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Hi,
Im about to start Kingmaker 2e and i don't know how to approach it. To me it feels like PF2e is the wrong game for this adventure path and i would really love to get your input on how you make the wilderness survival / exploration fun.

My issue is that PF2e has next to no ressource management. Food is super cheap, weighs almost nothing and can easily be found with subsist and forager. Water is similar but a bit trickier. You have infinite light. You quickly have no need to gather firewood and other survival necessities.
So how do i highlight that my players are crawling through the wilderness? (mechanically)

My other issue is that PF2e is designed in a way where you are always at peak strength. I was expecting some changes to the way healing works because infinite healing makes random encounters and hazards kind of pointless. The GM Core even says the following:

"PCs have many ways to heal themselves, so keep in mind that a damaging hazard
won’t always have a huge effect. They tend to work best if their activation might alert creatures in the area, lock the PCs out of an area, or cause a similar narrative setback beyond just damage or another condition easily removed outside of the pressure of combat."

But the AP uses random encounter like the AP was designed for a game whhere you recover slowly from damage.

And one last question: Am i crazy or is hexploration not compatible with exploration? Im so confused as to why exploration tracks time in hours while hexploration only tracks days. Maybe im overlooking something but there is also no good way to aproximate how many hours you spend in hexploration. Mechanics like the hustle action don't do anything for hexploration and im not really sure how i can use exploration actions during hexploration. Am i missing something ? Do you decide if you either use exploration or hexploration? Or is hexploration a different mode of play?

How do you feel about the price of ammunition? It feels a bit like Paizo doesn't know what to do with it. Im interested in how you guys feel about it.

A Battery has 10 charges and costs 10 credits. If you have a charging station around, you might get free refills. You could also get 10 Projectiles for 1 credit which means it is cheaper per "bullet" but you have no chance of getting free refills.

You can buy some ammunition at the start of the game and depending on the enemies you are fighting you either run out of ammo at some point or you can loot enough ammo from enemies to keep going.

But ammunition doesn't weigh anything and you automatically get rich in SF2e. If we assume you get roughly 100 credits during Level 1 then you can buy 1000 Projectiles. This only gets crazier on higher levels. So rather quickly you are swimming in Bullets.

Grenades on the other hand have a scaling price. I know they are not technically ammunition but they are still a ranged weapon in some sense. If you don't want to throw fire crackers at the enemy you need to spend more and more money on more powerfull grenades. Grenades also have a weight so you can't carry infinite grenades with you.

To me this doesn't make sense. Either the devs want uns to never worry about ammunition or they want us to care about it. The reusable grenade shell could be a baseline feature of how grenades work.

In my perfect world we would all care about ammunition and the cost of ammunition would stay relevant throughout the game. I think bullets and batteries should have a baseline weight like arrows. A "stack" of Bullets (10/20) could count as 1 Light Bulk and a Battery should always weigh at least 1 Light Bulk. Just to prevent you from carrying infinite ammunition.
My next fix would be to have ammunition prices scale with a weapons level or tier. (Just like grenade prices). This way you could still have affordable ammunition for the early levels and the price could scale with the SF2e Credit Economy.

The only problem this would introduce is the fact that enemies now need to carry "leveled" ammunition as well because otherwise you would run dry during a mission. But i think thats a worthwile tradoff. I really like the feeling when you find ammunition for your favorite weapon in a video game. I would love to see this mentality in SF2e.

But i could also see a world were people hate the idea of "buying enough ammunition". There are plenty of games like Mass effect 1 where your guns have infinite Ammunition and you only reload to cool down the weapon. But i think that it would only be fair to make grenades cooldown based if we move in to this direction.

Edit: Can somebody please tell me what the point of the cantrip Recharge Weapon is after a few levels? I think this is a nice idea. But it becomes a pure fluff choice once you have enough money to buy large quantities of ammunition.

Ok im not sure how this works with the whole pathfinder 2e compatibility and im obviously not a professional dev so please take this as a rough idea.

I really like the idea of caring about amunition. I also like the feeling of finding ammunition for your best gun in every shooter. But you will be drowning in ammunition in the later stages of a pathfinder game because you are guaranteed to get rich in any game based on PF2e.
And i also saw some comments about ammunition being to expensive in the early game. (And it is indeed a bit pricy).

What if we would determine the damage die base on the Tier of the ammunition? I think this would solve a few issues.

- We could have cheap early game ammunition and expensive lategame ammunition which would mean ammunition would keep its relative value throughout the game.

- We could design cooler special Ammunition because you could decrease weapon damage if the ammunition gives a cool effect.

- This could also bring back the old weapon categories (small arms, long arms, sniper rifles, heavy weapons) while also having matial and simple weapons. Just make the old categories in to ammunition categories. I think it would be a cool way to differentiate between the different weapons.

- This would also result in cool situations where you could loot your enemies powerful ammunition. It would create a different experience when you fight enemies who can drop ammunition compared to enemies like the swarm. You could also develop different strategies on how to conserve ammo because ammo wouldn't be worthless after a certain point.

- I think it feels better when you upgrade your ammunition to deal more damage compared to your weapon.

What do you think? Is this to micro managy?

Im really interested in what you guys think about going back to Arcana, Nature, Ocultism and Religion.

I really liked the fact that Starfinder 1 said that people started to realize that magic is one giant research field. It felt like a cool continuation from the Feat Unified Theory.
I also have a few problems with the fact that Religion and Ocultism overlap in some campaigns. Mysticism was a cool catch all solution for the old problem of "damn i don't have any enemies / plot elements in this adventure path which require nature / religion / ocultism.

I have read throug almost all of the playtest adventures by now and they mostly found good uses for the "new" skills from pathfinder 2e. But im not sure if they fit the setting entirely. I really liked the fact that the gods of Starfinder 1 had a bigger impact on society. You could neatly attribute some plot elements to mysticism or culture but you could also not involve them in your plot. Now, if you don't want religion to be a dead skil, you have to include them in your plot.
The birth of the newborn adds a lot of potential for weird cults so including ocultism in your games should be easy. But i think some of the old SF1 Plots might have not enough occult themese to make ocultism useful.

Im super curious if you like the "new" skills or if we maybe should advocated for a return of mysticism. I mean we got Piloting and Computers. If we delete Arcana, Nature, Ocultism and Religion in favor of Mysticism we would be very close to the amout of Skills PF2e has. We could maybe Keep Arcana as an oposition to mysticism or we could bring back life science. (But i never liked the overlap betwen life science and medicine.)

What are your thoughts on this topic?

Please hear me out. I love the idea of a mechanic. But i think the mechanic should be split up in to different ideas and implemented not as a class.

Almost any hacking, crafting and repairing ability from the mechanic could become a cool skill feat. And it makes sense in a setting like starfinder to allow any class to specialize in tech.

The drone which is arguably the coolest part of the mechanic could become something like an animal companion which could be taken by anyone. If you really need to have players spend class feats for something like this, you could make it a dedication like the beast master. But think it would be better to have a tech item called the rigging kit or drone control unit which takes up one of your hands which allows you to use the command an animal action to grant actions to your minion drones.
Drones could just be sold as tech items. And depending on the devs whishes drones could either share or not share your MAP. But the action economy balances itself.
This would also solve the weird SF1 problem where a spy drone was either a cheap tech item or a custom build class feature from your mechanic. It felt really bad to see that a cheap drone could to the same things your mechanics custom drone could do. And you always had to justify why the mechanics drone wa better. Im not talking about combat here. Im talking about the fact that it was a major choice for the mechanic to install a camera module on his drone while the cheap spy drone came with a fully functional camera.

TLDR: I think making the mechanic is own class misses out on cool skill feats and will result in artifical restrictions on normal tech interactions to make the mechanic feel special.

Maybe this is a me thing but i really don't like languages in SF1 or PF2e. And starfinder has a an even bigger problem. There are tons of languages but you can only learn languages during level up. This means that you need to know in advance which language will be useful. But you can't because there are to many of them. And if you aquire a new language you are instantly a master of the language. Maybe it would make more sense to learn languages like a wizard learns new spells.

And its really not easy to find a use for a language. Almost everyone speaks Common and there are even translation apps. Sure you can have the odd encounter where there is a language barrier between you and some random npc but in most cases languages are only relevant when you stumble upon some civilisation which is very primitive or not connected to the wider galaxy.

And the pact worlds languages don't make to me. You may find a kasatha enclave which is to proud to speak common. But why would any Lashunta not use Common or a translation app? In Pathfinder you can maybe argue that they want to seperate themselves from outsiders and that they use their own language to be secretive. But translation Apps make this impossible.
The Playtest book shows that you can use languages to further define your characters identity. We could do this way better if we merged languages with lore skills. Lets say you get a Lore Skill which represents your upbringing, the local customs and the local slang and language. This skill can not be used for social skill checks but its absence or presence might give you a bonus or penalty. You start your Local Lore (for example Castrovel Lore) with master / legendary proficiency and you can use it to decipher writing or recall knowledge about your home planet and its culture. Another advantage of this aproach is the fact that you can have different levels of proficiency with languages which you are learning.

And i realy don't like ancestral languages on a galactic scale. While it is already unbelievable that all goblins on golarion speak the same language, because they are somehow immune to developing dialects or changing their language, it gets even weirder on a galactic scale. When the shirren escaped from the swarm they traveled for a long time. Are you really telling me that my modern day Shirren speaks the same language as some shirren enclave, which was built by a refugee who got lost in some random solar system 300 years ago?
And its even weirder when we consider the fact that languages didn't change or evolve during the 300 years of the gap or during the many years between pathfinder and starfinder.

I know we are handicapped by the Pathfinder 2e compatibility thing. But it would be great to see a design pass (or lore update) for languages. Having over 100 Languages where no language has a purpose is not that fun. Maybe this can only be fixed in the Starfinder GM Core by changing the way adventures are written. But i really hope something happens on this front.

Hi,
Im trying to understand Piloting and i have a few things which don't make sense to me.

Does the Stop Action imply that your vehicle moves on its own if you don't do anything?

If thats the case then i don't understand the Drive Action. 1 Action Drive makes sense. You make a check and you can move your Vehicle just lik you would move any other token. (at least thats how im reading it).
The two and three action version confuse me. You spend twice or thrice the actions and get double / tripple the speed but you can't turn your vehicle. (And it becomes reckless.) This would make sense if it gave you twice/thrice the speed to move per action spend. But the way it is written now im just as fast when i use 3 1 Action Drive Actions.
And if the Stop action implies that my vehicle doesn't stop on its own, then why would i ever waste actions to move in a straigth line.

The next thing which confuses me are the stunts. One Stunt allows you to move at half speed and then turn. But this give you a penalty for your piloting check. Is the gain that you can turn? Because the 1 Action Drive Action allows me to turn as well, right? Or is the gain that i can move at half speed and that the drive action forces me to use up my entire movement?

How do you guys read this skill?

Please don't be annoyed by me saying that this is not PF2e. I mean that this is entirely new game and that we should look at the playtest like a game which is seperated from PF2e as much as possible.
The devs said that this game will be compatible with pfe and for some reason they are talking about PF Classes fighting alongside SF classes. But i think this should be viewed in the same light as Pathfinder 1 being compatible with DND 3.5 / 3.

More importantly we should focus on the fact that we need to build our playtest encounters around the intended meta of SF2e. This means that we need maps which have enough cover and line of sight blockers to allow solarions to sneak up on enemy soldiers. I think we should look at XCOM maps (newer games) and take inspiration from them to facilitate flanking and tactical aproaches.
The weapons in SF2e seem to have relatively short ranges. But considering that we are less likely to fight in an open field it might not be a problem. Many SF Fights will take place in cramped star ship corridors or busy urban enviroments. I think we should get inspiration from real life and video game close quarter combat szenarios. (Video from the game Door Kickers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxD1BxkAZ3k)

I think we should forget PF2e Classes for a hot second and focus on potential Starfinder Parties. Mystic has really nice healing abilities which should be considered when talking about the durability of the other SF Classes. The fact that the witchwarper gets access to a mighty heal spell (motivating ringtone) tells me that we should expect our casters to supply at least a bit of healing for the front line. Mystic was described as a healer (not a supporter).
When we talk about solarians movement and gap closing abilities we should consider the fact that we have 2 casters which can easily provide a +10 Feet speed boost with motivating ringtone and a ton of other options like the envoys second level feat get in there.

We should also be creative in how we approach our groups tactics. This is not PF2e melee mode. We can have a Solarian or Soldier carry a Riot shield while a teammate throws a 10 credit smoke grenade in the enemies face to provide concealment. If you delay your turn correctly the operative could shoot at an enemy before the smoke goes up and then lie in wait with hair trigger to shoot at everything that comes through the smoke. Area Attacks and Automatic weapons don't care for concealment and some area attacks can easily circumvent cover. You could use a smoke grenade to generate concealment and follow up with a nice round of frag grenates, flame throwers and rocket launchers. When the enemy starts its turn they either have to move out of the smoke or deal with concealment.

TLDR: Don't force this game in to a PF2e mindset. Be open and creative. Play the same encounter multiple times and try to figure out other approaches. And most importantly: HAVE FUN :D.

Not sure if i am crazy but i want to make an argument that the community might read counterspell wrong.

Counterspell: https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=633

"You expend one of your spell slots to counter the triggering creature’s casting of a spell that you have in your repertoire. You lose your spell slot as if you had cast the triggering spell. You then attempt to counteract the triggering spell."

I want to make the argument that you should use your characters level and not the level of the expended spell slot for the counteract check.

Counteract: https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=371

"Otherwise, halve its level and round up to determine its counteract level. If an effect’s level is unclear and it came from a creature, halve and round up the creature’s level.

Critical Success Counteract the target if its counteract level is no more than 3 levels higher than your effect’s counteract level."

We are using a feat to counteract a spell. So i think it makes sense that we are using halve (rounded up) the level of the wizard against the spell we are trying to counter. It doesn't say anywhere in counterspell that you would use the level of the expended spell slot to determine the effect.

This is a clear difference to Ring of Counterspells where it clearly states that you use the spells level instead of the items level. https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=454

You can attempt to counteract the triggering spell, using the level of the spell stored in the ring

I couldn't find any official source where Paizo states how exactly counter spell works. Do you know of any adventure, interview, faq where they explain it in detail ?

I get that paizo wants to make both systems fully compatible but i really hope that they add some feats or something that allows characters to take more Skill increases.
Or maybe you could grant classes automatic skill increases for skills they use, like the inventor has in PF2e.

I mean we don't know what you roll to drive a mech / jeep / spaceship but its safe to say that you want a few side skills to feel like a Star Finder Character.

The only problem is that many things which rolled against other skills roll against auto scaling skills now. A "low" bluff skill is virtually useless because sense motive is part of Perception in PF2e which gets automatic skill increases.

Same goes for Stealth. Intimidate doesnt get compared to the enemies intimidate but against their Will save. Combat Maneuvers use Athletics in PF2e.

What im trying to say is that you need to max out many of the skills you want to use because you can't really hope for enemies with low stats. And you can't increase your Int to get more Skill points in PF2e. (You only get a trained skill.)

So lets say you play a soldier and you want to use your amazing intimidate ability. That means that you have to put your 3rd, 7th and 15th level skill icrease in intimidate for it to have the best chance of working. (Not much different to Starfinder).
Lets say you want to grapple an enemy from time to time. This means you have now locked in your 5th, 9th and 17th Skill increase.
You have now locked in 6 out of 9 Skill increases. Your first Flavour Skill increase can be spent at 11th level followed by 13th and 19th.

I love PF2e to death but i will miss the ability to invest a bit in Piloting, Stealth, Culture, Medicine or Bluff if nothing changes.

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I think they will at least partly redesign skills because Arcana, Religion, Occultism and Nature are not as usefull in Starfinder because we don't differentiate between different Spell Lists (Arcana, Divine ...) in the future and we need piloting somewhere. (Lets hope its not just a random lore skill).