schnoodle's page

I’ve had a lengthy discussion with my friends about Stifling Stillness, and while we’ve come up with our own ruling, I think it would still be healthy to have something official.

“breathe air and aren't holding their breath must spend a single action on their turn straining to breathe”

So is holding your breath an action? If it’s cast on top of you, do you get a free action beforehand to hold your breath? Do you suffocate if you don’t/can’t spend an action to breathe and aren’t holding your breath? Do you have to take the action to breathe at the start of your turn, or just sometime in it as long as you’re in it? Do you just suffocate if you cast a spell in it?

For all sorts of different ways to see breathing handled…
See spells like: Vacuum, Air Bubble, Toxic Cloud
Effects like: Inhaled, Swallow Whole, being submerged

You can also point to Behold the Weave for action debt, and Avert Your Gaze for preventing a similar sense (and can you just choose to be blind instead?)

I may be a bit confused overall about mechs, but I noticed a few... maybe problems? With the Lynkor Valko:

First, I have no idea what the melee (adamantine claws) nor spiked shield are in term of slots/mech points. I don't see the weapons in either book.

Second, doesn't it violate the "minimum MP" rule? As far as I can tell, it's looking at 48 MP out of the minimum of 60 (duello pod), if we sub the claws with hammerfist in the lower limb slot.

Third, not all the mission cores have all the slots used. Are we expected to add the others ourselves?

Fourth, at 3rd level, each player having a tier 3 mech would mean you don't have enough MP to split between one another.

Again, since this is all new for me, I might be misunderstanding the mech rules from TechRev.

Emotivores in Archive 2 immediately strike me as interesting - we haven't gotten any vampires yet, but the look and need to feed reminds me of it. They don't have very much extra fluff to them, but I wonder if it makes sense for them to actually live as a society?

The first indicator being the clothes they wear - depicted as fairly clean and even having trinkets and utility pouches. Given that they are shapeshifters, they seem to fit that role that vampires often did well - be able to manipulate a group of people from behind the scenes, and laying out the framework for perhaps "raising" a society as cattle, much like vampires do in many fantasy settings.

It doesn't seem to indicate, though, whether they work as a group, or are just single isolationists that come out to feed. Do they have complex thought, or are they basically just cunning, hungry zombies? Also, what does psychically feeding on feelings do to the victim - do they die or are they left stunned? Do they become a thrall to the emotivore?

I really like these creatures and would love to hear your thoughts. I think it'd be super interesting if they introduce vampires, as these emotivores would probably have a place in that society.

When I first got the CRB, the first character idea I had and worked on was one that was a bit edgy, a bright and innocent character with something dark haunting him. He was to be a spellcaster happened upon his power after some junk, and basically was scared but used this void power to try to do good (while fighting off the dark influence). From glancing over classes, at first the Solarian seemed to fit this so well! You could channel the energy of the void, of a black hole! A small black mote followed you around, and you could make it do things! As I was trying to get the character to work though, I found that the vast majority of Solarian makes balancing very important, as you rely on Photon powers to deal damage, while "Graviton" are more utility.

At that point it became obvious, it wasn't a spellcaster at all, but a utility melee/tank. Which is still cool! It just made me so disappointed, as Mystic and Technomancer don't really fulfill the "class fantasy" I was looking for.

Does anyone else have any hopes for new classes in the future like this?

Compared to DnD, there's not a lot intuitive tools for character or campaign building. Obviously Starfinder is fairly new, especially being a bit unique in its science fantasy setting, but as a new GM it would be really nice to have character / encounter / world-building pieces all in one.

We have roll20, but its UI is very... disappointing. It becomes a slough to jump between the unresponsive menus and awfully lackluster options (and overall unattractive interface). I also checked out Hero Labs, but between the pricing and that it doesn't have all current sources, it's pretty much not an option.

So in a space that doesn't have many decent alternatives, it almost seems backwards not to support something, in a world where people are friends with others across the globe. To draw comparisons, DnD 5e has DnD Beyond, which is actually fairly intuitive and makes character tracking really nice for both online and in-person play, however I don't particularly want to play 5e over Pathfinder or Starfinder.

We recently got Archives of Nethys (which is really quite nice, just lacking a simple search function for Starfinder...), so it would be great if they continued to at least support growing tools, especially for character and campaign management. Do we have any word from Paizo on the subject?