Tyson Hinrichs's page

Pretty sure The Stewards are the military that oversees protecting Absolom Station.

Ok, thanks for the tip. An easy fix to replace our references to Absalom Marine Corp. and Military Intelligence with the Stewards. We missed them in our reading.

I haven't written a long bio for any of my RPG characters in many a year, but I do enjoy delving into setting lore for details to keep my PCs from being just like every other member of their class or ancestry.

My favorite SF2 playtest character was directly inspired by some of the new lore for 2E. He was largely a beat-stick (close quarters) vesk soldier, but he was also a borai and a worshiper of Zon-Shelyn, which gave him a rather unique outlook on (un)life. (And a memorable look, too: a brawny corpse lustily singing in battle, accompanied by the buzzsaw of his whirling painglaive.) His somewhat fraught relationship with still-living vesk made things that much interesting when I chose to play him in Empires Devoured.

That sounds really cool Tim! Lots of opportunity for original interaction for the character. Creating unique gameplay experiences is always fun.

Haven't had time to read 22 pages yet, but will start off with a question and some resources that might help others new to Starfinder Lore.

What sources did you use for your Starfinder lore?

For Starfinder 1e lore The Maple Table has over 140 Starfinder videos.

A newer channel I really liks is Absalom Archives.. They have a series called "Starfinder Drift Lanes to Distant Worlds." which covers Starfinder Lore topics going all the way back to PF1e book Distance Worlds, through to the current time.

We really only used the two books out for SF2e so far. Player Core, and Galaxy Guide.

Obviously we invented some stuff, The Major, and The Triple H mercenary outfit. We also referenced the Absalom Marine Corps, and Absalom Military Intelligence, that aren't explicitly named in the books, but make sense to us (and I like calling the Intel division, AMI). We also invented the small moon, Karse, but the books do state that there are many a moon not mentioned therein.

Thematically, we added a little depth to the Dragonkin bond, but that was just to get more into the emotion of the characters.

We tried to stay within the published lore as much as possible, while still being true to what we wanted our characters to experience.

My group is going to be playing SF2e shortly, and our GM asked us all to, really try, and dig into the setting lore, to make our characters fit in, and to hopefully give us all more investment in it all. So, my friend and I wrote our character backstories together, showing how we meet, and how my female Pahtra Operative, and his male Dragonkin Soldier, become bonded partners. It turned into a full-on 22 page short story. We're both pretty proud of it.

I thought it'd be fun to share it here, and to ask others to contribute similar character stories if they wish. Read it, don't read it. Offer critique's or share your own content, if you wish. Just please, keep it classy. Constructive criticism is welcome, abuse is not.

There are no sexy times happening, any violence avoids outright gore, and there are a couple of instances of mild swearing. We tried to keep it PG-13.

Go to The Terrible Twosome of Talon and Phang.

You know what? I'm sorry, but the mechanics of this in gameplay still feel confusing to me. Let me try to break it down for gameplay.

First and foremost, this is a weapon, and it deals damage when you succeed on a strike. The damage type listed on the weapon is 1d6 Modular. Here's the actual entry.

Group Knife; Weapon Traits Agile, finesse, modular (A, critical (corrosive), tech, or S and analog)

Now, it is a knife, so, for the sake of argument, let's say the default setting is the last option, "S and Analog." That makes sense to me. You hit with it, and it deals slashing damage.

Ok, so now let's use an interact action to switch it over to the first option, A (Acid damage). When you hit, you're dealing acid damage, makes sense, and useful for bypassing resistance, or taking advantage of a vulnerability. At this point, it should lose the Analog trait as well. Not very meaningful mechanically, but OK.

Now, though, let's interact to switch the weapon to its second option, Critical (Corrosive). So, now the weapon isn't "S and Analog," and it isn't "A (for Acid)." What damage type is it dealing now? Critical (Corrosive) isn't a damage type. It just adds on an extra feature, if you critically succeed, and IF you have access to critical specialization.

The same goes for the Tech option. There's no such thing as Tech damage.

Does it simply deal whichever damage type it most recently dealt? S or A? Or, is the entry miss-typed? Is it really 2 choices? S and Analog is one choice, and the other is A, Critical (Corrosive), AND Tech?

More and more, I think it's just two choices, but wow, it's really unclear, if that's the case. It really needs that AND just before Tech.

Thanks for the explanation!

I'm confused about how the modular damage type applies, specifically regarding the Talon (knife).

Interact to change - OK.

Acid damage - cool.

Critical (corrosive) - so, if I don't have access to critical specialization yet with my character, there's no benefit to choosing this?

Tech - Is there ANY benefit to this option? Seems like it just makes the weapon vulnerable to enemy abilities.

Slashing and Analog - I can see some benefits to Analog, isn't affected by abilities targeting tech weapons, but it says runes don't work if the weapon isn't also Archaic. Does this mean I can apply weapon runes to the Talon, and they'll work as long as I don't switch to this configuration?

Advanced Alchemy says "you don't need to attempt a crafting check to do this... You can craft a number of alchemical items up to 4 + your intelligence modifier" per day, and that these items must have the consumable trait.

The craft skill in player core 1 says "you can craft items with the consumable trait in batches, making up to four of the same item at once with a single check."

My question is, can an Alchemist with a +4 intelligence make 64 alchemical items during daily prep? Doesn't seem like much of a limitation, but a strict reading of the RAW seems to be saying just that.

Hey, thanks for the clarifications everyone! I'm using pathbuilder to pre-build these companion characters, so that I can give them to my party to control in combat (just to make it a little easier for me to run), so knowing what she should have is a big help.

The versatile human heritage they gave her is responsible for her having an extra class feat. And I finally realized where her extra skill feat is coming from, but that still leaves the extra general feat, and the Tanning Lore vs Warfare Lore skills.

Am I missing something, or does Amiri have extra feats at level 1? She has 2 skill feats, but the Hunter background only grants access to Survey Wildlife. She also has 2 general feats, when, from what I can tell, she should only have 1 (either Diehard, or Intimidating Glare).

Also, she has Warfare Lore instead of Tanning Lore?

I cannot figure out where these are coming from.

There's a lot of sandbox content that can take place throughout this Adventure Path, and as a result, more than most Adventure Paths, the "each chapter contains enough XP to level you up" idea doesn't really make sense for Kingmaker. That said, Chapter 8 absolutely should have had some advice on how to award XP as the PCs work through its events and encounters. The easiest way to handle it is to just grant the PCs 1,000 XP for succeeding at the chapter's goal. A more complicated way is to grant 30 XP each time the PCs a Liberation Point that puts them 1 point closer to 30 points (if they lose Liberaiton Points and then regain them, they shouldn't earn XP for regained Liberation Points), so that once they hit 30 Liberation Points, they'll have earned 900 XP for the chapter. Then grant them 100 XP for hitting 30 Liberation Points.

Thanks very much for the detailed response. This is perfect.

Am I missing something regarding rewarding XP to my players in chapter 8, part 4? No XP rewards are mentioned in the entire part, but according to the level tracker, and the title page for chapter 8, the party is supposed to go from level 14 to level 15.