Xenobiologist's page

Eewwwwww.

Alright, here's some brainstorming.

1. Heaving fleshquakes
2. Eruptions of ichor
3. Ichor that has subtly or radically different effects on drinkers, than before.
4. Orocoroans behaving very differently from before. Most are unusually energetic.
5. Strange sounds you can feel through your boots.
6. Weird, indescribable smells permeate the breathable air in the domed cities. Each city acquires a different smell. None are pleasant to offworlders but nobody can agree what they smell like.
7. Sinkholes and flesh-movements that swallow up people, animals, objects, and sometimes whole vehicles.
8. Landmarks and patches of landscape that have changed color and/or texture. Fleshy growths may develop.

9. Buildings in a city rearrange when the PCs aren't looking. The resulting arrangement is sometimes "wrong":
9a. Geometrically impossible (buildings or rooms occupying the same space, or with their gravity oriented contrary to the planet surface, or larger or smaller on the inside, or internal and external angles no longer match).
9b. Looks like an optical illusion.
9c. Internal and external angles of buildings change without damaging materials.
9d. Building materials change to flesh or something unidentifiable.
9e. Some parts become incorporeal, including everything and everyone they contain. Even the air inside turns incorporeal.
9f. Unnameable, subtle wrongness that seems to disappear if you focus on or look directly at it. Causes vertigo and confusion.

10. Things that affect ichor-drinkers and Aucturn-cultists more often than other people:
10a. Nightmares. They range from disturbing to outright sanity blasting.
10b. Waves of emotion. Most are indescribable and confusing. Those that can be named are usually deep awe, anticipation, excitement, dread, fear, and joy.
10c. Urges to do random, bizarre, inexplicable things. 65% chance the person forgets about it after doing it.
10d. Seizures
10e. Hallucinations
10f. Mutations

11. A sense of impending doom. Get off the planet, NOW!
12. The ichor, or a strange cloud, heals an injured character but also causes a small mutation or change in personality, or grants an ugly (but useful) biomod to the healed body part. Will they accept the gift of Aucturn, or get it removed ASAP?

This seems like a good time to use the Corruption system from Everyman Games.

These are fun!
In general it'd be even better to make options that are setting-agnostic, or separate options for fantasy vs. futuristic, like my 543 below.
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543. Playing an expensive vidgame
(comic: playing a children's vidgame and throwing a tantrum when they lose a life)
(PF: Playing polo on a very handsome mount, or playing hopscotch.)

544. Giving a passionate political speech to convert a crowd to truly heinous or violent behavior that endangers someone the PCs care about.
(Comic: Giving a passionate political speech to a crowd that "Evil will always win, because Good is dumb.")

545. Callously arranging how to permanently eliminate rivals or competitors that pose no serious threat to them.
(Dark: Callously ordering a slave child beaten or tortured to death, or mutilated, for making a tiny mistake while serving in their evil lair.)
(Comic: Sending their child to his room for being a spoilt brat.)

546. Casually harassing or abusing an employee/minion/servant [in a way that none of your players have personally suffered]
(Comic: Calling a rival Villain juvenile grade school names.)

547. Casually littering in a public place.

548. Annexing a town/village/neighborhood/island/space station and evicting the impoverished residents who have nowhere else to go.
(comic: Repossessing someone's spaceship/vehicle/drone/chariot/mount/home because their extended warranty has expired and the villain has been trying to reach them about it.)

549. Torturing and dismembering a tiny animal, clearly amused.

550. Ranting to minions or political followers about how disgusting and intolerable one of the PC's ancestry or religion is.
(comic: Ranting to minions about how poorly the Players have min-maxed their PCs, and how the minions had better not make the same mistakes)

551. Trying out expensive outfits and jewelry in a full-length mirror. A servant is dressing them while they stand and pose.

552. Trying out a new augment/prosthetic/magical replacement for a body part destroyed by the PCs or another party of heroes.
(Comic: Trying out a prosthetic extra head.)

553. Doing the Sunday crossword puzzle.
(PF: Working on a complicated metal or wood sculpture puzzle)

As I chose my avatar for this forum, I found some glitches.

1. The first problem I discovered is that the filters/search for Type does not work well with the Types actually on many avatars. When I went to pick my avatar, I searched for Shirren and there were only 2 options shown. Now after looking through every single page of avatars I've counted 13 avatars with Type: Shirren, including my new avatar. 11 of them can't be found by filtering/searching.

Likewise, searching/filtering for Ratfolk only brings up 5 avatars, but there are actually 20. Most are type Ysoki (which you can't search for) and one is type Monstrous Humanoid. I think there are more Android avatars than come up by searching, too.

There are 2 Lizardfolk and 1 Kenku with Type: Monstrous Humanoid instead of Reptilian and Tengu.
Reptilian and Repitilian are both searchable options. Several avatars are type “Repitilian”.
There’s an odd situation in which the Werebat-kin, Werecrocodile-kin, and Skinwalker are all type Shapechanger, but the Were-Kyra (which looks like a gnoll) is type Human.

Several avatars have types that are not search/filter options: Artificial Intelligence, Centaur, Fetchling, Gillman, Gray, Grippli, Humanoid (not monstrous humanoid), Kasatha, Kish, Munravi, Ord, Samsaran, Sarcesian, Strix, Vesk, Vishkanya, Wayang, and Wyvaran. But these types are not search/filter options. Vesk and Wyvaran doen’t show up under Reptilian or 'Repitilian'.

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2. While looking for an avatar I continuously had to deal with this problem. The description box for each avatar takes up a lot of vertical space – in many cases, it’s too tall to fit on my widescreen laptop monitor. It’s especially a problem when subtype and/or deity are listed. To fit this on my screen I would have to zoom out, making the avatars small and hard to see clearly. I’ve noticed that many other parts of this website are designed to fit only on a narrower, taller monitor and don’t adapt to the shape of my monitor, leaving wide left and right margins and making lots of stuff disappear down the bottom of my screen. Avatar selection is an especially problematic example. Yes, I can scroll down (usually) but the way it’s designed, I can only see a fraction of the intended screen image/information/whatever at once. In this case I have to scroll down until the avatar is out of sight to read the bottom of the description. In several cases in the bottom row of each page, I can’t scroll down far enough to see the bottom of the description at all, because it disappears into the big blue and black area at the bottom of the website.

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2. While manually searching for a new Shirren avatar, I found that several avatars have no name or description, and no source. Some are currently being “used by -1 people”. Sorting by usage doesn’t gather them at the end, in fact it doesn’t seem to sort by how many use the avatar. These are all the ones I found, sorted by date:

• Grey humanoid with pointed ears, glowy red eyes, and a wolf/bear head on their head. Sorted by date, is between Muldnal and Bregga Dreamstalker. -1 users
  
• ^ Similar-looking humanoid with no hat. Is between Ibzairiak the Dragon and Dearga Finlay. 0 users
  
• A copy of Archbaron Darellus Fex. Is between Ginerva and Donarda Gedraedius. Has -1 users
  
• 2 in a row with -1 users each: a 4-eyed, tentacled, horned, blue something and an upset-looking elf with a forehead tattoo. They are in between The First Warden and Natsiel.
  
• Blue Shirren with gold armor and red goggles, in between a Human Technomancer (named “Technomancer”) and a Human Ace Pilot. 1 user.
  
• 2 in a row, 1 user and 3 users. Angry, glowing eyed, blueish woman and a human man. They’re in between Yamtisy and Captain Jemma Redclaw.
  
• Apparently a Kitsune, used by 15 people, in between Reiko and a Human Summoner named “Summoner”
  
• Blue humanoid with antlers and white eyes. Between Giant Killer and Fire Giant. 1 user.
  
• Irritated looking redhead Human man. 3 users. In between 2 of Lictor Octavio Sabinus and looks like the same guy, I think.
  
• Orkish looking green person. 0 users. In between Ewigga and Urnsul.
  
• Veiled humanoid. 6 users. In between Adowyn and Seltyiel.
  
• Humanoid woman with an icicle crown, used by 14 people. Between Ezren and Riftwarden.
  
• Shouting human man, in between a Black Dragon from Dragons Revisited and a Red Dragon from ?. 34 users.
  
• Man in a purple beret, in between Drizz’t miniature and cartoon Wil Save. 15 users.

4. An unrelated problem is that the text formatting to create a list doesn't work on this forum, as you can see above.

And 'improved' includes 'tripled in size'?

Maybe they did that (somehow) to avoid being eaten by Snakefolk murderhobos who kept invading their underground towns...

Thanks!

Let me make sure I got this right.

Based on your total levels:
Ability score and modifier increases
max Ranks allowed in each Skill
Feats and Theme Benefits
Items you can buy
Tier in SFS
XP needed for next level (SFS)

Based on your current Class level:
Skill ranks from current level
Class Skills and Class bonuses to Skills
SP and HP
Base Saving Throw Bonuses
Base Attack Bonuses
Class Abilities, Class Feats, and Connection Powers
Spells known and Spell slots
Proficiencies

other:
Skill ranks from each previous level, when increasing Ability modifiers: class and class level of each previous character level
RP: total level, and best Key Ability Score
Caster level: total of spellcasting classes
level prerequisites in Feats: as listed in the Feat
Items you can craft: Skill Ranks (max = total level)

Is that all correct?

I've only played in Organized Play at conventions (as a Starfinder Society member character). It seemed to me that seriousness and silliness depended on character concepts and players' preferences. Even within the same scenario (Dreaming the Future) some adventures were played seriously, and another was semi-serious because one player decided to play the long-lost Icon daughter of the space pirate lord. Then I watched a game in which all the characers were completely incompetent and had turned their mission into an idiotic fiasco.

But I would like to see Hmm turn Signal of Screams into comedy.

We see plenty of artificial scarcity, built-in obsolescence, and cheap products flooding markets in order to exploit different income brackets in real life.

In addition, items are artificially marked up, sometimes to exorbitant levels, with flimsy justifications or none at all, and then marketed only to upper-middle and/or wealthy people. In the U.S., the corporate approach to organic food and life-saving pharmaceuticals are good examples.

The addition of level as purchasing requirement makes it even worse. Why would you need to level up a few times to buy a board game or other civilian equipment like valet drones or healthcare items? How do you even measure level? That is a purely metagame concept and there is no way in game to actually know what level someone has or give an in game explanation what level means. For casters you can argue that it represents access to certain spells but for other classes? When they have access to mundane abilities is also a purely metagame concept. And why has the speed a soldier can shoot (soldiers onslaught) have any relevance for him being allowed to buy a drone that styles his hair and polishes nails?

Thats also the reason why justifing weapon permissions with levels do not work as they are not a thing. When your 1st level PCs go off following a rumor, fight some baddies and come back lvl 8 without any proof of what they have accomplished, why should they be allowed to openly carry anti tank weapons everywhere, even in the middle of the city?

I think the character level is meant, at least in economic terms, to be an abstract representation of the character's social standing and connections with the SFS. In a more detailed and granular game like GURPS, this would be various Status, Ranks, Allies, Contacts, and licenses. While I don't like the way that characters suddenly get better all at once when they increase a level, I think level does seem to work as an abstract measurement of social standing.

Where I could agree is non-combat items, though. I think that anything which wouldn't be restricted by licenses (or perhaps artificial scarcity) might be better "restricted" by price rather than level. That probably still wouldn't make it a good idea for a 2nd level to save up 25,000 credits and blow them on a hair-styling bot... unless your GM runs scenarios in which hairstyle is extremely important ... somehow.

Or perhaps certain healthcare items get cheaper the higher your level... because at a higher level you can get some equivalent of health insurance?

Have characters go through background checks and licensing if you feel like that improves the game. Force them to build connections before they can get access. On the flip side, you can let players buy the non-combat or any items they want if you so choose.

If you think this level of granularity is important to a setting, then feel free to indulge. I might also suggest figuring out prices for docking fees and repairs to your ship, as well as rearming it after every encounter, paying for inspections to make sure a hidden flaw in the reactor is not poisoning your crew, dealing with quarantines when traveling to from remote locations, keeping up-to-date passports... oh! Yearly taxes, and voting too.

Personally I might find dealing with docking fees, ship repairs and re-arming, buying ammo and food, actually interesting. But I'm the sort of gamer who gets a kick out of Dwarf Fortress. I can understand if a lot of players don't want to do that. I wouldn't want to RP the red tape, filling out forms, and crap. Just tell me what the license fee and taxes cost and I'll subtract the credits.

Simple question for the community: what's the name of the galaxy where all the action happens? Does it have a name?