Snare specialist here! Level 8 now, and it works ok. Basics:
Free snares: Snare Genius gives me 4, snare specialist 6, and snarecrafter dedication gives me 6; so 16 free snares per day. You used to want Powerful Snares at level 8, but now that's baked into the Snarecrafter Dedication in remaster. There will be some games where you can really shine, but I'll admit it's pretty rare that you're charged with defending a plot of land from an expected attack. About one per year, really. So you'll want to be a bit selective about what missions you go on. The rest of the time: Surprise Snare IS your game. This feat lets you spend 3 actions to bowl your snare into an opponent's square and set it off. Before remaster, it did lower your DC by two, but with remaster that's gone! What remaster DIDN'T do is fix the range question. The feat doesn't say how far away you can set these snares. But in 2020 I happened to be at a table with Tonya as GM, who made a table ruling of 20' range. That wasn't issued as a campaign rule though, so your table may vary. Outside of snares, I've got crossbow ace. And in theory Hunt Prey -> Precision applies to the surprise snare, as it doesn't say the hit has to be a strike. Which snares to take? The hard limits: nothing with a cost, nothing that takes more than a minute to craft. Those just don't work. Outside of that... same as picking spells. Some damage, some conditions, some utility. A couple snares are fort instead of ref, and a couple have no save. Take a variety. I have NEVER had other players be a problem or complain about my snares. And I've not had GMs try to go around them either. I've got a bunch of cardboard tiles that I'll lay out when we're defending an area, with a mark under them to say which type of snare they are. Then we get a surprise when they go off. The only problem I've had is playing dumb. Because when you're putting snares around a campsite, your character doesn't know that the map only goes one direction. So if you don't want to be meta, you waste some snares on approaches that as a player you know won't happen. Oh well.
I first ran this at a con in the last slot of the night so that we could go overtime. Even with some overtuned PCs it took nearly 6 hours. I did not give out hero points, but afterwards realized that was a mistake. The mythic rules in the set say to change ONLY these rules. They do not mention the hero points. Therefore, you should still give out the hero points as if there was no mythic. I've since had this game at my local store. Since our store had a strict closing time, I directed the GMs to skip the spiders AND the statue fight. One table (23cp) finished right on time, the other (16 cp) about a half hour early.
This is actually pretty thoroughly explained in Divine Mysteries. Maybe wait to read it before passing judgement. Oh, I have. It's a nice story that goes good to improve Torag's image after it was tarnished in Sky King's Tomb. And improve relations between dwarves and orcs. It still comes out of nowhere and has no support in any of the previous Urich material. I also talked with the author who WROTE Urich in the scenarios, who agreed this felt unsupported. She's the one who pointed out the godclaw problem to me. It's not that it's a bad move, and teaming up with Torag isn't even out-of-character. It's just out of left field with nothing to hint at it from his prior portrayals.
The other problem was the orders that for these specific guards; we couldn't kill them. Nobody was built to do non-lethal, so we're taking penalties to hit for both fights. Except our casters, who were just SOL because they can't change to non-lethal on the fly. By the last fight I was willing to just eat the infamy and pay it off with AP. But then the trigger warning happens and it feels like a slap in the face to any attempts at nonlethal.
My GM went ahead and used the retributive strike, but all of us were pretty sure it was supposed to be Reactive Strike. My barbarian was our only frontliner. She's got champion dedication but no further champion abilities. Them ALL having retributive strike AND bonus mental damage against me meant I had to be positioned very carefully to avoid a MASSIVE retaliation any time I hit someone. Our healer kept me up, but I was NOT happy with their hypocrisy in using Champion abilities.
Something about this doesn't feel right to me. While the quality of presentation may vary from GM to GM, the ability to get the same game at any table is one of the hallmarks of PFS. Yes, GMs need room for improvisation and handling creative solutions, but that is a fine line and this feels like it misses the mark. I can't put my finger on why, but it feels like losing some of the 'organized' part of Organized Play. Maybe add some limitations that changes may only be in reaction to player actions or concerns. I agree with the points made by Cirithiel, Tomppa, and Mr. Fred. Reskinning enemies to avoid phobias I get. I've had to deal with a giant spider issue at a table I ran. But reskin for personal preference? I don't want to hear a conversation where one table fought tigers and another fought wolves. On the note of 'adjust obvious typos or errors in a scenario' - the editing quality has gone down drastically in recent years. Please put more funding to editors and don't make GMs do the work that ought to be done in house. And when errors are found in scenarios after release, it's not like you're reprinting books - just update the PDFs. As to formatting the text. Things that are listed in the bulleted sections (use alternate maps, fix typos) should not ALSO be listed in the header paragraph. Duplication leads to bloat and errors years down the road. Edit: I'm not opposed to revising the text. Just think it needs more work.
I run a Cosmic oracle, which had (and still has) the mildest downsides to being cursebound. As a pure caster, I don't care if I'm enfeebled and easy to be moved around. But it used to come with floating off the ground and a bit of DR. Used to take Vision of Weakness, Advanced Revelation, Divine Access (Cosmic Caravan), and Rogue dedication for linguistics (It's dumb that people who came through the Thassilon time jump don't have starting access Azlanti). Still taking Vision of Weakness (basically no change) and Rogue dedication. Not sure if Advanced Revelation for Interstellar Void is worth it. The spell is... ok. Divine Access for my domains... I'll probably drop. So all told.. I have more spells, and lose my DR. But the cosmic part feels like it lost a lot of flavor.
So I looked back more on how SF1 handled this. And then found out what ELSE this playtest took out. In my 16 characters, I never played a many-armed race. But I did sometimes go for more handy options. One is a Raxilite. This is a tiny sized creature that comes with a doc-oc style implant on their back that can collectively hold one medium sized weapon for them. Their own hands are left free to handle tiny-sized things. Mine was a caster so they weren't really using their hands in combat, so wasn't an issue. I have a nanocyte who used their nano swarm to create a natural weapon, and could fight with that while keeping their hands free. PF2 DOES THIS TOO with many ancestries. So we already effectively have 3rd hand fighters. Here's something they removed: Bayonets. They had clamps where you could attach a melee weapon of light bulk to a rifle, effectively a light-bulk finesse weapon to a pistol, or up to a 1 bulk weapon on a heavy gun. Or instead you could mount a grenade launcher on the gun. I had a vesk that fit the model for the new Soldier class: They carried a heavy flame thrower, with an underbarrel grenade launcher, and wielded a sword with their tail. IT WAS FINE. I'm still picking just one to use per turn, with the tail sword for AoOs. Something else not in yet: Power armor. Power armor came with a number of mounts on it to put your weapons on and fire them while your hands were free. This let me have a sword, a shield, and shoulder mounted guns. The purpose is versatility in threat range response. Different element guns or melee as needed. The last one, though I never used it, was that around level 10 or 11 you could just add extra limbs through cybernetics. That's missing too. The unwieldy system can cover most of the issues people propose here. Word it that using an unwieldy weapon taxes the user enough that even if they have more actions or weapons, they're still unable to do it again without more feats. I don't have an answer to people saying that it opens up lots of wand use - the PF2 tables out here don't get much wand use. But it sounds really expensive for multiple one per day items.
I am hoping that we start getting more scenarios for PFS. There is so few new content being written for Society, I can't even remember the last time I actually got to play scenarios.Year 5 and Year 6 are both slated to have 20 scenarios plus an interactive special. Additionally, a two-hour Quest is released every other month. I cannot fathom how anybody could refer to this as "so few new content." PF1 had an average of 28 per year (including specials). It's not a LOT more, but having a reliable 2 per month FEELS different.
They could form the Apis Consortium.
My "samurai" is one of these. As the daimyo of his clan, he took it upon himself to learn the professions of all his subjects. Got to level 14 before PF1 ended publication. Was GM credit until level 3, so he was always a Samurai in flavor in play. When he was level 11 with only a few games left before retirement, the Lore Warden errata came down and granted him a full rebuild - so he changed the weapon he focused on from katana to chainsaw and gambled on it working for the last scenarios and modules. The chainsaw was from a scenario chronicle, but only has a few hours of use left. Used boons to start with a 3rd trait and a stat boost. And then more boons for some gear. Half-orc (city-raised, heart of the streets, sacred tattoo, scavenger, skilled)
The chainsaw had answering, consecrated, and keen added to it. Ring of Balanced Grip let me use it without penalties. Whispering Gloves make the chainsaw silent.
It's very frustrating that the background and summary don't actually go over what's going on IN the scenario. We don't know about Faqhir's bankruptcy until we get to his bedroom. We don't know he's the mastermind until we're underground. I don't understand why it doesn't consider the option of the pathfinders saying "Hey guards, we're already looking into this too. Let's share some info and access." instead of sneaking around.
Zyphus would be interesting. My character is built on hunting down cultists of Zyphus - they'd be thrilled at the development, but "mission accomplished" ends the character's concept. Still, Zyphus is a niche tool that allows for places filled with traps that aren't otherwise justified in having them, so I don't see him leaving.
To the "how do you react" question:
So yes, she was devastated. She wound up with the pathfinder society as they knew the most about Azlant. She would tell people "Call me Acavna" as an act of remembrance and tried to spread word of the moon goddess. While she was a bit of a trickster before the time jump, that has been buried under overwhelming grief in the present. After 3 years of game she had recovered enough to start sometimes using her own name (Phengos) and her trickster side was starting to re-emerge, but it's still slow going. The big aids to this were actually her ganzi tail randomly grabbing things and presenting them to her, and a some time travel games inside and outside of org play that allowed her to talk with my starfinder grief councilor character. Art of Phengos/Acavna: First set, second set.
Could someone provide a live link to the Additional Resources allowed page again? TIA.Starfinder
I'm missing a few of the newer AP's, but I'm counting 1277 non-consumable weapons. The weapon fusion enchantment system is also WAY better than PF2's runes. Even if they let us fly at level one like they promised... the rule on having to spend an action to stay in the air every turn is garbage.
Strong motivation to not rebuild.
I get what Cylerist and Corvus are saying. A friend of mine described it like this: Star Wars is a low-magic setting with some high-magic characters (Jedi). Starfinder is a high-magic setting with low-magic characters. There's magic stuff all over the place, but the magical-ness of individual characters is actually pretty low. Even full casters rarely FEEL like "I'm a MAGIC user!"
Realized another concern while at convention this weekend: Languages. Starfinder you start with a couple from Int, and get another with every rank in Culture (so every level). Sometimes you'll get TWO per rank in Culture. So you can wind up with a LOT of languages - which is fitting when there's 140 ancestries, most of which have their own language. Pf2 it is incredibly hard to get more languages. You're spending feats to get a couple of them.
They had ONE scenario at appropriate ranges for a sniper duel. If you were a sniper it was fun. The rest of the party spent several rounds running to get where they could do something useful.
Ok, I'll bite. I know I've been pessimistic about the balance points in PF2 that I'm not looking forward to in SF2. But there ARE some PF2 things that I'm looking forward to. So rather than being entirely gloom, sell me on things in PF2 that will make starfinder better! Starting off: I like 3-action economy. I like the ancestry feat / class feat / skill feat system and how it progresses through levels (general feats could be better). The general structure of how you build a character. I like magic items counting against an investment limit instead of getting 2 magic items and the rest eating into your armor mods.
There's 71 races in starfinder with darkvision - more than half of them. If you're in the other half, you can get it for a level 1 armor mod, or a level 3 cybernetic. Or put a flashlight on your armor. So darkvision is more of the Flight level of balancing than the 4-arms balancing.
Ramiyels I would love to see more of - including being allowed into organized play. But... I suspect they'll fall to OGL. While the name and description at first seems new to starfinder, if you read between the lines of their article and futz with pronunciation a bit... these snake-tailed ladies were probably Lamia Matriarchs that sometime during the gap lost their evil obsessions. While other media have pretty much locked on to 'snake-tail lady with arms = lamia' I don't know if that's enough to take the setup away from WotC.
1-98 was originally only playable if Thursty ran it (so at a small number of conventions), same with 2-98. 1-98 is now available to be run by a 4 or 5 Nova GM PF1 ended with the Whispering Tyrant escaping his prison, destroying Lastwall, and marching on Absalom. Most of which was dealt with in an adventure path. On the organized play side, we had a giant expedition to close down the base he'd left behind under his prison, during which many PCs and a few NPCs died.
I'm curious to know: for the people who dislike the active hands mechanic and the Switch Active Hands action, what would you do, personally, to balance having two, four, perhaps even more extra arms at level 1? Would you give those ancestries tradeoffs to offset that power, would you implement some other kind of mechanic to help balance those extra arms, or do you believe nothing more would need to be done for gameplay to remain balanced? Opportunity cost: if you're picking an ancestry for this, you're not taking some other cool ancestry.
I mean, it's true that my PF2 characters are less defined by a specific combination of choices that allow me to do the specific neat trick I decided I wanted my character to do than my PF1 characters were. But the long and short of it is if you can't get unlimited, all day flight at a sufficiently low level for it to "define your character" then you don't define your character with unlimited, all-day flight in mind. In fact, a surprisingly workable way to build a PF2 character is "have absolutely no plan for what choices you will take at any future level before you are actually given those choices." Sure, that's why ancestries like Sprites and Strix with wings and cultures centered around being able to fly make TOTAL sense that as soon as they become PCs their wings get clipped until level 13.
PF2s power curve is so low and tight that it can't handle the stress.Several of us have explained why PF2 was designed that way and why it makes for a very flexible and fun game to play. Saying that you don't like it doesn't change that. No game system is right for everyone. I can barely tolerate playing PF1. I liked SF1 well enough, but not enough to put more time into it after PF2 came out. And several of us liked the middle ground that starfinder took or even (gasp) liked the high ground of pf1. And now we're having the low ground of pf2 shoved down our throats and being told to like it.
I do think there is merit to the active hands mechanic: without it, a multi-handed character could do stuff like dual-wield guns and reload them with free hands, wield a two-handed weapon while also soaking up damage with a shield, plus have a free hand to do Athletics maneuvers and Interact alongside that, all at level 1. Given the proper feat commitment, all of that could probably be made to be okay, but breaking 2e's tight hand economy at level 1 with no investment other than picking the right ancestry is almost certainly imbalanced. Turning that hand economy benefit into an action economy benefit instead, with the possibility of buildinng further on the mechanic via ancestry or general feats, I think is the reasonable way of going about it. They can do all that now, with a core race, and it's never been an issue.
|
