Velr-Fex's page

HTD wrote:

Duiker wrote:

HTD wrote:

Are the population and demographics of Shadow Absalom Station provided in the article?

Yep. It gets a half page descriptive write up and then the usual city stat block of population breakdown and such.

What are the population and demographics then?

1.2 million people, 55% kayals (fetchlings), 22% d'ziriaks, etc.

Who is governing the city now? Is it still run by a dragon?

What's your guess for the next big rules book following this one?

I would like either:

1) Book filled with starships and deckplans, like those we get in the adventure paths.

2) Book focused on magic, expanding the options for the mystic (i would love some new connections) and the technomancer.

3) NPC Codex, or something more akin to the villain codex, but not exclusively focused on evil guys, but rather the many different factions/organizations of starfinder or of the science fantasy genre.

Garbage-Tier Waifu wrote:

bookrat wrote:

Situations in which PCs may find themselves on planets without their protective gear can never happen in SF, so clearly these rules are just a waste of space.

Like every adventure could be so certain. You forget that these protections have time limits. They are not endless. There is a real possibility that, should tragedy strike, the PC's have a limited amount of time (the lowest leveled armor only lasting a day) in which they can survive in these environments. The threat isn't for when they are prepared. The threat is there for the sake of tension when they are not or they can't readily replenish their suit's environmental protections.

Also, you can hack suits to turn those off you know. That actually can happen to PC's and NPC's alike.

I should have known that not everyone could read the sarcasm. Poe's Law strikes again. :(

Unfortunately, there are no sarcasm rules available by now...

How many pages do each of the planets of the Pact World get?

Or you could apply the robot subtype to a stone or iron colossus. I did both.

David knott 242 wrote:

I think it would probably be more accurate to say that the Swarm are the major threat of the setting and consist of most but not all of the Shirren race. Shirren PCs, I would assume, are somehow apart from the Swarm.

If they follow Pathfinder, there are probably a bazillion major threats out there to the pact worlds, with the Swarm, the Cult of the Devourer, and the Bone Sages already name-checked. And I assume the Dominion of the Black is still out there, not to mention all the other existing planar threats (demons, kytons, devils, daemons, etc).

I believe even Pathfinder has its major threat. One that would unite even Good and Evil deities (Amodeus and Sarenrae or Apsu and Dahak). However, we are yet to see an adventure CENTERED on him or in fighting his cultists. Might not be the only threat, but surely the greatest in the setting.

You know WHO I'm talking about.

The Product Description needs clean up.

Indeed.

Anyway, no one is curious to know who is the Devourer? What if it is one of the new Core Deities? Or maybe something else from the dark corners of the universe...

The way I see it, judging but what we see here and elsewhere

The iconics will be:
Human envoy
Vesk soldier
Ysoki mechanic
Android operative
Kasatha technomancer
Lashunta mystic
And the yet known race as a solarion

You should probably take a look at this post here and you should find out that the "yet known" race is called Shirren and that the mystic iconic is probably going to be one of this insect like creatures.

Steven "Troll" O'Neal wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

Why wield a lightsaber axe or a flamethrower when you can wield a longsword? Many kudos to the lady on the left for keeping it classy.

This cover has a very "Guardians of the Galaxy" feel to it, which I imagine is how most Starfinder adventuring groups are going to resemble in their eclectic party makeup. I approve.

Huh, neat. Looks like it'll be more fantasy than I previously expected. Not a bad thing.

I actually feel the opposite. I mean, I love the cover, it is gorgeous, but it looks like pretty much straight up Space Opera. I was expecting some element that made it obviously Science Fantasy -- wizards and robots, dragons and starships, that sort of thing. I agree that it has a powerful GotG vibe, which is good, but I hope interior art and other pieces embrace the fantasy aspects more directly.

Indeed.

The old promotional art that is now presented as the Character Folio cover had a Kasatha using what we could assume to be magic; he was casting a spell. Now we have no magic or any fantasy element at all in the cover of the Core Rulebook.

For us, people that are following all the news about the product, this might have no impact at all.

This had no impact on me, until I saw this post.

However... For a new player, or a person that isn't familiar with Paizo or Pathfinder, this could be enough to cause the misunderstanding that Starfinder has no fantasy/magic in it. No one is "casting magic" and there's no iconic creature of an average "fantasy" settings (orcs, elves, dragons, dwarfs, goblins)...

Well, I'm sure the majority will read the books back for the product's description - the art is amazing enough. ;)

Awesome cover!!!

A larger version of the art can be found here.

Looking at the original art (larger size without logos) you can see the spaceship combat better.

It seems to be a clash between the Pact World Alliance and their allies, Veskarium, against the Shirren.

Impressive art, impressive cover, and I'm sure it's going to be an impressive book as well.

Well done everyone!

I can find fantasy stories where powerful heroes fight and defeat dragons or other epic monsters and survive ridiculous amounts of punishment. This somewhat justifies fantasy characters getting really high hit point totals; the fictional sources support those capabilities.

So now you can present the examples of people fighting spaceships to justify why that should be possible.

This guy doing THIS is what I have in mind when I think about this subject.

pnewman wrote:

At GAMA the man running our demo said "One point of starship weapons damage = 100 points of personal damage (unless they changed since I turned in the manuscript)".

So basically 10 points of damage would equal 1,000, then? If Starfinder is supposed to be some lower powered game compared to Pathfinder, then that's cool.

However, if high level Starfinder characters are supposed to be on the same high powered scale of Pathfinder characters, then I'm not really liking this decision. In the same game where high level characters have proven to have insane durability against even the most powerful attacks can just get effortlessly owned by any starship. I don't know, I guess many people still just don't get it, whether they were a developer for Pathfinder or not. Many people I guess just don't realize that a high level character's toughness was a feature of the game, not a flaw.

*high level character survives a mountain falling on him*

*high level character survives against a Colossal sized Gravity Cannon's blast*

*high level character survives against Godzilla's (Mogaru) atomic breath*

*high level character gets one shotted by the Millennium Falcon's turret blaster*

That's some solid consistency right there, huh?

Didn't the developers say that Golarion has vanished during the time of Starfinder? I know exactly why! Because Golarion was totally vaporized by the presence of the awesomely exaggerated power of a starship! They also said that the deities won't say what happened to Golarion, but that's because the gods are too fearful of high tech metal flying vehicles! It all makes sense now!

Bare in mind that I'm only saying this if Starfinder is intended to be a high powered game like Pathfinder. If it is, this is a silly rules decision that I have very limited to no respect for.

Indeed! If someone is able to survive Mogaru's breath weapon, I'm sure they should be able to survive a spaceships' attack...

I'm not saying that all characters should be able to, but high level characters are not mere mortals. The Rune Lords and the likes of Jatembe and the Whispering Tyrant were all just mere mortals in their earlier days.

While we can easily create or own settings just like we do with Pathfinder rules, I'm a big fan of the Pathfinder Setting as well. So my primary concern is with Starfinder main Setting.

As you said, we are talking about a futuristic setting, so of course some things will have changed drastically in terms of environments, inhabitants, culture, and so on. However, we are also talking about a setting that "resolves" around numerous planets; Castrovel, Triaxus and Akiton being just few of the core ones. I'm sure this also means that the number of possibilities for the setting is infinity.

There has to be a planet inhabited by fey (Castrovel), or by dragons (Triaxus), and just as we have futuristic societies and planets in Pathfinder Setting, I'm sure there are going to be planets inhabited by primitive societies in Starfinder.

I'm a bit concerned that there won't be enough fantasy in the game, but I think that's just because Pathfinder is already fantasy, so the fans (and designers and developers?) are talking mostly about the space part.

I have the same concern. How many magical beasts, outsiders, fey and the likes are going to inhabit the planets, the lands, how much will these creatures of fantasy influence the world of Starfinder.

With Pathfinder we have nations ruled by vampires and ghosts. Its a world where kingdoms are built under the influence of devils, angels and even might Dragons, but also of humans with powers that rivals those of demigods. There are forests dominated by the fey and others where demons are lords.

How much is the whole Pact Worlds Setting influenced by mythology and fantasy? That's probably what we are all concerned about.

I hope everything is well balanced, just as in Iron Gods or in other travels we did into the distant worlds inside Pathfinder Setting (like that trip with our dear grandmother Baba-Yaga to Triaxus).

What about ships as a part of treasure? Lets say the PCs defeat pirates and capture their pirate ship intact, now the PCs have two ships! What if the PCs decide to keep them both, they can hire extra crew to man the pirate ship out of the loot captured from the pirate horde. What is the GM going to do in that case? Is he going to say, "No you can't do that?" The PCs would then say, "Why not?, we defeated the pirates and now we got their ship." The GM says, "Its against the rules!" so the PCs say, "Fine so we sell the pirate ship!" The GM gasps and says, "You can't sell the pirate ship either! Pirate ships can't be sold for money!" "What do we do with the ship then?" asks the lead PC.

How would they be able to keep the spaceship? They would need a specific crew number to take the ship in the first place.

Assuming the spaceship they are in requires four crew members, and you have four players. Unless they hired additional crew members in advice, I don't see how they are going to be able to take the ship. I mean, they need to control it, they need a crew to move it. It's not like they would store a spaceship in their bags.

Since there were slides of ships for Vesk, Shirren, and the Pact Alliance, I strongly suspect that the Shirren are inhabitants of a solar system other than those of Golarion or the Veskarium.

The Shirren could well be part of the infamous Swarm, this strange enemie of the Pact Worlds Alliance was said to be insect-like.

One of the big ones is called the Swarm, which is a big race of interstellar insect-like things that just overrun everything and are not really fun to be around.

The vesk spaceships weren't called "Veskarium Spaceships", so I suppose the Shirren spaceships could well be the "Swarm Spaceships".

I'm just making assumptions and speculations that should not be taken as official.

- I'm a bit uncomfortable with "Oracle>Cleric" Mystic class.
- Pharasma, Desna, Sarenrae, Abadar and even Iomedae are back, but no Asmodeus? I think the Glorious Reclamation was victorious over Cheliax...
- Hope the some of the old Pathfinder Core Gods not mentioned are still around and are merely not core. As "minor" gods.
- Gundam!
- Loving the starships variety. Hope to see these illustrations on a preview.

But also remember that PCs have starships and those ships scale with the APL. to keep having the ship being meaningful it also needs to pick up new abilities and get stronger as the party levels. To keep the ship side from becoming an automatic win button there need to be enemy ships at those levels that can threaten the PC ship, thus we must have ships strong enough to outclass high level PCs or those PCs will just do without ships.

Indeed! But I'm pretty sure that space combat, space travels, and many other utilities - such as accommodation and status - are also good reasons to have a spaceship. I'mp hoping to see really big spaceships, and maybe those are the ones that you are talking about, the high level spaceships. ;)

I'm pretty much excited about the spaceships. I'm very anxious to see if they are getting stat blocks just as monsters and NPCs. You known, I really want to grab my "Spaceships Codex"... Lots of assumptions I did here, I know! XD

Velr-Fex wrote:

Why not? Aren't there characters powerful enough to kill demigods in Pathfinder? Why wouldn't they include characters powerful enough to handle a spaceship? Maybe a powerful technomancer or the bearer of an artifact/technological device. Just because it's a space ship it doesn't mean it needs to be stronger than a level 20 character.

Demi-gods and starships just aren't of the same sort of thing. Apples to oranges.

I feel like you shouldn't be comparing what can and can't be done in Pathfinder to what can and can't be done in Starfinder.

I'm personally hoping they do away with a lot baggage that existed from 3.5 that carried over into Pathfinder. The "invulnerability" of high level characters in one of those things.

If there's a system we should have in mind while guessing about Starfinder's "can and can't"s, I suppose Pathfinder is the better one, at least between it and "hopes". I know there have been some confirmed changes to the rules already, but I'm pretty sure that Starfinder has always been announced as:

"Take your favorite fantasy RPG to the stars! Set thousands of years in Pathfinder's future, Starfinder is a stand-alone roleplaying game evolved from the Pathfinder rules and designed to bring you a whole new universe of science fantasy adventures. (...)"

So we should always take Pathfinder into consideration...

Demigods are supernatural beings and aren't required to follow the same rules that ordinary (if powerful) mortals are bound by. They're not exactly the best example to use for opponents of starships. We'd be better off talking about starship power and how they can handle themselves against enormous but conventional organism such as space amoebas, uber-kaiju, dire dinosaurs, Awakened sequoia trees, xenomorphs, and clonal entities like Pando.

Sorry, but I think you made a mistake.

Just as our friend Sauce987654321 said, what I was saying is that PCs are able to fight the likes of Mogaru and even demigods. You should known that Mogaru can blast a 1,200-foot-long beam, and even a spaceship would probably be threatened by it.

Sauce987654321 wrote:

I mean I mentioned in the other thread that there are monsters that are hundreds of feet tall/long while the millennium falcon is only 114 ft. long.

Also, there's no reason to add in random modifiers if a starships weapons attack people. Their weapons are already going to have a higher base damage due to their size category. You don't have to have starships do thousands of damage in single attacks to convey that they are powerful.

Maybe, but spaceship weapons should probably kill most adventurers in a single hit, even at higher levels using advanced gear to defend themselves. Personal laser shields just don't produce enough energy to defend from an actual star ships laser guns.

Why not? Aren't there characters powerful enough to kill demigods in Pathfinder? Why wouldn't they include characters powerful enough to handle a spaceship? Maybe a powerful technomancer or the bearer of an artifact/technological device. Just because it's a space ship it doesn't mean it needs to be stronger than a level 20 character.

My biggest question is: Are spaceships getting stat blocks? Thanks.

Long may she reign