Vicaring's page

Most of it I think was leaning towards the realism of these weapons rather than mechanical reasoning. Most handguns typically hold 6-9 rounds depending on model, with as many as 12-20 on extended mags. More weigh the weapon down or risk jamming (to my knowledge, I'm by far not a firearms expert).

A revolver that's designed to be concealed typically holds 5. A bigass "magnum" revolver also typically holds 5. A standard revolver holds 6, with at least one version holding 8 (Smith & Wesson .357).

An automatic like the M1911 45 holds 7 standard. The Browning Hi-Power 9mm, which was introduced at around the same time as the 1911, held 13. Today's pistols, such as the Glock 17, hold around 15 bullets in 9mm.

Extended magazines for the Glock hold 31 rounds.

Modern "Battle Rifles", such as the M14 or FN-FAL, hold 20 rounds in .308 (7.62x51mm).

Modern "Assault Rifles", such as the M4, M16, AK-47 and variants, hold 30 rounds in either .223 (5.56x45mm) or 7.62x39mm.

All of which probably has nothing to do with your point, but I thought I'd throw out some real-world numbers.

EDIT: There is a famous exception to these numbers: the FN P90 Personal Defense Weapon and its brother the FN Five-Seven Pistol shoot a 5.7x28mm round; the pistol holds 20 and the PDW holds 50(!).

Alright. I know that I said before I wasn't going to respond to this thread, but I got to thinking.

I played the moldstorm by RAW. Whether or not the party helped the Lashunta, or how long it took to help the Lashunta, is irrelevant to whether my party would have been affected by the moldstorm, which is what ultimately killed one of my players.

Why?

Because the moldstorm happens on the 7th day of travel, according to the book. Also, on page 15, it states that 12 hours of every day the players have to use their environmental protection to protect against the crazy jungle heat.

None of my players had 4th-level armor, which is what would have been necessary to still have protection on day 7. 3rd-level armor runs dry at the end of day 6. So even in a best-case scenario, where my players had decided to not help the lashunta, they still would not have had environmental protection when the moldstorm hit.

If I have been offensive to anyone during this conversation, I apologize, I really do. That was not my intent.

But yes, diseases in Starfinder are deadly. I lost a player to one in book 2, and helping the lashunta prior to that, and whether I made a ruling that slowed down the party, had no bearing on whether or not that player would have been affected by the moldstorm, which is what killed him.

I'm not attacking you man!

Dude, I was trying to be anecdotally helpful to a topic that I had personal experience in. You said my opinion was irrelevant ("contaminated" was the exact wording, but same thing contextually). How is that not an attack?

Anybody who has ever DM'd for any length of time knows that adventures are never cut and dry, that every adventure, even those that are pre-published, will be run differently by different groups, that adventures will be run differently even by the same DM if that DM has different players. To say that one group's experience is irrelevant or "contaminated" is the height of arrogance and, quite frankly, inexperience in playing, or at least understanding, how RPGs work, because you are taking your own understanding of the game and situations that you were not involved in within the game and saying that everybody needs to handle the situation the way you think they should (twice you said I "should have" done this or that, and this very post above mine you said that you're trying to prevent other DMs from making "similar decisions" to mine).

And there are indeed "rulings" distinct from "house rules". The biggest difference, in my mind, is that a "ruling" is situational, and is never bothered to be written down, because the situation is so rare that ever encountering it again is extremely unlikely. I am comfortable with the decisions that I made, and I would most likely make them again if I was put in that spot. The notion of "If they dragged her behind them tied by a rope to the ankle while 'tending' to her disease" is so laughable as to not even be contemplated, regardless of what RAW says. Let's have some remote semblance of reality in our fantasy, yeah?

This is my final post on this topic. There appears to be nothing more to be said, really. You and I, it seems, are not bound to see eye-to-eye on this one.

/soangry

This is just a discussion about disease rules, chill out man!

You know, I posted in order to, as I said, provide a data point from an actual game session to provide insight into aswering the main, original post, about the lethality of diseases in this game.

And a discussion about the lethality of diseases would have been fine. Instead, I find myself coming under attack for my DMing style and the decision-making process of my players, as evidenced by this right here:

And my point is that your sample is contaminated

Seriously, guy. If you want somebody to chill out, to not be defensive, perhaps try to not be offensive.

If my experience with diseases here in the game is an outlier, and isn't evidence for disease lethality, at least in the first AP, then so be it.

But I suspect that my experience, regardless of whether or not you personally think it's "contaminated", is representative of (the exact circumstances would be different for every group, of course) a LOT larger player experience than you're willing to admit, to which I present, as evidence, the very first post in this thread:

I keep hearing about how lethal the diseases are in the first Dead Suns module, and how nasty diseases in Starfinder are in general.

Did you inform them that she would get worst by being moved?

Because this house rule right here is the root of all evil that came to pass...You actually made starfinder diseases even worst than they already are.

Yes, I informed them. I am up-front with my players about rules, my rulings, and my reasoning behind rulings. I find opacity to be a vice, not a virtue, in RPGs.

And actually, I don't see it as that house rule being "the root of all evil that came to pass". Nor do I consider it a house rule. It's a ruling. DM's always have rulings, for all kinds of situations that RAW doesn't make any damned sense in.

As said before, the party isn't supposed to be able to help that NPC. It says it right in book 2, that the NPC will most likely die. The odds of her living are close to astronomical, if you look at what kind of die rolls are required to save her. They should have failed at least one of their first several rolls, meaning she dies within the first couple of days, regardless of whether they decide to tie a rope around her ankle or not. The fact that they rolled so incredibly well is what derailed that part of the adventure.

Yes, they were supposed to still have their environmental protection for the mold storm. But they didn't, because of reasons I've gone into in detail. Really, I don't understand the insistence on placing blame for how this turned out. I posted to illustrate what occurred to my group, during actual play, and what my group in actual play observed regarding how deadly diseases are in Starfinder. It was supposed to be a helpful data point, and instead I find myself defending party decisions and my own DM rulings.

I would remind readers, again, this is not a novice group, nor am I a novice DM. And the diseases in book 2 killed one of my PCs.

if they're not PCs, you may want to, in the future, abstract the process of whether they live or die a bit.

I don't disagree with this. It was our first time with Starfinder diseases, and I wanted to see how it played. Now that I know, I can modify future adventures with them in mind.

Why did they stop there and wait for her to get better? Just improvise a gurney and drag her along, Treat Disease only takes 10 minutes - did they mistake it with long-term care, that actually takes a day or more?

You should have explained their options better.

I thought I explained the situation and their options perfectly. Thanks for the assumption that I didn't, though.

I reasoned that this person was quite literally at death's door. IIRC she's one step above death on the disease track when they find her. I reasoned that moving her at that point would have affected her treatment negatively, regardless of RAW's 10 minutes for Treat Disease.

The players had quite a discussion of what to do with the situation. Hell, they had the discussion twice, because we ended one session just as they found her, and came back and started the following session just as they left it. Some players were in favor of leaving her. Some really wanted to help her. Those players won the argument. I, as the DM, let them make their own decision, and did not push them one way or the other. I find that players like not being told what to do.

Moving her after that, when she started getting better? At what point would that be? She was up and down that disease track. Just when she looked like she'd be getting better, they'd fail a roll, and she'd get worse again.

Instead of having that pointless NPC give up the main bad guy plot, I'd suggest having them meet Panelliar at the exploded temple ruins, now free from his compulsion to prevent the PCs from the entering the place...I'd have the adolescent mountain eel show up at the ruins, and 1d6 rounds later a full grown mountain eel (AA pg 78) joins its spawn to lunch the PCs.

No NPC is pointless. Especially not if played right, and especially not this one. She's bound to become a henchman, and help flesh out the party. She's a keeper.

I like that idea about the mountain eels. I might just use that.

How many fortitude rolls did the NPC had to make? And were the players at least entertained by all of this?

The PC's made, IIRC, one save per day (I let the players roll her, the NPC's, saves). 3 weeks (the exact number of days I am unsure of) for Ralkawi plus a week and a half for the mold storm would be right about 30 separate rolls.

No, the players were not in the least bit entertained. I had one rather vociferously complain that the entire disease mechanic doesn't make sense because it doesn't use hit points, which are supposed to reflect a person's health, &c. I pointed out to him that D&D 5e, which he likes, uses a similar system, but instead of separate disease tracks just uses the exhaustion track. That quieted him down.

I'm hoping at least they'll use the NPC they got from it, so it doesn't feel to them like a complete waste.

This is me putting words in their mouths, because I honestly don't know their thought processes, but I don't think anybody thought it'd take so long to heal the Lashunta. Also please bear in mind we're all coming to Starfinder from D&D. One of my players (and myself) have been playing since the old BECMI and 1e days (with quite a bit of time off, on both our parts, during the 3e timeframe. We both came back for 4e because it was so different, and stuck around for 5e, and now there's SPACE!!!awesome). I'm pretty sure they thought it'd be a quick one-and-done roll or something, not an extended process.

And then, once they'd begun, I think they were loathe to say, "You know, she's getting better. But we're running late. Bye, lady. Have fun with the critters growing inside you."

Then, by the time of the mold storm, they were already three weeks late, and said screw it.

And as I said before, now as a GM, I'm in a position of figuring out how to get them to the next stage without having any of the final fight happen, &c. But no worries, I'll work it out. I've been doing this DM'ing thing a long time. It'll probably have something to do with the Lashunta they saved. She'll tell them that Tahomen(??) talked to her once about an asteroid base, or something to that effect.

Anyway, all that to illustrate that yes, the diseases in this game are brutal. Or at least, they have been for my group.

EDIT: Also, my players for some reason are convinced that the archaeologist is actively working WITH the cult, and so the chase hasn't been to rescue him, really, but more to figure out what's going on and stop evil shenanigans.

That should have taken at least a week, if the player managed to fail every single fortitude check.

Yeah, it took a while. If I'm remembering correctly, it was 3-ish weeks to heal the Lashunta, and once the player was infected by the mold storm they stopped progressing until he got better. He never did. A week and a half? Honestly, I can't remember the exact timeframe. There was a LOT of dice-rolling, with him rolling to save vs the disease, another player rolling Medicine to help the first with his saves, and another going out hunting/foraging with survival rolls for food and water. Keep in mind, my players didn't start the expedition with anywhere near three weeks worth of food or water, so they were into survival/forage mode already early into trying to heal the Lashunta, Ralkawi? Is that her name?

Anyway, had I been better prepared, or knew how deadly these diseases were, I would have completely skipped this one encounter, but they had just healed the Lashunta, which by rights they shouldn't have, and as I said previously I didn't play the Akata from book 1 right, so this was our first real experience with Starfinder diseases. After the lashunta, I thought the diseases were a pain, and time-consuming, but not terrible. Then before you know it, Player Kill.

I know this is purely anecdotal, but in book 2, Temple of the Twelve, my players actually managed to save the sick Lashunta (they were getting crazy good rolls. Saving that NPC isn't supposed to happen). It took them forever. Like seriously 3 weeks of treatment or something. Now I get to figure out how to handle the rest of the book and the opponents, seeing as they took such a long break, but that's neither here nor there.

But then the very next encounter, a mold storm, put one of my players down. Dead. From a disease. It was more than a little disappointing to the players, methinks.

I wasn't familiar enough with the Starfinder disease mechanics in book 1, and so the Akatas really weren't anything for my players. But looking back at it, had I done it right, that could have been brutal. Just like book 2 has been.