Ubu's page

My brother is an electrical engineer and develops cube satellites, the one problem with vacuum is that it makes things outgas. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materials_for_use_in_vacuum
Vacuum, combined with solar radiation is basically the worst environment for any man made materials. Outgassing even makes aluminum grow tiny splinters that will flake off of any exposed surface, often destroying electronics.

I don’t think it’s too far fetched to assume a creature that can survive in space could have sensory organs that can “smell” these molocules all around them.

Ok so this weekend I'll be running the first session of the stealth and sabotage campaign arc.

I have made a table of DCs to hear sounds based off of the CRBs few examples:
Sound of battle 0
Small/medium creature walking 10
Whispered conversation details 15
Automatic door opening 20

Based off of these examples, I have created DCs to hear the sounds of weapons used:

Melee operative 10
Melee one-handed 7
Melee two-handed 5

Weapon firing
Cryo 0
Flame 0
Laser 5
Plasma 5
Projectile 0
Shock 5
Sonic -5
Dart or Flechette 10

Bulkheads and ship interior door dampen sound and add a +10 to the DC for anyone on the other side to hear the noise.

In addition I have created the weapon mod Suppressors which, when attached, add a +3, +5, +7, and +10 to the DC from Tactical to Paragon.

The weapon fusion "Quiet" may also be applied.

Weapon Fusion Level 3
Quiet: When active, this weapon fusion reduces the sound of the weapon when used. Add 5 to the DC of the check required to hear the weapon in use.

I feel that these additions will give the players the ability to think and act tactically in regards to removing obstacles or threats to their mission.

Anything I missed?

So I plan to take my group through a short campaign in which stealth and sabotage will be the primary objective.

A colossal size ship will be approaching a target in near space, the PCs are given some one-time use experimental invisibility generators that grant invisibility for 4 hours. Their objective is to slow or disable the ship long enough so that their employers can evacuate the target.

The house rules I am implementing for this portion of the campaign are:

Sabotage: Different ship systems can be hacked (Computers skill) Disabled (Engineering skill) or Destroyed (using detonators and explosives with the Engineering skill). Hacking the security system would give the PCs bonuses to not being detected while on board, disabling would make the system useless for finding them, but would be discovered relatively quickly and could be repaired, destroying the system would make it useless to find them, but would immediately be discovered though it cannot be repaired.

The systems that can be targeted are Sensors (external/navigation), Engine, Power Core, Drift Engine, Thrusters, and Security Systems.

Different combinations of systems sabotaged will yield different results. For example, hacking the Sensors to give false information and the Thrusters to make minor adjustments to the ships course will place the ship at a Drift exit point much further away than the intended target.

Stealth Execution/Knockout: Any form of combat would be very bad for the PCs as the crew compliment on this ship is 300ish, all of which are mercenaries. If they are in a situation where they must remove someone they can attempt a stealth execution.

The PC will make a melee attack against an unaware opponent and add 10 to their damage after strength mod and this is the DC that the enemy must make a fortitude save against or suffer instant death/knockout. As the target is also unaware, they do not receive their dex bonus to AC.

I may have to adjust the numbers a bit by giving a +2 bonus to the DC of the fortitude save, but will have to see how it plays out.

Thoughts? Questions?

I like the weapon accessories, under barrel grenade launcher, and automatic weapon rules. I'll talk to my group and see what they say about implementing something similar.

Are undead affected by Necrotic damage? What is Profane damage?

Wondering if someone has run into this before. I’m playing and Android Mechanic who uses drones. On page 69 it says “Your custom rig can be configured to take an upgrade slot on your Armor...” and since he is an Android I installed the upgrade on him. Since the custom rig can operate as a Mk I comm unit which includes a flashlight, does this mean he can use a flashlight without requiring a hand to hold it?

It’s not really an issue for him due to racial vision, but we have a couple humans in the party who do not have that benefit.

I think there isn't really as large a problem as many take it to be. So long as the group knows that selling captured star ships is to fund their own ship, upgrades, replacement, repairs and the like, there isn't that big a problem.

Our current GM has a +3 limit set on the level of gear we can purchase, no matter how many credits we have. This is pretty in line with quest rewards that I have seen so far (level 4 cryo rifle for a level 1 party in the AP?).

Come to the understanding that the game is scaled based on equipment, and if you outright try to break the game it won't fly.

My group and I try to get any and all house rules agreed upon by all and written out since we rotate GMs after certain story arcs. One GM may be less prone to hand wave than another, so for us its good to have the numbers down.

On another note, being a technologically and magically advanced setting, some ships could easily have a Star Wars-like force field designed specifically to only hold atmosphere. This could negate the necessity of a secondary airlock strength door, replacing it with an interior ship door, or none at all for the frugal ship captain.

Personally I think it would probably make a better emergency system for a decompression event, but integration into other doorways and surfaces could probably be possible with little effort.

Btw. You don't depressurize your ship during combat you just put on your spacesuit and helmet. Gundam teaches us well.

I would argue that The Expanse teaches us better. Punch my ship full of holes with your anti-ship weapon, but if it doesn’t hit me I don’t care. Though I suppose if you depressurize your ship your atmosphere does need to be stored in high pressure tanks and would cause arguably much more damage if breached if the much smaller target is hit.

For purposes of mechanics, we the hardness and hp values given for Airlock are for one set of the doors alone. An airlock is just like a real lock, 2 partitions used to equalize to what is held on the other side. So for our purposes this would require 2 breaches, one for the outer doors and one for the inner doors.

Obviously hacking is preferable as not only could it be a silent breach, but the doors remain operational. However blowing both airlock doors and exposing the unsuspecting bordies to vacuum may give the PCs an interesting edge in combat and an even more interesting fight. Personally, I think any crew that leaves their vessel pressurized in ship to ship combat deserves to asphyxiate for their poor planning.

My group settled on creating a feat to handle demolition:
Demolition Expert, Prerequisite Grenade Proficiency, Engineering rank 1 Benefit Explosives can be linked to a single detonator (taking the same time per charge) explosive damage is multiplied by 15 when used against objects.

Our GM has decided as per CRB that since charges are being specifically shaped for use in breaching, that DR is ignored and explosives do double damage. But as stated before, it would still take an obscene number of level 1 charges to breach a single portion of the airlock. However, if multiplied by 15 the average damage (3.5) x 15 = means you need just over 3 on average to breach an airlock door.

To make it scale, we decided to take ship tier into account. If you use level 1 explosive charges on a tier 6 ship, the damage multiplier is reduced by the tier difference. In this case it is reduced by 5 making the multiplier a 10 instead of 15. It also works the other way with higher tier explosives.

Batgirl_III wrote:

Quote:

They didn't use such for reasons they've explicitly stated many a time: if you allow players to buy or sell ships ( or ship parts ), you break the economy in half.

If that's the case, then I would suggest that it is the economy that should have been fixed and not the money sink treadmill that they actually put into Starfinder.

How?

How do you balance being able to sell a ship which should be worth millions, with character-sized gear and economy, in a game which primarly focuses on character size encounters?

In Mechwarrior, you could sell a single mech (the worst one), and buy literally the whole list of personal gear, twice (or thrice, just for fun). In Mechwarrior, it didn't matter much, because personal gear was not very useful to begin with, and most combat was done in mechs anyway.

But in pathfinder, personal gear DO matter. A single Plasma Torpedo Launcher from a starship would cost probably more than all the gear you would need from lvl 1 to lvl 20.

So, again, please provide a solution. How do you allow to sell ships (for credits), and not ruin the whole level-based gear the game is built on.

I have to disagree with you here, why does everyone believe that ships should be worth millions? In Starfinder, spacefaring is as common as seafaring is now. Should a tier 1 ship be worth millions? No, just like a zodiac isn't. Sure, you can purchase luxury yachts and cruise ships are worth millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, but purpose built fishing vessels and leisure craft (speedboats at the like) range from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Does that address the PCs getting the equivalent of an Arliegh Burke class destroyer or a Nimitz or Ford class aircraft carrier? No, but these require funding on a national level to produce and maintain.

Since there is no set price on ships, why not set one? It need not break the economy of the game (considering that level 20 armor, weapons, and grenades can run 932,000c, 935,000 and, 216,000 respectively) many things tend to be ludicrously expensive. I am aware that this is a balance thing, but if ship price for a fully functioning ship is based on it's tier and challenge rank, it isn't economy breaking.

A tier 1 ship is either small like a speed boat with a mounted machine gun or a junker held together by duct tape and hate, is that worth tens of thousands? Nope, call it a CR 1 and it becomes 4,600c. Try to sell it and you get your 10% worth at 460 if someone is willing to buy it.

Manage to disable and board a CR 20 naval frigate? That bad boy is worth 7,820,000c! Again, worth 1/10th considering attempting to resell/ransom/part out the vessel.

I also like the idea Batgirl_III has about going through the courts to do everything by the books, taking years at times for things to be cleared. The PCs can turn it over to whatever legal body does the work in turn for a percentage of its value now.

This is how we will be running starship capture in our game anyway.

So my group and I are very interested in boarding action in our campaign and have seen a few ways to go about it posted somewhere online, we tooled around with them a little bit.

Hacking: Making an appropriate DC Computer skill check to hack the ships computer, a PC can open the door without alerting the crew if all countermeasure are successfully bypassed.

Engineering: With an Engineering tool kit and appropriate DC skill check, a PC can manually open the airlock. If it is alarmed the crew will be notified, if there is a Science Officer active on the ship, they will become aware of the breach. DC can be based off of the hardness of the airlock (standard is 35) and some multiplication factor to make a cumulative check target.

I know there are basic DC checks ranging from 20-40 for opening a lock with engineering, but that is assuming the airlock actually has a physical lock on it.

Breaching Charge: With an Engineering skill check an explosive with detonator can be placed on the airlock, if successful the objects hardness is reduced by 1/2 for the purposes of damage. Explosives cost and have the same properties of grenades. This would always alert the crew.

Being the door kicking soldier I am very interested in using breaching charges though our operative has the hacking covered. The only problem with the rules in game for explosives vs airlocks is that the standard airlock has a hardness of 35 and has 160 HP so a single breaching charge, even properly set, must do 177 damage to breach the airlock. The maximum damage of 2 level 18 Frag Grenades worth 96,900c+100c for detonator a piece still fall short by 2 damage!

Is that math right? If so we need to do something about it. Maybe a feat that grants a multiplier to explosive damage when used against objects for demolition? Perhaps using an explosive focus as they do in real life for breaching charges could cause greater damage? Since the damage range for a Frag Grenade is 15 feet and we are reducing it to a focused point of say 1 foot, we could multiply it by 15 (I know not really how energy works but let’s look at the math).

A level 4 Frag Grenade at 700+100c for det does 2d6 or an average of 7 damage. Properly set with an Engineering skill check the 35 hardness is reduced to 17. So with average damage x 15 for being focused = 105 and after removing the 17 damage reduced from hardness, that leaves 88 damage on average per level 4 charge.

If that is too powerful we can factor in the tier of the ship to reduce the effectiveness of lower level explosives. For every tier above the level of the explosive subtract 1 from the multiplier? Add 1 for every tier the ship is below?

What do you guys think?

I had made the calculations based off of the individual experience of 4-5 players but the Wealth Gains per Encounter is based off of a value for 4 PCs isn't it?

I divided the WGE by 4 and multiplied it by the number of encounters it would take to level a PC at the rate of 4-5 PCs (from the experience point awards table found on page 390) to determine gained wealth at time of leveling.

So I see where you are coming from in regards to party size, and I suppose I could make a sheet that automatically changes for a given party size, but at the moment this seems alright with that assumption of 4 players. Please do let me know if I am missing something though.

So after crunching a few more numbers, and excluding major outliers, WGE of 65% for a single PC (1/4*WGE on page 391 core rule book) fits the closest. Having said that, it is a very rough a dirty method and leveling the ship to tier 2, 4, 8, and 10 will not generate enough credits to level the PCs ship by anywhere from 60%-218% (4-5 is a very large outlier).

The numbers can of course be adjusted to fit your process, and might be a bit more even if someone cared to work on a tiered approach to smooth it out a bit.

If anyone is interested I can upload the spread sheet with all the data.

Hey gnomas, great work, I am a huge fan of the concept! A big thanks to both you and Porridge for crunching the numbers. I was making a couple spread sheets to try and determine the numerical rational for replacing the BP with 2.5 PCs worth of WGE. From the numbers I have seen, PCs gaining experience at a rate of 4-5 players, and gaining standard WGE per at level CR encounter seem to have little relation with the increase in BP per ship tier increase due to the non-linear BP gains per tier.

Here are some examples:
PC's of level 3 require 4000xp to level to 4, they gain experience at a rate of 200/CR3 encounter, and as a result will require 20 encounters to level. In each encounter an individual PC would gain 275c at a standard WGE rate, meaning 275*20= 5500c are collected from level 3-4.

The BP difference between a Tier 3 and 4 ship is 20 (as it is for all ships from 1-5) and with the array you presented, 19 of those bp would cost 150c and the last would cost 850c (I understand that tier 4 is one of the outliers) so (150*19)+850= 3700c. Compared to the WGE a single PCs share would actually be enough to cover the upgrade cost with 1800c left over.

One more example, from level 15-16. 341000XP/12700xp=26.85 encounters to level. 26.85*28250= 758512.5c gained.

100 BP difference between 15-16 with (99*6500)+8250= 651700c. 758512.5-651700= 106812.5c left over for a single PCs level share.

I'm not trying to criticize your system, I am actually a really big fan of what you have here, I would just like a way to link the BP replacement with an easy to scale credit amount for our GM. If there is something I'm missing please let me know, and I'll keep tooling around with the numbers on the sheet to see what I come up with.

That's fair to say, I hadn't considered it from the perspective of the Jarlslayer being under-powered as I was trying to keep the damage in line with it considering it is a large suit as opposed to the Battle Harness as a medium.

So instead of trying to dumb down the numbers, how about we think about them as a secondary weapon at their respective levels:

Level 5 1d10

Level 8 2d10

Level 11 4d8

Level 14 4d10

Level 17 6d10

Level 20 6d12

They may still seem a little under-powered, but they also get that nice strength bonus. I think that my GM will buy into this kind of damage progression as opposed to bumping the scale upwards.

Now if there were only some improved versions of the Jarlslayer...

A very fair point, I will add an exception accounting for reach.

Hey Sandwitches, really liking the leveled Battle Harness system you have. I'm playing a soldier and was really hyped to get into power armor but was pretty disappointed when I saw the complete and utter lack of linear progression for anyone who wants to play with a battle harness type rig at any level above the level 5 model in the core book.

I've taken your numbers and tweaked them a little bit in respect to damage and have changed the Mk VI to have 2 weapon slots (I imagine 1 over each shoulder). In addition to that I looked at the average cost difference between power armor and the most expensive light armor and heavy armor of equal level to find the price differences, and then did so for both at level with the new battle harnesses.

I've worked out the price differences as well but can't seem to copy and paste it without the format crapping out so in summary, the average price increase for power armor as compared to light armor is 5.1% while for heavy armor it is 6.07% making the average between the two 5.59% (all numbers were rounded up to the second decimal place).

So with that in mind:

These numbers can obviously be changed to make them nice even looking, but that is a fair progression given the maximum price of armor for the given level.

Thoughts? Would you guys change any of the numbers around regarding damage or possibly EAC/KAC?

Sorry, meant to say that they receive no additional reach just because they are mounted on the weapon, I'll change the wording.

There should not be any basic 1 handed melee weapons that get reach anyway.

I'm not sure about the price of the mod though, 10% of weapon cost? Though, should it be 10% of the long arm or of the melee weapon being mounted? I would lean towards the cost of the long arm to keep it more in line with Weapon Fusion logic.

Hey guys, I know this is a bit of an older post but I really like the idea of bayonets in Starfinder! I'm talking it over with my GM at the next game but here's what I've come up with so far.

Bayonets: A mod to any “Longarms” class weapon that allows attachment of any One-Handed Weapons from the Basic Melee Weapon of the P or S (Piercing or Slashing) damage type. Damage is equal to the unmounted weapon but suffers from a -2 to attack as a result of the difficulty to strike with the weapon mounted on a Long-Arm. Weapons with the special type Unwieldly suffer an additional -2 (-4 total) to attacks with a mounted bayonet. The bayonet mounted must be of equal level or lower than the Long-Arm it is being mounted to. Additionally, if the Long-Arm has any Weapon Fusions, the cumulative level of all fusions and the bayonet item level must not exceed the Long-Arm’s level (this includes any fusions on the bayonet itself).

I think the item level and fusion level cap help keep it out of the realm of uber op, but i'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.