Valfen's page

Pantshandshake wrote:

Dracomicron: That’s your answer for everything.

Not true. Sometimes the answer is "chainsaw."

I find both answers to be perfectly fine, to be honest.

You have line of effect, if you can punch through the obstacles. That's what line weapon do, by description : create a line of effect if you have the damage.
You do not, however, have line of sight, so you need to guess at squares (or fire blindly and hope someone is there), and targets have total concealment for 50% miss chance.

The tactic is a novelty past the surprise shot anyway. On top of the 50% miss chance, intelligent opponents would either move out of range at once, or at least drop prone + fight defensively for a total of +6 AC (which is a lot in Starfinder), then proceed to crawl out of range.
You could also make a very good case of said opponents having Improved Cover (so another +8 AC) against the line weapon fired through walls, which would further diminish any effects.

Firing through walls is fun, interesting and visually appealing, but I'm thoroughly unconvinced it's game breaking. At least, not anymore than massed sniper fire, and I haven't seen any complaints about that.

The FAQ'd post asks a question that I think is a bit different, but interesting nonetheless, I've thrown my vote in as well. ;)

And I've attended a conference where researchers stabilized time measurement from atomic clocks (*) to enough precision to measure that the 3Om height difference between two of them actually yielded a time difference compatible with the one predicted by Einstein's relativity theory. (much to the researchers relief, I shall add. They were understandably a bit nervous when they made the first measurements)

I didn't even know about the electric universe before the thread on these forums. I can't even understand the blind willingness of some people to trust a few people (and in some case, one person) claims against the vast scientific consensus. Especially with the g*#%&$n internet making everything so easy to cross-review, re-analyze, reproduce, or whatever strikes your fancy with the available data and conclusions. Wrong results don't survive for very long, nowadays.

(*) Using a technique akin to the one described here, but with optical landlines throughout the whole of Europe's GIANT research network, accross several physics labs installations. I can't exhume the paper on it though, and it drives me crazy !

Off the top of my head, I can't remember a game system that I know of that requires you to add the weight/encumbrance of loaded ammo to that of the weapon. Values listed are always for a fully loaded gun, and you only take into account weight/encumbrance for extra clips/reloads.

Bulk is highly abstract and is a rough measure of how annoying it is to carry something. I'm perfectly okay with the system saying that it's more annoying to carry ammunition as extra reloads than already loaded in a weapon.

In Starfinder, skimming through the weapons table, to two worst offender I can find are flamethrowers and heavy projectile weapons.
A lot of Flamethrowers bulk is fuel, so I'm okay with the game implying that the bulk of the rest is somewhat negligible compared to that.
Heavy weapons ammo adds up for half a bulk for a full clip, but it's in the weapon, which likely comes with straps and is (hopefully) designed to be as practical as possible to lug around fully loaded, so again, I'm okay with the players getting a discount.

Enforcing bulk for loaded ammo is likely to end up, through rounding, as players being only 1 bulk higher at most than without. This could also encourage a focus on energy weapons, because batteries are light. Personally, I can't see any significant gameplay gain and wouldn't bother.

Fallout is what people think of for futuristic power armor? Really?

Not Doomguy or Master Chief? :v

Fallout 1 was published in 1997. Halo 1 in 2001. Half-Life in 1998. Doom goes way back to 1993, but back then, Doom Guy didn't really have anything resembling the (admittedly awesome) Praetor Armor.

1) forcing the landing - the PC's didn't really check for bugs on the car so this is easy. One of the technomancers can force the thing down or I can just say the thing has a remote override switch that the jiang-shi vampire kicks in (can't remember her name). Boom, instant forced landing.

I'd say this is the perfect use case for the classic man-portable missile launcher. Just shoot the car down, action-movie-villain style !

2) I'm torn between having Gretal switch sides or try to stay out of it. She's currently on quite friendly terms with the PC's and her former squad mates were willing to attack her. I'm leaning toward having her hunker down behind the hover car and try to aid the PC's

Hard to tell what would work best with your group. As written, I think this NPC would stay true to its engagement with the players, especially if they took steps to befriend her. Have her focus on mooks and let the PCs take on the bigger threat.

I'm willing to bet that Paizo will never answer your inquiries directly, because a) a lot of your posts feel like you're crusading for balance, MMO-style, and developers know exactly what to do in those situations, b) even if it weren't the case, Paizo still would be in a no-win situation from a PR standpoint (of paramount importance since this is the internet) by commenting on these subjects, and c) a pen & paper RPGs, even in our increasingly digital world, is very different from video games when it comes to publishing changes.

Situational/Utility talents have always been hard to value properly, since they tend to be either incredibly awesome or unexpectedly disappointing, but I think no one really disagrees with you on Solarian being mechanically weaker than Soldier, because even with all else being equal, consistency always beats potentiality in any analysis.

If Paizo really deem the Solarian a tad too weak, they'll probably use future materials to either (or both) :
- Pillage 3.5e "Force of Personality" and "Steadfast Determination" to design a feat that let's you swap Charisma with either Con or Wis for saves. This is your fix to the problem, this is mine as well, except that we can make it baseline instead of a feat tax because home games.
- Design a feat that lets Solarians shorten attunement time to increase rate of usage on utility talents, probably through Resolve spending.

I know many players who know systems better than the designers do.

This is both true and false, as I'm sure you're aware of. Building a system from the ground up is not exactly the same as analysing/improving one. I know many people that are incredibly good at improving an existing design, but that would be utterly incapable of creating one from the ground up. Both are valuable skills, but they often don't give insights on the same parts of a system. (which is why you often put these two different kind of designers, engineers or researchers in the same office)

You all are clearly overthinking it !

An operative will be at +1 over the mechanic, at best, on computer skill checks, and can hack in half the usual time. (and take 10 at some point)

Meanwhile, a mechanic can hack things remotely, and if exocortex, while shooting things in the face. I'll definitely take that over a +1.

Being aware/prepared outside of combat is already taken into account in the ruleset : you don't get to be on the wrong end of a surprise round.

To the best of my knowledge, the original house rule for "Shield Shall Be Splintered" comes from here and was coined in a retroclone context (specifically Labyrinth Lord, if my memory serves me right)
The "what if the shield is magical" problem is sidestepped in the article because of the relatively low power level of retroclones and the author's campaigns.
The idea was to have a quick, simple, and cinematic option to increase the shield usefulness. It works really well in that regard.

Invoking the rule with a magical shield, I'd probably rule the shield gets the broken condition, and maybe is instead destroyed if the attack has a better enhancement bonus than the shield's.

Those worried about abuse and silly turtling with many shields, and not willing to gently yet firmly slap their players, should rule that this only works against criticals. It's even more suitably cinematic and should limit most of the problems.

That's incredible work here Dervish ! Much, much depth added to the centaur tribe.

I gather that Xamanthe fate is quite different in your world ?

I also very much would like to know more about the visions. If you have time to elaborate a bit on that aspect, of course.

Excellent idea for an exceptionally fine set of alternative rules, especially the Strain/Injury variant.

You're nearly to the point where you will have fixed everything that annoys me in the 3.x/PF game design paradigm. Only with much more eloquence and elegance than I would ever be capable of.

(Because "bump" does not even begin to express all the good things I have to say about your work)

"Energy Attacks: Energy attacks deal half damage to most objects" (Smashing an object)

Undead/constructs will be damaged like everyone else, and can make a fort save for half.

The whole "immunity to fort save" is there to make them immune to stuff like stinking cloud, since it makes no sense for creatures, you know, not alive. Almost every damage effect against which these creatures don't have specific resistance (cold immunity for undeads for example) will work normally.

Step 1 : Realise that as a GM, it is easy to TPK any party whatsoever, without resorting to any kind of rule twisting, and that the true difficulty is to challenge players in meaningful ways without quite reaching said TPK.
Step 2 : Realise that internal party balance and player expectations disparity is what creates most problems around a table, not powergaming, and work toward ensuring consistency on those two fronts first.
Step 3 : ???
Step 4 : Profit.

Other than that, what Evil Lincoln said. The best way to deal with powergaming is to make sure everyone agrees on the same terms for the campaign at work. I found it's always what works best, since everyone agrees beforehand on what "fun" it will be rather than having bits of it stolen without warnings, until there's none left to be enjoyed.

But, but...

No, okay. That's so unbelievably cool that it *will* be stolen for my campaign. Who cares if it overshadows other "boss" encounters ?

Anything that steals away player control on their character I can only view as a bad thing, because it's the *only* thing players have full control on in the gaming world. Unless every player around the table is OK with restrictive (*) stat generation, I would be careful about using those kind of alternative.

When doing stat generation, regardless of the actual savor (usually 4d6 drop lowest), to alleviate the common woe of the player having rolled very poorly while others have good to very good stats, I record the stat arrays of every players, and let them choose whichever they want.

Incidentally, the more "old school" or "hardcore" a GM whishes to be, the more min-maxing he risks to elicit among its players. Because character deaths are usually not fun if it occurs because of random kobold #3 or Generic_Deathly_Trap_of_Doom_42 only because of poor stats or ignored WBL (for example), anything that detracts players from the sense of empowerment that is usually assumed to come with the process of gaining levels in Pathfinder will tempt them to play the system to its limit in order to get what they want (generally, some form of successful character).

Edit : I'm unclear on one point : I mean that you should consult your players about the playstyle you wish for your campaign *before* deviating from the default assumption of Pathfinder, not that lower powered or harsher games are inherently wrong. If everyone agrees, then no problem.

(*) Yes, restrictive. PF assumption is 15 point buy.