Wrath's page

The price is close to triple the previous value at each increment

The issue I was trying to point out at the beginning of this aside is that loot is often an item like a gun. The other characters will often pick up said gun and use it. The caster that doesn't want to use a gun has to take his share of loot (in guns) and sell them, for which he gets a megar return. If he then is expecting to buy large amounts of spell gems to fill actions in combat that he isn't shooting, with the credits he got for the guns he's sold, he's going to run short very quickly.

Some people have been proposing that a character can do this and be just fine based on wbl charts. At character creation maybe, but unless a gm is going to drop quite a few spell gems instead of guns you won't be able to keep this statagy up.

The issue basically boils down to this. If you are selling stuff instead of using it starfinder punishes you. You can't expect to do this constantly and not fall behind characters that don't do this.

Then perhaps you could run it like my groups do. If an item drops and someone can use it, we calculate the equivalent monetary cost and ensure that others get that amount eventually. It’s a tally system.

Eg soldier picks up a gun worth 2000 credits. He decides to keep it.
Soldier doesn’t get any of the funds from selling loot until the 2000 credits is accumulated (either through credits or other guys picking up gear as well)

And I’ll also point out once more - if a person decides to deliberately ignore gear they can use because they decide they want to buy gear that isn’t dropping, then that is their issue, not everyone else’s. If a player says “I refuse to use that gun that’s an improvement to my gear, because I want to use more spell gems” well that’s really their cross to bear.

Let's not forget that WBL is also "self-replenishing" by nature. If you blow up 20k credits in spell gems in a very tough fight, you're supposed to regain these credits over time through your next encounters, with some of that regained wealth in hard credits, and the rest in the form of other consumables.

.

Yeah.....that’s not true.

If someone decides to spend all their wealth on consumable items and another party member spends it on retainable gear, why should the consumable guy get rewarded with more loot?

WBL is a guide of how much you’ve earned in that level. How you spend it is up to you.

Yeah, I guess if that’s where you think you’re wanting to be as the soldier, it might work.

I just don’t see them starting out with a 14 intelligence unless they have a very specific design in mind to skill up.

I see it as way down the line from Dex, Con and Wisdom, all of which add to saves at least.

But then, I’m also not worried about a character only having 50%chance of passing a skills test, honestly. It actually makes the dice important game again.

The obsession with maths and perfectly balanced classes also delivered 4th edition.

That turned out a little differently than the devs expected, despite addressing nearly every issue that folks were complaining about for 3.5

I wouldn’t call it a cartel.

There’s barely twenty people who post in these threads with regularity. 4 of them seem to regularly disagree with you. (If you’re correct about the “same three folks” statement above)

There’s probably a few more who just don’t care enough to post about the disagreement.

As for maths being the only way to prove an items worth in a roleplay game, that’s a very poor metric for so many aspects of the game.

As much mileage comes from inspiration provided and situational play between a group.

If it all only came down to math, roleplay games would suck.

I’m of the opinion that if it doesn’t have a mechanical reason or the player isn’t going to later try and leverage advantage from it, then just leave it as charcater choice.

However, if the player is later trying to leverage reputation that gives advantage somehow (because they were a total bad @$$ and didn’t even whimper during torture) then some form of roll or expenditure of resource needs to be made.

I really like the idea of spending resolve that was mentioned above. Perfect example how those points could be used outside normal expectations. But that becomes a house rule.

Otherwise it’s a fort save or will save (GMs call) which falls less in the house rule domain and more in the GM applying current rules to unusual situations.

Wrath wrote:

CeeJay is also ignoring the very large group of people who buy the modules because they don’t have time to design their own game.

Admittedly I do think if you don't have time to adapt modules to work for your table, you should probably think about whether RPGs are really for you.

Quote:

large numbers of people are buying the modules that Paizo produce.

Of course. I'm one of them. I have several SFS modules and all of the Dead Suns content to this point. I just adapt the content.

Quote:

I will go so far as to say that CeeJay is on the minority for play style in this hobby.

I make no claims either way. All I'll say is that if you want to get the most out of this hobby as any other, you have to be willing to invest some time and effort to make it work for your group.

What an amazingly arrogant statement.

I will say that I currently play a number of systems where I don’t have to modify the content in the prepublished adventures in order to make it enjoyable for my group.

That includes both pathfinder and fifth edition.

However, what these last few posts of yours has certainly demonstrated to me is your complete lack,of understanding of the player base in the hobby world. It explains a number of your previous statements in other threads. It also makes much of what you have to say worthless in discussions about game play issues or balance.

You have a firmly concreted stance of “I don’t have an issue so it can’t be a problem”, and then dismiss any other style of play than what you use as irrelevant and wrong.

You may not find a problem with the game, and that’s fine. But your arrogant and dismissive attitude towards other people’s experiences and findings is unpalatable.

CeeJay is also ignoring the very large group of people who buy the modules because they don’t have time to design their own game.

Paizo makes the majority of its money from its adventures, not the rules. It’s why they make the rules free (eventually this will happen for Starfinder)

What that tells me is large numbers of people are buying the modules that Paizo produce. The expectation being they should work really well with the rules as written. The most that may need changing is the odd equipment drop that may not suit any one in the group.

In fact, I will go so far as to say that CeeJay is on the minority for play style in this hobby.

Back to graviton stuff.

Situations where graviton mode can be great,

- zero G environments. Pulling the enemy off the wall leaving them floating in space and possible accelerating to a bad place.
- any situation where there’s dangerous environmental factors that you pull them into (quicksand, head vents, electric fences, laser traps, mine fields to name some)
- when the Solarian is above the targets. If he’s on the ceiling through suction boots or the Solarian ability and he just lifts the enemy up and then drops them again. Even more effective if his companions have readied actions to shoot the enemy mid lift. This even works if the Solarian is on a balcony above them.
- if the enemy is on a cliff or ledge.
- if an enemy is flying

Those are just ones I can think of and that’s only dealing with the one power everyone’s seems to whinge about.

Some of the graviton modes in a Star Wars style setting are going to much more viable than folks are giving them credit for.

There’s no railings in Star Wars for the most part and they regularly have strings on high platforms and across elevator shafts and around into for space hangars.

For my part, I saw a Solarian pull 3 enemies from out of cover after flanking them. This allowed his companions and some NPCs shoot them without the cover advantage.

The same Solarian pulled an enemy into the the middle of an elevator shaft and it fell three stories. It’s a complicated situation, you’ll need to read the Legendary planets AP to get full gist of why that fight is happening.

As is, I haven’t read anywhere in the setting of the game where there are safety railings etc. Nothings to say Starfinder isn’t similar to the Star Wars universe thematically.

Having said that, I’d like to see that particular revelation be enabled to work in both directions. Either a pull or a push. Effectively the Solarian draws a well of gravity to him during combat but then relases it like a magnetic coil eruption that cause the huge solar flares in the sun. It pushes enemies away if you want, or you could still use it to pull them.

No. That isn't what it is boiling down to. A magic gun does not a spellcaster make.

Spell casters do things other than damage with their spells.

Does everyone seriously think that the only way to solve problems is supposed to be 'do hit point damage' to it?

And here is where the problem lies.

Let’s say you have spells that allows you to solve a threat in combat without damage. Charming or dominating or fearing them or whatever method it is.

Now in one action you have removed a threat from the game, no matter how many hit points it has. It may have taken a combatant based class two or three rounds to have the same effect.

So, now we start putting in classes that can effectively drop that,type of spell more frequently, as is the current request for this thread.

Every round in a combat there’s a potential for the caster to remove one or more threats using just one spell slot or action. No matter how many hit points.

What if the group is trying to talk their way out instead?

Well, there’s a few ways to boost your skills in diplomacy and intimidate etc that means you can use skills to achieve this.
If you start adding spells that remove the need to make skill checks, then you’re destroying the build potential for whole other classes.
If you start increasing the number of times a caster can spam the “boom I win.”spell then you are really starting to impact on the effectiveness of other classes.

Even if it’s a spell that boosts skills instead of just wins the roll, you are making other players investments into their characters almost worthless.

Please take in to account that the classes need to be balanced not just for what is currently available in the game, but for what might potentially come out in the future. Limiting the amount of casting you can do may well be a design philosophy put in place to mitigate future abuse of the system

Starfinder has also made skills more important again. There aren’t spells out there that just completely negate the need for them any more.

Hopefully this trend continues. If not....well it sucks to be the guy invested in hacking skills and information gathering when the caster beside him just waved his fingers and the computer spews out answers, or his chosen deity just whispers the meta plot into his ear.

Remember, spell slots aren’t just used for combat. The more slots provided combined with a growing list of utility spells that are bound to come, the less that skill checks will become important.

Having said that, the designers are doing ok so far, having spells provide bonuses to skill checks rather than just replacing the need for it all.

I'm going to marvel at the vastly different playstyle some other people have from me when they think time stop is a broken 9th level spell. IMO time stop is a workhorse spell of that level, about average of what you should expect. Not great, but it gets the job done.

It's certainly not nearly as strong as shades, gate, wish, mage's disjunction, and the like.

Time stop is just the example someone used above. On its own it’s perfecly fine. Combined with summons and other spells it becomes unbalancing compared to what other players are able to do.

The point I’m making is it doesn’t matter how many spell slots you give casters, it’s the tools you provide that they can spend spell slots on.

In other words, there’d be no problem with full progression casters, as long as the spells remained in check. At which point casters would complain about how weak the spells were more than likely.

For those very keen to play full casters though, there are rules in the book for converting Pathfimder material over to Starfinder.

Use at your own risk

Wrath wrote:

Actually, I’m basing it off the stats of critters in the bestiary book.

Stats for which you have little in-play context by your own account.

Quote:

But hey, keep telling me my stuff is limited and your homebrew is correct.

My "homebrew" consists of reading the rules and having played the game for more than a few sessions at a stretch. We established that part last go-round, remember? I'm not insulting you, I'm just stating a fact: you're simply not in a position to make broad definitive statements about how the system works. And you cannot generalize how combat works from looking at attack bonuses in the Alien Archive, which goes to the discussion we just had about the limits of "theory."

(Hmmm. Do I want to know what happened to enemies being too "easy" to hit to the point where players were supposed to not care about armour, earlier claims which your most recent outing more-or-less directly contradicts? Probably not, I guess? If this is a fresh theoretical angle you've derived from reading the Alien Archive since that's fine, I just think you should be forthright that that's all it is.)

Creatures are easy to hit, which again makes leaving your own cover to shoot them almost pointless.

For the few fights we had where the enemy AC was high, the less combat oriented classes were very restricted in what options were available. Basically debuff. Now we didn’t have too many fights like this, but the ones we did have lasted for quite a few rounds longer than many roleplay games. Again, this is the mechanical design of the game. It’s a stated design goal in fact. So now you face situations where some players are pretty much doing the same action each round (which isn’t perceived as doing much to the enemy) for 4 or five rounds or about 30minutes of real time.

Now let me again talk about my experience.
I’ve run two published AP sections from two different publishing companies who’s job it is to design adventures

I will only discuss the combat part of those (as indeed all my points to date have been about) since it’s the core mechanic which really turned our group off.

The monsters and NPCs in those games were designed to the rules in the Alien Archive. This was able,to be done because a) the first module was written by the very people who wrote the alien archive which were using the rules before the public got hold of them and b) the second module was using the same rules as the alien archive because a number of publishing companies also had access to those rules prior to the public getting access to them.

I ran one of my groups for 4 sessions and they got to level 3 at the end of the first part of the Paizo module. I had five players in that group.

I ran a second group for 9 sessions and got through to level five eventually in a second AP I’ve already mentioned to you. We honestly nearly quit by level 3of that one as well but I convinced th m to take a short two week break and come back to it. By level five the five players in that group also thought the combat was not up to par.

So I have DMd 14 sessions with ten different players using official and third party modules which in turn used official rules for combat and NPC design.

My experience is more than enough to make a judgement on a game system on whether I think it’s worth pursuing compared to the myriad of other games out there.

From what Youve states so far, you’re running homebrew games while making adjustments that you feel need to be made.

You have every right to enjoy your game, but do not denegrate my opinion on the game by saying my experience is limited so therefore wrong.

And all of that is just talking about the issues with combat and NPC design that my players had. None of it comes from “this needs to be pathfinder and it’s not” because apart from me and one other player, the groups I run with don’t do pathfinder any more.

There are other omissions in the system which the groups didn’t like, but they are far more subjective than the combat stuff so I haven’t bothered mentioning them in this thread.

Again I’d like to emphasize that you don’t get an opinion until you actually play the game...we are all open to discussion and criticism from people who at least try it for a few sessions.

Which you have repeatedly told us you havent

His complaint is about the aspect of the system that happens outside of playing the game.

That is, the building of characters and how he loves complexity and problem solving in that aspect. You can do thatnall,day every day and never roll a dice in your life.

As such, he has every right to make a statement on why he doesn't like this system. He even went through the comparison for purely CRB in Pathfinder vs Starfinder and still finds it lacking.

I'm going to agree with his findings too. Starfinder is far more like 5e in that regard (and in quite a few others as well).

For me though, that's a positive in favour of Starfinder over Pathfinder. For the very reason it really helps prevent rules lawyers and munchkins from trying to break the system.

The problem of course comes down to this. My group has played quite a bit of 5e now and the players have seen or played through nearly every class combination possible. The shine is wearing off. At least Starfinder is going to continue growing the races and classes options at a faster rate than 5e.

@ceeJay - I'll absolutely concede you point about third party content. The one I ran was the first part of legendary planets . It's basically an AP that's been designed for fantasy based systems (Pathfinder and fifth edition) but they've shoe horned Starfinder into it.

It's more pulp sci fantasy than the setting in the core book, so some of the base skills are not overly useful already. I actually wrote a review on the module.

The content as far as story goes is perfectly fine. It would be a really good Pathfinder adventure actually. But it wasn't working overly well for me as DM for Starfinder.

However, despite those flaws the encounters were designed using the system in Starfinder, so our issue with combat wouldn't change really.

But it's a very fair point you make about using third party stuff to judge a system.

Sadly we found the official content ran the same.

Meh. It's a game. Plenty of people are finding it really awesome for them, so I think that's great.

I believe for my group, we're planning on using some of the design theories of Starfinder and putting them to the chassis of Fragged Empire. Fragged is a really robust game mechanically, but suffers from really poor layout and explanations on how things work in the book. Having read all the Starfinder stuff, I have a far better idea in how to effectively use Fragged.

So for me, none of my money was wasted in all honesty. It just didn't pan out for the group the way I'd hoped.

@ Sid de Squid - that's a needlessly aggressive response to something that's now been discussed for nearly 300 posts.

There's nothing you've said that hasn't already been discussed, without the arrogant and aggressive overtones.

I think you'll find the Gap is going to play exactly the same as the cause of Arodens death in Pathfinder.

It's a major part of the setting that no one outside of Paizo ever gets to find out. If you remove that meta mystery, you then negate the very reasons for it being there in the first place. That reason is to provide a distinct divide between the two game systems and not have to worry about one development team stepping ont the toes of the other as far as creative writing goes.

Personally for me, I'd love nothing more than to find out Aroden died when he slipped in the shower and the gap just happens to be the time when all the gods went on a pub crawl,and got so drunk they just forgot what happened. Nothing more sinister than that.

But I don't think it's going to pan out that way

There are plenty of settings that do not use the undead as purely evil.

Eberron comes to mind immediately. It was by far my favourite setting for 3.5 purely because of its moral greyness. There were evil undead in that game, but there were also non evil undead including the deathless leaders of the eleven nations.

Disc World (which has its own games associated with it) has non evil undead. They are even protesting their rights to proper citizenship in that game.

Some of the barbarian and other tribal classes have access to spiritual ancestors who provide advice or fight next to you briefly or guard you at night etc etc. they are spirits who protect the living.

Star Wars has force ghosts!

I fully support the idea of not liking a setting because it doesn't meet your needs or expectatiOns though.

For me personally, the setting is never the reason I dislike rules. There are so many settings out there I can choose whatever one I want and lay the Starfinder Rules over the top of them.

For Sci Fi, my two favourite settings from game companies so far are from Fragged empire (humans are extinct in this setting, and there's already been two apocalypse events from which societey has re emerged.), and Infinty (table top game by Corvus Belli)

Star Wars could also work fairly easily for Starfinder, just retooling the fluff of mystics and technomancer into Jedi and Sith aspects.

So if it's just setting that bothers someone, no real,issue.

However, the original poster who began this particular train of thought on the undead had a plethora of reasons why they didn't like the game, not just the setting.

the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh wrote:

How in the name of all that's unholy are the NPCs supposed to know this ?

Generally because most NPCs don't really expect to have multiple life or death encounters a day. PCs do and that's an unusual situation.

See, now this is where I think people have it wrong.

Why are the PCs in a fight with the baddies? Because the baddies do bad things, probably regularly enough that they have more than one shootout or rumble in short amount of time.

Why do the bad guys think the PCs are the only ones coming in the attack? Would it not be just as logical for them to think that maybe this is the first wave? Maybe reinforcements are coming, or multiple squads have infiltrated the base.

The players and the DM know that it's likely to be their one and only encounter, but the NPCs have no idea about this.

In actuality, the players shouldn't either. Why would they think there's going to be more than one nasty thing inside the floating space ship, if anything at all? Unless they've done scouting to know what's in an enemy base, why would they think there's more than one group of enemies to fight?

You're using gamist thinking to justify NPC actions. Try running your NPCs the way the players run their characters. I mean how unrealistic is it for the enemy to fall back,and come at them another time?

And so far all the nay Sayers seem to believe this conflict be teen players and NPCs is only happening in the home base of the enemy as a last stand. What an amazingly limited way of thinking that encounters occur.

As an example, let's look at the first encounter in the AP. two groups of gangsters shooting it out with the PCs caught between. The gangsters aren't in their home base, and for all they know they may have to conduct a running battle to retreat back to their safe havens. Why on earth would they go full psycho any more than the players would?

What about when the players are at the base of the gangsters. Suddenly there's a shootout, why are the gangsters thinking "This is my last shootout, better go gangbusters and expend everything I have?" After all, they are embroiled in a minor gang war at the moment and presumably have other gang related activities occurring which means they might be expecting more trouble to come knocking.

@jimthegray - I didn't even mention other editions until someone asked me to bring them up. Please don't push your agenda onto me.

If you think it's a well known fact that pathfinder players hate 4th ed, please point me to the evidence supporting this.

I, for example, played Pathfinder and 4th edition concurrently for quite some time. I still play Pathfinder occasionally. I don't play 4th ed at all.

I also don't play Starfinder at all.

You'll note I also don't play Dragon Warriors, Earthdawn, Fragged Empire, inquisitor or Any of the other games I listed early, despite some of them being amazing games.

Starfinder has similar mechanical changes to both 5th edition and 4th edition. It also has similar mechanical changes to Fragged empire.

The ones similar to fifth ed I don't mind at all. The ones resembling Fragged Empire and 4th edition I also don't mind, but my players really disliked.

Now, if you have a problem with someone mentioning other game systems in a comparative manner, the problem lies with you, not me.

@ CeeJay - yeah, that's part of the argument the Jeff was making about why he thinks Starfinders system is better. Combat is balanced differently so it doesn't need enemies to go Nova really.

Having said that, Going Nova is a term originally associated with Magic users. Not something that's as likely to apply in Starfinder given the lower power threshold of Magic in the game.

I had a discussion on these threads years ago about how people were designing their encounters and why it was leading to some perceived issues with Pathfinder. It was particularly to do with caster martial disparity and the fact that in a fight against PCs, a single high power caster could be a total fight on its own. This upset folks who thought that was too powerful.

Myself and a few others noted that this power only existed because effectively all the DM was expecting the enemy caters to do all day was hold on to their power and fight PCs who happened to rock on past. I suggested that you should maybe start designing them so that spell slots had utility spells for daily use in their plans and maybe even (shock and horror) have spent some, if not the majority of the their Magic doing the evil things they do prior to the PCs coming into contact with them.

In my campaigns, I ran a concept where enemy power tended to dwindle through time in a day cycle (I would randomly determine this if it was necessary ). My players though it was great that night they spent time scouting an area, they could get a read on how effective an enemy might be at any one time and choose their battles a little better.

I didn't do it all the time, but certainly enough that it impacted game play style.

I also do things with travel scenarios where I run random encounters. I'll vary how many the players will have in a day so they don't get into the mind set of "well, there's our random encounter over, all good" . Mixing things up like that makes the game more exciting for us.

Wrath wrote:

Farlanghn wrote:

Wrath wrote:

But, when the guys in the first encounter are rolling at +6 to hit and adding numbers to their gun damage when only my best player combatant can hope to hit with those numbers and still can't add damage to the guns.....well that doesn't fly with my players.

You let your players know what bonuses the enemies have?

I roll open dice, and my players can do math.

For someone who mentions immersion as much as you do, it seems like rolling out in the open is a pretty big immersion breaker. But that's just me. Do you also let your players role their own Stealth checks too?

Yes. and I roll perception for enemies in the open as well. This can go any number of ways. The enemy obviously fails, players get to,do,sneaky stuff. The enemy obviously passes, the enemies respond to the players trying to,do sneaky stuff. The enemy rolls close, but players don't know if they've been spotted or not until the enemy acts.

None of that breaks immersion.

Immersion comes from consistency in how the game world works. No matter what happens, there's always a mechanical aspect to a rolplay game (dice rolling). That's not what I'm discussing when I discuss players feeling connected to a game world

I also let my players roll,perception too. But I don't tell them the DC thy need. Because despite your hyperbole, I do roll in secret occasionally when the situation requires it for suspense. I don't roll secretly in combat though, again unless it's for something the players just won't know about.

@thejeff - I suggest you look at the modules I listed. The NPCs are not designed any differently. In fact, this occurs because your players could in fact just attack and kill them rather than bring them along. As such, they are built using the guidelines for all NPCs and not PC guidelines.

As a DM, you could redesign these NPCs to follow player builds, but then that's time and energy that you wouldn't need to bother with if the system used the same rules.

Wrath wrote:

But, when the guys in the first encounter are rolling at +6 to hit and adding numbers to their gun damage when only my best player combatant can hope to hit with those numbers and still can't add damage to the guns.....well that doesn't fly with my players.

You let your players know what bonuses the enemies have?

I roll open dice, and my players can do math.

Absolutely, I fully understand the game design behind it. Especially for action economy. That doesn't stop the game from breaking immersion for players.

4th edition was a classic for this.
Encounter design and running games in that system was just pure joy as a DM. It was so cleverly thought out and so very streamlined. The mechanics for running the game were glorious as a DM. But my players hated it, because it completely broke their sense of connectedness when the humans they were fighting could do stuff completely outside the range of what the players had any chance of achieving.

As for the gong nova issue, try putting your players regularly against teams of enemies with as much power and action economy as the players have and watch how fast they begin to Nova. Or try breaking your game play up so that players have no idea how many encounters they have a day. It could be one, it could be ten! Or, try running encounters where the enemies are holding back because they actually have agendas and plans that run beyond dealing with the players today.

All of that is possible in systems where the rules are consistent between player and NPC, and they all add to immersion in the game world

Redelia wrote:

The biggest problem with NPCs and PCs being built differently is how to handle the situation when an NPC joins the party for a while. And players being the creatures of chaos that they are, you can't predict ahead of time which ones they will try to recruit. So you either build every NPC twice, once as NPC and once as PC, have weirdly unbalanced fights by having the NPC still use NPC stats, or have the game come to a screeching halt while you rebuild the NPC they've recruited. And this is not an infrequent thing in my games. The little bit of extra time to build every NPC like a PC is a far better solution than any of the above, but because of how the math works, it's not a good option in Starfinder.

The only reason for this to happen on a regular basis is if your running with only 2-3 players and didn’t have the foresight to tell them to each make 2 characters to play

That's blatantly false, and provably so. Pathfinder and Starfinder have adventure paths where NPCs Jon the players all the time. They can become regular and recurring aspects of game play. Hells, in Pathfinder they can even become co-Horts if you take leadership.

Starfinder has space Goblins and a mercenary that can join you in the second act of the very first adventure path they wrote fo it!

In fact, there's another adventure path written for Starfinder called legendary planets. The second or third encounter sets up a recurring NPC who,travels with you for three character levels!

Now, as for the Solarion thing mentioned so far.

None of us made it that far in the system to meet that NPC. It's completely irrelevant to my argument.

But, when the guys in the first encounter are rolling at +6 to hit and adding numbers to their gun damage when only my best player combatant can hope to hit with those numbers and still can't add damage to the guns.....well that doesn't fly with my players.

This disconnect doesn't make my players feel heroic, it actually makes them feel,constantly weaker than the standard enemies they face. "By the gods, even a lowly ganger is better at this than my operative with all his specialist training" is not a good way to make the players feel,connected to a system.

- also, someone mentioned above about NPCs going Nova etc, and felt that was what contributes to this. If your DM constantly Nova's your enemies and it bugs you, then that's the issue with the DM, not the game. If you consider the world in which a bad guy is plotting things that cause the players to come along then you should also,consider that the bad guy has probably spent some resources that day actually doing bad guy,things!

To put it another way - it makes sense for a bad guy to go totally deep end with damage and nova spells. They've just run into the fight of their lives where on misstep can see them dead because they are out classed and out gunned on action economy. My players have no problem with that, because it makes sense. In fact, when their characters get caught in the same situation they react the same way. Why wouldn't you? There no point worrying about possible further battles if the one your currently in is so dangerous you may not even survive.

Systems where the rules of play are consistent for players and NPCs alike (that I've played)

Dragon Warriors (first roleplay I ever tried, back in the 80s and early 90s).
Earthdawn (1st edition, no idea about the other editions)
Shadow run (1st and second editions)
DnD 3.5 (and 3.0 before that actually)
Pathfinder
5th edition
Inquisitor (Warhammer 40k roleplay. We ran 1st edition)
Warhammer Fantasy roleplay (1st edition from the 90s)

All of those have creatures that have unique rules, which doesn't bother us. However all of them build and run NPCs off the same mechanics and guidelines as the players.

5th edition is a little looser in this regards with things getting pack tactics etc, but all of those abilities are easily emulated by player options.

Games where the rules for NPCs are significantly different than for PCs (That I've played)
- Fragged Empire
- DnD 4th edition
- Starfinder

None of those lasted for groups. All of those are easier to DM than the first list (except 5th edition DnD, which is very easy to design and run games for.) but ease of DMing does not mean the gameplay enjoyment for the players will be better.

For those who questioned my points

- the recommendation in the book is purchasing of gear at level +2, sometimes +3 in big trade centres. That's where the balance point is. Feel free to stray from that but this game is pretty finely tuned in combat. I think messing with that recommendation will mess your game up pretty fast.

- yes there are systems where creatures are built with very different rules to the players. We don't like an of those systems really. None of us have an issue with creatures having unique abilities because it's a dragon or a troll or whatever, but when the entire build mechanics differs from what players can do, it breaks out immersion. Why should a human NPC get to do all this other stuff and shoot better and add more damage to his gun, than the human player character?

- I personally don't mind any of the issues I outlined, except the ridiculous maths that creeps in for high level play. My group really disliked this game. It's difficult to play a game designed for four or five players if you're the only one sitting at the table.

So instead, we play games we all like. It's why I didn't invest any more money into this than the PDF core book and issue one of the AP.

The mechanics of the game have similar connotations as 4th edition, we found. The arbitrary nature of level caps on gear and the fact enemies are built and function differently to players. While I thought those rules were great as a DM (they make running a balanced game far easier), the rest of the group hated it.

Resource tracking - the seriously tedious math is why our group eventually quit Pathfinder as well. It just became no fun to run combats with all the buffs and de buffs flying around, especially at high level. We all felt that this was going to be true in Starfinder as well.

I imagine plenty of folks will have fun with this system, but I fully understand why others are leaving it or not getting into it at all.

@CeeJay, yeah that all makes sense.

I've never been one to worry that PCs don't have access to everything .NPCs do.

Ancient law lost to time, new mutations of power, cultural or racial incompatibility.
Theres any number of reasons why PCs might come across things they can't do.

I ran a homebrew Pathfinder campaign once where only those of noble heritage could tame and ride gryphons and hypogriphs. I used it to show a class divide in my setting and it added to the players immersion in the world by adding a touch of envy to the game.

This isn't exactly the same, but touches on the same themes.

If it helps, you could always think of this like the Jedi and Sith. In the movies they had lost access to powers from the past that they lamented not being able to do any more.

" Have you ever heard the tragedy of Darth Plageus the wise?"......

Farlanghn wrote:

Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:

... I was just f#%~ing talk about this s&#+ in the Alien Archive thread as a hypothetical and it turns it out it was already a thing.

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

What was the hypothetical?

A PC Solarion seeing an NPC Solarion making ranged attacks with their stuff and wanting to do that later only to be told “lol nope, NPCs use different rules than you”

4th edition does this. So does fifth edition.

Starfinder is not Pathfinder, in far more ways than folks think I believe.

Stellar rush is useful, no doubt. If I was going to be in close combat often, it's definitely an ability I would b choosing.

But I suspect it would not be a power I'd be getting off every combat.

I certainly wouldn't be doing the rush along walls then fall prone on the ground move suggested above by HWalsh. That opens you up to an AoO (leaving your square in a threatened area) and leaves you prone in melee. That's just....well stupid.

I've seen too many situations where the terrain just stops the charge for enemies in cover. That includes with th caveat of moving first to try an open up charge lane. This is particularly true in corridors and buildings. Cover is just so much more prevalent in Starfinder.

I also think the revelations and how you choose them would heavily depend on the way you play.

If you're playing society games, where you have no idea who you're allies are going to be from one game to the next, then I would be choosing powers that work for me as an individual more than ones than synergise in groups.

However, in games where I know the other players and characters, I'd be choosing more revelations based around team dynamics. I mean, you throw radiation at a group of combatants and combine it with the Feint ability of allies (or yourself if you've gone improved Feint) and your debuffs start looking much better.

So, like all the revelations, Stellar Rush has varying value dependant on the campaign your in. It's still a hard one to pass up if you're planning on getting up close and personal as often as possible.

I have some starship miniatures for sale at 0-hr.com. They come with a 1 inch hex flight stand. There are also complete deckplans available for every ship, both as a PDF file and as a (real) 24x36 poster at miniature scale (1 inch = 5 ft) with a 1 inch grid built into the map. The resin miniatures are $9 and the deckplan posters are $20. The PDF files are for sale at RPGNow.

0-hr Web Shop
Pic of the ships

There are sample docs and a gallery of starship renders at 0-hr.com as well.

Those ships look really good. Nice range too!

@Quandary - nope, she specifically calls out replacing the need for social skills with other skills for important moments like meeting the king.

She's complaining that a social score is useless because her DM lets their group change the rules and functions of a skill set to circumvent weaknesses in their class. That's perfectly fine in your home game, but claiming a stat is useless because your home rules is wrong.

Additionally, your first example is ridiculous. Unless given good reason to refuse you entry then you won't need a diplomacy for that situation at all. It's like me making you roll athletics checks every time you need to open a door, or intelligence checks every time you want to read a sign.

As for your second situation. The first roll is definitely diplomacy. You failed. Sucks to be you. Maybe if your friends had all chipped in with aid another you'd have passed.
The final,attempt is a bluff check though. You're deliberately trying to trick them using reverse psychology. This time you're the one trying to change which skill is being used to circumvent weakness. Failing the bluff means they don't fall for the trick and still don't take the antidote.

AND ANOTHER THING! I value social skills lower in general because the truth is that when you play social, you can fluff your way around them much more readily than you can around something like your hit bonus. You might convince your DM to give you +2 to hit if you do something especially dazzling, but if you're trying to get an audience with a king, you can probably manage it with all kinds of different skill combinations. You might REALLY need diplomacy that one time that you have to convince the king his vizier is going to assassinate him, but most of the time if you get creative, you'll be able to work your way around needing to roll.

And that's sort of my other beef with Charisma. I AM a social player, and when I'm reduced to actually using the social skills directly, it's almost never as fun. Using the social skills is the BORING part of playing a social character. It's not like I'm rolling diplomacy and oh boy what if I get a critical hit and bed all the Duke's sons! Fluffing your way through those situations IS the fun part.

That's an issue with your play style and not the rules.

There are rules in place for succeeding at social skills as much as there are for success in combat or non social skills.

If your DM is choosing to ignore them because you talk your way around it, that's not the games fault.

It works the other way too. You may have a character with diplomacy through the roof, but you as an individual can't put a coherent sentence together. The rules allow your character to sweet talk his/her way in to see the grand pooh bah of wazoohland, even if you the player would get arrested for standing tomclose to the gate that leads to guard quarters.

So, Charisma exists in order to allow folks who normally aren't particularly persuasive or socially adept, to play a character who is. Just like strength lets you play Hercules or intelligence lets you play a Stephen Hawking.

Not sure if this got addressed earlier or not.

Radiation - folks are saying this power is useless against armoured foes. The environmental protection for your armour actually has to be activated for it to be in play. It takes a standard action to do that.

So, now you've dropped an AoE that will affect creatures in the first round, and cost them standard actions in the next round if they don't want to be affected again.
That's a pretty huge debuff.

Plus, there are any number of opponents who don't wear armour.

There are certainly going to be times when it just isn't worth dropping the radiation, but they are situational.

Wrath wrote:

That's a very important clarification, and speaks to their decision.

If charges weren't laid, the company would need to be careful in how they handled further interactions for legal reasons.

Imagine the repercussions if a major publishing company blacklisted someone who's business relies on the same community circles. Especially if no reported offence had occurred.

The person not reporting this may well have tied the hands of Paizo as a company.

The offences (plural) were witnessed. Whether criminal charges are pressed or not, in no way prevents Paizo from banning the attacker.

Here's Gen Con's policy
http://www.gencon.com/attend/policies

Here's the Pax (West policy
http://west.paxsite.com/safety-accessibility

Neither require that charges be brought in order to ban the harasser.

How does that hold up to a law suit for ruining a business or career? Because that was likely what had to be weighed when making decisions on the incident at that time.

Also note that a ban isn't in place yet. But given Roberts more recent posts indicating movement within the company to deal with these situations, nothings to say there won't be a future one.

What I'm saying is, taking time on a decision like this with potential ramifications for your business is prudent.

Just a point for clarification:

Someone on page 2 suggested that Paizo recommended the police not get involved. That is not true. Lisa Stevens was fully willing to involve the police but the victim did not wish to press charges. Bill was at the convention with his children and the victim did not want to negatively impact them by having their father arrested.

I don't know why the employee who was injured by Billl didn't press assault charges but that is entirely their call to make and I support their doing what is right for themselves.

However the victim was not involved in the decision-making process to not ban Bill from future conventions.

That's a very important clarification, and speaks to their decision.

If charges weren't laid, the company would need to be careful in how they handled further interactions for legal reasons.

Imagine the repercussions if a major publishing company blacklisted someone who's business relies on the same community circles. Especially if no reported offence had occurred.

The person not reporting this may well have tied the hands of Paizo as a company.

Let's see, standard operating procedure for every convention I have worked (with six years at upscale hotels in both Madison and Seattle) is to resolve situations without involving the police.

Standard operating procedure for every company I've worked for when sexual harassment claims are brought to management are to thank you for not publicizing it and handling it quietly.

So, if you're going to boycott Paizo you should include Pizza Hut, Best Western, Hyatt, Subway, The Bruce Company, and a whole mess of other places.

Just saying.

That's the point of what's being asked here though.

If a company does handle it, that's great. In other words, if they inevestigate it and act on the findings as they should, then there's nothing wrong. Doing that quietly and with as much dignity for all parties as possible is perfectly fine.

But that's not what's being claimed here.
What's being claimed here is the company hasn't dealt with the issue. The claim is they suppressed it, and continued as if nothing occurred.

So far, these are just claims though, and only from a very few people, some of which is only second hand information.

So, you're just here to whip Paizo's liberal base into a frenzy.

S+~* happens at conventions, and it honestly sounds like they handled the situation when it came up and they're working on ways it wouldn't happen again, so what purpose does bringing it up months after the fact.

Excellent trolling.

All of this is new to me.

And if you're not seeing how the current climate has changed so that this has again become relevant, then you're kidding yourself.

if it turns out Paizo as a company has been involved in suppressing reports of harassment etc, that's a pretty major deal.

The current climate means previous methods of coercion against victims have now been swept aside. Individuals and companies are now being called to justify their actions, where previously they'd been allowed to sweep it under a rug.

I don't see this as trolling. Six months ago this would have been locked down and I'd have never heard of it. This is just a re opening of cases previously ignored.

I haven't seen any proof that Paizo are doing these things, but the growing list of allegations is worriesome.

This is the point where victims should come forth and feel able to make their claims without fear of retaliation.

This will serve in one of two ways
- either no one will come forward, and all we'll have is second hand accounts which may not be true.
- or the actual victims will come forward and we will get first hand accounts at which point the company needs to respond.

What I actually think will happen is the thread just gets locked down and removed.

So far, I have seen no PROOF. Some on here are siding with the supposed victim and some are siding against her, but in the end, where is the PROOF the person did anything wrong? The nice thing with our justice system is that you actually have to prove someone committed a crime. It is the very reason Cosby got cleared. People waited too long until there was no longer any proof. So how could Jessica prove her claim? Well, she apparently did not record it, so there goes that idea. Apparently no one else is coming forward making similar claims, so that is no help. Did anyone witness it? No? Well, I guess she needs to actually make a criminal complaint. Has she? No? Then no crime was committed. That is the simple facts here.

I am not saying the dude isn't a sleaze, he very well might be. Then again, the girl might very well be trying to blackmail her way to some cash in exchange for shutting up. We simply do not know at this point.

I was a prison guard for almost 13 years. I unfortunately saw far to many people accused of rape that did not commit the crime they were accused of. Most of them involved either wives that were caught by their husbands cheating and then claiming rape OR two people getting drunk and one person regretting her drunken decision the next day. Then there was the cases of victims stories changing multiple times before AND during the trial. So at the very least this man deserves his time in court. Failing that, he is innocent.

Actually Jessica has proof of his innapropriate behaviour. She screenshotted the entire thing. Go back through the links in the thread and you'll find them.

I haven't seen any hard proof on the Paizo actions in regards to the complaints, just a growing number of complaints by more than one source.

This isn't a trial, btw. This is a place where people are expressing deep concern about a company they've been supporting for a long time, apparently actively suppressing reports of harassment and abuse for preferred clients and operators.

Paizo has long had a reputation for its acceptance and industry leadership in changing sexist/racist/bigoted views in the gaming industry. If these allegations ( a growing number of them) prove true, then they have been perpetuating a lie. Not illegal, but certainly crippling for a company reliant on its good name to stay running.

CPEvilref wrote:

Are you seriously suggesting that men and women coming forwards to report assault, harassment and abuse in varied industries is a 'hivemind manifestation' And that it's somehow unfortunately-timed with regard to RPGs and Paizo?

I mean, Robert reported the harassment and assault incident back in July.

He reported the harassment in the Pathfinder Society on the 12th of October.

It's only now, when added to Jessica Price's revelation, that this is getting traction.

Almost as if these things happen all the time, but it takes some light being shone to make people take notice of them.

I claim no expertise on the local 'trees' in this matter - however, as a student of history and psychology, and as a lifelong observer of Humanity from the perspective of an outsider, I do have enough familiarity with the 'forest' to be concerned by this very sudden flip from something that's somehow gone from an issue nobody particularly worries about to an issue that's outright monopolizing public discourse.

You're 100% wrong on the statement "nobody particularly worries about".

It's just very often that worry is swept away by those with authority to bury the story or apply pressure to ensure the claimant is discredited.

The very reason it's snowballed is because a very public and powerful media outlet finally decided to be brave enough to report and face up to the huge pressure against them.

Their gamble paid off, which shows just how many people are concerned and affected by this!

"Damnit Xera, I'm a Solarian not a doctor, what do you want me to do about it!?"

Parimer wrote:

I ran it with my PCs at 2, and they haven't had the easiest time with many of the other fights already (no deaths yet, but plenty of times 2 of the 4 have been unconscious). This fight ran a bit more smoothly. The tactics do not have it staying in melee combat 100% of the time, and it will also leave with a decent number of hit points left. It is a tough fight, but they made it through. Probably would have breezed through it pretty easily at level 3 given that a lot of classes get a decent bump in power at that level.

Level 3 Soldier with a Pulsecaster Rifle (level 1 weapon) can hit this thing for 1.5x(1d6+3) or an average of 18-19 per full attack.

Combine that with a team of level 3's and this thing can be burned down so fast.

Example:
18 avg from Soldier Pulsecaster Rifle
21 avg from Shocking Burst (technomancer)

Alone this drops the thing by 39 HP in one round. Easily allowing a group of level 3's to kill it in 2 rounds.

If they hit it. a full attack soldier is rolling at +5 to hit at best when making a full attack (assuming highest stat boost and some feat to max hit potential).

That means he only hits 30% of the time.

Which means three rounds of full attacks will hit twice. So it takes three full rounds to do the 18-19 damage you're mentioning above. Unless you're very lucky on the dice.

This thing can drop a player in that time.

You're scenario also assumes electricity damage being thrown at it. This is not very likely given what's dropped in the game and what weapons are cheap to purchase in the early levels of game play.

You're also assuming a technomancer.

So, while it is possible to kill this thing in two rounds, it's highly unlikely.
I suspect the majority of combats against it to last 4 to 6 rounds, just like the rest of the game. And it will be a very arduous 4 to 6 rounds too.

Ranklin lounged in the communal food bay of the cruise liner Baritond. The big ship was travelling real time through the Golarion system, heading deepward to Absalom station. It was a slower trip, but far more affordable for the young Solarian than hitching to a Drift ship and travelling fast.

He'd left home with barely enough creds to gain boarding and pay for food, let alone maintain his weapons and gear. Despite the dire situation of his financial status, he couldn't help but feel excited. Apart from a few of the local planet hoppers on Castrovel, he'd never been on a space faring ship. The low hum of the drive engines kept the super structure constantly vibrating, a feeling which relaxed his muscles and left him a little soporific at times. It was like he was constant,y sitting in one of those 5 Cree massage booths back home.

More exciting was the prospects of travel and discovery coming from his upcoming job. The Starfinders were running a recruitment drive after their disaster a few years back. It meant decent pay and pretty good prospects of travel,throughout the system. As Ranklin flipped through a few of the holologs detailing the Starfinders and Absalom, his mind kept drifting to thoughts of what he might discover and who he might meet in the future. It made researching hard, but he was never much good at that aspect of his job any way. Usually when he went on a bounty, he was given a dossier on the target that had been knocked together by RnD. He sighed a little, realising that wouldn't be something he could rely on any more, and went back to reading the various blogs on Absalom.

Above his head, the dark globe of Solar matter wove in aimless patterns, matching the thought processes in his mind as information was taken in and filed away for future reference, or discarded , or hazed over as other fancies took their hold.

Outside in the vast empty of space, Baritond continued its inexorable drive outwards, the faint blue trail of ionic discharge swirling in its wake as the energy shields collided with dust and hydrogen molecules every few hundred metres. Ahead, the single pinprick of light amidst a sea of stars, showed the location of Absalom, jewel of the Pact worlds.

The rule for ,multiattack specifically mentions that a creature can full attack!

It stays that if it does so, and has multi attack, it can make all of its listed ones, "instead of two attacks"

This isn't open to interpretation.

Monsters and NPCs are built with different rules to player charcater creation, and that's it for differences.

The combat rules are universal, so the option to full attack aplies to everything

If you guys are going to start saying that enemies can't full attack, then you better start applying that interpretation to every action listed in the combat section. Which of course means there is no combat.

You can't cherry pick which rules apply in PFS.
For your home games, go wild.

On the note for focus firing on the melee guy.

Remember that creature between you and the shooter provide soft cover, so bonus to your AC (which should already be quite high if your the melee guy).

If you're going to close on enemies to melee, try to choose the guys in cover themselves. If you position well, their cover also becomes your cover so now you're at +4 to AC.

I had a soldier in the very brief PbP I was running that had KAC 18 at level one (heavy armour). In cover he's was 22 AC which meant enemies needing 16s to hit him.

That's dropping the odds of getting hurt dramatically.

Add to that the party can Harry and cover fire. This both boosts AC of your mate, and drops the hit chance of the enemy. If they're going to focus fire, make it hard so the melee guy can kill them twice as fast as the dudes shooting.

I mean, the soldier I have toyed with at level one is doing d12+4 damage in melee, vs the average D6 of his party mates. Since he's such a threat that the enemy is ignoring others, help the poor guy out. He'll easily mop up the enemies for you.