th level: Str 16, Dex 16, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 8, Cha 22. He's gotten as high as 150 points of damage doing a smiting spirited charge with a lance on a demon before. Since he has a high charisma I took the trait to make UMD a class skill bought first scrolls of spider climb and then eventually scrolls of fly. At this point he can make his mount fly three times per day with the sky steed spell.

The character is a bit of a one-trick poney, but he can heal in a pinch and with spider climb and an intelligent, sentient mount that's only medium size that he can call to him dungeons generally aren't a problem.

Have: Expanded Narrative (recharge GM stars); Soothsayer (+4 to one skill, +2 to AC or +2 to save or throw once per adventure, shaken after); Adopted Weapon Training (gain one weapon familiarity racial trait, but -1 to attack with all other weapons)

Want: Tiefling

I'd imagine that they're set within the scenario, if not already spelled out on the Chronicle.

Neither. The Chronicle Sheet simply says you may take a single faerie dragon as a familiar and the scenario refers to Bestiary 3 for the creature statblock.