keftiu's page

Chinostes, Drokalion, Iapholi - my old friends, it's so wonderful to see you again! I've waited many years for this.

I make a lot of noise about my hopes for Arcadia, but our first glimpse of Iblydos in Distant Shores alongside it was just as exciting - and that Tyrant's Grasp backmatter mini-article on hero-gods is an obscure favorite of mine. Here's to Myth-Speaker!

EDIT: Whoever plays an Awakened Animal (Lion) Cleric of Drokalion first, know that you are the coolest PF2 player.

If the Summoner revision finally gets us the Synthesist Class Archetype, I'd be quite happy to see that.

The Golden Road meta-region is the Inner Sea's MENA (Middle East + North Africa) equivalent, and there you have both Katapesh and Qadira. The former is a fabulously-wealthy province of the most extravagant empire on the face of the planet, and a place with a lengthy history of genie magic; the latter is essentially a nation-sized bazaar, full of curiosities and class disparity.

I'm really hoping we see a Numerian [something] that gives a good excuse to rope in some SF2 stuff.

Y'know, it only just now clicked for me: a lot of the Chelish army the good guys will be slaughtering en masse in this war... are going to be formerly-enslaved conscripts who got drawn into service via contracts they told would free them. Many of them were in chains less than 3 years ago.

That's pretty gnarly.

Seltyiel in a dress is really important.

Mythic campaign, 3 books, and starts at level 1? Seems low level for a campaign about the players becoming "hero-gods"

Hero-gods are an existing concept from older lore, and have always been relative small fry on the mythic scale, equivalent to a lot of Greek heroes/demigods. Many of the hero-gods from 1e were in the low- to mid-teens in terms of level, so finishing this origin story up just shy of that makes good sense to me.

The scale most of them are dealing with is being a really big deal in a single city.

Thank you for such a thoughtful reply, The Block Knight!

Is there any chance of Hell sending infernal repo men to seize the whole country?

Happy pride, everyone, even in these dark times <3

And if you've ever picked up one of those lovely charity bundles that Rue coordinates, you own some of my queerest works - my game Feathers and my Songbirds expansion Gifts from the Golden Isles have both featured in them, and are pretty intimate reflections of experiences that are very dear to me.

Those post-playtest blogs are always so fun to read.

Is it silly to say the SF2 Mystic? We're obviously waiting to see the final shape of it, but "psychic support character who connects the party through a mental healing network" is just such a cool fantasy (and so elegantly mechanically realized) that I have to love it. Exciting support classes are hard to make - they nailed it!

Guilt of the Graveworld is an AP release.

The Dominion are my favorite Pathfinder villains, and their absence from Starfinder is really strange to me. I'd love to see them invade both settings!

lorewise the difference is scope.

The Druid is fueled by their connection to the life of their region, or at most, their planet.

The Mystic's connection is beyond planetary, and is not to life, or elements specifically, but a connection to the universe as a whole. It is an evolution of the druid.

I don't really know what this has to do with OP's very mechanics-driven question. Nobody in this thread is talking about the lore.

Aren't the villains you're referring to from Zeta Gundam ultimately reveled to be a part of the Earth Federation? The same Earth Federation that the heroes fought for in the original series, just a handful of years after winning the One Year War?

It's a conflict between the Titans, a Federation-created security force that has spiraled out of control into a fascist group that answers to no one but themselves, and the AEUG, a virtuous rebel group opposed to them who never once really do anything morally questionable in the show's 50-episode runtime.

What I'm saying is, make Andoran go farther - the full French Revolutionary mindset. They're starting with Isger/Cheliax due to proximity and shared regional history, but they've decided it's time to do away with monarchy as a governmental system all across the Inner Sea, at the point of a sword if necessary, and are ramping up revolutionary propaganda to that end.

This would be an absurd left-field swerve, given the total lack of such fervor anywhere in PF2 Andoran so far. It feels like idiot plotting to me; the idea that a nation presented as pretty reasonable and well-led would abruptly decide that everyone around them deserves a crusade seems like artificial, implausible "conflict for conflict's sake" writing to me.

Alkenstar's weird, because the visual direction Paizo's chosen for them is very Wild West/Victorian, but everyone there is using guns from up to several centuries before then. I much prefer how Arcadia's guns are a mix of fantastical air gun designs and explicitly magical firearms, because it conveniently dodges all of that strangeness.

I suppose where I'm at is that I'd rather have a game where a Fighter, Rogue, Magus, and Ranger all might have reasons to pick up a gun than I would a game where there's one class that exists to make them suck less (with a peppering of gun-related antics thrown on top). I don't *think* I should have to pick between both, but guns shouldn't be so prohibitive that only the I Fix Guns Guy should bother.

This is not to say that there aren't other ways to achieve good class balance. Or funner feats, etc. Just to say that game balance may constrain much of the solution space. Reload as a game mechanic is not fun because the player doesn't get as many actions to do stuff with, but it's at least thematically related to a realistic aspect of early firearms. Getting rid of it (and modifying other firearm stats to maintain balance) might improve player experience, but for the folks who already think flintlocks in their fantasy are disbelief-suspending, rapidly firing them makes the suspension of disbelief problem worse.

I feel like this is the kind of problem the Rarity system exists to solve. I'll never understand why they didn't just make Firearms equivalent o other ranged weapons, but Uncommon.

Anyone who has a problem with fast reloads also probably won't like using the blast from your gun to fly around, either, but that still apparently felt appropriate for low-level Gunslingers; I don't think an equivalent action economy to everyone else in the game is more audacious than that. Why design for people who will never use the thing on principle anyway?

I like guns in fantasy. I don't think "I use this one specific subtype of weapon" is a coherent class identity under the PF2 design paradigm, and like many others, guns being kind of bad mechanically unless you play The Gun Class feels like one of the most bizarre facets of PF1 to bring forward.

Really hoping for something different in PF3, ten years from now :p

EDIT: I admit, seeing how much more fun the SF2 Operative and Soldier get to have than the Gunslinger stings a little! It does give me hope for the future of Paizo design, though.

Fair enough. I admit, I was being somewhat hyperbolic.

But this whole thing was billed as being the start to a massive Inner Sea War, and when I think "war story", I think something along the lines of a Gundam series. A story where even the "bad guys" have a point and rationale behind their actions that reasonable people can get behind and which side is in the right is entirely a matter of perspective.

My favorite Gundam series, 1985's Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, is about a heroic rebellion fighting against fascists who do things like fatally gassing civilians en masse in the name of suppressing dissent against their rule. There's no question about the morality of our protagonists and antagonists, but somehow it's one of the most acclaimed entries in the series.

Cheliax is a dystopian nightmare of surveillance, propaganda, and torture, where widespread racist slavery was recently 'replaced' with conscription and debt traps, ruled by a despotic regime in thrall to literal Hell - almost none of which is new to 2e. What kind of "reasonable both sides" do you want them to depict with the Chelish state, exactly?

Oh wow, really?

At this point, they should just make it a Kobold heritage with its own feats.

Mentioned at PaizoCon that Dragonets got their spot instead.

With the word that Wyvarans were cut from LO: Draconic Codex, I'm pleading for them to eventually find a new home.

With both the inciting incident of the Hellfire Crisis and a major related Adventure Path set in Isger (with a direct sequel to follow), I have to wonder if next year is an Old Cheliax year.

The Order of the Nail having a spine is kind of funny, considering how evil and awful they are in their own right.

Distant Worlds. Distant Shores was a Golarion book that included regions like Iobaria.

Exactly right! I mix up their titles all the time.

Distant Shores is one of my all-time favorite PF1 books, and I've really struggled to ever feel hooked reading SF1's Pact Worlds by comparison. A do-over would be a lot of fun, as an overview of the setting's core and an excuse to flesh out a bunch of the locals as Ancestries.

I'd avoid having to remake your characters, personally - just wait until Core is out!

keftiu wrote:

Anything interesting done with Kyonin's otherworldly connections?

** spoiler omitted **

Sad to not have a little bit more of their weird Castrovelian flavor come through (I always imagined Kyonin with Lashunta embassies), but I suppose one plot hook is better than none. Thanks!

Technomancer Fix Suggestions & Design Philosophy

This final post offers mechanical fixes, feature rewrites, and thematic corrections based on the preceding review. Some are surgical tweaks; others address broader conceptual failures. Use it for ideas if you like, or ignore where you disagree.

The Stakes: Technomancer Represents the Setting

Starfinder is a world where magic and technology exist in the same space. No class exemplifies that vision more than the Technomancer.

When the Technomancer fails, the setting fails to express its core idea.

Right now, the Technomancer feels like:

A worse wizard

With more feat tax

And less tech flavor

That is the opposite of what this class should be.

Grateful for this thorough, reasonable analysis. I'm not the most crunch-minded fan, but the Technomancer Playtest read as being pretty troubled to my eyes, so seeing it spelled out so well is really clarifying.

I agree with your high-level quoted take here, too: Technomancer is very core to what makes Starfinder different from nearly every other sci-fi game on the market, so it being incoherent and nonfunctional is a real problem.

Whatever the biggest city in Razatlan is :p

Anything interesting done with Kyonin's otherworldly connections?

Does that weird dread Lashunta feel in the sun ever go anywhere, or does it remain a loose plot hook still?

Well, that's Eox and Apostae vouched for - and my worries that the setting is mostly stuffed with corporations somewhat affirmed. Any fans of the other locales?

I have a Leshy Champion in PFS with the Finadar Leshy background. A creepy little dude that used to be demonically tainted, but now got redeemed by Sarenrae. The fire and sun themes are so very on point. That all still works fine.

The issue is that I took the Sorcerer dedication for the Demonic bloodline for Glutton's Jaw. I could bite people and get some temporary HP back, which worked well on a Champion build. But with the remaster, that whole flavour got lost.

What broke here?

Andoren troops in Isger feels like quite the escalation to one Andoren citizen's execution - by Hellknights, not even Chelish troops!

I come to you from the Pathfinder side of things with the question in the title.

Iron Gods is what got me into Pathfinder, and Distant Worlds is one of my favorite books they ever released for PF1. I've really enjoyed PF2's few jaunts to other planets in Adventure Paths, and greatly appreciated that each has come with a gazetteer. There's a PF2 Society scenario with an alien in it that's very, very cool, and Androids are my favorite Ancestry in the game.

But I've found Starfinder's lore surprisingly slippery... which is odd, because I like sci-fi a lot more than fantasy in most cases! It might just be the novelty of the sword-and-planet Pathfinder iterations, but I've honestly not been able to chew on any SF1 books well enough to see if I even like the lore or not. So far, I've mostly just caught a lot of glimpses of vague corporations all over the place.

So I come to you with my request: what stands out to you as exciting in the core part of the Starfinder setting? I'm tentatively bought in on its version of Aballon, but would love to be sold on more of the rest.

LiaElf76 wrote:

there’s absolutely no way for Paizo to account for what hundreds of different groups might have done.

This would be a substantially more compelling argument if there weren't an entire rest of the planet they could have picked to set this scenario at where this problem didn't arise.

I just shared this blog with the group I ran AOA for and every single one of them got angry about it.

I don't want every place an Adventure Path party could've plausibly retired to getting knocked out of danger permanently, personally. That feels really limiting for future storylines.

Sandpoint, as mentioned, 'should' be bulletproof if 1e's heroes are still around. Ravounel 'should' have a superheroic party committed to its continued existence. Does Strength of Thousands mean that Nantanumbu is immune to significant harm forever now?

I'm finally giving some Starfinder books a more thorough read than I previously had, and Formians are really sticking out to me... but here's a post from me begging for them 4 years ago.

Formians I'm starting to think are increasingly likely as a playable Ancestry; this text now establishes them on three different planets, and the sidebar on 'hiveless' Formians seem like ready-made PCs. I have friends clamoring for insect Ancestries, and have loudly wanted to see them on Castrovel alongside their Lashunta rivals.

Starfinder 1e had playable Formians, complete with a Heritage-like alternate trait for winged Formian Alates! We might see them return through SF2, rather than a Pathfinder 2e book.

Like the thing about Villains in an ongoing story that is not building to a specific conclusion is that you need for villains to lose both because "good triumphing over evil" is generally satisfying to the reader and in order to make room for new villains. Like we closed the Worldwound, but then Tar-Baphon got out. When Tar-Baphon gets put down for good, almost certainly something worse is going to crop up.

So even if the Thrune dynasty were ended completely, there is very little that Cheliax has contributed to the ongoing story that couldn't be replaced going forward with an expansionist Molthune or Mzali or Oprak if they wanted. I'm all for putting the "devil-themed" villains in the background for a while so we can have other problems, just like how Batman has to beat the Joker from time to time so we can tell stories about Bane or Clayface or the Riddler.

To say nothing of the fact that you can still have Hellknight baddies without a Chelish state - though I don't honestly expect Cheliax or Thrune to go away anytime soon, myself.

(That said... I'd *love* to see us finally get back to Mzali. Strength of Thousands all but outright said "hey, we'll get to this story for real someday, just not right now," and that's been a tough wait!)

Specifically I’m curious about how it relates to and has being resisted being absorbed by the Church of Abadar, which follows many of the same tenets yet promises an afterlife.

Congrats on the 14-year thread necro!

It's been said somewhere (I can't find it now!) that we're about to enter a "multi-year" metaplot event called the Hellfire Crisis with Battlecry, Hellbreakers, Operation Hellmouth, and the next PFS season, so it seems like safe money to finally bet on that Lost Omens book on Hellknights... and maybe an Old Cheliax guide.

I suspect next year won't be Arcadia's, either, and that's a bit of a bummer to me.

If the Wyvarans don't get a mention in Draconic Codex, I'm assuming they're toast.

I'm selfishly very interested to see what all this means for Khari and a potential Rahadoum front. This war won't stick to southern Avistan, I expect, and those more distant aftershocks are where some of the most interesting storylines are hiding.

I've got some work in this! Hope folks check it out for a good cause.

Dare I hope for the glorious return of Wyvarans (Winged Kobolds)?

It feels like a miss that PF1's Outer Dragons aren't here, I won't lie.

Excited for the rest of it!

That Player's Guide sounds lovely.

Ooh, so I wonder how all this is going to play out with the Hellknight Order of the Scourge?

They have basically been on alert to rebel against Cheliax since the Path of the Hellknight book came out. Delicious implications for my 1e Inquisitor of Ragathiel/Hellknight...

Lost Omens: Legends had the Order of the Scourge being targeted by Thrune-sent Red Mantis Assassins!

Those could be reserved for Starfinder though.

They're also not in the leaked Alien Core, which is fueling my frustration. I've liked them for a long while, especially because one appears in Iron Gods - it's a little sad to wait 6+ years for them in 2e.