Search Posts
My table found themselves in option 2 after a lightning bolt was cast in the lounge. Even the barking dogs and construction noise couldn't conceal THAT.
They can wander around for the two hours, but odds are they are going to get a bunch of breaches just for waiting around. I made sure my players knew two things in the library.
edit: IIRC the four player adjustment drops the DCs, but if they don't even try there is no way to avoid the breaches. There is also a bit of damage for getting dumped into the lab. If a group gives this section a pass I don't think its possible to get the second prestige. Letting a Venture Captain get beat up is bad form.
I was just going to consider the "melted" book to be Precautions. Assuming the party collects enough books on Sunday of course. Really looking forward to running this at high tier. My only fear is the PCs will make the diplomacy check to the point the don't even fight Daosvaria. Not getting to make a True Strike, Power Attack, Fly-By Attack bite will make me a bit sad.
GMing at a con should continue to get some kind of bonus. Most of the time you pay to get in and time behind the screen is time you aren't playing / at a party / etc. I like the extra boon slot idea (if 2e ends up with that system). It certainly doesn't need to be an ancestry boon. I never understood the fascination with catfolk anyway. A reduced cost rebuild would be helpful. For example, when the GM credit character you cobbled together ends up 3rd level and you find the build is sub par after you play.
As someone who has run Way of the Wicked twice, I'm not a fan of evil PCs for PFS. I'm sure there are players who could do it without disrupting play. Everyone I've played with so far can be civil even if their characters have reasons to disagree. We're there to have fun not beat each other up. A character's alignment is no excuse to be a jerk at the table. IF the organized play team is going to let evil in, during a playtest could work. If too many tables report a problem you revert to the No Evil rule.
I'd like to see the corrected starship combat DC's added to the guide. Players and GMs are more likely to find it there than the Starfinder FAQ page. At least it gives people another chance to see it. A Drake rebuild sounds good. Had a group use that in the drone fight and run out of ammo pretty fast.
Plastic in terms of minis can mean lots of things. There are big differences between the old D&D prepainted, Pathfinder Battles, and Reaper Bones. Hard plastics hold detail better, but can get brittle (see pathfinder). Soft plastics like Bones take paint OK and can take a beating in the minis box but you lose fine detail. added bonus, you can straighten limbs and weapons with a pot of hot water or a hair dryer. Resins vary too. If the manufacturer isn't careful you can get bubbles and other defects. Never noticed it with Super Dungeon Explore minis or Relic Knights. I had an old Warmachine Colossal that I needed to fill in some small holes with putty and sand flat before priming. Filing down mold lines should also be done with a dust mask. Resin debris can be irritating. I suspect for most people a quick blackwash will make the details pop out enough that they won't need to fully paint them. Skittermanders could be washed in blue instead of black. Might get the mini close to the cover art.
No Pictures = it don't exist. Links please. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/325468910/starfinder-masterclass-minia tures/description Scroll about 1/3 down so you can see the Encounter packs.
Just looked at the art from the Starfinder Miniatures kickstarter. The ones on the left seem cute. Something ewok-like wandering around, obviously some folks like them. I don't have the book yet so no clue about the rules for playing them. As soon as they are sanctioned I expect a bunch of new characters entering play. Then I glance at the two whelps and ... umm... what is that coming out of their belly? My reflex of "Kill it with fire" kicked in.
The Starfinder and Iron Gods pawns work pretty well and are cost effective for most people. If you want minis, Reaper Bones (Chronoscope line) has some great models for the Starfinder characters under $5 per mini. If you want more detailed minis Reaper has the metal minis (the same sculpts as the Bones) for $6-10 dollars. Unless you want the Bulldog, think X-Com mechtrooper, who is $20 in metal. Warmachine has a few factions that would look good in the Starfinder setting, Convergence and Retribution mostly. They aren't cheap AND you need to assemble them. I'm thinking a Tactical Arcanist Corp leader model would be fun to base a PC on. I personally hate working with resin minis. I don't know about Ninja Division, but other resin models I've worked with have pits and bubbles. If you want to kitbash there is a potential toxic dust problem. At $10 each, I am much less willing to hack an arm off to switch gear and repaint the thing.
Noticing gunfire varies in different games. The archaic firearms in Pathfinder would be quite loud. While I can't find rules for how loud a Perception DC -10 feels right. With the +1/10 feet, anyone within 100 feet hears it automatically (DC 0). Most people could hear it at 200 feet (DC 10). Depending on the campaign style they may not know what the sound is. Starfinder has guns everywhere and in a wide array of types. Anyone would know (or at least have a good idea) what they sound like. The Silence spell didn't make the cut so someone would have to research it now. But a weapon augment that reduces the noise of firing doesn't seem out of place in the setting. There is an oil of silence for Pathfinder so we have a precedent. Silencing a sonic weapon would likely break the weapon or the enchantment. Being horrifically, damagingly loud is the entire point. Even if RAW it would work, I'd houserule it that you can't use sonic weapon in a Silence area.
The room making a perception check to notice feels backwards. If the party notices the weak spot can they make stealth checks to keep quiet? To avoid the opposed roll, you could just say if someone gets a stealth check less than 10 it collapses. As above, the cave in hazard in the core rulebook sounds like what you're after. If you want the CR higher, bumping up the damage by 2d6 and / or raising the save DC by 1 should get you to CR 10. No way to bypass? If this is the only way to the plot you could have PCs deciding to not risk the cave in and leave. Might work better if it's a faster way through but not the only way. What happens if they use a summoned monster to poke it until it falls? Is the intention here to trap the party on one side of the debris so they must go forward to get out or just to soften them up before a big fight?
Orbital bombardment is a staple of science fiction. "Nuke the site from orbit, its the only way to be sure" can be the correct answer to some problems. Viral outbreaks, massive colonies of undead, disassembler nanite swarms are all great reasons to evac and reduce the a city or continent to ash. I suspect most ships won't have the firepower to do more than a few city blocks worth of destruction at a time but I could be wrong. It is not a Good answer in terms of alignment. The default assumption about Pathfinder and Starfinder is the PCs on average are somewhere between Neutral and Good. Indiscriminate destruction is always a Chaotic act and often Evil as well.
If you really need to use this for a home game (eat coilgun dragon!) the various Battletech games have scaling damage for people Vs Mechs and Mechs Vs space naval assets. A Mechwarrior 2nd edition character has roughly 30HP, single short range missile does 2 points to a Mech or 10d6+6 to a person. That same 2 point missile needs 4 more friends do 1 point of capital ship damage. The answer is pretty much the same, firing ship scale weapons at unprotected people is overkill.
Everything I've heard on this topic from the developers is that you can't target people with shipboard weapons ... yet. There wasn't space in the core rulebook to deal with all the aspects of ship level combat Vs PCs. While nuking the dungeon from orbit may sound like a good idea, it breaks the game's theme. And several interstellar conventions regarding cultural sites, use of WMD, etc...
Personally, I don't like the idea of running anything immortal with a fixed alignment. Eliminates the option for characters to grow, mentally. And somehow that wasn't the spoiler I was expecting. Anything with an intelligence over 2 can be redeemed in theory. Just because you've broken the natural cycle of life and death to extend your material existence ... oh wait, that's why you're evil in the first place. So maybe the best we can hope for is True Neutral. That would be another route to defeating a Lich even if you can't identify the phylactery. If you can't kill it, convert it.
Even the halfling ranger in Order of the Stick knows lead blocks divination. Maybe if you dropped Divination when you specialized I could understand why a caster wouldn't know that. The problem with dropping it in the ocean (aside from the new pressure zone rules in Aquatic Adventures) is that even you don't know where it is. Things wash up on shore all the time, there are aquatic species out there that have the same spells as surface folk. When you regenerate do you really want to wake up inside a whale? Or stuck in some tube worm near a volcanic vent?
If the party captured anyone during the occupation of the Horn, you could rebuild and play one of the adventurers that attacked. The party could easily turn any of the neutral NPCs to the dark side. They all have a small bit of back story to build from. As they are from the world, it may also give you some inspiration. Infernal visions can guide a new villain to the party. any class with a divine tie and loyalty to Asmodeus can be drawn in this way. A Haunted Oracle, maybe a former member of the church of Mitra. Maybe a convert from another oppressed faith who heard about a group of rebels trying win religious freedom for the land. A nature based character could an Iraen (tribal people south of the Horn) be determined to prevent the ever-expanding Mitran faith. Both times I've run this, someone grabs antipaladin. Sort of on that vein, an Inquisitor could be fun. Rather than stamp out heresy, you are driven to find protect the surviving faithful of Asmodeus. Trying to liberate stolen relics of the faith and generally be a pain to any Mitrans you find. Did you fight <Monster Name Redacted> for a Mythic Trial or Ascension? If it is who I think it is, good on you for trying. That thing is horrible.
Looks like I need to dig through my collection of minis. I'm running both scenarios at SkalCon. http://www.skalcon.org/
Most Liches I know hide their soul away from the lair they operate from. Some distant, forgotten place. My favorite is a dragon's hoard. You should really get permission from said dragon as you aren't sure when you'll need to hang out there for a few days to regenerate. Leave yourself a few useful items so you can start rebuilding. As to identifying one that has been collected by troublesome "Heroes" the spell Detect Evil should be your first step. Yes, if it has been worn by its foolish owner for years and has other evil spells attached to it the Detect Spell won't help much. Having other evil people nearby won't matter, the spell will let you get specific by the third round of concentration. The higher level divination spells like Legend Lore, Analyzer Dweomer and some psychic abilities should be able to confirm if an object is the phylactery. A sufficiently high DC Spellcraft check to identify the properties of the item should do the job (treat like a Cursed object). Example, if you made it out of an Amulet of Natural Armor +5 the DC to identify a phylactery with Spellcraft is 15 (starting) + 15 (Caster level of the item) +10 (margin of success required to spot a curse) for a total DC of 40. By the time a party can take on a lich, there should be someone in the group who can hit that DC better than half the time.
Now I want to make cursed grenades that DO return when thrown. If the device releases an energy pulse, sure maybe you can recharge it. A fragmentation grenade doesn't work like that, the casing becomes the shrapnel that does the fragging. Of course that's modern grenades. Nothing says you can't put a few of those universal polymer blocks inside, plug it into the wall for an hour, and be ready to go again. Of course, depending on where you threw it, you may not want it back.
First, you need to use a move action to get close to them, and so can’t full attack. Second, you immediately fall if you’re not on solid ground, so (as I read it) you won’t even get the chance to attack them once. There will be times you don't fall, microgravity comes to mind. If you are using this power without gravity and you don't have a jetpack what happens? Do you keep going in the same direction until stopped?
The biggest threat here is Command Undead feat. Hard to stop that short of bumping your will save. Intelligent undead often have Channel Resistance (bonus to saves) and you get a save everyday. Even if the necromancer has jacked up his DCs, eventually you'll roll a 20. The feat references the spell: "If the subject is intelligent, it perceives your words and actions favorably (treat its attitude as friendly). It will not attack you while the spell lasts. You can give the subject orders, but you must win an opposed Charisma check to convince it to do anything it wouldn't ordinarily do. " Friendly does not mean mindless slave. If you person controlling you isn't careful about their orders, well... "I'm sorry, but you said Fireball the goblins. Its not my fault two of your allies were in the blast. You didn't tell me NOT for maximize the fireball."
Death Ward targets a living creature. Much like another thread about protecting yourself form spells that don't allow saves there are only a handful of things that work. Spell Immunity (and its Greater version) - good if you know what your hunters use, or are concerned about 1 spell (searing light for example). Globe of Invulnerability simply turns off lower level spells. Spell Turning can work here too. Sadly, lots of the stuff PCs throw at undead is less effective (or useless) on the living so the reflection isn't as good). However, undead tend to have poor Fort saves so reflecting a Disintegrate is amazing.
Are the starship rules less complicated than GURPS? I saw people talking about cube roots above and started thinking about GURPS Vehicles again. <shudder> If the system flows well I can live with handwaving away parts of physics. This is still a fantasy game at its heart.
Whatever forces instigated The Gap probably don't want people snooping around trying to pick up the pieces. They broke reality for a reason. Any other group of worlds that aren't interested in joining the Pact Worlds and are looking to expand their empire. Can't have these Starfinders exploring / recruiting new worlds when we want them all. Space Pirate King. There has to be at least one of those out there, probably lots of them. Space is big.
Not a squirt gun, but it will do. Copied from the PRD:
|
