Starfinder Alien Archive Pawn Box

Some thoughts on the number of pawns provided:

The person responsible for choosing the numbers provided for every creature has done a good job.
Almost every creature is there in the required amount.

There are a few exceptions:
-"Apari" have organization: solitary, but two are in the set.
-"Deh-Nolo" is the same.
-"Dragon, Young Adult Blue" is the same.
-"Gray" are encountered solo, paired or as invasion (6-12), but 4 are included.
-"Haan Combat Pilot" are encountered solitary, but 2 are included.
-"Hallajin" is the same.
-"Ikeshti Rivener" is the same.
-"Inevitable, Anhamut" is the same.
-"Kalo Deepspeaker" is encountered solitary, but 4 are included.
-"Maraquoi Shaman" is the same.
-"Necrovite" is solitary, but two are included.
-"Novaspawn" is the same.
-"Orocoran Ichor Lord" is the same.
-"Reptoid Master" is the same.
-"Skittermander Whelps" are encountered solitary or as a nest (5-25), yet only 4 are included.
-"Swarm Thresher Lords" are encountered up to 2 at a time, yet 4 are included.

There could have been more "Drow Enforcers", "Space Goblins", "Hesper" or "Ikeshti" instead, but that´s a minor concern remedied with buying a second box.

OMISSIONS:
-"Elicoth", one of the coolest creatures imo, is missing because it´s gargantuan.
-"Frujai Colony" - colossal.
-"Kyokor" - colossal.
-"Oma", which is colossal as a creature, but medium as a starship.
This could and should have been included.

ERRORS:
-The "Cybernetic Zombie" pawn is medium, but being based on an Ysoki base creature, it should be small instead.
-"Void Hag": 2 are included, but for a coven 3 are needed.

Mostly a very good selection. Having more pawns than needed is better than the alternative.
If 3-5 medium Oma and one more medium Void Hag would be included and the "Cybernetic Zombie" (assuming it is based on the Ysoki art from page 114 of the Alien Archive) would be small, it would be nearly perfect.

I´ll put up a proper review once i have the physical product in hand.

How many of the upcoming pawn sets are also going to be missing numbers and set indicators?

Why did you stop doing this? At least through Bestiary 5, pawns had a set indicator and a number, and I've found it very helpful.

I just got the actual box in the mail. It is huge, has nice liiking art, and includes several bases.

Now I just need to go recuperate from that hernia that I got from picking it up and hauling it inside. ;)

Curiously, one of the Medium size bases in my box is yellow. Not that it matters, but is this a quirk or is it intended?

When I make patios I always put one brick upside down.

So you're the guy who creates DVD box series like this!

It's more subtle then that, I usually tuck it away in a corner. :-)

Curiously, one of the Medium size bases in my box is yellow. Not that it matters, but is this a quirk or is it intended?

It's a sample to promote the purple, yellow and orange base packs also available for Starfinder as a paizo.com exclusive.

Aha!

Very hefty box
Nice quality
Not sure i need 64 elementals though for SF
Though will use them for something i imagine

Does the PDF version contain top-down views for VTT? Since that is the only real reason to have the PDF and the only real way to use the pawns since the oh so intelligent people at Piazo decided that it was a good idea to release the adventure path but wait for a year or more depending on when they do make it to market to publish the maps for those adventure paths. That takes some serious intellect.

Does the PDF version contain top-down views for VTT?

There are no top-down views of pawns, since they would be more or less unrecognizable that way.

Since that is the only real reason to have the PDF

Untrue, lots of people use PDFs to have facing views of pawns on VTT or to print out pawns.

and the only real way to use the pawns

Untrue, lots of people use pawns outside VTT.

since the oh so intelligent people at Piazo

If you didn't intend that to sound like a sarcastic insult at Paizo's intelligence, you might want to reconsider your phrasing. Also, it's funny when somebody insults someone's intelligence but misspells their name in the process.

decided that it was a good idea to release the adventure path but wait for a year or more depending on when they do make it to market to publish the maps for those adventure paths.

Untrue, the maps are released together with the AP installments. Even if you're talking about the Campaign Setting Map Folios (which have like three maps that are generally overland scale and not useful for VTT play anyway), I don't think those have ever taken a year (let alone "more").

...since the oh so intelligent people at Piazo decided that it was a good idea to release the adventure path but wait for a year or more depending on when they do make it to market to publish the maps for those adventure paths. That takes some serious intellect.

Appreciating the necessity for that takes some understanding of the production process and the timelines involved in ordering art - most of the art and maps hasn't yet been produced until after the AP is halfway done, so even if they pull the trigger immediately on pawns/map packs/ancillary products they are rarely ready before the AP is completed. They need to wait for this since things can change substantially from outline to author turnover - significant NPCs can take on different relevance and I presume the author is also largely responsible for the maps as well.

Also, I'm not sure what you're waiting for in terms of maps. They don't generally 'publish the maps for adventure paths' separately (they used to provide such a product but there were a lot of people who objected to it and the format of the map folios was changed, to generally positive response). Just a heads up, in case you're waiting for a "Distant Suns Map Collection" PDF or something..

That said, I would always recommend waiting until after an AP is completely released before running it anyway. There is usually nuance and context for the early installments that don't really come together until you've read books five and six. Many of the problems people report when running the early/mid-range AP issues stem from a failure to fully appreciate the overall arc, in my opinion.

Bryan McWhirt wrote:

...since the oh so intelligent people at Piazo decided that it was a good idea to release the adventure path but wait for a year or more depending on when they do make it to market to publish the maps for those adventure paths. That takes some serious intellect.

Appreciating the necessity for that takes some understanding of the production process and the timelines involved in ordering art - most of the art and maps hasn't yet been produced until after the AP is halfway done, so even if they pull the trigger immediately on pawns/map packs/ancillary products they are rarely ready before the AP is completed. They need to wait for this since things can change substantially from outline to author turnover - significant NPCs can take on different relevance and I presume the author is also largely responsible for the maps as well.

Also, I'm not sure what you're waiting for in terms of maps. They don't generally 'publish the maps for adventure paths' separately (they used to provide such a product but there were a lot of people who objected to it and the format of the map folios was changed, to generally positive response). Just a heads up, in case you're waiting for a "Distant Suns Map Collection" PDF or something..

That said, I would always recommend waiting until after an AP is completely released before running it anyway. There is usually nuance and context for the early installments that don't really come together until you've read books five and six. Many of the problems people report when running the early/mid-range AP issues stem from a failure to fully appreciate the overall arc, in my opinion.

I prefer to not use VTT but since there are no maps for Incident at Absalom Station (Dead Suns 1 of 6). The Docking bay is scheduled for a March/April release. Sunrise Maiden has a May/June tenative release date. I have not seen a release date for the Fusion Queen, Acreon, or Drift Rock, indicating they are likely going to be a year or more after the module has been released even though the maps are don as a scaled down version appear in the module but you are not going to be fitting any pawns on those.

I guess I can understand the non-overhead view on the tokens. For using a VTT I'd still prefer a 3/4 isometric view.

I've not played pathfinder so I don't know how adventure paths were done in the past but I would think the best way would be to release the maps for each module with the modules. I don't mind the extra cost as that makes sense to me and one of the main reasons I wanted to move to Starfinder over Star Wars was that these maps were going to be available to play on. Buying a module and having to wait a year for the maps to be available or be force to use a VTT is just sad though. I would feel a bit different probably if other maps were not coming out before the ones needed for the module.

Bryan, apologies for my earlier answer which may have been snippy in tone. I didn't realize you weren't previously familiar with Paizo's business model from Pathfinder. Allow me to clarify, perhaps this will be of some help to you, at least to manage your expectations.

Adventure Paths do not produce physical maps. If you're expecting to see Fusion Queen, Acreon or Drift Rock as physical map products, you're out of luck. The only way to get AP maps physically is to take them directly from the adventure (scanner if you have the physical AP volume, copypaste if you have the PDF). The maps inside an adventure will not be sold as separate products. They're DIY stuff. You make them digital yourself through the aforementioned means, and then you either use them in a VTT or print them out physically, according to your own preference. I have done both and run adventures successfully both on VTT using maps I copypasted from PDF, and physically with printouts that I printed on my color inkjet.

The maps for each module are already released, within each AP volume. It just requires some legwork to get them out of each volume. That may be more legwork than you wish to do, but I will say that once you've done it a few times, it's a couple-of-minutes process.

The resolution for the maps of the locations in the APs will always be a little fuzzy when blown up to one real life inch per square, but they're still perfectly playable. And it's the best and only thing we're gonna get.

For VTT purposes you pretty much just take the maps from the PDF. There's absolutely no need for standalone.

For VTT purposes you pretty much just take the maps from the PDF. There's absolutely no need for standalone.

Yep I am currently running a VTT game in Roll20 and ripped all the maps I needed right from the PDFs they are 300dpi which leaves more than enough room to scale them up to the appropriate size for a monitor and still look great.

For Starfinder I did switch to portrait tokens rather than top down images (I prefer those) but the switch was fine with my players and again I can rip all the art I need for the tokens out of the various PDFs of the various books and adventure path PDFs without any additional purchases.

Over all it works fine and the free PDFs provided by subscribing is exactly why I do it to provide me with all the PDF material I need for my Roll20 game. Plus I love to have a hard copy of all the books for my collection.

The resolution for the maps of the locations in the APs will always be a little fuzzy when blown up to one real life inch per square, but they're still perfectly playable. And it's the best and only thing we're gonna get.

They are indeed perfectly usable. You can see a photo of Docking Bay 94 here. I printed it at 800% using the artist's image, freely available here.

I have a few questions regarding the PDF then.

1. How do you get the images out of the PDF? They are understandably password protected.

2. It turns out there won't be internet access where we will be playing, which makes my last few days of learning Roll20 pointless. Does anyone know of a VTT for Mac that does not require Internet or and I back to using GIMP and tons of layers? Unfortunate as once you start getting past Roll20's learning curve for GMs you get to liking it.

1. I don't have any problem just clicking on the image to select it, right-clicking to Copy, going to Paint and Paste, then crop as desired. If that doesn't work, there's also a Take Snapshot option in Acrobat's, I think, Edit menu.

2. Fantasy Grounds is an installable VTT program, I haven't tested it out whether it can save assets offline.

1. I don't have any problem just clicking on the image to select it, right-clicking to Copy, going to Paint and Paste, then crop as desired. If that doesn't work, there's also a Take Snapshot option in Acrobat's, I think, Edit menu.

2. Fantasy Grounds is an installable VTT program, I haven't tested it out whether it can save assets offline.

Thanks Samy. It looks like FG does not require network but I will find out. I'm going to hold off on getting it as they are working with Paizo to release full functional Starfinder rules minus space combat. It's been submitted to Paizo as of yesterday and it's waiting on approval. They say it will probaly take a week or two for Paizo to approve or submit changes/corrections so best case is that the full Starfinder rules for FG could be available in a week or two. Someone else suggested Maptool and I briefly looked at it and for just maps it should work.

Hope you get everything working! If you have any more questions just ask!

No Ellicoth really hurts. I was just looking for it thinking "I'm all prepared, it's in the book, wait, where?"... Now it's just an empty large base on my table. Was it left out because it was in a Pathfinder Bestiary before?

It's too big.