Starfinder Adventure Path #17: Solar Strike (Dawn of Flame 5 of 6)

So I still find this one bit hard to review since it IS mostly combat encounters, but after four years of time since I first read this I think I've seen enough starfinder adventures and run campaigns to have better impression of material even without seeing it in practice.

And in this case, that experience tells me that Solar Strike feels weirdly incomplete outside of combat materials. Like, DCI npcs can come with you, but the adventure doesn't ever tell what they can or might do during the adventure(outside of like two mentions of them tearing up or being excited at the end). Like all burden of them is put on GM and there isn't guidance for how they react to things, how they can mechanically help PCs or anything really. It feels like "Well what if players don't take them with them? Better to not waste page pace on what happens if they do". Starfinder in general is kinda awkward about how to handle npcs being interesting, I think some of later adventures does it bit better, but its consistently one of biggest issues I have with adventures, so I think even though this is four year old ap the feedback on this should still be useful to paizo.

One of the things that really feel incomplete to me is that there is constant recurring mention of the mole working for bad guys and his twin brother which he really wants pcs to rescue once he is unmasked. Well you'd think the consistent mentions are building up to something, but nah his twin brother is dead by time pcs find him. Was he dead all along, did he die when he failed to capture pcs, is he still alive if he DID somehow successfully deliver pcs as prisoners, adventure doesn't make explain that or make any further mention of either mole or his dead twin making it feel like something got cut out from draft by editors. Like it being bummer downer ending is fine, but in that case I would expect one final mention of mole's reaction at his twin bro's fate, but nah its just ends and gm again has to figure out what to do if players somehow got invested to that minor subplot.

Yeah there are lot of these small non combat things that feel just kinda off. Like one npc its mentioned that if they die, then more resistance members die at the end during the big fight, but there isn't really any context on how many (besides "less than expected") die in first place, so does that mean if they died then they took about as many casualties as they would have expected? It feels like throwaway line "GM: Oh, there are consequences for pcs failing this part? Players: Well what is it? GM: Umm more people died? Players: How many more? GM: Err, more." Like was there supposed to be some sort of "pcs get victory points, more they get less losses" mechanic that got cut or is it just attempt to give extra consequences for pc failure that doesn't really clarify how big of consequences are?

But yeah map quality is still great and I do think there are some nice possibly memorable combat scenarios. But my favorite parts of the book really are the Bestiary, anassanois' city article and Deep Cultures article. I do like the cheeky nod to Outpost Zed(i've noticed that after against the aeon throne, Outpost Zed has gotten so many cameos even though none of APs have been canonized into timeline yet. I still hope that happens at some point because it needs to be acknowledged that all Eloritu runes have been discovered by now on side of new locations being introduced x'D). But yeah, anassanois and other deep cultures better make future appearances ;D Adventure itself is pretty okay, but I don't feel comfortable with giving this one four stars just because I like articles, the adventure feeling weirdly off regarding non combat stuff puts the overall nature of it down for me even if it turned out all combats are super fun in practice.