lordofthemax's page

Sobokazhet wrote:

And that is acceptable for some.

Is it?

A 1st-level solarian with Strength 18 and Weapon Focus has an attack bonus of +6. With a tactical pike, they deal 1d8+5 damage in photon mode. Against an HP 17-18-ish enemy (e.g. a CR 1 akata), it will take them two regular hits to take down the enemy.

A 1st-level solarian with Strength 14 and Weapon Focus has an attack bonus of +4. With a tactical pike, they deal 1d8+3 damage in photon mode. Against an HP 17-18-ish enemy (e.g. a CR 1 akata), it will take them *three* regular hits to take down the enemy.

The former also has an attack bonus 2 higher than the latter, or 10% more overall chances of landing a hit.

In the case of the latter, I would say that the extra turn spent trying to take down the enemy is non-negligible, which could very well be *two* extra turns spent attempting to fell the opponent in the event that the character misses by only 1 or 2. Action economy is king, after all, and an enemy that stays up for one or two more rounds is an enemy that threatens the party for that much longer.

I would like to point out that this assumes that you're the only one hitting said enemy. Normally I wouldn't run off and split the group, fighting enemies one on one, I'd be working with my group to take down monsters. In your example, odds are no matter if you're the first or second solarion you used, that enemy will probably be dead in just one round if you have a competent party.

My group usually uses point buy, so we might be using the old PF system for that.

The list is already alphabetized. That, and I've just been using the search function to check for duplicates, apparently I missed those.

there are a few repeat offenders in it...

undaunted is listed twice
void stalker is listed twice
aluminum falcon is twice
death blossom also twice
destination unknown is listed twice
moonstar is listed twice
Starjammer is listed twice
starmoon is listed twice.( isnt this name similar to moonstar?)

Thanks for the heads up, but this presents 2 issues. 1) finding replacements and 2) Oh dear I'm gonna kill myself for this cause either every repeat name is one name I overwrote by accident and now I have to go back and figure out what they were because all the weird name moving and changing happened during the formatting stage, or every repeat was there prior and i messed up by putting them there.

EDIT: Aluminum and Aluminium are two different falcons. The people decided that there would be British and American variants.

Re-formatted everything, now it's better

So turns out Google docs can't sort by row, only column. I alphabetized the columns, but I can't put the entire list in alphabetical order.

Actually it was 1003, at some point someone (probably me) miscounted. Oh, and CKent83, I removed the Executor from the list cause you had exactly one too many, and we already have the Executioner, which was pretty close. It got added to the list of extra bonus names off to the side.

SO, without further ado...
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I hereby present, for the first time ever, the completed list of 1000 ship names.

THE LIST

28 more names to go, guys! :D
well, look at that. I've joined that annoying cliche where people say a sentence then name a couple names out of it.

The Mortogo
The Namegu
The Esreyu

Not it's 25. How convenient!

Current total: 936
More ship names! :D
The Shanghai
The Triforce
The Triad
The Leaping Lizard
The Hypotenuse
The Pythagorean
Keskodai's Wrath
Iseph's Shadow
Navasi's Swag
The StarCraft

Now it's 946.

By the way, our current total is 843. We're so close guys, only 157 more! If everyone here puts in 10 more, we'll be done!

In a small fit of temporary insanity, I have decided upon a list of names that would be common in the Shirren Navy.
The Silkworm
The Fruitfly
The Cricket
The Beetle
The Silverfish
The Atlas Moth
The Leafbug
The Mantis
The Firebrat
The Locust
The Cicada
The Hornet
The Wasp
The Dragonfly
The Assassin Bug
The Fire Ant
The Tunnelweb
The Caterpillar
The Centipede
The Katydid
The Scarab
The Monarch
The Queen
The Wolf Spider

Well, let's add some more to our list, shall we?
Hope's Beacon
Thief of Hearts
Freedom's Light
The Sea of Stars
The Normandy
The Rayya
The Neema
The Sheppard of the Lost
Noah's Ark
The Last Light
The Infinite Dark
Staring at the Void
Edge of Darkness
Wandering the Stars
The Basilisk's Breath
Glory to the Hive
In Memory of Cailean
The Fruits of our Labor
Son of the Stars/Daughter of the Earth
The Last Breath
Dying Light
Seeing Stars

I don't think this should be too hard, from what I can tell all you need to do is randomly generate a number between 1 and 1000 (or 0 and 999), and assign a name to each number.

Okay guys, as of right now the official number is:

Here's a link to the spreadsheet
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/179zVxJza26PLTD3FqpWPV0UeZB3HOthKtET yViEnL7M/edit?usp=sharing

lordofthemax wrote:

I'm actually gonna go ahead and get started on the spreadsheet. How should we organize this? Right now we're looking at 2 20x20 tables (20 rows/columns for the use of a d20), or should I just do a 10x100 for a d10 and d100?

Just have a list of 1000 ship names, then roll 3D10 for the number. Or you could do something like have a list for how many words are in the name of the ship, is one (or more) of the words a color/god/place, etc. But I think that would defeat the purpose of all of these donated names.

Just have "X" lists of 100 names. Right now we've got what, close to 600? So 6 lists. For every 100 names, add another list. When you've got 10 lists you're done.

"x" lists of 100 names, where x is 10, makes a 10x100 table. Also, a d100 is just 2 d10s, so a d10 and a d100 is the same thing as 3 d10s.

So basically, we're in agreement on my 2nd idea.

I'm actually gonna go ahead and get started on the spreadsheet. How should we organize this? Right now we're looking at 2 20x20 tables (20 rows/columns for the use of a d20), or should I just do a 10x100 for a d10 and d100?

Hey guys, quick question: has anyone ever made an official Starfinder Discord yet, and if not, CAN someone start an official Starfinder Discord?

So right now I'm counting 595, though this number is probably off by a bit.

Yeah, but in a box set there would be less pawns and probably smaller (as well as less numerous) flip mats to make up for the extra resources the box requires, and to keep the price low enough to consider buying.

MattZ wrote:

In re: any combat involving up to 3 points of interest can be modeled as a plane.

Could a 1 on 1 combat then be modeled as just a line? All motion then boils down to Approach, Retreat, or Maintain Separation. The more mobile combatant would have near complete control over the separation distance.

No, because the direction your ship is facing matters, so there's more to it than just how close you are. There's also which way you're moving. So besides the two ships, you'd want to track the starting and stopping point of the moving ship on each turn (or possibly point of closest approach or some other interesting point before you reach the end point), which gives you 3 points of interest again.

Which makes me wonder why that also wouldn't create 4 points of interest when dealing with 3 ships, thus bringing us back to 3 dimensions.

That's not the point he was trying to make. He was talking about the ships when he said points of interest, and even if you take 3 points and have them face and move in three totally wild and different directions, a flat plane can be made by those 3 points at any given time.

Heh. In the last 4 comments, I have been corrected in three different ways. Well played, Paizo community.

I'm personally still not totally sold on Solarions, probably because I've been getting all my info from blogs and text information and not interviews and such. A melee based class in a sci-fi setting like this seems a bit pointless, especially when you bring up that they require the use of magic in order to actually get weapons for themselves. Summoning weapons is cool and all, but making an entire class based around it seems a bit weird when they could just buy a magic chainsword and some power armor or something. Feels a lot like monks, maybe crossed with paladins (which doesn't work in PF. Very few classes can effectively multiclass with monks). Now, granted, they haven't released more than a single sentence on the Solarions (being "Solarians are mystical melee combatants who harness stars and black holes to create weapons and armor from energy, and can manipulate these balanced, fundamentally opposing forces of energy."), which is all the information I have on them right now, but still. I need more info before I can start going off on how cool they are. Heck, for all we know they could just be Mystics but with better gear.

But I'm still pretty sure that the name is just a cheap marketing ploy that the founders of the class decided to use in order to attract more people. I mean, look at it, it's the most dramatic of all the class names so far, and the only proper noun (only one that must be capitalized). Everything else is a real word.

Tengu are a "Core" race in my pathfinder games and will absolutely be a "Core" race in my Starfinder games.
SM

you, sir, are my hero.

I didn't think anybody outside of Wikipedia actually knew what that stuff was.

It's used in most dictionaries, and it's basically required in order to attemd oxford. (that last part I made up)

At least they lent me some clothes for the photoshoot.

This avatar is so embarrassing. -_-

I have to ask... why is Iseph staring at you?

Dude, I can't even read what you're typing, much less pronounce it. If anything, you have confused me where I once had clarity.

... How does your keyboard make all those funny little shapes?

I said at the beginning it's oxford pronunciation system. Look up a guide for it, it's a lot more specific than spelling things out. Easier than it looks.

Using oxford pronunciation system here.
"Ysoki" is asian in origin, and likewise the y at the beginning probably makes an i sound, making the word /isoʊki:/.
Vesk is probably like vest, but with a k instead of a t (/vesk/)
Shirren i think is /ʃiren/
Kasatha I've been pronouncing /kʌsæθʌ/ or /kæsæθʌ/, I've been using both
Lashunta i think is /lɑːʃ uːntʌ/.
I'm pretty bad about dropping my soft a's into u's, so I may have put in this ʌ where it doesn't actually belong. Hope this helps.

EDIT: I put Ysoki down wrong, I didn't see the above posts till after I posted this.

The footing is really weird in the picture. Altronus is stepping on Keskodai's leg, Obozaya is stepping on his other knee (weird, considering he/she's BEHIND Keskodai), Keskodai's right leg (now broken) is sticking out between Navasi's legs (... not even going to start on the uncomfortable awkwardness of that), Iseph is stepping on Obozaya's fuel tank/ammo thing/big gun/etc., Iseph's right leg is also between Raia's legs (but not as bad as Keskodai), and Navasi looks like she's stepping on Quig's tail. Then there's Keskodai's staff, which is just everywhere (under Obozaya's foot, behind Navasi's right leg but even further in front of both her legs than his foot).

Conclusion: these pieces of art were all (awesomely) made independent of each other, and probably combined in this picture using Photoshop or some other editing software using layers.

Quig favorite by far. Also, I'm really hoping that they kept the ratfolk's Swarming racial ability, it made for some fun games.

For those who aren't familiar with it, two PF ratfolk could both be in the same square at the same time. Cool, right? It gets better. If they're both in the same square and both attacking the same target, it's considered flanking. FLANKING. The op of this ability was the best. One game, I gm'd an entire party of 5 ratfolk (the 5th guy was a sniper, so he was cool sticking back from the group). Good times.

Torbyne wrote:

lordofthemax wrote:

Kharn the Betrayer wrote:

I like them, but would have preferred something more like the thri-keen as my bug people.

Thri-kreen are awesome, but we already have one 4-armed race (which, fun fact, a lot of the community believes was based on le thri-kreen). Two 4-armed races would just be kinda dumb.

Well, Thri-kreen and Protoss equally. Making the iconic Solarion a Kasatha kind of makes the Protoss heritage pop a little more.

Kasatha don't really look a thing like warhammer eldar, which is what Protoss heritage really is. Space Elves

Since when were Protoss space elves? Space scions/mystics doesn't mean that they were based on or meant to be space elves. Elves were nature freaks, Protoss were fine with blowing up planets.

Also, in case anyone didn't know: Kasatha were in pathfinder, and aren't original to Starfinder. They WERE introduced in a sci-fi themed adventure setting (iron gods), but that doesn't mean they were originally imagined as a space-faring race. For this reason, while their Starfinder artwork and culture/armor/etc. have some inspiration from the protoss, I don't think that they were an inspiration for the original race. I could be wrong, open to arguments here. Just voicing my thoughts.

I like them, but would have preferred something more like the thri-keen as my bug people.

Thri-kreen are awesome, but we already have one 4-armed race (which, fun fact, a lot of the community believes was based on le thri-kreen). Two 4-armed races would just be kinda dumb.

Owen K. C. Stephens wrote:

Quandary wrote:

Sounds like these guys are like alt-(Pathfinder)-Gnomes in a way...

Ysoki/Ratfolk, which previously existed in Golarion, treading more alt-D&D-Tinker-Gnome territory...

What is the difference between the treatment of the new "Starfinder Core" races and the old Pathfinder Core races?
"Core Races" in PRPG meant the PC stat races in Core Book.
Only now I hear all those races will also be included in Starfinder Core Rules.
Except amongst those, only Human has been described as a Core Starfinder Race.
Will a distinction between those two groups of PC Races be an ongoing thing, or is it just weirdness of Blog Previews?

There is a distinction.

Imagine if we had put fetchlings and tengu in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook.

... you should have put Tengu in the core rulebook...

...can we have Tengu in Starfinder?...

Quandary wrote:

Sounds like these guys are like alt-(Pathfinder)-Gnomes in a way...

Ysoki/Ratfolk, which previously existed in Golarion, treading more alt-D&D-Tinker-Gnome territory...

What is the difference between the treatment of the new "Starfinder Core" races and the old Pathfinder Core races?
"Core Races" in PRPG meant the PC stat races in Core Book.
Only now I hear all those races will also be included in Starfinder Core Rules.
Except amongst those, only Human has been described as a Core Starfinder Race.
Will a distinction between those two groups of PC Races be an ongoing thing, or is it just weirdness of Blog Previews?

There is a distinction.

Imagine if we had put fetchlings and tengu in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook.

... you should have put Tengu in the core rulebook...

I just had an amazingly terrible idea for my campaign. I'm making a Shirren priest (class probably a cleric or mystic) who leads a cult of followers who worship the Swarm and earnestly believe that the only way their species can survive is to re-merge with the Swarm. The members of said cult are all complete communists and use implants/stims to simulate a hivemind, with all members contributing to it. The party is hired by the priest (who never joined the hivemind so he could preach independently) to go blow up a rival cult (players don't know that priest is a cult leader yet). After they blow it up, when they ask why the priest wanted them to go kaboom, he basically says "Cause they were interfering with my church's ancestor worshipping. Hey, speaking of, we need some security at our next meeting cause the government is trying to dissipate us. Interested?" If the players are smart, "ancestor worship" might clue them in on the cult. Otherwise, if they are not dumb, the government intervention should tip them off of the less-than-legal stuff happening. Even if they are dumb, the actual being at the cult meeting should hopefully be obvious enough to reveal that they are a cult. It's up to the players how they proceed with this knowledge.

Ideas/critiques/questions anyone? I'm still relatively new to gm'ing, so my storylines right now aren't quite on par yet.

So me and my buddies have been talking about this game for a while, and are already planning out our party. Right now our group plan is: two Ysoki twins (envoy and technomancer, envoy being the captain of le ship), a Kasatha mechanic, a Human operative (think black ops), and now I have decided to be... a Shirren hipster. Complete with a boombox, denim jacket, fake dreads and beard, a wool cap, and cargo pants. We decided to go either mystic or just tranfer over the bard class.

Since there's supposedly (basically all but confirmed) this huge antagonistic race called the swarm that is in the Starfinder universe, I'd like to call to mention the Starcraft books. Despite some of them being lower-than-average quality, they do help put the Zerg into a bit more perspective, and 90% of all these swarm races (Zerg, Tyranids Collectors, etc) are born from the same idea.

The short version is, "Probably a lot". The slightly longer version is "We can only guess."

[I was thinking this would be a thread about technomancers copyrighting or trademarking the spells they come up with ...]

Actually, that's a better idea than mine. Let's do that instead. So how WOULD that work? Like, if I buy a machine from some big corporation but then modify it using magic and stuff, and change the look of it and upgrade the specs, can I then release it as my own?

So I have EXTREMELY limited knowledge on all things legal, so I need someone's help with this. What sort of permissions/licenses/etc do I need in order to, say, write a book that takes place in the Starfinder universe, or maybe make a card/board game?

Lord Fyre wrote:

ulgulanoth wrote:

I wonder why Hobgoblins couldn't have just filled this role?

Probably because they wanted "new" races for Starfinder.

Indeed. That's probably the same reason why we have Ysoki and not Dwarfs, or Lashunta and not Elves.

WHOAH WHOAH WHOAH, HANG ON HERE. I take offence to this on behalf of the Ysoki. They compare better to gnomes than dwarves, they are an engineering tinker-ey race, and gnomes' physique is more similar due to the lack of brawn. Ysoki are like jawas: they build crap to sell and mess with, not to go to friggin war with it.

BretI wrote:

In most sci-fi settings, the ability to conceal a weapon can be more important than how big a hole it will put in someone. Something like a TOW can take out a tank, but you are going to be stopped if you try to carry it in the open on the street. I would expect there to be weapon limitations as part of the setting.

There will be times where you don't care that everyone sees that massive weapon you are carrying. I expect there will be other times where security asks you to step to the side, we don't want that weapon on our space station.

I watched the Humble Bundle playtest session. It is difficult to tell, but it doesn't look like they are treating armor as DR which I find somewhat disappointing. The characters were only second level, but seemed to have a variety of abilities which sounds good.

I hope we find out more of what they have planned.

Setting specifically, the main currency seems to be UPBs which are as i understand it, ultimate legos, they can be used to build anything out of themselves if you have enough and some sort of macguffin plan or knowledge or something. If i have that right than anyone could carry around some random amount of cash, go on up a tower, assemble a particle canon and start a rampage. I have no idea how security on Absalom station would handle that. From what i gather some planets like Akiton might not care that you are walking around with a repeating fusion carbine because everyone is armed and other planets might have a surveillance state drone system constantly checking for newly manufactured weapons... looking forward to how or if they address stuff like that in the core book. its like the 3D printed guns issue of the future.

Maybe they'll handle it like Nova Praxis does: things can only be assembled like such using a "compiler" or some other device to coordinate the assembly, and each compiler thingy can only build things when you plug in the schematic you need in order to build the thing. Using this system, in order to just build a gun or something, you need to acquire the schematic, which would be restricted or require a license of some kind.

Just letting you all know that we're planning to announce one of the two new core races on the blog *this week*. :D

Can we get a date on that blog?

I watched a bit of the playtest stream that was uploaded to youtube. It looked fun but I noticed the damage dice for futuristic weapons seem to be pretty low (basic d4, d6, d8, etc)

Do you think primitive weapons like bows will still have the same dice as Pathfinder or is everything going to be re-balanced?

I thought Starfinder was going to be mostly compatible with Pathfinder, but this just fills my head with a thousand questions :S

The reason it's so "low" is that in the future people have better armor and materials than they had in pathfinder. Moreover, it's kinda dumb for a 1st level character to be able to 1-shot most enemies or get 1-shotted themselves because of a friggin 6d6 laser rifle. Na, what's probably gonna happen is either the pathfinder weapons will be scaled back, or they'll have some pretty decent sized penalties to attacking (like -8 to attack and half damage, or something). Someone somewhere already said (this isn't a direct quote, it's paraphrasing) that a barbarian with no armor and a battleaxe charging at some dudes with machine guns would get mowed down pretty easily.

I have a couple Vorlon ships and a White Star from Babylon 5. Does that mean I win? :)

Why yes. Yes it does.

deadboy wrote:

Star flumphs would be BRILLIANT! A non-humanoid race is really what a sci-fi setting needs.

Dibs on getting to play a hooloovoo.

Tell you what: you can be a hooloovoo, and I'll take a mattress. Sound good?

I'm prolly gonna be using minis from twilight imperium, combined with some older minis from the old Star Wars spaceship board game. Discontinued collectible minis for everyone! :D

EDIT: now that I think about it... I can also use the map tiles from TI on my hex grix map to show where planets/asteroids/etc are on the map.

Torbyne wrote:

The concept as i understand it is that the group owns a ship that scales with the average party level. That scaling is determined by a point pool that the PCs decide to spend to upgrade various features. I suppose it would be similiar to a group owned Eidolon perhaps? What is left in the air though is groups that want to fly individual fighters or operate in a capital ship as opposed to a Serenity, Millenium Falcon or Rocinante. We dont know if you can pool other resources together and buy a second ship or change hulls from what you started with aside from just upgrading the one ship. Also, the existence of a dedicated resource for ships makes me wonder if you could buy upgrades with more traditional wealth.

Hmm, now i am wondering how fun it would be is players each ran their own fighter or worked in 2 man teams on each ship fighting against GM controlled forces. You could work in a lot of interesting scenarios since Facing is now a thing for ships. Wonder if you could pass target locks along or something. Like, the Solarion, Soldier and Operative are all in fighters while the Envoy and Technomancer are in a support ship locking, jamming and directing the hits.

A group pool of points is a nice way to do it. It could also work if each player had their own pool of points to spend on their position in the ship.

Maybe whenever a player levels, along with normal level stuff they have the option to get special cool upgrades and bonuses to their position on the ship (similar to getting feats, but specifically for the ship). That'd be cool.

Star flumphs would be great.

Make it a core race, 2017.

As noted, we have 2 yet to formally announced.

The grammar nazis have arrived. "We have 2 races yet to formally ANNOUNCED." This should either be ANNOUNCE, or you need to add a "be" (making it "yet to BE formally announced")

Shippy McShipface

Already been used. Though it is probably the best name on this whole list...

That Swarming ability is worthless if there is only one ratfolk in the party, assuming that that ability is unchanged from Pathfinder.

Which is why you COLLABORATE with your fellow party members :3

Kasatha and Ysoki are equally powerful in my opinion, Kasatha because op (that is legitimate reason), and ratfolk for one reason and one reason alone: Their Swarming racial ability.