kaid's page

I agree that the way you are describing Akashic Dragons is how most of them would be like; however, there's no right answer here. An Akashic Dragon will behave very differently if it's a friendly NPC, a neutral NPC, or (very rarely) the Big Boss monster. Also, where they are from could make a big difference; an Akashic Dragon in the Azlanti star empire might be the curator of the department of propaganda's library of disinformation, known to the public as the Library of Truth.

Hellknights trying the contract trick, likely wouldn't write the contract themself but would call upon the highest level lawyers from hell to do so, and would likely be in a contract so long it would take years to read, and other efforts would be made to distract the dragon during the reading of the contract. Here, the people pulling this off would be the Boss monster.

The Akashic Dragon I'd personally like to hang out with is the one in charge of the Library of Galactic Music.

It is all fun and games until the dragon starts blasting retro EDM death polka.

I'm not sure why "the Wizard is a weaker choice for a magic focused character" is an intolerable situation when "the Fighter is a weaker choice for a sword focused character" has been a fact of life a lot of times in the history of this family of games.

The Remaster was less "let's fix all the classes" and more "let's make the best of a bad situation."

Well other than rogues going um let me quietly steal some pretty strong buffs and then pocket sand so nobody notices it.

WOOT I will have to plink around with that tonight.

Dragon disciple is back? neat

now I can put more dragon in my dragon by playing a Kobold with Dragonblood heritate, picking additional draconic kobold feats, be a draconic sorcerer with draconic acolyte archetype
with ancestral paragon I can take up even more draconic racial feats
with dual classing or free archetype I can take up a dragonstyle monk or draconic barbarian
and I am sure I will find some sort of dragon worshipper background

make way dnd, if I go dungeoneering I am fitting in more dragon per square cube then you ever could

Yo! I heard you liked dragons so I put some dragons in your dragons.

I suspect before they start adding more to summoner it is going to need its remaster pass even if it does not change much.

Why aren't you EAing the target(s) for 40 while the eidolon Strikes for 23.5?

Last I checked 63.5 is better than either 23.5 or 40.

If you only have one target or vs one with really high reflex saves it is nice having the eidolon with martial accuracy and in those situations you can boost your pet to give it even a bit more oomf.

Occult only having two phantoms that are... let's say, less likely to inspire characters than what the other traditions have, is a bit of a bummer. Aberration is such a natural fit that Secrets of Magic even discusses the underpinning of why occult tradition summons aberrations in the occult magic section.

I know that a remaster is unlikely to add a lot of new class options, but I'll go ahead and toss it out there anyway.

The changes to dragons should make a dragon option be available in each of the main spell casting flavors. An occult dragon eidolon seems very fitting.

Sounds like it is mostly done they are just finishing up some of the GM stuff. The IOS/android delayed till early next year but given the time of year it is and the cert process needed it would be weird if it did make it out before the end of the year.

Seen one Exemplar so far - you'll be surprised how far Gaze as Sharp as Steel + any melee ikon + Hurl at the horizon (with a returning rune) can take you. Hi, yes, I would like a thrown d12 weapon please. Vow of Mortal Defiance is also a bizarrely good undead chewer because almost all undead are unholy but most aren't weak to holy; if that player starts their turn 'next' (within 10ft, because thrown) to some chonking zombie brute (yes, we are playing Blood Lords, how did you guess) that is a lot of dice to throw.

Something like this is what I was looking at for exemplar. They seem like they get some very interesting stuff that works with/improves throwing weapons. They just seem like they have some very good support for that which is a more rare niche.

It is all fun and games until you see a kalo solarian zooming around like aquaman!

pauljathome wrote:

2) Stellar Rush, especially with a creature with a fly speed, gives INSANE mobility. Ranged combat you say? I am my own weapon :-). 70 feet at level 1 for a Dragonborn with 2 actions
3) The insanely cool Graviton attuned pull. As far as I can see there is nothing stopping me dragging them into the air and just dropping them.

Not only TGTBT but also not supported by RAW.

Stellar Rush: You rush forward with a blast of stellar energy, getting into the thick of combat with ease. Stride twice. You gain a +10-foot circumstance bonus to your Speed during these moves.

Stride: When you use the Stride action, you move a number of feet equal to your Speed. Whenever a rule mentions your Speed without specifying a type, it's referring to your land Speed.

So, no Flying with a standard Stride action.

The stellar rush feat has the transversal trait so you can substitute any movement type you have to perform the action.

I can't contribute from a rules perspective, but I've been trying to imagine what it would look like to primary target + area fire someone with the same grenade.

Is it literally just like, hitting them in the head like a baseball pitch before it bounces and explodes? That's kinda amazing.

I can sort of see it. I am of the mind that the primary target does not expend extra ammo. Basically when you do an area attack that primary target is your primary target of that so it gets hit first with the initial direct part of the aoe/autofire. So for a grenade you threw it at somebody and it contact detonated on your primary target so they get that initial hit of damage before the aoe damage of everything else does not seem unreasonable.

For a automatic weapon you aimed at one dude before you walked your fire on everybody else in the area.

For blast aoe weapons it would be like the grenade your primary target is the poor sap that was ground zero of your shot gets the extra helping of damage.

Zoken44 wrote:

"Void Survival: Unlike normal undead, you aren’t

destroyed when reduced to 0 Hit Points. Instead,
powerful energies attempt to keep you from being
destroyed. You are knocked out and begin dying
when reduced to 0 Hit Points"

This is in the side bar regarding the Corpse Folk's heritage.

Isn't this part of those other options you mentioned?

Thank you for pointing that out. It does not appear on AoN. This is exactly the what I thought was missing.

Probably because it is listed in a side bar and not in ancestry block but it is specifically called out.

I backed this. I like the art style and want to encourage more SF2 stuff. And given how fully this thing was backed looks like there is a fair amount of demand for it.

Please let the thaumaturge wand implement use exploit weakness/IE or tune down to 1 action or 'Something!' to boost its early level implementation. The class is to action heavy for a 2 action activity as more than a back up rotation item.

Please let thaumaturges just 'work' with 1H+ weapons without having to jump through 1000 hoops.

Please let thaumaturges free action exploit weakness like a barbarian can rage.

Please boost the power of the mind smith (its weapons are very under-tuned).

Please do something for the psychic (extend the length of unleash psyche, ditch the stupefied, bump them to 3 slots per level, or give them a secondary 'focus pool' like cursebound traits on the oracle.

Yeah I always found it weird you have this cantrip thing that has adjustable damage types but it does not interact with your exploit weakness feature.

Zoken44 wrote:

As far as SFS goes... yeah, what Squark said.

But in general, this looks cool, another way to play undead, (a first one for SF2e) and an interesting, if sad and hilarious ancestry.

I think you just offended a lot of Borai. But this is the easiest* way to get negative healing on any PC, which is a part of the undead fantasy a surprising number of people miss from Borai.

*I'm hesitant to say only because I can't remember if there's an option in the player core. Was there a mystic feat to gain negatice healing?

Borai are kinda one foot on either side of the line. Corpse folk are the first true undead ancestry option in starfinder. Borai your body is still alive but your soul is haunting it and puppeting it around.

So I hear you like swords and dragons.

May your engineers be fully caffeinated and armed with big plates of snacks for their endeavor today.

Yeah, I totally just added something in my head when reading verdant. Too many systems with too many similar rules, I assume. Yup, Khizar need to breathe, therefore the petrified should better stay home until there is an armory book or such.

Well or if you go that be a spell caster or be a good friend with one so you can get magical environmental protections.

You can also think of them a bit like a sink hole I would think. The thing that causes water to come in just slowly etches out the bottom but due to how inhospitable the surface of aballon is it freezes then sublimates/evaporates as it gets near the top. Given the resources in the ice wells I assume most probably have at least some paths/trails carved in for access.

Opsylum wrote:

Alien Core has another interesting mention of ** spoiler omitted **

Loving the Scrap Rats and Paradox 17 (very Magnus Archives), and GLaDOS! Dominion of the Black getting more stuff is also a real treat. This book is a treasure.

I mean, I guess from an editing standpoint it makes sense ** spoiler omitted **

Not just

Theaitetos wrote:

Tiny Sprites can jump as high as gargantuan Titans.

Diminutive Grasshoppers can jump higher than elephants

If you have a tiny sprite with an 18 str and a human with an 18 str pound for pound that sprite is a freaking monster.

Ironically most actual war hammers had more in common with a basic hammer than a sledge hammer. The bigger the surface area the more spread out the hit. Most of the damage increase is the strength of the user than the size of the weapon.

Like a medium two handed spear and a large two handed spear shouldn't do different damage because the part that is actually the work is basically the same.

The main difference would be in ability to parry/block the attack. It would make some sense to give large weapons the razing trait vs weapon sizes smaller than them.

Being able to buy it is one thing, being able to buy

4 people * 4 combats/day * 7 of days adventuring = 112 potions

To give you quickened in "every combat" for a week is something that as a GM I'm not considering.

Your expectation is unreasonable.

I might allow you to buy like 20 per week.

Yeah common means you can generally find a thing at a settlement. It does not indicate they have a walmart levels of supply of that thing. Most potion makers are probably doing small batches of a lot of different things and not giga batches of one specific potion unless they have an actual order up front to do so. if you are just passing through you may be able some of a particular potion but if you want 20+ you are going to need to put in an order/orders and wait a few weeks.

Or handsome dragons working in host clubs. :O

Chip n' dragons.

TheTownsend wrote:

Less likely mentions include khulan and moyishuu (fey, though the latter had 1e stats), anacite (cannon souless automatons), kothama (size huge), jinsul, cardali (extinct except for one guy), hallajin (energy beings), and uplifted bear (arguably already has PF stats).

So it looks like Anacites are a very likely inclusion for ancestry at this point, considering they don't get statblocks in Alien Core, and books seem to regard them as player-facing this edition, at least in Galaxy Guide.

Galaxy Guide wrote:

The players are anacites or other technological life-forms from Aballon who focus on long-term economics and faction politics over decades. This campaign highlights downtime activities and hexploration as the characters receive lucrative opportunities from the Insight Array and other notable figures. Between building alliances with factions and stockpiling resources, the characters gain wealth and influence the long-term trajectory of Aballon. This campaign benefits from frequent interludes that showcase the direct challenges in a particular business quarter (such as the above side story) alongside downtime systems.

I would agree. If corpsefolk are playable not much reason not to have at least some kind of basic anacite option although it is possible SRO will have an anacite lineage option.

Gazwin wrote:

While I appreciate this coming out, I wish that Tech Core was coming first. Maybe I'm in the minority on that thought.

Our book with tech classes is coming out later because of the timing of our Tech Class Playtest! We need to account for an appropriate amount of time to take on all the feedback from that before the book gets printed. Thank you for letting us know what you want to see though! We're working diligently to make sure you get a book you enjoy!

The more polished the more better. I want it now but the longer it cooks the better it will be. Getting the ancestry book out sooner should keep us all busy stuffing all the weirdness we can into our adventures.

kaid wrote:

My reading of the cold rules is if you have the level one thermal mod that protects you from moderate cold would reduce the effects of sever cold to what moderate would do and extreme to what sever would do.

So while not totally immune to to the more sever colds even the basic thermal mod is like wearing a winter jacket and does lessen the penalties one category.

That's how I see it working, too, but the cheapest armor that it can be used with costs 15 credits plus the 120 for the commercial-grade thermal capacitor. That only leaves you 15 credits for weapons and other equipment when starting.

I would argue if your first session is start in deep artic conditions basic thermal protections should be made available and basic armor + thermal mod is reasonable mitigation.

My reading of the cold rules is if you have the level one thermal mod that protects you from moderate cold would reduce the effects of sever cold to what moderate would do and extreme to what sever would do.

So while not totally immune to to the more sever colds even the basic thermal mod is like wearing a winter jacket and does lessen the penalties one category.

I feel this is one of many instances of ambiguity as a result of sloppy writing: it seems like the intent from the very beginning is for the Witchwarper to choose who's affected or not by their quantum field and by extension any effect associated with it (including spells affected by Isolated Spell Matrix). RAW, however, you would still be affected by the spell at 3rd level, because you'd still be in the quantum field, even if you'd be excluded from its other effects. It's only at 19th level that you'd be able to immunize your teammates by excluding squares they're occupying from your field.

Even if a GM rules that way you would still be able to shift the field so you could use big aoe spells even at basically point blank range. As long as your people are just outside the field drop what you want in it and they would be unscathed. This lets you use some big booms in narrow hallways/cooridors without risking making your own party uncomfortably crispy. Then once the spell goes off your team mates would be free to step into the field to gain the positive benefits.

I think in all the SF1e scenarios I've played in, only one had a need for food, but to survive on rations only, you would have needed more than a month's worth.. Although having food on hand has come in handy to try to befriend wildlife.

I remember using rations and R2E meals in the playtest. They are rarely used in Starfinder organized play since you can assume travel time on a starship, the ship has food for the trip. Unlike Pathfinder, there is rarely an overland trip lasting more than a few hours to get somewhere in Starfinder.

60 credits to get both the camping kit and Explorer's canteen is a lot for a 1st-level character.

We also don't have environmental clothing yet, so running a low-level survival adventure is either a really good or bad idea, depending on the level of challenge you are looking to give the players.

All armor that does not have the exposed trait is basically environmental clothing. You can use a mod slot for better protection against specific things like if you are on a toxic atmosphere or hot/cold.

I would agree 60 gold is a lot for a starting character but the canteen alone is pretty solid survivale tool. It filters water so if any water is available you can purify it and UPB are WAY easier to pack than rations and 2 UPB for a full day of meals is pretty reasonable. I expect the tech guide will have more space to fill in a lot of the blanks for basic kit stuff that didn't make player core.

I believe rations and R2E meals are in the playtest document. Not sure if/where they got placed in the final releases, though.

I looked and I sure didn't see them other than the couple odd ways of getting them indirectly.

I do not find those items in the player core, did I miss something ?

I am not sure they are listed separately but the camping kit comes with 1 week of rations. There is also he explorers canteen that just generates food. You insert 2 UPB and it converts that into 1 day of nourishment. No real limit to it just insert UPB and you get food paste.

Agonarchy wrote:

Since a summon can stick around for a full minute, its round-to-round abilities have to be diluted compared to an unsustained spell. You might be able to have higher-powered summons with less issue if you had to constantly feed them spell slots.

Spells all compete against each other for a slot based on what they do. So a combat summon should be able to equal the damage of a similar level spell in a combat. Since direct damage in PF2 does pretty nutty damage, very hard for a spell to compete.

Even if the spell lasts a minute, the fight likely won't last a minute. So you have to build these spells to do enough damage or effect to equal the spells they compete against with the span of a combat.

I don't envy the Paizo designers having to thread that needle. I will say for the moment summons spells for combat are hitting on the too weak to compete against another spell slot as the levels up. Need to be up tunned some until we get a sweet spot for effectiveness.

Not only do they need to be tuned higher for regular casters to compete with other slots, they really need to be tuned up to make the summoner summon creature option and feats a lot more viable. With summons as weak as they are for combat, the summoner using summons is an absolutely terrible option becoming more terrible the higher level you get. No class should become weaker as you gain levels, but summons spells become far, far weaker as the levels rise due to the way the level based math works.

I think with summons they really are not there for pure damage. They have some damage some utility but also are more bodies on the field. Any attack or movement against them is basically a debuff effect unless it is an AOE any damage the summon soaks up is indirectly a heal on your party. One issue at some tables though could be too much "game" knowledge by the NPC. GMs understanding how under leveled summons are can wind up with them just ignoring the summon instead of the more natural reaction to suddenly seeing a dragon appear in front of you of Holy crap its a dragon and react accordingly.

Yeah, Starfinder is just sort of doomed to get a portion of what Pathfinder gets, even if they started at the same rate, unless Starfinder really does pick up some traction. The compatibility helps, I mean, it has me winding up to run Guilt of the Graveworld. But really the only reason I'm humoring it is because it's compatible enough, and if it was much more incompatible, I'd have entirely ignored it. But my next plan is Pathfinder, so. If I couldn't allow all Pathfinder classes and most Pathfinder ancestries, I'd have not bothered. A well-oiled conversion system is what it'll take to keep the Pathfinder 2E players coming back to using Starfinder stuff.

But for example, even if they started at the same pace, Pathfinder simply gets more. The Pathfinder Core Rulebook had 12 classes, with 4 more the following year in the Advanced Player's Guide. Starfinder began with 6 classes with only 2 more planned for next year. (But granted, if Starfinder began with 12 classes, that'd be problematic for coming years, as Starfinder only had 13 classes, reduced to 12 if we combine Precog and Witchwarper, which means if Starfinder began with 12, we'd have the entire 1E roster day 1, with everything the following years having to be entirely new. It's a valid strategy, as it gives Paizo a 3-year buffer before they have to figure out completely new classes)

Starfinder also does sort of make up for it by giving ancestries at a faster rate than Pathfinder, though.

I do like how they are leaning all the way in on ancestries. I think of all the things I would immeditely okay poaching from PF2 though is ancestries. There are a whole bunch of really neat PF2 races that would be hard to really mesh with most campaigns that would be dead simple to integrate in SF2. Take the aquatic races environmental suites built into nearly all armor means right from the jump they are totally viable in any adventure. Then you get weirder stuff like the automata, conrasu and some of the more odd ball ones again are a lot easier sell in a science fantasy setting where they are just one more person in a sea of diversity.

I think in a sf2e environment witchwarpers likely would still be a popular pick even with other casters around. Stuff like everybody in a giant area friendly concealed/have cover or enemies treat everything as difficult terrain that can be upgraded to basically be a 100 foot field of immobility is a pretty damn powerful tool.

Also with creative use of the field witchwarpers can have very long range to their spell casting and most of the field effects are very party friendly where you can do things like exclude the squares your party is in and then do an aoe that only effects things inside the field.

Witchwarpers have to be at the top or near top of battlefield control and unlike most casters their feats are really good.

Halcyon Mists focus spell from Rival Academies.

Grants temporary hit points without listing a duration. Might be intentional (strong, if true), or supposed to be tied to the 1-round Concealed effect.

Could use clarification either way. I've seen several discussion but no consensus.

I don't think it would be OP even if it just lasts till expended but that is pretty unusual.

Your issues with Dex aren't really going to be solved by just more classes, it's kind of baked into the system, Dex was a key stat in PF2 and it's only exacerbated by SF2's extra emphasis on ranged.

I also feel like any potential discussion of class options here is going to get clouded by your very offhand subjective assessments of things. I feel like you either need to explain your thoughts more, or maybe not talk about that at all since which sublcasses are good doesn't really seem to be like the meat of what you want to talk about.

I do generally agree that six classes is kind of a sad opening for the system, especially with some of them not having a lot of built in build variety making them pretty narrow.

... but I guess it's also worth pointing out that there are 27 other classes made for the same system you can go add to your games if you want. That would help variety a lot while waiting for more dedicated SF options.

I believe this is why they made sure to have the technomancer and mechanic play test to go before SF2e core book came out and they are SFS legal. So right off the jump there are 8 playable SF2e specific classes although two of them are going to be getting some changes when the tech book comes out.

Personally I'd just make up a number, one per pc doesn't feel right cuz not everyone will use them,

I am always pretty generous with consumables like this. If people like flinging grenades let them have a reasonable amount of them. Some parties just won't use them much others like tossing them around.

I sort of suspect we should see more info on stuff like this in the tech core book. The technomancer class makes a lot of use of spell gems/spell amps so it would make sense if that book is where they go into this.

SF1e did not get any options to increase clip size on release, I'll bet SF2e will get something similar on their first big gear focused book.

I suspect some kind of high capacity clip/drum clip/belt fed option are going to be some upgrades for ballistic weapons. Having your big space machine gun with a ammo belt fed from a backpack seems pretty normal scifi type stuff. Have it cost a weapon upgrade and an armor mod so you are investing in not having to reload very often.

I think there probably will be some other magazine options but bullets/projectiles take up physical space so it is a lot harder to boost capacity of a magazine compared to just improving the quality of a battery.

Seems like the later is the correct reading. So your first get'em boosted strike gives charisma mod and any further strikes you make until the begining of your next turn and your allies strikes in the same time period get the +1.

I don't think they would specify subsequent wording if it effected the initial hit.

Like some ancestries will have two or three significantly powerful features and another ancestry might have only one or very little.

Dragonkin and Vesk are both 10 hp and 20 feet of movement... but Dragonkin have flight and darkvision and their partner bond while Vesk only have low-light vision.

I know flight is considered cheaper in SF but it's still a very good ability.

Astrazoans have low light vision and almost unlimited shapechanging, humans have no features, a hearing/sighted vlaka has less hp and a cool but somewhat situational skill feat, kasatha get four arms and... an extra language for some reason?

Some of these aren't huge on their own but in general it seems like ancestry bonuses are really haphazard, with some ancestries getting multiple high powered features baseline and others getting almost nothing without any real clear advantage in any other way.

Humans are a bit more limited in default features because they get some pretty strong ancestry feats. The one that just grants a level 1 class feat for some classes is extremely strong.

That said it does look like SF2 is just leaning into the ancestry weirdness and I am down for it. In a tech environment a lot of the default features get mitigated pretty fast. A lot easier to pick up things that grant low light vision, flight and I believe we will bee seeing bionic extra arm options for non multi armed ancestries to be able to have fun with that too if they want.

The trouble is the phrase "threatened" is used only twice in rules elements in SF2. In Dance partner, it might describe your melee reach. In the other it unambiguously refers to the weapon's first range increment. So hopefully the errata clarifies how Dance Partner is supposed to work.

The later would make that skill a lot better for an envoy. Let a melee get up to punch something and you in range to shoot stuff.

Neat.

Isn't Krune the Runelord that the PFS dealt with?

he got betta.

I just got confirmation on Reddit from the author of Guilt of the Grave World that there will be cinematic starship scenes in it. Sounds like about 40% of the adventures take place in space, so there could be several CSS in it.

That is good to know I am looking forward to picking this one up I love the whole concept of eox and how it works so the more info I can get about it the better.

To give a homebrew example, my plan for Barathu was giving them a land speed of 20 feet with the Hover trait. Which would let them ignore difficult terrain and any floor-based hazards.

Then letting them earn their flight with feats.

Though seeing default fly speeds of 20 feet has been giving me cause to reevaluate my general fly speed arrangement. My next pass of fly rules is probably gonna accomodate clumsy fliers (Shirren and Tengu), Normal Fliers (Automatons, Barathu, Dragonblood, Dragonkin, Nephilim, Geniekin) and Swift Fliers (Strix, Flying Awakened Animals, and Sprites) with a 15/20/25 speed rate, as opposed to the land equivalents of 20/25/30.

What I have done with them is pick up that level 1 feat that gives you legs/swim speed for early mobility. Later as you go you start getting more and more transversal options or get them from envoy's that it becomes less of an issue and you can "evolve" out of that level 1 feat.