rixu's page

rixu wrote:

The drug is quite lethal, we lost one character to it and another was close, one more fail and he also would have died.

As written it's a level 20 drug that only my con focused solarian player had a chance of living through. I'm honestly surprised you only lost one.

Well, Only two took the poison since two others managed to insult the Boss and were thrown out of the nightclub. They were called to help when the fight began...

Some more notes about the night club part for the GMs who are going to run this. There are things one should note before running it:

1) Decide how the police are going to react if the players happen to kill a few bouncers in the assassin encounter. Even if they are deceived I think murdering Nightclub employees might cause some issues. I was lucky that one player only took a few out non-lethally and the one killed was by a player affected by the drug so it could be blamed on the poisoning. Also, if they kill Zurnalas bouncers they probably are not going to be allowed to search for the device.
The drug is quite lethal, we lost one character to it and another was close, one more fail and he also would have died.

2) The book says the singer is Verthani. The assassin on the other hand is human and the disguise goes away in 10 minutes. Still they are required to make the police believe shes an imposter? She is also mentioned to be wanted and even with a reward so the police probably would see that right after scanning her to the system.

Just to note a few things I needed to work with "on the fly" :)

From the looks of it the adventure really expects me to handle a office building in the middle of a city as a normal dungeon and that no one notices nor cares when the PCs arrive with heavy weaponry and possibly power armor and start to shoot the place up, the same way no one cares or notices that they have a lethal trap on the front door which only by pure dumb luck has not fried someone already like a reporter who wants to do a bit about the upcoming Penumbra launch and decided to visit in person.

THIS! My players got the first shock and were wondering what is happening here. After this they decided to call the cops since there is a deadly trap on the door. I really had to think how to handle this but since it was a "private" building the police said they will come and investigate but were thinking it was probably a electrical malfunction and needs a electrician rather than police.

I decided this was on an industrial outskirts of the town and that's why there were no bystanders and such a small building was possible.

And even after demolishing the place the PCs are targeted several times with bombs and fully equipped mercenaries, yet the police is supposed to not care while the PCs are expected to have their normal gear with them.

I think this problem is quite consistent through all the APs I've run. The futuristic scifi worlds clearly have taken their gun laws from the US and made them even worse :D

Hi,

I canceled my Starfinder Adventure Path -subscription and this order was canceled. I just noticed that it had also canceled the Near Space -rulebook. Isn't this part of Starfinder Roleplaying Game -subscription and should be still sent?

-Markku

Hi,

Could you please cancel my Adventure Path Subscription.

-rixu

I just wonder which is the companion, the humanoid or the quadruped.

Also, after seeing the cute plant creature my players started to wonder if this is Starfinder or Pokemon and whether this is going just too far :D

I was reading the first books magic items and noticed something interesting regarding Dawnflower Melange:

"Cafes near the Radiant Cathedral are often filled daily with Sarenite clerics enjoying this beverage while talking about the confluence of science and religion."

They must pay insanely well to the clerics if they can afford 475cr drinks daily just for refreshment :D I better keep this quiet or my PCs will probably try to rob the clerics...

I'm having problems with Aurelos. C10 is a 15 X 30 room and it is supposed to have 4 rune wardens and 1 AZ soldier in it awaiting the party to enter the room and are ready to fight. That just doesn't make any sense to me. I'm just going to have to spread them out throughout the upper level.

We played this last week and it was quite crowded (we even have 2 large PCs) but I think it was just fine. I like it that the space stations and ships are quite confined since you would probably want to minimize the size for cost and environmental system reasons.

And when you think about the room it's not that crowded when they are not fighting since normal person does not take a full 5 foot square when just standing or sitting.

I did notice another strangeness here: The adventure states that Evadrian knows of the PCs right after landing AND the guards in this room check the cameras. Still, the Rune Wardens in room C5 don't know anything? Why on earth would the guards in here or Evadrian not inform the other guards of the intruders if they are aware of them?
Or maybe the Pathfinder in Space just happened again and they decided to send them a letter or maybe a carrier pidgeon XD

Have not read SoS or DoF APs yet but I really hope they are a bit more believable in these things.

Everything powered makes sound.

Can't agree with this. You only have to see a modern day electric car and you can realize it really does not make any audible sounds other than the tires unless you are right next to it or inside the vehicle.

Adding some science fantasy in thatand you should be quite soundless.

*Throwing money at the screen*

One thing that really bugged me here is the fact that the automated drones of Aurelos are not communicating with the facility or even reporting when spotting a hostile.
While I can understand storywise that it is nice for the characters to be able to surprise the facility it really does sound stupid. Why would there even be rune guardians guarding the entrance if they blindly believe that the drones can handle any intrusions? The characters should be able to stealth their way to the facility if the story wants it, not make it sound like the Azlanti are tactical idiots :P

This is an issue all the APs have shown, they tend to be "Pathfinder in Space" rather than Starfinder when considering facilities, their security and encounters there. Even modern security is highly automated, seems like Starfinder security is somewhat like the 80s or 90s standalone non-networked security cameras since even the camera feeds the characters find tend to be grainy even though with their technology the digital recordings would probably be quite sharp and clear. Of course, RPG designers can't be expected to know information security or facility security but even some realism would be nice :) You could have the realistic networked security system but that would make it more vulnerable to hacking so a good computers roll could disable all the cameras in the facility by accessing the network through one of them.

The drones did not even give any challenge for our groups tier 5 ship, only time they actually penetrated the shields was when I rolled TWO critical hits on the same round on the same side of the ship. Otherwise it was just scratching the shields if they even managed to hit.

We ended the session after the fight but I'm considering changing the adventure so that the asteroid knows someone is attacking it if I can adjust well enough for that.

EDIT: after reading my message it is (again) sounding way too negative, we've enjoyed most of the AP, I guess it's just in my nature to remember the negative parts and not the good ones :)

Actually AP7 - Reach of the Empire has a Drone Tube -expansion for ships that can launch autonomous tiny racer ships that can do a single pilot and gunnery action each round. So basically another ship with no need for a controller.

It basically requires you to have a hangar bay and then install 1-2 drone tubes in there, giving you 5 or 10 drones to launch (2 each round).

I so enjoy players who want to dive into the evil alignment sphere. Nothing is more enjoyable than watching that hash out at the table and end with the party turning on itself. I never restrict alignments, but always give my players a simple bit of encouragement. If you choose this alignment, I expect you to play it. Then I point them to some literature on characters who exemplify those alignments so that they know the expectation.

After 20+ years of gaming I have a problem of most players ALWAYS going that way and playing it. In homebrew it's not a problem but in Paizo AP it tends to make things...interesting when characters want to eat NPCs who irritate them etc...

I think it's strange to think that a company would RESTRICT 3rd parties on how they can sell their products. Think about it: Paizo makes money on making RPGs. Hero Labs is another companys product which also sells Paizo products inside it. Basically they are resellers, saying they can't do something is probably even not in their power but also not in their interests since it's just added value to the game and they make some money when people pay for the SF/PF content in the programs. And the program capabilities are just as diverse as people are willing to make, I doubt Paizo would say no if someone wanted to do a new program which suits their needs better, problem is probably more on the side of software development time (and costs) and the market size which is not huge. Who has the time/money to do hundreds of hours of developing when you can't even know if someone buys the product. Not too many I'd guess.

Miniatures are a bit more complex situation but it's pretty much the same as the situation in Marvel movies was. Marvel sold the license for mutant movies to Fox which means they basically give up the right to make movies for them and gave all the power to the other company which paid for the rights. They could do good movies or s@@!ty movies or just not do them at all, it's their right since they paid for it. I presume it's the same here, ND paid for the license and we can only hope Paizo had some part of the deal say that the license rights come back to them if they can't deliver. Otherwise they just have to wait for the deal to end or try to negotiate something.

We had a WTF moment yesterday as the players went to Outpost Zed. I laid out the map for them and they wanted to go from A2 to A5 since there is a way there on the map. I started to wonder how it can be since there are hostile creatures there and it's right next to the cantina. I also remembered it was supposed to be only accessable from the pipes. Quite a bug in the map, or did I get something wrong?

One more thing came to mind: since there was no use for the hovertrikes in Madelon I wonder what was the point of the voicebox mission. Or is Ludvar Cresk just such an ***hole that he won't give the parts to the saviours of the colony since he can't speak? :D

I decided they get the trikes anyway.

So I decided to "spice things up" by raising the number of Electrovores from 2 to 3. Well, considering their AoE-attacks this really did spice things up :D
The players won but 2/4 went down and one went to 0 Resolve since he always took more damage from AoE after stabilizing. But hey, at least it was a challenge :) I'm going to keep throwing some extra enemies from time to time to keep things more interesting.

My group finished liberating Madelon's Landing yesterday and I have to say this was WAY too easy for them. Everything (except the first space combat) was just walking through the enemies. Even without disquises since we had one SRO, one Dragonkin, one Shobhad and one Ryphorian so we had one who actually could have used the armors.

The SRO also gave some headache since Hobgars love tech. The "toaster" even suggested, after having one group of Hobgars try to dismember him, that they should simply kill all the creatures and walk away :P I managed to steer them away from this path.

Anyway, with two melee fighters (dragonkin technomancer and Shobhad Soldier), SRO mechanic and Ryphorian Mystic they walked through everyone. With the 10-15ft reach the big guys had they simply took every room in the garrison under their threat range the second the fighting started. A few times someone actually got damage over their stamina but nothing else. The most anticlimatic encounter was Olaraja. He managed to sneak behind them and hit the Magic missile attack on the mystic. After this, Mystic casted Hold Person and the big guys pummeled him down in one round.

I really hope the third part is harder or I might add some enemies to the encounters (without extra xp since it might unbalance the later encounters). It might be this was easy if the developers thought about new players but my players finished Dead Suns and knew how to make their characters efficient. Anyway, if you have experienced players the encounters are probably too easy to be any kind of challenge for them.

I just really started to think about this. If the book release schedule holds AND this will be the next installment of Starfinder Subscription it means the game will really get new material next summer. That really, really sucks IMO. Waiting for 8 months for new material when you've gotten used to 3 books a year seems way too long. Or maybe we've just gotten used to too good release schedule :)

Although I have been wondering how there's still been no news on AP, books or anything after that.

No pressure, any news on progress, kickstarter or anything would be nice :)

I don't feel it's been forgotten but I also was wondering about the book after AA2. If it's the Beginners Box that is really a disappointment and I really hope it is not part of the subscription. Although there might be a book in there that fixes the Starship DCs and other bugs in the Core Book.

I completely agree that the PDFs should be updated to reflect the real values, at the moment the starship part of core book is so faulty you always need to have the errata open when fighting in space. Some clarifications on issues often spoken on the rules forum section might also be welcome.

After thinking about this for a few days I started thinking that maybe the Beginner's Box is kind of a "second print" of SF? There is a Player Guide and GM Handbook it should have updated versions of the rules and the separation might make sense since the 600 page tome is mostly unnecessary for a casual player. Still, would have liked a "real" new sourcebook rather than a reprint of things we already have.

I would not be surprised if at least the Player Guide would come to store separately after the Box comes out.

I don't feel it's been forgotten but I also was wondering about the book after AA2. If it's the Beginners Box that is really a disappointment and I really hope it is not part of the subscription. Although there might be a book in there that fixes the Starship DCs and other bugs in the Core Book.

I completely agree that the PDFs should be updated to reflect the real values, at the moment the starship part of core book is so faulty you always need to have the errata open when fighting in space. Some clarifications on issues often spoken on the rules forum section might also be welcome.

Veskarium/Swarm would certainly need some love, and the Starship book would be a close second

Hi,

I added Starfinder Dice Tray in my sidecart a while back and presumed it would ship with the next subscription. However, there's been two Starfinder APs shipped and the item is still in my sidecart. Is there a reason why it has not shipped yet?

Yesterday we came to a situation where a character, who has Eyes of Rhean as eyes, sent his other eye away while staying hidden himself. When I started to check the range I could not find anything sensible.

In Eyes of Rhean (Dead Suns book 6, page 30) it says it works as Spy drone. In spy drone it says it works like a 1st level mechanic drone. In drone section the only thing related to range is that the drone needs to see or hear you, or be in range of your custom rig.

Since Eyes of Rhean is a magic item I presume it can't be controlled by a computer or a remote, but through some sort of mystic/magic/psychic connection. Since you can see through the other eye what the flying eye sees, does that effectively make you unaware of your own surroundings? Except for other senses, of course.

Since normal drone can be controlled through computer or remote and it needs to see or hear you, how does the eye work since you can't see it and I doubt you start yelling commands to it while flying. And back to the biggest question: range. How far can you fly the eye? Does different materials block the signal? You can house rule these but it would be nice to hear if someone has spotted something I have not since our group has no drones and I have limited experience with them.

This is the call I ultimately came down on. The player was arguing that seeing as the capacity was downgraded that the bulk of the launcher should be as well. Seeing as there is nothing specifically calling this out however I went with the accessories rule. It does make it hard for a non strength based solider to carry around more than one main gun but its probably for the best.

Our Soldier is not STR-based but has boatload of weapons, they just reside in glove of storing and Null-Space Chamber. Or if he has his Powered Armor on two of them are mounted on it. Powered Armor also gives a nice boost to his STR :)

Our group has been in Starfinder for a year now, Dead Suns ended and now we are doing a sandboxish homebrew adventure which goes where the players seem to want it to go. Players have no interest in changing the game or starting over with new chars so we'll probably go forward until they get bored or killed :)

The item (morphic skin) says on the advanced model that you can't gain or lose any abilities and the doppelganger version only adds the possibility to mimic certain person. Also, clothes are not part of you or your skin and the item augments you, not your gear.

A player of mine did some math on the fusion. At first it sounds great for a char using projectile/automatic weapons but when you get to higher levels it's just insane to buy it since the fusion level goes up but ammo price stays the same:

lvl 3 (lowest lvl you can get it) weapon gets the fusion for 440cr. For that money you get 96 heavy bullets so the fusion might pay itself back if used for automatic fire a lot.
lvl 13 X-Gen gets the fusion for 9760cr. For that money you can buy 2168 ammo which you probably can't fire during the time the weapon is relevant for the character.

The player calculated that he had shot around 500 heavy solid projectile ammo during his leveling from lvl 1 to 12 (Dead Suns).

Even if you combine it with the most expensive materials (+70cr per clip) you need to fire over 1200 ammo before it pays itself back.

Seems that the fusion is only usable for low levels or is our math broken? And yes, it is useful if you happen to find yourself in a planet with no ammo stores/workshops and UPBs :)

Well, we finished the AP few weeks ago and everyone really enjoyed it. In the last book there were a few things that the players didn't enjoy, including the final Boss fight. I'll write our experiences so others may prepare for them better than I had :)

The players took the see invisible -spell ampoules which the boss dispelled. They had one left so basically the only one able to see the boss was their soldier. After killing the other creatures only two creatures were playing actively: the soldier, who was soaking around 75% of bosses damage with his Energy Resistance, who was shooting Serovox, and Serovox attacking him with Explosive blasts. Others were taking ready actions and trying to pinpoint Sevorox every time they attacked. This took ages since Sevorox could be invisible for 26 rounds (used 2 greater invisibilities) and got boring and repetitive quickly. Even a shirren can't see Serovox since they fly and there is no atmosphere so no vibrations to detect. Only reason Sevorox was killed in the end was because of lucky crit that took them under 40 HP which, according to tactics, made him get down and the team melee solarian hit him for around 100 damage.

After this they looted Serovox and found the Electroencephalon Command Key. I allowed a mysticism roll with DC40 which they made and realized what the item was. Instead of destroying it they threw Sevorox in Null Space Chamber and secured the key. After getting back to Absolom Station they gave the NSC and the Key to Ambassador Nor who was extremely happy about it.

The spaceship battle felt quite dull also, since the other ships barely got through EoBs shields and EoB did triple crits on pretty much every shot, disabling them in few rounds. With the +10 to rolls they pretty much hit automatically.

One noticable thing was also the fact they did not get any credits when getting back to the station. Maybe it was left for the GM to figure out but since they brought Serovox in I had a good reason to give them 50k from Eoxians, and also gave some from Starfinders since they had been paying them earlier in the AP. Luckily the group had looted pretty much everything (they even had a few kish warriors corpses from the landing platform for scientists) so after selling everything (for 10%, except for relics) they got around 160k. And no, they had not been to Absolom for the few last books since they thought they are pressured to get to the Stellar Degenerator.

So everything went well in the end and the group definitely wants to continue with these chars so homebrew it is from this forward and Azlanti Empire will have to wait for them to want a new start.

Have I missed something in the rules or is it really so that characters in vehicles take no damage in collisions or ramming? Meaning you could drive a plane straight to a mountain or a car full speed to a wall and only the vehicle gets destroyed?

It came us as characters were standing inside a one-car-train and another one rammed them destroying the train.

Oh, and another thing that caught my eye in the Malakar encounter: Does she really carry a 20 bulk system-wide comm unit in her pocket? :D It was listed in her gear :)

Most characters get their proficiencies from their class, not the feats. Example, a Soldier with <13 Str still has Heavy Weapon Proficiency despite 13 Str being a prerequisite. So due to the spell specifying: "You cause all targets of this spell to lose proficiency with one class of weapons of your choice..." rather than removing their feat, I would go with a no.

I'd align with this one. It does not remove a feat, it just takes your proficiency away, regardless of where the proficiency came from. So it does not affect any feats, you just don't remember how to use the weapons in question.

We concluded Hangar Country last night and a few strange things were noted:
If there is no atmosphere and the comms directly vibrate on flesh/bones, how on earth do the Sensor suit machines click and beep? They're broadcasting it on all frequencies? :D

Same thing with Malakar discussing about the PCs actions. I guess she intrude their comm frequencies to be able to comment their actions. I'm not even going to go speculating how sonic weapons work without atmosphere since there is nothing to carry the soundwaves, let's just pull the "magic"-card here :)

Fun adventure anyway, the players already are voicing protests about the campaign ending so we'll probably continue with some homebrew mayhem after finishing the book.

No matter what, the cost to use this is huge. 400cr for one clip, the projectile weapons ammo was expensive as it was. It's like reverse alchemy :D

That's how we played it. It is still insanely good, even with the one round activation time.

Keeping the book as AA1 was is fine by me, but like the "Index by CR" in book 1 it would be really helpful for a GM to have "Index by Biome" or something like that. You could easily look which creatures are usually found from arid, jungle, aquatic, void etc. surroundings.

I also like the idea of playable/NPC -seperation. Helps the players to check races for characters.

So what if my players don't want to board the Empire of Bones and instead stick to the plan from book 5? Or board the Stellar Degenerator and try and use it to shoot down the Empire of Bones?

I understand that an AP can't account for everything, but a sidebar about these options would have been nice.

All that aside, seems like an epic ending to the story!

We just played this moment last week. Many were thinking about boarding the Stellar Degenerator but I mentioned that the tech-savvy chars know the alien device is so huge they would probably take days, even weeks, to even find a way to power the engines, let alone fly with it. After this the players also did the math that they only have a few hours before the Corpse Fleet comes there too and even the portal might close and trap them there, so they ruled out that option.

Also, it's so massive that ramming with it would probably not work since even the supercolossal ship is faster and could probably evade them.

Just a few tips that helped me in the same situation :)

Sounds good, thanks for the info :)

If people actively do this, do others require the will saves or think about the characters sanity when floting in nothingness, with no quarantee of ever getting out? For example if the wearer is killed by a monster that does not loot. Or even if someone loots, he probably checks the NSC's inventory display and does not take the people out without precautions.

We've been discussing this too. Technically, IIRC, the book only says you can't access another portal inside a NSC so you actually could hide an army in your arm. Just put a few people inside one Mark 2, each having their own mark 2 with 2 people etc. Suddenly a strike team can infiltrate a palace with just one person with insane stealth :P

However, I ruled (as GM) that being in the confines of such space for any amount of time requires will saving throws which get harder every minute since psychologically the person would be trapped in nothingness unless sedated. This at least limits such use and would pretty much prevent any transport of "bad guys" from good characters who would not want to torture the prisoner.

My F5 just broke. Will start clicking the refresh button with my mouse. No rush, really. I'll just hold my breath until I get the PDF...

I want to know when others get the PDF so we can start discussing this book!

I'm refreshing my mail and digital content list all the time but the PDF just does not appear. Must be a fault somewhere *keeps smashing F5*

3 months have passed and monthly AP is soon a reality, any news on this one?

So some more thoughts after finishing the book just 12 hours ago with my group. And I have to give a disclaimer, I'm trying to write in positive tone but us Finns tend to be blunt instruments even when not meaning to, don't take any offence :D

Anyway, when they were in the Foundry they got through it quite easily, the elementals might have been hard if they had more room, but since they are 4 large creatures they were restricted to 2 fighting and 2 standing behind the others so not real threat here. Hybeki managed to beat the team "tank" quite badly before the others got rid of the pets and slew her too. But the real deal was the fight with Xavra, everyone liked this since actually 2 chars needed to revive themselves with Resolve and he really made a number on third one too. Although the Time Dilation was "nerfed" by the fact that most had haste circuits it nicely took the circuits away from them (really powerful mods, I have to say. Especially to melee solarian). The only thing they wondered was that how in hell a Kish, who is defending his holy place, goes blasting with supernova in the holiest place they have. We did wonder how did the correct datapad even survive the two supernovas he unleashed :) This was not a technical problem and the fight was entertaining but did make a number on story immersion since even our own solarian, who realized Xavra was a solarian, was certain he would never use supernova in the library. Well, maybe he just was stupid and fanatic :) Anyway, nice ending and off to TTG we go next week :)

My players tried to kick the Vampire to the acid pool. I wonder how the data module would handle that fate :D

"Luckily" they were unsuccesful and the vampire instead kicked one of them there. RIP.

I have to add that the previous message was not a complaint, just a notice. Everyone thought the crashing building was a nice episode with some excitement and everyone else got out just fine, this one char just happened to be on 0 stamina and the house took HPs all at once.

If there was something strange in the Securitech building it was the fact that the computers were untouched by time and the mold. Since there was no power or magical reason that just sounded strange. If I would run the adventure now I'd probably change it so that the computers-rolls are to go through the servers hardware and find some static data crystals that have the info, might sound better than finding 1000 years old computers that just need to be plugged in :D

I also wondered what kind of preservatives were the Kishalee using if protein cubes lasted for almost a millenium until getting bad and evolving into the swarm :D

But these are small nyances, mostly the book was solid at least until now, we'll get to the foundry on Tuesday :)

Extrabonus: if a character is fatigued from the radiation sickness he most likely will get crushed by the Securitech building. Now we have no techies :P Oh, and they almost lost the access because she was the one who hacked the computers. She had a helper so I said he can also remember it, otherwise they would have probably shot the Foundry open with the starship weaponry...

So, any news on this one? :P Getting nervous with this silent treatment :)

I'm not sure should this comment be here or on general rules section but really, the SecuriTech building access explicitly says you CAN'T park a spaceship in the air. WTF, you can by a drone from a market that has the ability to stay in a spot and compensate for any wind automatically but the starship with AI-computer can't do this? :D

I was going to allow them to just station the ship above the building and go down with the rope, telling the AI to hold position if they decided to do this, but they got the climbing gear from the outcasts and went that way so no problem here. I was wondering about the motivation of the aberrations outside the SecuriTech building. They were fleeing the swarm and ran into the players. However, they can fly so why just not continue up or something. The poor things got slaughtered in 2 rounds because they decided to throw poop on the players :D

Fun adventure otherwise, when you just ignore the english/kish/kishalee -translation problems and the fact that there is a suprising amount of ancient stuff still around after millenia of looting and decay :) "Magic/SciFi/Don't ask" works just fine there :D

PS. The "microwave oven" in House of Renewal was brutal, the only really tech-savvy char went in and got cooked really bad. Just before going down she managed to remotely hack the machine since her friends could not shut it down :P Although I still can't believe she was dumb enough to go in there...