WatersLethe's page

I would like to point out that "upgrading to level appropriate DC at an appropriate gold cost" has it's own issues. It's a bunch of annoying book keeping just to make items not suck, doesn't help in low down time situations, and still frequently results in unsatisfying stories. It makes loot sheets not only a list of expiry dates, it also asks you to reup your subscription to keep using them.

I recommend the [New DC] = [Old DC] + [Char Level - Item Level].

Then warn players not to try to cheese old low cost items.

The lack of 1h weapons is bizarre.

Designated Operative Rifle
Range: 100, 1d10P, Deadly D6, Volley 30ft, Unwieldy, Tech, Magazine: 5, Expand: 1

Not yet familiar with the feel of SF2 weapon balance, but this statline doesn't seem out of place to me.

I think it turned out quite well, especially as a base class that beginner players will be interacting with.

An area weapon that can shoot farther than you can throw things by hand.

Come on, be realistic

I'm just now building my first operative sniper in response to the comments about sniping in SF2e.

Am I doing the math right here?

A Commercial Assassin Rifle in the first range increment does 1d10 + 1 Kickback + 1d4 precision damage from aim, for a total of 3 to 15 points of damage.

On a crit hit vs a target that is off guard, a Commercial Assassin Rifle in the first range increment does (1d12 + 1 Kickback + 1 precision damage from Backstabber + 1d4 precision damage from aim) X2 +1d12 Fatal damage, for a total of 9 to 48 points of damage.

If this is right, then it looks like the sniper operative is all about setting up the perfect shot. To get the off-guard condition on the target will likely take teamwork. Off-guard only gives you +2 damage on a crit, but also lowers the target's AC by -2, which helps getting the crit.

Since real snipers normally work in teams of 2, sometimes 3. I'm thinking of making a sniper support character. I don't think a spotter makes sense in SF2e, but someone who can debuff the target, and or help get or keep them in line of sight, and help get them the off-guard condition. I suppose a spotter could be someone who buffs the sniper, and or uses the Aid another action. So maybe the best way to play a sniper is in a team of 3, the sniper, someone focused on debuffing the target, and someone focused on buffing the sniper. The buffer could also use spells to change the sniper's damage type or help boost the damage.

I have an animal instinct barbarian shirren with Eager Assistant. I also have a Sniper Specialization operative on my team. I am planning on doing some combination of bite, grab, and aid. I'm really wondering what's the optimal combo.

Signed up for the Starfinder 2E Core Rulebook subscription back in mid-July, but this is still sitting in my sidecart. I reached out to CS 3 days ago, but still haven't gotten a reply. I'm fine waiting, but I'd appreciate a response.

I'm not customer service, but my assumption is that you missed the window for the regular Player Core shipment, and thus your sidecarted items are waiting for the regular scheduled shipment for GM Core. I am also in the same situation, but I half-expected it given my prior experience with subscriptions.

I haven't seen it mathed out, and I'd like to see someone do some detailed round by round math before making statements like it does less damage. I'm not the math guy, but it seems like sniper crits are massive and there are a surprising number of damage bonuses (kickback, sniper critical specialization, backstabber, fatal/deadly). Doesn't seem straightforward to me, especially with how few directly comparable weapons there are.

You son of a lich, I'm in.

For what it's worth, during the playtest I gave players plenty of Pathfinder weapons with grades, it worked fine. As long as it's in line with ABP it's no big deal.

The contemplative is all about the brain. The tiny eyestalks that should hang out somewhere around the neck do not equate to a face, and shouldn't be were you would default to focusing for characterization. Doing so kind of misses the point. This is likely why the art neglects adding the eyes from the description.

Most other characters aren't depicted with their head gear active. I think it's fine to just assume a hardlight shield covers their brains.

I played a mystic who threw on resist elements and walked around a laser shootout impervious to harm, being able to regenerate more innately per round than all the enemies focus firing could get through.

There are a lot of situations where that HP pool makes you more survivable than the game necessarily expects.

I think the HP reduction is an attempt to make it feel a tad bit more even.

Really looking forward to finding out more about the project and team! I hope they don't make the mistake of launching the Kickstarter without building up to it on the youtube/reddit interview circuit.

moosher12 wrote:

And lastly, Vanguard is probably not gonna be a Vanguard perse. Frankly, it's name is misleading, and will become especially misleading when Pathfinder classes join the mix, as vanguard does little to invoke its actual abilities. So it would likely be due for a name change. I vote Entropath.

To be truthful, this is part of the reason why Vanguard never "clicked" with me in 1e. It felt like the entropy-related aspects were just kind of "there" in the class without clear guidance on their place within the setting apart from the villain-coded Ataxxea. Were you supposed to be spiritual as a Vanguard? No clue, the class text didn't really offer an opinion the way it did for Solarians. It felt redundant with Solarians narratively and felt like it was more interested in its mechanical role of "tank class" than it was in its narrative role of "empowered by entropy."

Obviously this is more a failure of imagination on my part, because the class seemed to be very popular from my admittedly limited experience, but I just could never really come up with character concepts whose narratives would be best served by being a vanguard...

Same. Vanguard was a giant set of off-putting mistakes to me.

I could easily see something similar mechanically and flavor-wise show up as a Solarian class archetype. Hopefully the name can be reclaimed by a more fitting class fantasy.

Here's one that gets me, though it's more a mechanical frustration than a flavor one (though it also hits flavor too).

Three enemies standing next to each other you have 5 bullets in your gun. You can't autofire unless you can reposition yourself such that one enemy is out of the cone.

Let me introduce you to a little thing called "lying to your GM" /s

But seriously that scenario came up a few times in playtesting and it was THE WORST

Otherwise, it seems weird that you could fire at an enemy for free except if you're aware of its existence.

You're firing an extra bullet for every target. Just justify it as one of those hitting them.

It's really not very hard to sweep under the rug. Much easier than, say, robots and undead being susceptible to diseases.

I'm actually REALLY surprised this is the one that gets you.

I like that it retains the ability to throttle back the amount of ammo spent depending on number of targets. Feels right.

I'd be fine letting a player expend ammo based on the number of targets they intend to hit, and letting the allies and unknown invisible enemies in the area get hit for "free".

I HAVE THE PDF!

Ladies and gentlemen, we have the pdf

Speculation, but I feel like art issues crop up more with Starfinder due to the pool of proven ttrpg artists who have experience with making scifi/modern artwork being quite small.

I've definitely seen a lot of commissioned artwork yoinking gun and ship designs from anywhere they can.

Pretty unfortunate to see.

I seem to recall prior releases being opened for sale closer to noon on the day. Gotta get coffee and have some meetings before pressing the button!

My definition of a shifter is a martial class that is encouraged to take on different forms to suit different tasks inside and outside of combat. They should be a dynamic, bag-of-tricks class with utility and skill challenge tools rivaling casters.

I think taking on a single form and staying in it is better handled by other options. For example, an animal instinct barbarian can already be very closely flavored that way.

I think shapeshifting into other humanoids is fine, but shouldn't be the focus. I think the priority should be to enable becoming: animals > elementals > monsters/creatures > other humanoids.

Was there something beyond the binarian counting down in binary?

WatersLethe wrote:

Just curious, if I added a Starfinder 2e subscription mid-July and I got Battlecry from my Pathfinder subscription delivered already, did my Starfinder books get sidecarted for a ~September delivery?

That's right on the cusp, so I'm not sure off hand, but if you reach out to Customer Service, they can let you know!

I'll probably just buy another at a FLGS on release day.

I'm gonna be out here stuffing SF2 books into peoples' hands like warm bowls of food at a soup kitchen.

Just curious, if I added a Starfinder 2e subscription mid-July and I got Battlecry from my Pathfinder subscription delivered already, did my Starfinder books get sidecarted for a ~September delivery?

What I would like to see in a Shifter class: starting perhaps with the ability to manifest a shape's natural weapons (e.g. claws for a Big Cat shifter), then adding at higher levels the ability to shift into that shape, then later more shapes ending with four or five different shapes from, well, the entire Bestiary. :-)

I'd like Paizo to attempt giving the class a full shapeshift from level 1. I don't want to have to play as an animal instinct barbarian for the first few levels until I have earned the right to play a shifter.

The creator of Pathbuilder has Starbuilder on the roadmap for October

8th level is probably a bad comparison since the comparison of SF2e ranged meta and PF2e was in SF2e 1st level character can fly.

I wouldn't expect a Bulette to be using a gun any more than I would a Rancor from Star Wars. If you want a shoot-out with guns, you don't need monstrous aliens or PF2e creatures; you need intelligent opponents armed with guns (NPCs with bad attitudes)

Looking at 1st-level creatures in the Monster Core, you have lots of the low-level base creature stats for intelligent PF2E ancestries and species. Give them a laser gun, and there you go, they fit into a SF2e ranged fight.

There are plenty of uses for monstrous aliens or PF2e creatures in SF2e. But a ranged-only shootout is not one of them.

I've used so many shortbo- I mean gun, definitely gun- wielding statblocks already

Only 8 days remain... what happed to days after that? If Zoken stops counting, will we even have days after that? Will this become a new adventure "A Cosmic Countdown"? or will this be the end of Days...

Now that the question is asked, I think our safest course of action is to enshrine Zoken inside a Golden Throne, keep him from ever tasting the sweet release of death by any fel means necessary, and ensure that he never. stops. counting.

Gonna dig deep into my bag of tricks:

1. Try sometimes advancing the plot mid-combat. Whenever I've had an NPC drop some important lore while in the thick of a fight, heads have snapped up from phones.

2. Have the dynamics of the world around the fight change. If the party thinks they have a handle on the way they expect the fight to go, they'll tune out and go through the motions. It can shake them up to have something unexpected happen, like shouts in the distance, or the storm that's been going on in the background suddenly turns for the deadly taking both sides of the combat by surprise.

3. Attack the players who aren't paying attention. If it would be a coin flip either way, maybe just select a target that brings a player back into the game. It's not punishing them, it's jangling keys in front of their eyes to get their attention.

4. Assign out of character tasks. Having someone look up a rule or keep track of buffs or debuffs can give them something to do to at least stave off pulling out the phones.

5. Use more complex hazards. Nothing like solving a puzzle with your life on the line to get some between-turn mental engagement.

Has anyone heard from Zoken yet? I'm worried.

WatersLethe wrote:

Zoken... I trusted you! You were the countiest of us!

Shirren are obsessed with choices; we need a species or versatile heritage obsessed with counting. I suppose skittermnandrs could be that species if you ask them to help count. I wonder if Zoken has the countdown condition.

But we already have vampires!

Zoken... I trusted you! You were the countiest of us!

Yeah, from everything I'm seeing, the Starfriends are doing a fantastic job with the schedule they had and the amount of work to be done.

I'm pretty confident that launching now with what they have is the right call. I've argued for a long time that the next Starfinder edition needs to get in sync with PF2, so that both can benefit from one another's advancements and successes. SF1 sales got demolished by the new hotness of PF2 coming out, and had to lumber forward being constantly compared to its younger sibling. Scifi already has a harder time selling than anything fantasy, and under those conditions it was a recipe for a tough downward trend. You had people like me running Starfinder stories using PF2 rules and completely abandoning SF1 subscriptions and purchases.

If they had waited for detailed Starship combat and the technomancer and mechanic to be ready, we'd be waiting for a Gencon release of 2026 at the earliest. History has shown that timing the release around such a major convention is critical for getting sales volume, so they wouldn't want to pop SF2 out at a random time.

Every year pushed back means another year of lack of synchronicity with PF2. PF2 got a bit of a lifetime extension with the remaster, and now is the best time to have the two systems link up and not step on each others toes in the future around edition releases.

So, we may not have everything we'd like with the Starfinder launch, but we're getting:

* a cleared future roadmap without a PF3 bugbear hiding around the bend
* a ton of compatible content from PF2
* a core system a significantly larger audience is already familiar with which should help onboarding and adoption rates
* a whole load of potential customers for SF2 content who might not even be playing SF2, which should help SF2's ROI
* much increased likelihood of jumping onto the wave of upcoming PF2-engine video games
* significantly smoother staffing problems, as designer system mastery is much easier to carry over between systems
* in general a better chance of the Starfinder setting to really break out without various factors stacked against it

Nine days remeaining until the launch... no nine... no the number nine... 7,8,9,10: 9.

Sorry, some ASE goon thought I was telling him no.

Not to be a buzzkill, but...

LET'S GET HYPED! IT'S ALMOST HERE!!

Demiplane's Starfinder 2e Nexus is going to be the most similar to the D&D Beyond experience from what I've been told. Unfortunately it's expensive. You'll be paying a LOT to get access to everything other characters will give you for free.

Hephaistos is a really slick free option, and it's been kept up to date throughout the playtest and is a delight to use. Unfortunately compatibility with PF2 content is not a priority.

The creator of Pathbuilder 2e said that Starbuilder is 100% on his roadmap, and we can expect some web application progress toward that around October, with more complete app support in December. He's got a wrist injury if I recall correctly, so things could vary. For all the features of Starbuilder it'll likely cost you a one time fee of $5. This is going to be my preferred option.

I used a fan created playtest JSON for Pathbuilder and I can definitely see the fully supported Starbuilder being the best option for many.

Justnobodyfqwl wrote:

Ok, ok, I'll bite: I think I'm literally the only person on this forum who has never heard of Warframe until last week. I watched the Starfriends play it, and I couldn't tell if it was an MMO or Mario Teaches Typing.

What's Warframe? What makes it so perfect for SF2e? I just watched a guy with spider arms jump a lot and I feel like I know even less than I thought.

Warframe is technically an MMO I think? It's a multiplayer 3rd person shooter. Gameplay emphasizes movement, with wall jumping, sliding, and leaping, while fighting hordes of enemies. Players (primarily) control the titular warframes, which have a range of themed abilities: The warframe Volt has electricity based powers, the warframe Zephyr has wind powers, the warframe Mirage has flashy, trickery based abilties based on her jester theme, etc.

Story wise, the game takes place in a ravaged, far future Sol system. Players navigate a map of the solar system across settlements, facilities, and space stations on or orbiting the planets as well as some of the most prominent moons and dwarf planets. The three classic enemy factions are the Grineer, Cloned workers who serve a pair of Queens, The Corpus, a tense alliance of megacorps, and the Infected, warped versions of the other two factions tainted by a bioweapon.

Player characters are known as Tenno, who control the warframes. The Tenno are few in number but stage commando raids and shock assaults to disrupt the enemy factions to protect the last independent human colonies at the behest of the Lotus, a mysterious benefactor with a maternal streak.

That's skipping well over a decade of lore including a fourth enemy faction, how the Origin System got this way, two independent villains, and a looming journey to Tau Ceti, but I hope what I wrote is digestible.

Thank you so much! This is exactly the context I needed.

That's fair. Archetypes have seen the preponderance of development.

But if there were more room, maybe fighters, barbarians, and rangers would have gotten stuff too. I'm just saying it's not like people can't want more options than they're getting, and it's pretty fair to expect that to be possible with only one class per book.

Didn't Battlecry! HAVE a ton of of new feats for existing classes and stuff? I always find it odd when this is brought up as an either or thing.

Well, looking at the "Batlecry! Martials and New Feats!" thread it looks like THE martial book has no new feats for fighters, barbarians, and rangers.

This is awesome. I wish I could get this mad about books I haven't read that contain most of the things that I want. I've never even considered getting upset at people telling me that I'm going to get everything I wanted.

It's like watching an olympic event.

From Maya:

Posting this here too for awareness! For everyone asking about the Starfinder Second Edition Player Core PDF, we're sorry for any confusion! I have tracked down the source! This change is a one-time change due to the nature of Starfinder Second Edition launching for the first time. The Starfinder Player Core is a major system launch, and we are making sure that everyone possible has the opportunity to get their copy (physical or digital) at the same time, on the release day. This change does not affect other future releases.

Your PDFs will be added to your accounts on July 31st, the same day that Starfinder Player Core launches worldwide. Thanks for showing us how hyped you all are for the book and the new system launch!

Do Deep Rock Galactic next!

For the record, offering incentives for Bluesky is just as offensive to some of us as offering incentives for Twitter/X is for others.

lol. lfmao.

Probably what makes more classes sell more books is that some people will be interested in one but not the other and vice versa.

I think shifting to 1 class books, and adding more options for existing classes, would be a natural transition to make. The older classes get more to play with and the new classes get more room to come out swinging.

I'm personally burnt out from playtesting multiple classes anyway, and tend to focus on one of the two each time a playtest cycle comes up.

I'd also love to see more optional systems built out and actually playtested, instead of slapped into each AP willy nilly. Could start leaning into building up support for various genres rather than relying on them being made up ad hoc.

Xenocrat wrote:

Taunt doesn’t have the emotion or mental trait, so it’s not really a taunt at all. You’re not making the mindless zombie mad at you.

Maybe I'm just MMO brained but I don't see a problem with Taunt being named Taunt as "universal ability that draws aggro to you". Since that is ubiquitously what that kind of ability is called in games.

Very easy to use it that way now that's not resisted by Will.

A skeleton [...] now just wants to feel the sun on his bones.

Skeletons will only do this when in distress. It's not normal, healthy behavior.

Anyway, what vague character concepts are y'all hoping to realize? I've got an idea for a vlaka borai operative who "survived" getting their face torn off, and now stalks from the shadows like a skull-faced movie monster.

I'm kind of getting Diablo 4 mephisto vibes.

There are a TON of concepts I want to play, it's so hard to narrow down.

I might want to play a human priest of triune and do some sort of techpriest engineseer type character.

Yeah, the name and flavor of taunting feels so utterly wrong for every sort of Guardian/bodyguard/protector that I'd want to play (or perhaps even interact with). Seems more in Rogue/Swashbuckler territory, and there are better names like Engage. But also yeah, if it can be reflavored w/ only slight dissonance, then yay, that is if the mechanics have been fixed as us playtesters suggested.

I always despised the concept of playing a bodyguard who, instead of jumping between their charge and a threat, tries to somehow influence the psychology of the threat to make it marginally less likely to attack their charge. It's like... if it were my bodyguard I would fire them immediately if they thought taunting was an option to rely on.

Since the new taunt mechanic applies automatically, and guarantees an attack penalty, AND makes the foe off-guard, it *feels* much more like a reliable combat mechanic. I can imagine it as something the guard is physically doing. I will absolutely be roleplaying it as such.

For people who have the book, can you build a Guardian that works without taunting?

I am not a fan of having taunt be built in. The fantasy of it just doesn't work at all for me. However, since it no longer requires a save and no longer cripples your own AC, it seems MUCH easier to just reflavor as focusing on interfering with a target. Sort of like a hunt prey type ability.

Close up it's easy to imagine, but at a distance it could be a variety of things like faking lunges, reflecting light in their eyes, making loud noises when it looks like they're about to swing, or some kind of anime "killing intent" type thing.

Not perfect but I can work with it.