professorbeej's page

Thanks for the advice, everyone. You've convinced me to let Chk Chk live (yep, she was playing the pregen, and it's glorious) thanks to the Exemplar's divinity playing off the Devourer's. Really appreciate all the discussion! Looking forward to seeing how it plays out on Tuesday evening. :D

But the Exemplar is a divine/god-like class that might have some extra special sauce. If you want to let it do a hard no-sell to all deaths you can.

This is actually what's making me really consider letting him save her. The effect is coming from the Devourer, so there's void/divinity involved, and with it being Exemplar, I am considering the fiction so that it might be able to step in. If it were a Mystic or something, I don't think I'd be so torn.

So my group is playing through Empires Devoured, and they reached the hazard called "A Game of Entropy." They were unlucky, and a character critically failed their save at difficulty-level 5, so they automatically die and get turned to a fine powder. It reads:

...the critical failure effect results in death. Creatures immune to void damage (such as undead) instead take acid damage. A creature slain by this hazard is reduced to a fine powder.

However, we have an Exemplar in our party (yeah, I allow PF classes in SF2e) who wants to use their feat Fish from the Falls' Edge to prevent them from dying. It reads:

Seeing your ally fall, you let out a cry, sending your divine spark to them temporarily to keep them from tumbling down the River of Souls. You prevent the triggering creature from dying and restore 5d8 Hit Points to them...

I ruled it that because they're turned into a fine powder with a disintegration effect, and that the Exemplar wouldn't be able to have time to save them.

I always understood powder/dust effects to be an immediate, no-save death.

But my players think that because the hazard doesn't explicitly say that the PC's death can't be prevented because of being turned to dust, and the Exemplar's ability doesn't say it can't not affect targets reduced to a fine powder as some spells and effects do, that the Exemplar could step in and save them before they die.

How would you rule this? I don't want to be unfair, but I also think the hazard is meant to be unpreventable. Thoughts and help would be appreciated.

Will we still be seeing the Demiplane/Paizo account discount? If we have the PDF on Paizo will we get the discount on Demiplane, or if we have it on Demiplane, will we have the PDF automatically added to our account when synced?

@Ed /hug

I am so excited for SF2e's GM Core I can hardly contain myself.

I use the 1 silver = 1 credit conversion and let my player find a Golarion-era revolver at an antique/junk dealer on Absalom station. I'm make the ammo harder to find, but they have a mechanic in the party who's particularly focused on ammo and an operative with a creator capsule, so it's not a huge hurdle to let them use it within the fiction.

Will we be able to build characters using these and others for Gen Con, or are all the SF Society sessions going to be run using pregens?

You should be able to search all of the creatures on Demiplane, too, whether you have the books unlocked on there or not. It's been really useful for me to be able to sort them on there.

Did the levels we could start at for SFS2 change? I was thinking it was 1 or 2. I guess we should all be level 1 to begin with at Gen Con if we're running through all the new SFS scenarios in order?

CULTxicycalm wrote:

Boxed sets died with TSR. No one after did them like they did them. Glad to see Paizo is trying them out after the hugely awesome Beginner sets.

Free League makes some excellent boxed sets, for multiple RPGs.

It's true. They're really excellent, pretty much across the board. They're also some of my favorite things to collect. I'm excited to have more available for PF and SF now, too.

I've never done Free RPG Day before. If I travel a couple hours to a shop that has the books, will I just be able to pick them up, or is there a requirement to play since I won't be GMing because my local shop isn't participating?

For me, it's making sure the dragon stays mobile. It's really easy to sit with them like seeming tanks on the ground, smashing and biting. But they're way easier to kill that way and less fun to fight.

Keep them flying in and out of range, strafing the party with their breath weapon when possible. With this dragon in particular, 250 feet of movement can keep it harrying your party for a while without taking an absurd amount of damage.

Spend a turn or two using its bite attacks and make sure to cast Dominate Person on the characters to sow confusion between them--then do it literally with the At-Will confusion spell.

The hardest part for me in running any dragon encounter is to make sure I, as a GM, remember all of the abilities and spells the dragon has. It might be good to plan out your first few turns with the dragon based on how you expect your party to react.

Like, maybe spend the first turn dominating someone, then fly just out of range enough to be frustrating, second turn strafe them with suffocating breath, plan for a second dominate casting, use the bite attacks, and then find a suitable target for disintegrate.

It's so great to hear that there will be physical versions to buy. My FLGS isn't going to be able to do Free RPG Day because of cost for them (we're a very small town), so I was worried I'd not be able to get the physical copies--or have to pay Black Market (lol) prices for them.

I can't wait to see the scenarios these are used in. The SF2e playtest maps have been great for my group.

Super Zero wrote:

For the exterior map, just use the map and ignore the walls and the furnishings other than the ladders and guns.

Honestly it's the interior map that's confusing, since you have to ignore the ladders and guns without telling the players the map does double-duty and they might need to be on the hull later.

A separate map wouldn't have hurt.

They actually made one/altered the map, for the Foundry module, looks really neat.

I'm pretty late to the party on this one, but is there a way to get that for the Roll20 version? It doesn't have anything but the interior map.

I am so stoked to play through all the scenarios at Gen Con. I know the first night is a 3rd-level pregen, but will we be able to create our characters for the others with playtest content like Technomancer or wil we need to stick with the Galaxy Guide and Player Core ones?

There's a real chance I am going to be playing a Vlaka Xenodruid at Gen Con this year. Or a Dragonkin Hellknight...or...*head explodes*

Good to know! Thank you! :highfive:

Maybe a strange question, but I haven't been able to find the exact answer: will this book actually replace the Core Rulebook with its new rules and enhancements? Like, actually at the table. Will my group be able to play using this and an adventure path module?