Zaccheus's page

Jeff Alvarez wrote:

These same questions keep arising so let me shed a little light on it for you.

We try and be the best licensing partner that we can and part of that, for us, is making our intentions with new product lines known to our current licensees first. When we were ready to discuss the Starfinder brand with our partners, we approached both WizKids and Reaper about the brand and our desire for minis. Obviously we would want to offer a new brand's license to our existing licensees, especially ones that have done such a good job with our brand, but both turned us down. Reaper has their own lines for Sci Fantasy minis and WizKids did not have the sculpting bandwidth for the project. So we turned to Ninja DIvision and they were thrilled with the opportunity.

We've known the guys from Ninja Division for quite some time and have always been impressed with their commitment to quality so it seemed like a great fit. We are still blown away with the sculpts we've been seeing from them and think that this line of resin figures might be the best resins we've ever seen.

While it is not our place to comment on their past KS campaigns, except to say that any blame placed on them for the Robotech debacle is completely misplaced and misguided. They, like many of us in this industry, were merely contracted to design a game for someone else's KS and Ninja Division followed through with everything they were charged with. It was, and still is, up to those that ran the KS campaign to fulfill the product to the audience. One wouldn't blame one of our writers for Paizo not releasing a module, right? So why are they being blamed for that failed KS? It's just not right.

The rest of their Kickstartes and any issues associated with them are on them and while they have always had the best of intentions, it is obvious that the lack of communication has caused loads of problems. I commend them for being as open and honest as they were in their video update and I really hope that the audience gives them the

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It took me way too long to ask the right question. That’s really what I wanted and was hoping to hear. Thanks for being so patient and answering our questions. Like I said earlier, Paizo has always exceeded expectations. Thanks again

Fair enough they are absolved from Robotech. Still their record is sub par. Those sculpts they showed you, are they finished products? Are those exactly what we will be receiving if we back the KS or are those proof of concept and the final products will/may be printed by some other company/hardware? They have always had beautiful renders and proof of concepts, what assurance do we have that quality control is on the up and up and the finished product will be the same as the minis you’ve seen so far? Also it’s not on us to give them an opportunity to earn back our trust, after two projects it’s on them to earn it. I understand the KS is doing just fine without my money and this isn’t your job per se so I do t expect a response, though I appreciate all the responses so far and would appreciate more but at the moment I’m not going to back this project and that makes me sadj

Agreed with Geddes. Being neither Paizo nor WizKids employees we have absolutely no idea how much more WizKids can take on or what their "capacity" is. To claim otherwise is spurious.

I agree with this, but why not be just a bit more transparent. All we have from ND a very troubled company to put it as nice as possible is promised they’ll do better and Paizo saying they have “faith” they’ll produce a good product in a reasonable amount of time. If Paizo has any kind of information or evidence this is true and not more empty promises they should provide it. Paizo has never really been a company that has been so opaque about these sorts of things. Just give us a bit more than promises. I really like miniatures, I’m in love with starfinder and have been very happy with Paizo, but I’ve been burnt by ND, and though Paizo has a great track record this whole situation stinks and I need more than just words if I’m going to support this KS, and I’d really like to, but at the moment it’s just too risky

Also let us not forget besides Wizkids and the very risky Ninja Division there are small third party companies, ie Far Off Games, that produced Xia legend of the drift system, which has awesome high quality preprinted ship minis that Paizo could have partnered with. Maybe they couldn’t pull off character minis too but that seems really unlikely. All around it’s just a really troubling decision that seems very unnecessary. I hope it pays off but there is no way I’m bacong a kickstarter I otherwise would have jumped on and spent at least 200 if not more

There is a resin unpainted line that is being run as a Kickstarter and there is also a pre-painted line that will be releasing in sets (ie not blind-packed or randomized). There are a limited number of the original iconics available soon (roughly 2-3 weeks). These are releasing early because they were designed as Gen Con releases to add excitement to our Starfinder launch.

We have complete faith in Ninja Division - Soda Pop to follow through with their promises in the Kickstarter or we would not have partnered with them.

I sincerely hope you are right. It just seems like an unnecessary risk. I obviously don’t know any of the details but you clearly already have a good working relationship with WizKids and their products have been great and so far each new set the quality just keeps getting better. Why change things when you are already killing it? The odds are that at best, the new company will do as good a job as wiz kids, and at worst they don’t produce at all, causing loss of money, good will, Time to get excellent products out to support your new line. It really seems like a gamble and it’s a shame because I would really like to see starfinder not only succeed but exceed expectations, and to tie such an important accessory to a company with a shakey track record to put it very nicely really seems like a giant gamble

We are aware of some of the issues with some of the earlier campaigns, but we are confident in the work that Ninja Division has shown us so far, in the Starfinder miniatures they have already produced and sold at Gen Con, and in their ability to deliver this project in the timeframe they have promised.

You should seriously reconsider. I backed their Robotech campaign with Pallidium Books, over 4 years, three houses, and two states ago and I still don't have my product. I initially chalked up to pallidium since they are notorious for over promising and never delivering, but ND has had two other projects since they haven't delivered on. Please Paizo is such a good company with so much good will, the Starfinder binding issue is nothing, doesn't bother me at all that I'm now on my third book b/c of it because Paizo has earned my trust and confidence. ND has earned the opposite and they are going to be parasites on your good reputation and I beg you to strongly reconsider.

Edit: this isn't the complaining of someone naive to how kickstarter works. I've spent upwards of $10000 on kickstarter projects, I've seen many delays for many different products from star citizen to polyhero dice. ND deserves their infamy. It's disturbing kickstarter even allows them to post new projects at this point

Two words. Card stands

Well the AP is called the dead suns, why not call it the dead sun, or sun deather (j/k), seriously though if you don't like it's name may I suggest sun slayer, star slayer, solar decimator, sun destroyer, solar doom, star darkener (again j/k)

Remember that armor in Pathfinder also doubles as your space suit. Breathing in a vacuum is important since you might need to do it at some point.

This

Ships. More ships. A book with more ships, weapons, upgrades, deck plans etc. the space winabaego we will all be flying/living in needs more love. It's a part of starfinder that really adds a lot of heart to the game and really stimulates my imagination. I want more. I'm also completely on board with space whales and other monsters we have to engage with our ships. Ship vs space monster combat would be very interesting

You can shoot guns in space. The cartridge has an excellerent in it in place of o2, so the gunpowder explodes in space. The real issue with firing a gun in space is the lack of gravity. Since the shooter isn't planted on the ground half the force propels the shooter backwards and the other half propels the bullet cutting velocity nearly in half.

A dev said this is getting addressed. I hope they do it in a way similar to you where you can increase rewards at a cost of greater difficulty

So drift travel has a wide variance of time. In a star system it's not very fast, 1d6, however to get to an unexplored star at the opposite end of the galaxy it's only 2d6 days travel, and then the return trip to absalom is always 1d6 regardless of how far thanks to the starstone, also travel to very far systems can be shortened if they have more/stronger beacons. Drift is more like a slow teleport though than it is like fast linear travel.

So going through First Contact, and Dead Suns I all NPC's with weapons that exist on the CRB equipment list have the exact same stats. A couple of things, like the goblin junknlaser and the sarcesian tactical sniper rifle aren't listed in the CRB equipment sections so they may or may not be arbitrarily assigned. This doesn't seem to be the case. Npcs weapons and armor seem to be the exact same as PC's. The only differences seem to be that noc's don't get their dex bonus to AC, and they get the weapon specialization bonus starting at CR 1, when PC's get it at lvl 3. And even if the stars given for weapons and armor aren't the same as listed in the equipment section (which it seems they are the same) that in no way means these values are arbitrary. You'd have to provide more evidence than one npc in one SFS NPC, that could too easily be chalked up to a typo or error, especially considering this is the first printing of a brand new role playing game. Look at any other "recent" rpg release and it's corresponding errata, there are always tons of typos, spelling errors, etc that have to be corrected. Let's try to not jump to conclusions based on one Npc's weapon stat

Fly into a black hole

Talk to your gm. As a gm, I'd be totally cool with you drawing four small arms during your move action provided you have the +1 BaB, provided they are easily reached (belt, armpit holsters etc; if they are in ankle holsters or a trickier location then that's a different story)

There's no rules in the CRB for random encounters nor for drift encounters. I presume they will come with future releases.

I would buy ship miniatures, and in fact ninja division is currently on working on officially licensed ones for starfinder not to mention several ships are included in the pawn sets. Because of this and the fact my battlemat already has 1" hexes that's the only size ships I'll be interested in. I would be happy with larger miniatures provided they still are sturdy on the standard hex base

Because they taste terrible. My character has both. Most missions planet side should be less than a week but it's space, s*$# happens so he has MRE's in case a three day mission becomes three week misson

This isn't necessarily that hard to fix. It's ok for some maneuvers to be exceptionally easy for high level crew. There are two solutions to having the difficulty scale as well as keep it so high level characters seem to actually get better at flying their higher quality ship than low level characters with a junket ship. One solution is to have opposed and unopposed maneuvers. At high levels the unopposed maneuvers would be extremely easy for the crew but opposed maneuvers would scale with level b/c the ship(s) you're opposed by should be better at "resisting" you. The other solution is to have more and more difficult maneuvers. So at level one the number of maneuvers you can pull off reasonably well is say 20% of the total possible maneuvers and then at level 20 it's say 50% are nearly guaranteed, 25% youre likely to pull off, 20% unlikely, and 5% are nearly impossible though doable if you're lucky and desperate. Both these solutions can be applied simultaneously. It actually looks lazy the way they did it. It's under developed and counter intuitive. Like the surgeon or race car analogy, yes it's really hard for an untrained person to do surgery X or drive car Z, however a highly trained person makes it look easy, this should be reflected in this aspect of the game as it is in others like fighting, bluffing, sneaking, etc. another example would be a proathlete. You wouldn't expect Lebrun James to have the same difficulty shooting a three point shoot unguarded as a highschool kid who has only played basketball for a year. Now if he's playing agains Durant, ya it gets a lot harder for Lebrun to score, not impossible, like it is for the highschool kid. I'm not saying I can design the game better, but I am very surprised they made this mistake. It seems very obviously flawed and like a huge oversight on their end

This whole situation breaks my brain. The problem I see, a level 20 ace pilot in a top of the line ship (tier 20) is less likely to pull off a maneuver than a goblin in a ship that is literally he'd together with string and duct tape. The difficulty needs to be on more of a curve and one that is largely inversed. Maybe the greatest difficulty should be somewhere in the 7 tier region, but it should be nearly a sure thing for a level 20 character who put a rank in every level. You'd never expect a top surgeon to be less successful at difficult surgeries than a resident. It makes zero sense

I've seen people talk about this, but I recoeved my Starfinder Corebook yesterday and I can not find it stating this anywhere in the fluff not any rules for what that means exactly as far as causing random encounters or whatever else. Has this been removed in the final printing or have I just missed what I presume are at the very least paragraphs of fluff and rules? If it is still in the game can someone please tell me where it's printed

For some reason, everyone who quotes the rule for the alchemical weapon seems to leave out this part
" The alchemical item takes full effect on the next creature struck by theweapon, but does not splash, spread, affect additional targets, or benefit from any other effects that specifically affect splash weapons"
The :doesn't benefit from any effects that specifically affect splash weapons" seems to be the nail in the coffin, and the int bonus is not applied to damage.