quindraco's page

One of the ways Captains could be a lot more useful would be if Taunt had to roll against the defending Captain, instead of the defending Ship - somehow, higher Tier ships are simply resistant to being mocked over the radio, regardless of the crew inside, and likewise, a Tier 1 ship full of level 20s are going to have a rough time ignoring even relatively shoddy insults. If every Captain in space had a Taunt gun ready to fire (so it would need to work on the same ship in the same combat again somehow) and was the ship's only defense (aside from turning the radio off, which turns off your own Taunt gun) against Taunt guns, a Captain could easily be more useful than a second Gunner. Instead, right now, the only infinitely spammable Captain action is Encourage, which you can accomplish with a Tier 7 AI computer module - there's no need for a body in that seat.

Androids have metabolisms of some sort, although it is a setting mystery how they digest anything, since they don't breathe in any chemicals to react with their food - they need to eat, and they regenerate slowly, just like a human does. Spoiler from Dead Suns 3.

I haven't read the PDF yet, but I'd assume Borais are to undead as Androids are to constructs - i.e. fundamentally NOT that, but rather humanoids with an exotic subtype and weird rules reflecting how strange they are.

Anyway, Androids have 4 racial traits; I would assume Old Talents lets you pick exactly one, based on your description, but what the hell do I know? They are:

Constructed
Exceptional Vision
Flat Affect
Upgrade Slot

Constructed is the trait letting them not breathe, while Upgrade Slot is the trait granting them an upgrade slot.

...And I just realized that, at the end of the ability, it uses the phrase "bonus slot". Okay, that makes more sense. Every mention of the addition in the ability except for the last sentence says "bonus upgrade" and I seemed to have missed that list line. Thanks for helping me with that! :)

This is actually an unsolved question, and I have another thread about this for FAQing purposes. I also FAQ-marked your post. :)

Here are the facts, and the facts are these:

1) There are three sentences in the rule referring to what you get.
2) These two sentences refer to you getting an upgrade, not a slot: "You can add one more upgrade to your armor than its normal maximum number of upgrade slots." "If you add this bonus upgrade to heavy armor, you can select an upgrade normally limited to powered armor."
3) This sentence refers to you getting a slot, not an upgrade: "An upgrade placed in this bonus slot costs half the normal credit amount."
4) This 2-sentence FAQ entry refers to you getting a slot, not an upgrade, but is not a FAQ entry on the question you asked.

60% of available sentences suggest a slot, and 40% suggest an upgrade. Do with that what you will.

No. You can only take it a second time, and only at the highest spell level you know it at.

Is this in the CRB anywhere? Or in Alien Archive? I can't seem to find it, and the wording is important for allowing someone who knows Summon Creature twice at a Spell Level below 6 to "level up" the spell like with any other leveled spell.

So if I already have one instance of the spell known, and decide to take it a second time, the second instance must be the highest level spell I can cast? Am I understanding that correctly? No taking it as a 6th-level spell, then taking it as a 3rd?

No, you can. See page 119: "Every time you gain a level, you can swap out one spell you already know and learn a single new spell of the same level in its place."

You've said you're talking about a level 17 Technomancer. At level 16, you learn 2 SL 6 spells, and at level 17, you learn 1. At either level, at the same time you do this, you can "lose" a single 3rd level spell you know to learn Summon Creature 3 instead. This means you can learn Summon Creature 6, and then learn Summon Creature 3, provided you did not already know SC3 (see below).

Remember, order matters when learning your spells - the rules governing your selection at level 4 are not the same as the rules at level 17. You have to learn your spells "in order" to make a legal Technomancer.

Note from above: There's no rule I can find banning you from learning the same spell over and over again - probably because for most spells, there is literally no benefit. Summon Creature is an odd duck, but to the best of my ability to parse the rules, you can learn SC3 after already knowing SC3 at level 17 - it just won't do anything, as the special rule adding additional creatures known won't trigger. Accordingly, I'm skipping the interim work and just telling you you can't do it, instead of telling you you can, but it's a terrible idea. It's possible your GM will rule otherwise.

-40C to +80C is a *lot*, and completely covers the ranges in the CRB - Extreme Cold is warmer than -40C and Extreme Heat is cooler than +80C. Just an FYI, in terms of in what environments you were expecting your players to need to worry about powering up their armor heaters. And don't forget, space is an excellent insulator - you don't freeze to death in space very quickly, and realistic/immersive thermal rules in general mean you should worry about the thermal conductivity of the medium (space should kill you slower than cold air should kill you slower than cold water, assuming no wind or active currents).

I don't think that's how it works. You can only ever learn it 'twice', period. I don't think you can learn it 'twice' as a 6th, getting two lists from 1-6, then also learn it 'twice' as a 5th and getting two lists from 1-5, and so on down the line. Like other variable level spells, when you learn it as a higher spell level, you 'lose' the lower level version from your spells known and replace it with something else. I mean, I don't think that breaks the game or anything, but it seems insanely silly and overly complicated.

This is false. Forgetting lower level spells of a variable level spell is an optional effect, per page 330 of the CRB.

If you know a variable-level spell and later select it again as a higher-level spell known, you can immediately select a new spell known to replace the lower-level version of the variable- level spell.

(Emphasis added).

Assuming a Monoclassed Technomancer, this means you can select Summon Creature 1 twice at Levels 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, and 16. Each time, you can choose whether or not to forget the lower levels, so if you choose not to, you can "stack" summonables known. As I keep repeating, this is of very little utility - any caster trying this is nerfing the heck out of themselves.

So what exactly changes if I also took it as a 5th-level spell as well? I get 20 more choices, 4 from levels 1-5?

Could I take it as 6th-level spell a second time? Or am I limited to one instance per spell level?

Can I take the spell more than twice?

1) Yes, 20.

I believe the theoretical maximum is 130 for a Neutral Monoclassed caster: SL 1 can't be spent learning triples from a table below it, and SL2 only has 33 learnables (1 of each from its own table plus 17 triples from SL1), but the SLs above it all combine learning fewer from that table with having triples from below them to consume every learnable from that SL.

You could achieve nearly this maximum, 129, with:
2xSL6 (you know 8 from SL6)
2xSL5 (you know 16 from SL5
2sSL4 (you know 24 from SL4)
2xSL3 (you know 32 from SL3 and SL2, and all 17 from SL1).

If you take it ONCE as a 6th-level spell, at 17th level, you would gain 4 at each SL from 1 to 6. Each one from 2 to 6 could either be 1 summon from that table or 3 from below - for example, the 4 known from 6 could be 1 Elder Robot, 3 Huge Robots, 1 Elder Fire Elemental, and 3 Huge Fire Elementals. Your total number of "slots" is 24: 4 at each spell level. Each "slot" can be 1 from that spell level's table, or 3 from any table below it.

The way it was explained to me is like quindraco describes.

Learn it at level 1 as SL1 spell, get 4 creatures from level 1 list.
Learn it again at level 3 as SL1 spell, get 8 (total) creatures from level 1 list.
Learn it again at level 4 as SL2 spell, keep 8 creatures above, but also add 4 from level 2 list.
Learn it again at 6, and you have 8 level 2 and 8 level 1 creatures.

At 16th or 17th level, you can potentially have it learned twice in every spell level and have up to 48 different creatures, total, to summon. If you start at a higher level spell, you get all the lower level ones for "free" same as any other variable level spell.

The theoretical maximum is more than 48; you get 48 just from learning the SL6 copy twice. You can reach 88 from SL6 twice plus SL5 twice. After that, you'll start knowing more than exist on the tables, so the scaling slows down. If the tables were infinitely big, the maximum would be 168 known types. In reality, the maximum is significantly smaller.

Combats run a lot different if any of the PCs are built for melee. The bad guys focus on the melee PCs; the AC of the ranged PCs rarely matters. For a good chunk of the game, melee PCs do a lot more damage.

Do they? When are you thinking of?

At level 1, a tactical doshko does about 7.875 damage, on average, to a combatant target with no DR, wielded by an S18 wielder. An artillery laser wielded by a D18 wielder against a combatant target with no FR does about 7.5 damage when full attacking (assuming any burn goes out immediately). I assumed a BAB of 1 and Weapon Focus.

A target with mirror image only counts as one target, but OP's question has more to do with whether or not the figments also count as one target - for example, if the caster has 4 images out, the attack against the caster might target a figment, but does the automatic weapon attempt to target the figments as additional targets? The spell makes it clear it's possible to target a figment somehow, since that's the underlying purpose of casting it.

I've FAQed the post, because the rules don't clarify this - the spell makes it clear figments are targetable, and the rules on Swarm Defenses make it clear that multiple targets sharing a space interact with automatic weapons in ways the automatic weapons rules may not cover, but there's no RAW rule I can find covering this specific scenario.

I would house rule, if I were the GM, that all figments are legal, equidistant targets, and hence the automatic weapons rule would have to be followed accordingly - a caster with 4 images out is 5 equidistant targets sharing a space, so the automatic weapon must attempt to attack all 5 targets; we randomly determine which of the 5 each attempt targets. Because of the unique circumstances, and for ease of play, I would randomly assign the targets prior to hitting, rather than after.

Per page 330 of the CRB, when you learn a variable level spell, you can cast it at any spell level equal to or below the level you actually learned. Per page 144 of Alien Archive, Summon Creature is special - you can learn it twice at the highest spell level you know. Otherwise, it follows the standard rules for spells - you can learn it once at the highest spell level you know. It's possible to learn this spell a maximum of 12 times, because when 1st level is the highest you know, you can learn Summon Creature 1 twice, then you can do it again at SL 2, and so on.

Each time you learn it, you either choose 4 types at each level you can cast, or you can replace selections with a member of a lower list, which lets you summon multiple. This means when you learn the L6 copy, you can gain 24 types (4 at each spell level) - in general, learning a copy at SLX gets you 4X new creatures learned. However, the downside is that you're burning up spells known for diminishing returns, so it's hardly OP. For example, if you take it twice at SL6, twice at SL 5, and once at SL 4, you'll have 2 more known "types" than even exist on the SL1 list - meaning using any spells known on the SL1 copy no longer does anything.

Recapping:
Learning Summon Creature at SLX nets you 4 additional picks at every SL from 1 to X inclusive. You can learn it at SLX twice, but only while it is the highest spell level you can learn - otherwise, you can only learn it once. Each time you learn the SL6 copy, for example, you get a total of 24 additional picks.

If they have a fly speed, you have a real problem. We know from Contemplatives that a PC stat block's fly speed can be a worse maneuverability than the NPC block, and from Barathu, that it can be the same. If you conclude that Haan PCs have a fly speed, you must issue them a maneuverability, and we can't decide that from precedent or any explicit rule in the book. Plus, we know from Dragonkin that you can't just assume the magnitude of the speed, either, because PC Dragonkin fly at 1/4th the speed of an NPC.

I think the only possible conclusion for now has to be "no", barring you coming up with some mechanism for determining the magnitude and maneuverability of the fly speed in question.

Fuzzy is correct - immunity to critical hits means the critical hit functionally does not happen, no matter how bizarre this might seem. An undead with immunity to critical hits does not catch on fire from critical burn, does not "bounce" electricity from critical arc, does not fall down to critical knockdown, and so on.

A---> B

A
Therefore Not C.

Non sequitor. That isn't how logic OR english work. Just because the rules don't tell you what happens when your +12 doctor or your +4 boyscout try to use these things does not mean that they don't work at all.

The wording is vague. Use a common sense answer.

The wording is not vague, it just doesn't say what you want it to say.

There are exactly as many rules in the book allowing someone to make a trained check with a Medpatch and get a +10 circumstance bonus as there are rules allowing someone to do it with a flashlight or a field ration: none at all. I get that you disagree with the RAW, and that's fine, and you're welcome to houserule it - Fuzzypaws was asking me about the RAW, not about what I felt the RAW ought to be, which is what you seem to be focused on.

In fact, I challenge you to write Medpatches in a clearer fashion if your design intent was explicitly to only provide the bonus to the untrained - I honestly can't come up with much aside from re-arranging the comma to be easier to parse. It's very, VERY direct about the fact that you have to make an untrained check to get the bonus.

p220 wrote:

A medpatch allows you to attempt a Medicine check untrained with a +10 circumstance bonus, but only for the first aid, long-term stability, treat disease, and treat drugs or poison tasks.

Because that's how English works? Maybe it'll be easier to read if I rearrange it as an IF THEN sequence.

This is what that sentence says:

IF you attempt a Medicine Check
AND that Check is Untrained
AND that Check is in this list: first aid, long-term stability, treat disease, and treat drugs or poison
THEN the Check is allowed
AND the Check is made with a +10 circumstance bonus.

You follow? The sentence very clearly states that Medpatches do something when you attempt a Medicine check untrained. There is no allowance in their rules block for what happens when you try a trained Medicine check.

Yeah, a bunch of Starfinder would have been better with PF2's action model - for example, it's fundamentally ridiculous that you can attack things multiple times, but can't harrying fire or covering fire multiple times, even though both are supposedly based on a single standard action attack. If the devs had been forced to work with the PF2 action system, denying them the ability to "type" actions and only being allowed to specify a cost, it would have been much better. I also suspect many of the weird issues surrounding Operative Trick Attack would never have arisen - they'd simply have Trick Attack be a 2-cost attack for one buffed shot and be done with it.

I'm fairly certain trained doctors can use medpatches.

Nope.

A medpatch allows you to attempt a Medicine check untrained with a +10 circumstance bonus, but only for the first aid, long-term stability, treat disease, and treat drugs or poison tasks.

Woa, I was really convinced Sprayflesh had multiple doses in it, but you're right - it's Capacity 1! Man, that's awful.

Sprayflesh does interact with disease saves in that you can use them as a medpatch, but that's not helpful to a trained doctor.

Because RAW, comm units haven't got cameras. Cameras aren't even available for sale in the CRB, full stop. Go read the rules on comm units again - they have microphones and speakers, but there's nothing there justifying the theory that they have cameras. Your GM has to house-rule in that your smartphone works like a smartphone.

You get broadly better carrying capacity numbers if you multiply strength by constitution - for example, you'll get a maximum of 324 pounds for 18S/18C, and 784 pounds for 28S/28C - but you'll nerf people down in the 8-9 range for both stats. For even more realism, since carrying capacity is quadratic in size, you can use (S*C*(size^2))^(2/3), where humans are size 5. That'll get you 403 pounds for an 18/18 human, 727 pounds for 28/28, and 514/927 for a Shobhad with the same stats. 8/8/Medium is 137, 8/8/Large is 174, and 8/8/Small is 102.

I ran the (fixed) numbers, and even if Treat Deadly Wounds let you apply your entire Medicine check as bonus healing, not just your INT bonus, it would still be worse per credit than Mk 1 Healing Serums. In fact, even being this nice still means you can't catch up to the serums until L10:

Your healing total is the result of your Medicine check plus your intelligence score plus your target's level plus your target's constitution score.

I think any possible homebrew is going to have to start with drastically cutting the cost per dose of Sprayflesh, particularly since it seems intended that an L5 doctor should have some interest in carrying at least one can of it.

That's odd, when I looked at it I couldn't find any scenario where Sprayflesh is better than spending the 440 credits buying and drinking 8 mk I healing serums instead.

Sorry, I screwed up my math - I originally crunched the same as you, but when I redid it for this thread, for some reason I thought Sprayfleshes contained 10 doses, not 5 - and worse, for some reason I thought it let you heal with your entire Medicine bonus, not just your INT. The difference is crippling. You are correct - Sprayfleshes still suck even under optimal conditions (INT 9 Doctor working on an L20 patient).

Shadow Essence is a poison defined on page 419 of the CRB. What is its item level and price?

Quindraco, can you explain further? I’m not getting why those are problematic for the Operative... Maybe I’m just dense.

Same problem pre-FAQ sniper rifles had - Operatives have no way to Boost a Boost weapon while also Trick Attacking.

Sprayflesh is universally worse than Healing Serums for healing - unlike Serums, multiple Sprayflesh doses (prior to resting to "consume" them) won't stack, instead overlapping, and won't even stack with SP healing from a Rest (you spend the RP, then take the HP healing instead of the SP healing). It's true that as early as L2 (L1 for a Lashunta) Sprayflesh heals more per credit than any Healing Serum in the game, but this doesn't address the problem that it does a lot less healing, in general, than taking your SP regen instead, and possibly chasing it with a drink of Mk 1 Healing Serum (the most credit-efficient Serum option). If Sprayflesh healing stacked with SP healing from resting, it would be interesting, and if it stacked with itself, it would be straight-up compelling and blow serums out of the water for out-of-combat healing.

Sprayflesh doses are basically Medpatches only cheaper if you're not trained in Medicine, so if you can convince your GM to let a computer control a sprayflesh doser, you can pretty readily build yourself a gizmo that will just stop your bleeding now, without requiring an action from you. I have no idea how legal that's intended to be - the rules on what computers can control are very lax and loose, including explaining what a control module ships with (e.g. a control module for a gun ships with a turret of unknown specs....). That said, computers have no way to gain skill ranks, only skill bonuses, so a tier 2 computer controlling a sprayflesher will roll a 16 on a 1, autopassing the DC 15 for stopping bleed. This is even better if you can come up with a way to tell when people are unstable - we don't have Medicine DCs for diagnosing ailments, so it's impossible to figure out what you need for your autosprayflesher to decide for itself when to dose you, just like we don't actually know how a creature doctor is supposed to tell when you're dying, stable, poisoned, etc. Depending on how your GM rules, building yourself an autodoc into your armor, consisting of a computer-controlled sprayflesher and computer-controlled advanced medkit, can be pretty great for things like autostabilization, or shaking off diseases and poisons.

Correct. Drift Engines do not consume PCU, they only demand you have the PCU theoretically available. You have to shut off your sublights to turn the Drift Engine on, but you have to do this even if you have enough PCU to pay for both as if the DE consumed power, and likewise, there's no need to pay for both the DE and anything else - i.e. all other systems can stay on while the DE engages. This is good for you if you try to Drift in combat, as your shields can stay powered up.

Creatures aren't items - it's why the Tensile Reinforcement armor upgrade doesn't work on Androids. RAW, the problem is the opposite of what you are describing; the ally was Bulk 0, because creatures are Bulkless. In fact, they have to stay Bulkless for many rules to make sense, like Mechanics taking Saddles on their Drones, or the Survival rules for mounted stuff doing anything, because as you point out, otherwise it's fundamentally unfeasible for almost anything to carry a rider. In your situation, RAW, the Large character would need to worry about the bulk of the Medium character's gear, but not about the bulk of the Medium character.

We don't have rules for larger or smaller weapons changing bulk - Hover drones and Large PCs currently have to carry weapons sized specifically for them with the same mass, changing the weapons' densities. The rules in question are on page 168.

The camera mod is among the ones that make the absolute least sense to me. How are we supposed to interpret how a drone works without the mod, given that taking direct control exists? Drones aren't blind that we know of, so what exactly is the camera mod actually adding? So weird. Whatever the explanation, should we be assuming Drones need a microphone mod to do the same thing with audio? What about other senses? They don't constantly fall over, so I'd hope they have an internal gyroscope, or at least some accelerometers, but do you need to spend a mod slot to do things like record the output of the device?

It's definitely the case that Sprayflesh is absolute garbage compared to buying healing serums like a sane person. Medpatches are also bizarre, because they only help the untrained - in fact, it's very easy to build an L1 character whose Medicine check is worse with a Medpatch due to being trained.

What let’s it hold two nets with one mount? I’m drawing a blank.

Nets are 1-handed capacity Drawn ranged weapons, and Weapon Mounts can hold 2 ammunition for any 1-handed ranged weapon.

Someone who installs cybernetics is called a "surgeon", as it is a surgical procedure to install a prosthetic - just a very advanced prosthetic. For example, you would go to a surgeon tomorrow if you were getting a pacemaker installed.

Someone who makes cybernetics is called an "engineer". Engineers do specialize in the real world - the subfield is called biomedical engineering, for engineers who make prosthetics. Typically, one of the engineer's jobs when designing the prosthetic is ensuring that the surgeon can readily install it - it is an explicit design goal that surgeons be readily capable of installing them.

The rule you are missing is on page 74.

Initial Mods: Each chassis comes with initial drone mods that are a part of the chassis itself. These are in addition to the mods a drone gains by level. You can’t change these mods when you gain levels or rebuild your drone unless you choose a new chassis.

Venom Spurs aren't weapons, they're cybernetic systems. That's why, right now, it's impossible to be proficient with Venom Spurs, let alone focused or specialized. You can only apply a weapon fusion to them if your GM rules that you can weapon fusion anything, owing to the rules on improvised weapons, allowing you to apply fusions to e.g. chairs.

By contrast, Bone Blades are weapons, so you should be able to apply weapon fusions to them just fine, using the standard rules.

Burn and Corrode, specifically, deal their own damage completely independently of what delivered them - for example, you can use fusions to make a laser deal only cold and sonic damage, and the Burn will be type fire. This is because they are conditions. You'd have to use a fusion capable of modifying the delivered condition to change it in any way.

The Merciful fusion has no interactions with the Burn or Corrode conditions, and both will behave the same way with or without the fusion, i.e. they will deal lethal damage.

Manipulator arms will work, at a -4 penalty to the attack roll. So will a weapon mount, which will have no penalty, and the mount can hold up to 2 nets inside it.

It should not require UPBs - what you need to do is tell the UPBs armor is already made of to incorporate the Noqual into themselves, akin to "upgrading" cable from titanium-wrapped nylon to adamantine-wrapped nylon (which also requires a starmetal, something UPBs seemingly can't fake on their own). I would use as much of the Noqual sidebar as possible for ruling on this, as well as the rules we have for using Adamantine, another starmetal:

0) Applying special material to any armor costs as much as applying it to a melee weapon. Note that this is based on the CRB's table 7-12 on page 191, which implies that special material costs are independent of object bulk, object item level, and object cost - they depend only on object type. You may want to increase this cost.
1) When a creature with DR/X hits a creature wearing armor that would overcome DR/X if it were a melee weapon made of the same material with a natural/unarmed attack, such as a slam, the target gains the same DR. For example, if a Fey with DR 5/Cold Iron punches a target wearing Cold Iron armor, the target has DR 5/Cold Iron for the duration of the attack. Noqual does this whenever the attacking creature is a magical construct or undead created by a spell, regardless of the definition of X on the creature. If someone is wearing Noqual armor, they gain a +Y enhancement bonus to saving throws against spells and spell-like abilities, but so do the targets of any of their spells and spell-like abilities. Y is 1 for Light Armor, 2 for Heavy Armor, and 3 for Powered Armor.
2) Adamantine Alloy armor is always at least Hardness 30, even if its Hardness would otherwise be less. Noqual armor has a +4 enhancement bonus (house rule away the sidebar providing an untyped bonus) to saves against magical effects. Neither of these apply to the wearer.

As others have noted, Glide is Fly but worse, for when you have no Pilot available.

There's no actual ambiguity, just the RAW seemingly violating the fluff description, implying the RAI may have been violated (and hence making it worth bringing to Paizo's attention). What you're basically asking is whether or not the RAW definition of injury vector afflictions matches the RAI definition, not for a clarification on an ambiguous interpretation of said definition.

I would be very surprised if you got what you're asking for in terms of SP vs HP; it would either allow PCs to murder NPCs with toxins far, far faster than I think is intended, because toxins would work on NPCs immediately, and only PCs would have an overshield, or NPCs would become immune to toxins, depending on which pool their points "counted as" for the purposes of toxins, and PCs would generally never, ever buy the stuff. You might be able to get a FAQ entry saying that temporary hit points block toxins, as I really don't know the intended balance of temporary hit points.

Altronus has Weapon Focus (advanced melee).

Better in the strictly technical sense that you will have a higher number somewhere, but that higher number will be odd and thus have no effect, unless it lets you qualify for a feat or some other ability.

Right, but that's not germane to OP's question, because maybe you are going for a feat. OP was asking why 17 specifically was the worst starting point, and it's clearly worse than 15, 13, 11, or 9. Obviously builds exist where the odd stat has no bearing at all, but if it has a way to matter, it shouldn't be 17.

The problem (and I agree it's a problem; I actually already made a Homebrew thread dedicated to addressing some of the issues with them) is easy to fix:

Air Elementals gain Aerial
Water Elementals gain Aqueous
Earth Elementals gain Cthonic
Fire Elementals gain Fiery
Ignore the CR requirements for these (they are under Simple Template Grafts). You have to modify various elements of the stat blocks, but it simultaneously solves multiple problems, like how water elementals do less damage underwater, as their natural attacks are blunt, as well as others, like how they're, RAW, extraplanar even on their home plane. And, yes, the fact that they'll drown underwater.

Problems this won't fix:
All elementals will still starve; whether or not this is a problem is up to you (you can have your earth elementals need to eat rocks, for example - the starvation rules do not mandate any particular food or drink the creature needs to consume).
Earth Elementals will suffocate in their home environment, because Cthonic does not let the creature "breathe" dirt or vacuum. Fire Elementals have a similar problem, depending on whether or not you interpret the Plane of Fire to provide oxygen and other chemicals to "feed" fires, or whether it's "pure fire", and hence your Fire Elementals should expect to be able to burn indefinitely in vacuum. Air and water elementals are fine with air, and the latter can breathe water, so they'll both survive their own home planes no problem.
Water elementals can't handle the parts of their plane that are hot or cold - they don't have a climb speed for interacting with ice or a fly speed for interacting with fog/steam/etc. Earth elementals *may* have a similar problem, depending on how you interpret lava or quicksand, as they have no swim speed. Air and Fire have their own share of these concerns, depending how you interpret your elemental planes, but it's easy to declare that Ice, Vapor, Lava, and so on elementals are distinct types, and the 4 in the rulebook are from very specific sub-locales, to overcome any such concerns.
All elementals rely on vision to some extent - even Earth Elementals mostly will only have Blindsense, even with Cthonic - which is varying levels of stupid, depending on type.
Other situations that "seem" to fit elementals poorly, such as how water elementals *don't* mind being doused in salt, but *do* mind being doused with very caustic acid, even though both chemicals will interact with pure water similarly.

There is no rules support anywhere I know of for any mechanic in the game that triggers on dealing hit point damage, rather than stamina - there are rules that interact with the difference, such as the Mystic Cure spell or Poisons, but I've never seen one that needs to deal hit point damage to function.

In general, afflictions are vector specific; for example, Black Lotus Extract is a contact vector poison, so it can be delivered with a sword without dealing any kind of damage, but Blue Whinnis is injury vector, so not only do you need to hit, you need to overcome damage resistance. Per the current rules we have, you can damage any of temporary hit points (e.g. from a force field), stamina points, or actual hit points to inflict Blue Whinnis - the definition of an injury affliction is on page 417 and includes any damage to the target, without caring about what pool is damaged.

Void Death is injury vector, so Akatas specifically are addressed using the rules I just provided (which, again, are on page 417): the Akata must overcome Damage Resistance and deal at least 1 point of damage to inflict Void Death, but need not worry about which of Temporary Hit Points, Stamina Points, or Hit Points that minimum 1 point is applied to.

Here's the progression of every legal starting stat, as you advance them:

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8, 10, 12, 14, 16
9, 11, 13, 15, 17
10, 12, 14, 16, 18
11, 13, 15, 17, 18
12, 14, 16, 18, 19
13, 15, 17, 18, 19
14, 16, 18, 19, 20
15, 17, 18, 19, 20
16, 18, 19, 20, 21
17, 18, 19, 20, 21
18, 19, 20, 21, 22

As you can see, starting at 17 is garbage compared to starting at 16 - there is never any benefit, ever. 17 is the only starting row above with this problem, where it is identical to starting at a point less at every advancement opportunity. Any build you can come up with with 17 in a stat would be better with 16 in that stat and the same point somewhere else, full stop, unless you somehow came up with a way to need the extra carrying capacity versus 16 strength, but never intended to advance strength at all (as carrying capacity is easily solved other ways).

Per the description of the spell, you need to make your own table, and you will also need one for Dragonkin and Urogs and more - more broadly, all Aberrations, Animals, Constructs, Dragons, Fey, Magical Beasts, Monstrous Humanoids, Oozes, Plants, and Vermin will need their own tables. Past that, you're asking for Advice, not Rules.

In terms of advice, Reincarnation is a very poorly designed spell, because it includes an explicit list of humanoids to reincarnate into, which is fundamentally incompatible with the fact that Starfinder has released humanoid races post-CRB and will continue to do so (for example, it is patently ridiculous that you need the 100 roll to have any chance of being reincarnated as an Alien Archive humanoid, e.g. a Reptoid). There is also no guidance offered for constructing alternative tables, and the table itself offers, with no explanation, biased results, with races varying between 4% and 9% (not including the 1% chance for all non-table options). You don't have much to work with when it comes to designing your own tables.

Instead, and to prevent exotic problems introduced by a "proper" reincarnation spell (which ought to be able to reincarnate a target into a species that has not even been contacted yet, which is potentially funny, but rife with problems if accidentally rolled), I'd recommend fundamentally restructuring the spell to have a table shaped like this:

D%
1-16 Original species.
17-48 Target creature may choose any species not including their original one, of the same type, known of by the creature.
49-96 Caster may choose any species not including the target's original one, of the same type, known of by the caster.
97-00 GM may choose any species.

The “Artillery Laser” subgroup of weapons are phenomenally misnamed. The meaning has changed overtime, there are also pedantic nuances between British and American English and some technical distinctions between military branches, but the modern usage in all cases pretty much agrees on one major point: artillery are not a small arms. (Which is another thing that bugs me: longarms [e.g., rifles] are one type of small arm; Starfinder uses the term “small arm” for what should be called sidearms.)

Artillery are things like canon, howitzers, mortars, rockets... Again, professionals will quibble about whether or not a particular weapon system is artillery or not, but no one ever would count a rifle as artillery.

Naming conventions are weird. You're assuming the artillery laser is being described as artillery, but you know how humans are. They'd name a laser that if its job was taking out artillery. If artillery lasers weren't awful at that, it would even be reasonable to do so.

You're definitely right about the sidearms issue. I had a hilarious conversation in-game two sessions ago as my Skittermander spent half an hour trying to get the quartermaster to issue him a "sidearm" - she had no idea what that word meant and kept bringing him more and more powerful weapons in confusion. He eventually stormed out when she brought him a black hole grenade.

Ravingdork wrote:

I think it probably has something to do with the fact that armor is not something that could be "drawn easily by the target as a move action," which would preclude it from being a legal target for a sunder attempt.

Why couldn't armor be easily drawn as a move action, you could certainly rule it so, but I don't recall anything in the rules saying you couldn't draw armor as a move action were you to be carrying it. It only weighs a couple bulk in most cases.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zuc3Oc3r7ww

How many BP does a level 1 party start with?

As he notes in the beginning of the linked document, his BPS work like experience or credits, so unlike in the CRB, his BPs scale with party size - the answer to your question is no longer a constant, regardless of party size.

A party of all level 1 people would start with 20 BP per member using Tryn's rules, instead of the CRB's answer of 55 flat, meaning a party of 3 or fewer members starts with a smaller budget, while a party of 4 or more has a larger one.

I haven't gone over the rest of his ruleset, but they definitely take a very different approach from the rulebook, as e.g. any Small or larger ship can hold an infinite number of gymnasiums, but a Small ship can hold 1 Medical Bay and then runs out of space, full stop. He also claims 1 metric ton equals 1 cubic meter, which is only true for water, so I assume his cargo table should simply be read as measuring volume, which is far more useful than measuring mass, as you can fit any amount of mass on a ship of any size, if you have some way to not die to the black hole I'm implying.

I really appreciate having an idea of how much volume a ship of a given size should have available for stuff, but you'd have to go over the available modules that currently consume "1 bay" and convert them individually to properly make the numbers useful - for example, once we have proper volume rules, we can finally express how large a gymnasium is, allowing a ship to have a larger or smaller gym.