steven lawson's page

Physics-wise, Bigger Object = More Mass = More Force.

Mechanics-Wise, allowing large size PC's as opposed to every playable just happening to be small or medium, means they don't just get a damage bonus for being bigger.

So it's a balance issue, you could as a DM change this, but then it's a pretty big advantage for large players, unless you add back the size penalties and bonuses, but since there are not currently any Tiny PC races, then there really isn't much of a disadvantage to being big anymore.

Who says he's not the reason Golarion is gone. Perhaps he escaped or was let free and it took so much magic to finally defeat him (or reseal him) that the backlash/repercussions created the Gap.

I want to know why Asmodeus doesn't rule over us all. I mean come on, everyone wakes up with no memory, and he doesn't take advantage of that situation? He could have come out and said "here's what happened, I won! mwahaha!"

To add to this, we don't know if Golarion is destroyed, and I kind of hope it is, just because that too would not kill the Tarrasque, so you would in essence have this giant sleeping monster floating through space and probably land on some unsuspecting planet.

Probably Daimalko. Just because it would probably go unnoticed on a planet with Colossi, but the Tarrasque being immortal would be far more dangerous than any of the other monstrosities on that planet.

As to the other gods, I hope they don't drop the ball like how they did with the Drow, by just putting them in space and changing nothing about them. Which is why I am against the future Archives having more traditional monsters, simply because I don't just want Hill Giants, in space, they need to show how all these gods and monsters adapted to the huge technological changes to everyday life.
Even more, we always hear tell of races forsaking a god for another, how about a Patron God of a Race forsakes their race for another. Torag got sick of the dwarves for whatever reason, but f~#+ing Skittermanders, that's where it's at. Would be an interesting idea, then you can provide that as an adjusted racial motivation to re-earn the affection of your god.

Edited: Lazy word choice.

Rovagug vanished with Golarion.

Hold everything, why is this not the literal most important thing happening right now in the entire Starfinder universe? Rovagug, for those who haven't read much on him, literally destroys worlds and kills Gods, that's all he cares about. And they just drop that no one knows if he is still in the Dead Vault.

You have the most destructive and dangerous being in existence, whose blood created the Tarrasque and no one knows where he went? A dozen named gods and a number of unknown gods, couldn't kill him and at best locked him away.

That and you'd have economy issues if you allowed spell-casters to go 'I don't ever need a gun' as guns are an expensive part of your WBL.

I don't see that being a problem, with Solarion Solar Weapon, they can just say, I have a magic sword I don't need to buy a weapon. And there isn't many people saying that is over powered because they understand that the Solarion would be pretty gimped if they only have their solar weapon and no other means to attack with. Or Pathfinder Monks/Brawlers, really any class with scaling builtin weapons, no one claims it breaks them because they have more money. Usually that money gets spent on stuff like Magic Fang or shoring up their weaknesses. Which tend to be very apparent.

The issue with 9th level casters has never been the damage they can do, every class in Pathfinder had a build that could one shot the Tarrasque if built right and abused a GM who let the player do weird things.

It has always been that a 9th Level caster has a spell for every situation and could potentially neutralize any encounter before it can begin. This is usually the main complaint I see when people tell stories of how the Wizard trivialized the encounter, it's not because he landed a critical Fireball into the monsters face. Sure there are ways to get to some truly absurd damage output on spells, but it's usually always faster and easier to just debuff the monster into oblivion than it is to burn them.

And while magic is well, magic, this lends to the rule of if you can imagine it there is a spell that can do it. Now while 5th ed. has the one concentration spell at a time, this will only affect part of the problem, when the party meets a locked door, the rogue picks the lock, the wizard decides if they want to go through the door, wall, floor, ceiling, astral plane or just remove the door from existence all together. So in a more tech based world where people use Biometric Scanners and Facial Recognition, the wizard would have spells that affect those, so either the wizard could use magic to disguise themselves or to screw with the machine. At which point the Technomancer is redundant.

So to this, I think the Shadowrun approach is best, tweaked, but still a good basis.

For those unfamiliar with Shadowrun, cybernetics tear at ones soul in a sense. So too much cybernetics and you are no longer even a person.

So I think a true 9th level Caster, would need something similar. That magic is an affectation on the living realm, it does not draw on the machines as the A.I. God has prevented that type of magic from infesting his domain. This does a few things, clearly draws a line between what Magic the 9th level caster can do, so it never crosses the line and makes the Technomancer irrelevant in design. It helps to decide not what a Magic class can do, but what it Can't do. This is far more important.

So you additionally can incorporate a similar Burn feature that the Kineticist has, that their ability to affect the living realm is tied to their own life force, thus introducing the first Constitution based class in Starfinder. So to prevent them from overshadowing the Mystic in terms of spells, they have a give and take mechanic with their magic. Want to heal someone, you can do it slowly and they would receive something similar to full rest over a short rest, this could be a 1/day/X Levels deal. A moderately fast, where you give Fast Heal of a number but the Wizard takes half that damage a turn, so you give Fast Heal 10 but you take 5 damage a turn until you sever the link, then you have the Oh S~+$ give health now. Which could do Xd8+Con but you take Xd6+Con in damage to give a massive amount right away.

Obviously the numbers chosen could be adjusted based on level and maybe incorporate the D10 and D12 more often, my favorite dice, but least used.

As the balance would be on how much are you willing to give up to get something.

Not many things from Golarion.

It's been what, 10,000 years since The Gap. And they mention very little made it off world. So I don't want to see in every book, "Oh look we found a cave and buried inside was a tribe of [Insert Beastiary Monstery Here] thirty times. That defeats the purpose of having alien life, if every moon also has lions, tigers and owlbears.

That should be left up to a robust conversion ruleset to allow people to bring them into their own games, but the Alien Archives should be kept to mostly aliens.

Quadrupedal races. Pathfinder had a nasty habit of shying away from letting the players use anything beyond the Small and Medium range, and very much disliked the idea of PC Quadrupeds like centaurs, as that resulted in a Large Sized race and then you get to have bigger weapons and thus more damage.

Starfinder on the otherhand has given the player what is it, 4 Large Sized races, from the Alien Archive. Though none have been a true Quadruped, and there are many ideas they have yet to do as well.

Multi-Headed Race, this opens up many ways for interesting Player Characters. Single Limb Races, a species with 1 arm could also be very new and interesting to see how it builds. Parasitic Organism, think Venom or Carnage. Split Races, a species that can separate themselves into multiple parts, each acting on their own accord.

Ring of Cosmic Alignment
This majestic ring is forged from twin bands of mithral and adamantine. If you have the stellar mode class feature, whenever you start a turn of combat attuned to a stellar mode and choose to become unattuned, you can immediately gain 1 attunement point for the stellar mode that opposes the
mode you began your turn in. For instance, if you began the turn in photon mode and choose to become unattuned, you can use the ring to gain 1 graviton attunement point. Using this ability is a swift action.

When using Zenith Revelations you are not choosing to become unattuned, you are becoming unattuned by result. Which is not the same thing. If there was an ability that forced you to unattune that would not trigger the ring and in the case of Zenith Revelations, it does just that. So you can only get that benefit if you choose to be unattuned as a swift action which gets you a free point in the other attunement.

Male Human Soldier (XenoSeeker)
Zapp Brannigan is the lead commander of DOOP, an intergalatic peace keeping organization. His mission like his previous commander, James Tiberious Kirk, to boldly go, where no man has gone before, and have sex with as many alien women as possible.

All the other Iconics are irrelevant or sent to fight the murderbots.

Ysoki are my favorite example of what I like to call the Liefeld Effect. One picture in particular personifies this, IMHO...

Check this dude out

I am not entirely sure they didn't hire Liefeld to work on their art.

https://i.imgur.com/edJD9wI.jpg

*gasp* I know, dozens of threads about what the Settings and RUles do not have and what we want them to add in. How about we do the opposite of that, what we don't want added in later additions.

Now you're thinking to yourself, Steven, how could you be such a meanie poopy head and not want more things in this new system, don't you know lack of content will turn people off to the system.

While this may be true to some extent, I just want to avoid bloat. A common problem that Pathfinder had; is that over the years they kept adding new Feats, Items, Classes, Subclasses, Prestiges, Monsters, Weapons and Spells. But never a new skill. (Something to look into maybe) This caused many problems, for many of you power gamers, addition of feats and other accoutrement; and yes I am using that word correctly, look it up; led to either them being discarded as situational at best or a trap at worst or they were way better than anything else previously added and became a staple in pretty much every build.

I prefer this game tries to avoid that as much as possible, since well it gets boring seeing every build use the same feats. Now this cannot be done by making the classes not need them as options, since people will want 100% Maximum in every numerical category they can, so making choices like Iron Will or a Ring of Resistance not mandatory just in turn makes them stronger as everyone starts at an even higher base value. Too much of that and a Level 1 feels like an epic hero even if they are just a nerf herder. (Not inherently bad either, but the system must support that playstyle)

Now being that this is a new system, albeit a tweaking of the previous one, there is not much to use and a lot to add. What I think is important is to outline what we as a community don't think is beneficial to the overall health of the system, so as to avoid such claims such as, Mathfinder or Numbers the Numbers Game.

Now common problems I observed at my tables over the many years of game playing may not be something you have encountered, or it might be something you knew but couldn't put to words or even something you knew and want to bring up, this is important to have this discussion and I believe we are long overdue.

Problem #1: Multi-classing: Now I enjoy the odd dip, because variety is the spice of life and who else is going to smuggle all that precious spice off Arrakis. The occasional taking of one or two classes to add some features and abilities that compliment and add to the playstyle of your INTENDED character, (we all know the What I made/ What the DM saw/ What I played). But my problem lies in the many many builds of Take 2 Levels of Sorcerer, 3 Monk, 10 barbarian and 1 Cleric of Angry Stick. Those exist solely to hit some ridiculous mark that would never be needed out of a single person.

Now this is a complex problem because frankly how do you prevent this from becoming a problem, you have so many classes doing so many things that eventually some things click and bleed into each other too good or too weird. This to me has to be addressed early on so to prevent it from being a terrible decision all the time or almost mandatory the rest. I think this can be addressed only when the game has a small pool of classes to choose from. And should be looked at not about what the other classes can give you, but what the classes are lacking. So if someone wanted to say be a Melee Mechanic but always dips Soldier or Solarion, look at what can we give the Mechanic so they can stay a melee character if they chose to without needing to dip or for a whole lot. Now this does go into another problem of classes stepping on each others toes, but I would rather have a bad dance partner and a great evening then spend a few hours trying to find the zipper on my dates dress because they wore 18 coats and I need a half a dozen manuals to understand why everything works together. So I feel like more options being available to classes would be a better long term solution than isolating classes into a niche role only they can fill.

Problem #2: Feats: I am not saying I do not want more feats, what I am saying is the feats being added must not just be a requirement to do something common well or only for something exotic that requires a dozen levels before it works.

This is noted in many two-weapon builds, usually requiring some f$$~ery to get feats early or meet requirements in a weird way. I am not much of a fan of that, don't really think anyone is. Countless threads about people dropping one or two of the requirements for two-weapon fighting or just dropping some penalties to not make it take forever before you can dual wield knives without stabbing your own eye. This is a pretty simple problem compared to the last one. Not that feats should be selfcontained but that feats should not rely upon one another to be useful. A possible solution is the removal of prerequisite feats. Allow the players the access to do the things they want to do, but curb the power they receive out of them. Which is actually much easier now, with added levels of items. You can put restrictions on what they can be used with less on what type of item can be used and more on what level it can be used at/with. So this removes penalties that annoy players, why should you be worse at something you took a feat to be able to do.

Problem #3: Rituals: This might be a problem I and very few people had, but it did annoy me plenty, a player, not always the same one. Would try to perform some ritual to gain power, example Lichdom. Having a ritual that exists to change fundamentally what the player is, usually causes problems. So a player wants to be a Vampire, well now they have to go find one, but they can't just be bitten otherwise they are a thrall, so now they need to go on a quest to find a magical item and a book and some old guy in a swamp on a mountain to do a ritual to make them a vampire. This tends to grind everything to a halt and either makes the player way overpowered or just was a way to delay them leveling and now are back in line with everyone else.

Now what this really boils down to is, I don't much care for miniquests in the books as a way to get power. I understand there are ways for quick power to be gained, at a cost. But they never have these as something that could be done quickly, it's always written as some long, many year process to achieve the goal and then stated it's not intended for players to do this or be careful because they may become overpowered. Just stop adding those, if the player wants to add in they are a space lich or cyber werewolf don't put in rules for how it should be done, just what they get as a result. Let us decide how much power that constitutes. And let us determine what they have to do to achieve there goal.

To be fair I would prefer they don't add it to begin with, as after a certain point the cost benefit is negligible to the point of why is not everyone at a certain point also a Insert Magical Being Here because it only costs a fraction of their time and resources to do and they just get stat increases out of it.

I have other things I would like to have kept out of future books but I see this post is getting long and will want to see what others think should be forgotten on later releases.

For starters, I'm not sure where you're getting the "show it" thing from for Werebeasts. Pretty sure they just Turn on the Full Moon whether they're looking at it or not. Which gives me the idea that it's something to do with the amount of moonlight the moon is sending down, which would imply something about solar radiation reacts with lunar material and in certain concentrations could trigger the change.

If that is the case then it would require a werebeast to be under the light of the moon, because as you say here

Since the quantity of altered-solar-radiation you'd need to transform is the equivalent of full exposure of the moon, I'd say unless you are similarly in direct path (aka the moon is Full from where you're standing) or you're, like, on its surface, then no.

Then any werebeast who is inside a building or wearing a space suit with radiation shielding would not transform, which would mean werebeast would need to be in a location, under direct moonlight, without an object providing shielding to them. So on a ship or a space walk they would never transform and if they stayed inside a building that would prevent it as well.

Unless you're bouncing something properly equivalent to the right solar radiation off it and it's high enough concentration to get that sweet spot, no.

So if I built a machine that radiates lunar radiation then I could trigger the transformation of any werebeasts in say a few hundred mile radius, since fallout of radiation is pretty f$!#ing huge.

Depends on where the cut is. If it cuts back on the amount of surface reflecting the light onto the planet, then possibly.

Just straight in half, it's no longer a full moon at that point. Or if a sizable chunk is gone, then does that constitute a full moon if only that is remaining.

And to finally add to this, how exactly is the moon emitting radiation, and if it's just a reflection of solar radiation why would they not transform in daylight, unless something on the moon changes the solar radiation into something that affects werebeasts, but why not every night to some degree then.

While true that UV Radiation has low penetrative power, a translucent surface, not necessarily glass would be used at the helm, as in Starfinder the art of the ships do show Cockpits with a clear substance on them. Even though structurally it would be safer to just mount dozens of cameras on the outside of the ship and connect them to a live feed for pilots to see out of or just mind jack into and pilot that way. Off-topic.

Now with UV radiation having a low penetrative power, if it's just reflected off of the moon that transforms werebeasts then you could prevent that with a heavy coating of SPF50, which makes very little sense, though then why could not vampires do the same thing, at that point aren't all vampires just EXTREME!!!!!! albinos.

TheGoofyGE3K wrote:

In hindsight though, this means that in an age of space travel,someone let a werewolf get into space before golarion disappeared. I feel this is highly unlikely given what it takes to get on a plane nowadays.

That is in our world, not that of Golarion.

The people of Golarion weren't even able to keep an entire clan of goblins from getting off of Golarion while stowed away in one of their larger spacecraft.

True, however once a month Goblins don't transform into large furry murder machines.

Additionally if the change is something that happens on Full Moon, which is something only observed on the ground, once in space, would not the sight of the moon trigger the transformation automatically since you are seeing it full all the time as the lunar cycle is non-existent. So in that regard would not all Lycanthropes be exposed as soon as they left the atmosphere which would allow for quick identification and extermination.

As for the Vampire issue, UV radiation would be pretty abundant in space, so if shielding was lost for even a moment would not the vampire die almost immediately, even though that would not be lethal to anything else. Or ships could have a protocol where everyone on the crew has to stand in the helm and face the ship to any local star to kill off the vampires.

It seems like, yes there could be, but it also make sense why they would be easy to eliminate, especially with the toss up of how Lycanthropy works when looking at the moon in space.

Additionally, for traditional werewolves, if I took my ship to a local moon and took a chunk of it, size is up for debate, and the showed it to the werewolf, would they transform? How much of the moon is required to transform them? If I used a space laser to cut the moon in half would they ever transform because it is no longer a "full" moon, if I cut a large chunk of the moon out, could I prevent any werewolves because no moon is complete?

Yeah, I have never looked at Charisma as appearance. It is personality, presence, self-confidence. Its not looks.

Yeah if we are honest, a good looking person would have high physical stats. High Strength for large muscles, High Dex for a lean build and High Constitution for good skin and other health related issues. Charisma would just make them tolerable to be around, they don't necessarily have to be beautiful people with a high charisma.

So the rules do not include kneeling as a condition separate from normal (standing) and prone. It did exist in pathfinder, but as we all know and understand starfinder =/= pathfinder. So SHOULD kneeling exist in starfinder? And as a side question, since it doesn't, what are you RAW if you ARE kneeling? are you normal ie standing (no condition) or are you prone?

My personal opinion is that kneeling should included as a condition that splits the difference between prone and standing, Free to get into swift to stand an move normally.

I put this question to everyone here in the discussion forum as I'm most interested in the title question.

The real question is what is the point of kneeling?

If it is to take cover, then that is covered under the well Coverage rules, it can be easily explained that taking cover behind an overturned table has you kneeling and that considering start to stop movement from kneeling, unless you are someone like Usain Bolt, would be pretty much comparable to standing so there would be no need to make an action to adjust, just like you don't need an action to stand up after you tumble, it's all considered part of the action.

The reason prone is different is that lying on your stomach, back or side is much more difficult to do in one quick fluid motion and most people will take a few seconds to do so, but with proper training you can easily get up in a second from that position, hence Kip-Up.

SO ask yourself this, what benefit would you get from kneeling that isn't covered by some other rule. And you do not want to be Tebowing in the middle of the battlefield in the open, even if the National Anthem is playing, get to cover instead. Making yourself a smaller target does not help when grenades, rockets and high capacity rifles are common place.

There are 3 classes in Starfinder built with melee in mind as a primary role. That is it.

Operative. Soldier. Solarian.

I thought you told me that a Operative was not a Primary Combat Class. So that you didn't need to consider how the Operative compared to the Soldier vs. Solarion debate.

I guess that changed overnight.

Operative: The Operative mentions combat. Specifically sniping

Which Sniper Rifles cannot be used with Trick Shot, only Small Arms and Operative weapons, so in that tiny class description, it can't get that right, unless Operatives are intended to use weapons that do not work with their major class feature. Basing your argument on flavor text is even stupider than using a poor build.

This is to the rash of people who recently are basically chanting "Kill this thread."

...
What it seems is that some people aren't able to persuade those on the side that think Solarians need a little something due to some core issues
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There are some small issues with the class
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vicinity of needing an extra +1 or +2 at the most.
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We can't compare fringe possible builds (off-shoots) to primary builds

They want this thread closed because it serves no purpose. There can be no persuading because you have outright ignored core class features, rules as written all to make your baseless argument that Solarions having weaker Reflex Saves than a Soldier, makes them utterly garbage.

Rules as Written Starship Combat is not Combat, as such Senderal Influence is still usable during this stage of the game. Ignoring this only shows you lack understanding of the basics of the game and class, but you constantly claiming they cannot use this ability when they absolutely can, is dishonest.

You keep claiming that Graviton powers are too situational and that they cannot be used reliably, so that they should not be taken into account when discussing how a Solarion stacks up to a soldier.

There are only small issues, if you do what you are doing and that is staying in Photon Mode 100% of the time. Graviton provides the Reflex Save bonus you so deeply desire, which since you are required to have no more than 1 attunement power more than the other, it is by design that you are intended to switch between your modes to make most of the powers you have. That you keep screaming like a child that staying in 100% beat face mode with your magic stick and can't avoid reflex save abilities, even though they absolutely can and only do so slightly worse than other classes whilst maintaining FAR more consistent DPR than most every other class is a laugh.

You claim that off-shoot builds are not to be compared, then we can outright ignore your build as an off-shoot, for the simple rule of a Solarion is not intended to be in one attunement for the entire fight, they get both styles of powers and are intended to use them as the fight ebbs and flows in different direction and maintaining one style is strictly for when the fight has reached that stage, not turn on photon and run around and ignore the other half of your class.

But because you make this a DPR race it's impossible to convince you of anything. Because you refuse to acknowledge that losing a few points of damage each turn in exchange for shoring up a specific play styles weaknesses is to big a price to pay, because what if you can't 2 round a creature that is intended to be an equal fight for the entire party, or god forbid extend combat by a single round because you weren't doing maximum damage at all times.

You'll outright ignore most of what I am saying because you don't understand the game, you are comparing 2 classes on the basis that because they can both be played melee, that makes them comparable to each other. Which is utter ignorance of the entire basis of the class, because you presume to know that that is how it is intended for them to be played, on the faulty notion that because they can POTENTIALLY have a free scaling melee weapon they are infact a melee class, when you ignore the other option is a free armor bonus. Finally the idea that classes can be compared is utterly ridiculous in the first place, because you have this unfounded notion that class abilities can be compared to each other without taking into account the entire class.

If people are complaining that the situation is a save deficiency, showing that every other class can hit a base +16 in any strong save without needing a feat, don't make a build that uses a feat and claim that they are wrong. It is blatantly a dishonest attempt.

What they are saying is that a Solarion hitting 16 on its BAD SAVE, the one it isn't intended to be good at, the one that is supposed to be lower than it's other, the one that is a weak point in the classes design is not a problem and that unless you can show EVERY OTHER CLASS, not just the Soldier is hitting FAR above that on their bad saves respectively, while maintaining near DPR, AC, Health, Stamina, Resolves and Skills as the Solarion then this is not infact a problem.

Graviton Provides the +2 Save bonus you keep asking for, solution don't stay in Photon all the time like a retard.

You can use Sederal Influence in Starship Combat, thats how the rules are written, so they do have comparable skills to an Envoy.

You ignoring every other ability the class offers outside it's ability to run and slash is dishonest.

You are only comparing it to a single class not other classes that also share similar abilities or concepts because if you did you would realize that Solarions are not singled out to be made weaker.

Your lack of knowledge of other classes shows in that you don't realize that other classes have more weird rule quirks that prevent them from even using their class abilities or do so in the most utterly retarded way.

You have yet to actually present a single argument that actually provides a solution to fix the problems you think exist, because just adding a revelation to to boost saves does not fix the problem, it just creates mandatory abilities that a class has to take to be built "Efficiently".

Edit: I called an Operative a Soldier in a part of this and felt it would be confusing. This has been corrected.

Though it would have been interesting if Charisma controlled Solar Weapon instead of Strength.

That would mean a Solar Weapon Solarian would only need Charisma and Dex, leaving them able to boost Charisma, Dex, Con, and Wis at every level.

Just like every other class in the game, and that solves your reflex save "problem" and makes it apparent that they are a Charisma class, and the increase in that with Senderal Influence means they compete equally with Envoys on Charisma Skills so no more complaint that you don't get to sit in the captains seat when flying a ship.

I was not saying dex to damage just dex to hit with melee. you would still not add dex to damage from what I was suggesting.

So your solution is to give every class an Operative Class Feature instead? How does that solve anything Walsh was bringing up.

All that would do is Add Dex and Strength to the attack roll, unless you meant add either of them but not both, which does absolutely nothing as if you read Walsh's guide a Solarion using Strength for the Damage would have a 28 in Strength but only a 20 in Dex, so that would do nothing for them and if they wanted to increase their Dex higher to have a better save and maintain the same Attack rolls then they are losing quite a number of points in Strength and as a result are going to do much less damage on their attacks per round.

So, yes, you have potential utility that a Soldier doesn't have... If you are built for it... If you are built for it, however, then you can't melee with any degree of effectiveness. It is a catch 22.

Yes but the fact that a Solarion has abilities it can use while attuned to the other focus is something that cannot be discounted and something that was obviously designed into how a Solarion is in terms of power, otherwise the requirement that you cannot have more than 1 Power above the other, would not be a necessity. And even a situational power is not something to be ignored, considering 90% of all Pathfinder spells and feats are situational, yet we still consider them when it comes to how powerful certain classes are.

Paizo is aware of this. The Graviton/Solar Armor Solarians in the book, for example, are all ranged combatants.

Yes which is why you making a claim that a revelation for gaining saves, makes no point. Graviton provides an Improvement to the Bad save, adding that as an option for Solarions, makes very little sense as that might solve the problem for Proton but instead make Graviton completely outstrip other classes, which it shouldn't if it is supposed to be bad at something, by design.

1. An Operative is not a primary combatant and is not intended to be a primary combatant. They get a large number of skills and primarily get boosts to skills. It is the single most powerful SAD class in the game as well, with the ability to use dex for its melee and ranged attacks, as well as it being their resolve stat, as well as having trick attack to increase single attack damage.

I disagree, all classes are to some degree a combatant, and considering that Operatives can only trick shot with Small Arms and Operative weapons, which they receive half level on instead of full level through spec, which is the trade off for the trick shot, if they cannot consistently land, they out put very little damage, because of their weapon restrictions. In terms of damage I would be hard pressed to see a ranged or melee Operative outstrip any class doing the same, it might at some stages of the game do more damage, but it really is limited on how it can fight. The notion that there are Primary Combat Classes, is interesting. What are the Primary Classes then, because from where I sit, there would be only 1 and that would be a Soldier. As they do not have class abilities that are functional outside of combat.

1. Charisma is their primary stat and they aren't, by default, intended to be a strength based melee combatant on top of it.

Then the solution which you propose does absolutely nothing to assess the inherent problem Solarions face and instead would only push the problem down further to where when they do add a solution it either completely makes the Solraion the most broken class or utterly useless beyond a dip.

The true problem is that Solarions do not receive their bonuses from the Key Ability Score. Which would be solved by Making the Armor or Weapon gain the bonus from the Charisma Modifier instead of Weapon getting Strength and Armor getting nothing.

Doing that meant if someone wanted to do MAXIMUM DAMAGE, then they would forgo many defensive capabilities and instead Max out both Strength and Charisma, which should push the Solarion at least another 15-20 DPR on Full Attacks, at the expense of having terrible time on defenses, which would make sense, and the draw back of bad saves becomes apparent if the person wanted to just see big numbers.

Look at your build but change one thing, Solarions instead receive their Charisma Modifier to Solar Weapon instead of Strength, then build from that, I am pretty sure doing that would solve all your problems.

Because you want a band-aid, I want to see if we even need surgery. And it seems that making a class base it's abilities off of its Key stat seems to be the only proper solution. Freeing up stat points from being spread, boosting DC's so your situational powers start passing the 50% mark, and making Armor not have the worst scaling since I saw a fat kid try to climb a rock wall for a doughnut.

The problem with trying to balance things is, frankly, so much of it is situational.

Using the APs, for example, there are few good places to use the Solarian utility powers.

1. Pull people out of cover with Black Hole.

You can't really do that.

2. Stick them in place with X!

A power that can only be used on a given target once. For one round.

3. Use Hypnotic Glow to...

I already explained that at length.

4. Use a revelation!

In round 3. If you're in the right mode for it. Things like Wormhole are usually not even needed.

People seem to think the Solarion powers are mega amazing, but as I've shown... They're not.

I mean Hypnotic Glow is a revelation that, effectively, anyone can get by the feat Connection Inkling. It's a 1st level spell.

Aren't you admitting here, that a Photon Solarion is pretty much identical to a Melee Soldier and that the only area that you can see a Solarion falling behind in, is when they use Graviton mode? So would that not mean the ONLY part that Solarions need buffs for is the Graviton mode, to make it more inline and useful for melee combat (Hint, it's not supposed to be a melee style, compare it to Technomancers and Mystics)

And why only Soldier, why ignore the other 2 melees? Melee Operative, with all the weird wordings and rules, such as it's more optimal for an operative to go prone and trick shot from the ground while slithering around like a snake. And a Melee Combat Drone for Mechanics?

If it's just a battle as you say between Soldiers and Solarions, then with both of them being the 2 best at melee, then you can't justify either getting buffed if everyone is lagging behind.

This is why this discussion is pointless, compare how Solarion does against all classes, do a melee build for all, a ranged build for all and finally a powers build for all and see where each class compares. because I highly doubt solarion will fall that far behind every other class if you do this.

And that excuse of, well if there is an Envoy or Operative then a Solarion skills are useless, is incredibly lazy and that implies that if someone in your party, ultimately on your side, that if they can do a skill better than you then a solarion is worthless. Which is the biggest load of crap ever, just because an Envoy could make a better Captain does not mean they will invest the skill points into it or even want to be that role. They could just as well want to be the Science Officer, Mechanic, Gunner or Pilot. Because you make a baseless assumption on a fictional party and then put them in a position deliberately to make the Solarion look worse is not indicative of a problem more than a poorly built character sucking.

To those who haven't caught on yet, Solarions are more inline with Pathfinder Monks than any other class, the issue they face is lack of expanded material and considering Paizo has stated that certain DC's will be adjusted and that with only 1 monster manual to go by Saves are not that great of a measure to use when you look at high level creatures as there is not a great many of them to choose from as examples.

TranslucentDuck wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

Can you provide a rules passage that supports this? I've not seen it mentioned before.

page 248 core rulebook

When you threaten a space and the opponent moves out
of that space in any way other than a guarded step (see
page 247) or withdraw action (see above), you can use your
reaction to make a melee attack against the opponent.

Thanks!

I'm not quite sure your interpretation hold, however. That passage clearly states "the opponent moves" indicating voluntary movement.

"Moves" and "being moved" are not necessarily the same thing. In any case, I've started a thread here to discuss the matter, rather than derailing this thread.

This is the current discussion in rules threads over what that actually means, moves and being moved, are two different things, but only slightly and the wording itself is up to contention. Because it brings up 1 of two different scenarios, both lets use the Graviton Solarian for this.

If the enemy being moved provokes an AoO than the Graviton Solarian could grab an enemy with they abilities, drag it in front of each of their team mates and provoke attacks from them on every turn. Which sounds ridiculous but when you imagine it, not entirely. Just dragging a pinata in front of a line of kids with bats who each get a whack at it.

If being forced to move does not provoke, then the solution is a Graviton Solarian has abilities that are Free movement for your allies, so if the enemies get to close, you can freely reposition your allies at no penalty and in many cases, you moving them is advantageous as you are doing their movements for them so they can always Full Attack.

One allows the Graviton to on their turn cause a lot of pain to enemies that fail to resist their abilities, and considering how many people in this topic consider Graviton to be useless at worst and situational at best, to the point where they b@~*# that Photon isn't the #1 at everything so it needs to be buffed even more. The other allows Graviton to set up their allies for ludicrous damage and prevent the enemy from even using the feat Step Up/ and Strike as those would not trigger on this forced movement. Which considering there are not a ton of feats, enemies may have something like this to keep their opponents locked down and now the Mystic and Technomancer always have a way out without needing to use guarded step.

It is definitely a worse stat than it was in Pathfinder. In any build (besides a tank) I would take Dex, Int, and whatever the class needs before Con. It helps, but you don't need it.

Yeah and that was intentional, seeing as how nearly every pathfinder guide rated Con as second or third most important ability on every class. And Starfinder it is more obvious that the regaining of stamina on a rest is a means to make your current constitution go further so that you don't have to dump points into that ability to make it to the end of a game. It's not the worst, it just is no longer mandatory, especially since they give ability boosts far more frequently.

So I'm stating Starship combat is not combat so you can use Sidereal Influence.

But you haven't stated why Starship Combat is not Combat. For all purposes the only difference between Starship Combat and non is the means by which you attack. So here is a question for you, if an enemy decides to bring their starship into the atmosphere and starts firing on your party, who are not in their starship, what are you in, Combat or Starship Combat?

Imagine being an 80 year old who acts like he was when he was 18. Would you want to be 18 and an a****** for the rest of your life. Unable to mature and grow as a person?

You are on the internet, this answers your question.

The problem with Drow, and this is entirely R.A. Salvatores' fault, every Drow character is a Drow who left their culture. In previous versions, Pathfinder, DnD and so on. Drow are incredibly isolationist, killing most anything that came in contact with their society. So as a result anyone who played a Drow, unless the game was everyone Drow, they always left. This isn't bad, inherently, but it is the only possibility.

And this is why Paizo dropped the ball, the Gap, while long enough that most humans and other species would have had major changes through their generations, was within 1-2 for the Drow and other longer lived species. This is the perfect time for Drow to have them expand into various Planets, because they have no home planet and cannot continue their isolationism, and are not solely able to interact with their previous planets inhabitants, with the Elves, f*!@ing off to be hermits, the Dwarves getting plastered on 100's of different species kinds of boozes, Goblins still being goblins and for Humans to know too much about the Drow to rely on commerce that way. This would be a massive shift in their culture to be so open in commerce and society. Even if the Matriarchy is controlling of the information the masses see, example China, the rest of the world can see everything they are doing anyway.

I would imagine most Drow stories to be similar to how, again, China was coming into the modern age, the mass extermination of those who want to change the status quo, e.g. the men and more recently born females who want to model their society on the more established xeno cultures, and the attempted control of outside influence.

That's what should be done with them as it is viewed as a schism in their society as their dynasties try to protect their old traditions of control while in turn expanding and improving in nearly every aspect of their current position.

Or if you wanted a more how to say, destructive view of it, liken it to Majority Islamic countries, where women are kept as second class citizens, where backwards laws about education, positions in jobs, the home and even basic society are now being subject to the scrutiny of the outside world and then you can have various factions within Drow culture who are now causing many civil wars, starting s##~ with the other aliens for damaging their way of life and so on.

There are plenty of interesting stories and concepts to use for a society like the Drow to suddenly have that isolationism taken from them when their generations have not gradually acclimated to the changes. But instead they were kept as, Matriarchy, still evil, instead of spider goddess it's companies now, still evil. Pretty lazy and their was plenty they could do with it and I hope that what I said could inspire others to consider options beyond the bare bones or even just as one poster said, Drizzt Du'Skywalker.

Well considering how they had the map of the Material plane, see if I can find a link for that.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/environment/the-planes

Has the information on the planes, ignoring the 3pp, it would seem as though the vaious homes for demons, devil, angels and so on, being that they are beyond the mortal plane and Starfinder is supposed to be just the space around Golarion, it would reason that Extraplanar beings, such as a succubus to keep with your example, would look something similar to the most attractive form of whatever species summoned it, so this would in turn beg a more important question when you see a being like that, are you only seeing a form that is familiar to yourself or their true form.

For all we know, all extraplanar being are an amorphous condensed form of mixtures of good and evil and only take shape when in contact with another being.

The summoning of a mount would be really interesting, again using the paladin you brought up, I think it could be really interesting idea for it to summon a creature native to your species, so a human would get for example a horse, which on other planets might freak the hell out of xenos because they would have never seen a horse even if the concept of summoning magic is common and well known. You could do a lot with that, how a horse and it's different analogs are seen in different cultures and why certain animals were chosen by the different species.

Personally for me the Dragon Disciple is not a Prestige that is meant to go all in for.

As Theconiel said, a Dragobarian is a powerful enemy, seeing as it is really easy to stack the strength bonuses from raging, DD, and enlarge person.

Sorcs can go into it and not lose out on much of their bloodline.

I feel that even with the changes allowing SLA's to qualify for DD, it still falls a bit flat when compared to some of the more recent PRC's.

So, yes the DD is not that good on it's own merits, but for a quick 2 or 3 level dip for some power it's not that bad.