Well, there's a difference between broken down and destroyed.
Well, there's a difference between broken down and destroyed.
Yeah, as in it's actually broken, doesn't work and can be fixed. Where as destroyed is unsalvageable. The broken condition is more like a "damaged" condition and disabled could be replaced with broken. It's like if the dying or even dead condition only gave a creature -2 to everything.
There's no reason to assume shields have a chance of being repairable after being knocked out. As a fictional technology, they behave any way we want them to. If they are partially discharged, they can be recharged. There's your broken/repairable condition you really need one. Remember why we're talking about this, to explain how a party might only ever have one ship at their disposal.
Are all Eoxians evil by definition?It is implied pretty heavily that the Bone Sages are evil though not of the destroy all life in an overly complicated scheme and twirl your mustache while doing so variety of evil, more of the love personal power and do what it takes to get more of it sort of evil. But Eox also has an area called "The halls of the Living" which i have always thought of as an ark or fallout shelter of sorts where the original, living, Eoxians took refuge and some of which are still alive as of the Pathfinder era.
In the Starfinder era with Eox apparently a participant in the Pact World Alliance i would assume they are no worse than before in that they want personal power and view the pact as a temporary situation until they are strong enough to stand on their own again. Though in practice i doubt the status quo could be altered in such a way that they could go back to each one being their own little king of their part of Eox and pretend that the rest of the universe isnt passing them by. So basically, i assume they are still evil but also smart enough to know that they are just too small a force to be independent on the galactic stage anymore so they come across as more selfish than anything else...
Not just the Bone Sages. I'm wondering if Eox will be a 'non-player' pact world in most games.
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I dont think we will see many Bone Sage PCs but their envoys mucking about spying on things or being information/technology/magical brokers could be a thing. They have first hand knowledge of world crushing doomsday weapons and a few of their enclaves seem to have kept up or surpasses that level of technology in the Pathfinder era so who knows what craziness they are up to these days. I think it would be really trippy if some of the Bone Sages could actually revert or encase themselves in living bodies for a period to live and work among the Pact Worlds more easily before they cast off their living...Not just the Bone Sages. I'm wondering if Eox will be a 'non-player' pact world in most games.Are all Eoxians evil by definition?It is implied pretty heavily that the Bone Sages are evil though not of the destroy all life in an overly complicated scheme and twirl your mustache while doing so variety of evil, more of the love personal power and do what it takes to get more of it sort of evil. But Eox also has an area called "The halls of the Living" which i have always thought of as an ark or fallout shelter of sorts where the original, living, Eoxians took refuge and some of which are still alive as of the Pathfinder era.
In the Starfinder era with Eox apparently a participant in the Pact World Alliance i would assume they are no worse than before in that they want personal power and view the pact as a temporary situation until they are strong enough to stand on their own again. Though in practice i doubt the status quo could be altered in such a way that they could go back to each one being their own little king of their part of Eox and pretend that the rest of the universe isnt passing them by. So basically, i assume they are still evil but also smart enough to know that they are just too small a force to be independent on the galactic stage anymore so they come across as more selfish than anything else...
Playing a bone sage necromancy focused technomancer might be kind of cool. Skeleton's with lasers and zombies in power armor sounds amazing.
Not every intelligent undead on Eox is a Bone Sage, right? Are there undead citizens with autonomous wills?
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Get yourself some Asmodeus sponsored sponsored legal representation.
Apologies if this has already been asked. And I know it's still too early to spill any specific details, which I'm perfectly okay with.
But as someone who didn't really like Pathfinder's crunchiness---from the myriad bonuses and the rules for every little thing to hundreds of feats and spells---but really liked what 5e did (and the Pathfinder beginner box, actually) would Starfinder be up my alley? I know they said there's going to be less skills and no crafting feats, which is a nice start.
But I find myself unable to run Pathfinder for new players anymore. Even if I'm just using the core rule book, it was simply a monster to explain and run. The beginner box was really nice, but it's not indicative of the actual game.
I really want to like Starfinder, since I do like a general level of crunchiness that lies somewhere between 5e and Pathfinder (which is what Starfinder is sounding like it's doing), but I just don't know. How do you balance trying to make SF compatible with PF, but also making it its own beast?
I guess y'all have figured that out since the books going to printers now, luckily I don't gotta worry about that!
Apologies if this has already been asked. And I know it's still too early to spill any specific details, which I'm perfectly okay with.
But as someone who didn't really like Pathfinder's crunchiness---from the myriad bonuses and the rules for every little thing to hundreds of feats and spells---but really liked what 5e did (and the Pathfinder beginner box, actually) would Starfinder be up my alley? I know they said there's going to be less skills and no crafting feats, which is a nice start.
But I find myself unable to run Pathfinder for new players anymore. Even if I'm just using the core rule book, it was simply a monster to explain and run. The beginner box was really nice, but it's not indicative of the actual game.
I really want to like Starfinder, since I do like a general level of crunchiness that lies somewhere between 5e and Pathfinder (which is what Starfinder is sounding like it's doing), but I just don't know. How do you balance trying to make SF compatible with PF, but also making it its own beast?
I guess y'all have figured that out since the books going to printers now, luckily I don't gotta worry about that!
Not sure what you mean by "crutchiness" Most of the characters I played in Pathfinder didn't have crutches.
Thats "crunchiness," but I'm not sure what it means either...especially compared to 5e and the beginner box.
Yes, crunch is system materials and concrete rules, and I think Pathfinder has way too much of it. My hope is that at the very least, if Starfinder's rules are just as complex as PF's then it offers some kind of guidelines or advice for new players on what kinda feats they're recommended to take, or what exactly their class does, etc.
Gotcha. And in that case, I agree. It's also what I love about things like the Advanced Player's Guide; it provides some sort of path for a player to pursue. But yes, it is a burdensome task to explain all that to a new player and could be much simpler.
I also think that PF is, (as I believe has been mentioned elsewhere here), bloated beyond reasonableness. All creativity has been removed from the character creation process by the ridiculous number of expansions to the core races and classes. You wanna be a half-undead-ogre-dragon-mystomancing pirate ninja? There are rules for that! And oh, by the way, such characters never fit well into any average adventuring party. (At least any I've experienced). I find that preposterous and difficult for the average joe like me who loves the game but doesn't have the time or money to keep up with the pace of publication of such expansions or purchase the library they've become. I feel terribly left behind in such an environment, and again, robbed of creative, genuine role playing opportunities. Who the hell can empathize with any such character?
All that to say that I also hope things are simplified with SF, and easier to keep up with since Paizo people are indicating that for now, SF materials will be limited to their monthly releases. That to me is a perfect model that will address all of the above, and keep us members of the masses interested for a long time.
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For Starfinder Society play, will each character be assumed to have their own ship or will that be something that is taken care of by the Starfinder Society?
I really would like to have my own ship/home setup like in the Video Game Warframe. Plus, I want to be a Space Ninja too. Will that be possible?
Gotcha. *snip*
I don't want to derail the thread so I'll just say that while I wholeheartedly agree that Pathfinder has a bloat problem, I wouldn't necessarily say that it's been sapped of creativity, since that's subjective. Some folks enjoy the mini-game of building their characters, and more often than not surfing through all the options available to them stokes their imagination in terms of character backstory/personality/etc.
As much as I enjoy 5e's (and Shadow of the Demon Lord RPG's) approach to things way more, I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy spending countless hours on Hero Labs building cool Pathfinder characters, then forming a backstory around whatever build I did. Still, I'm ultimately hoping that Starfinder's rules are less pedantic than Pathfinder's.
Doing my research, it looks like starship combat is going to be the biggest concern for me. I've never been a fan of relying on miniatures and a map to simulate combat, more so for spaceship stuff, and MORE so if things like positioning are entrenched into the rules.
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Apologies if this has already been asked. And I know it's still too early to spill any specific details, which I'm perfectly okay with.
But as someone who didn't really like Pathfinder's crunchiness---from the myriad bonuses and the rules for every little thing to hundreds of feats and spells---but really liked what 5e did (and the Pathfinder beginner box, actually) would Starfinder be up my alley? I know they said there's going to be less skills and no crafting feats, which is a nice start.
But I find myself unable to run Pathfinder for new players anymore. Even if I'm just using the core rule book, it was simply a monster to explain and run. The beginner box was really nice, but it's not indicative of the actual game.
I really want to like Starfinder, since I do like a general level of crunchiness that lies somewhere between 5e and Pathfinder (which is what Starfinder is sounding like it's doing), but I just don't know. How do you balance trying to make SF compatible with PF, but also making it its own beast?
I guess y'all have figured that out since the books going to printers now, luckily I don't gotta worry about that!
Definitely a consideration I also have; in addition that there's the problem that I've been playing 3.X/Pathfinder for almost seventeen years now, and have been enjoying a lot of the 5E rules mechanics considerably.
To that end, I was considering doing a Starfinder/5E conversion thing myself if the rules seem workable in that arena. Since I haven't seen a lick of the rules so fsar, the plan's still pretty much up in the air, and relies on a few factors:
1): If the Starfinder system utterly blows me away as something I want to use with no modifications, I'd obviously call that good enough and leave it be.
2): If the system's pretty good, and seems capable of accepting stuff like Proficiency bonus, advantage/disadvantage, backgrounds, and such with minimal fuss, I might just slap those on, make a quick "here's how to do it" PDF, and consider the work done.
3): If it seems even more capable of conversion, I'd do an overhaul, converting races, classes and the like, hopefully in a format where I could toss the rules up in Google Docs and let folks go ham with 'em.
4): If the two rules systems get along like oil and water, I'd probably just re-skin 5E classes, use the campaign, and custom-build stuff like new races and monsters. The players in the game I run aren't particularly concerned with those details so I'm sure if the "soldier" was just a 5E fighter wearing a hat that said "soldier" on it, they wouldn't be too bothered.
I'm sorta hoping for #2 or #3, since I've been feeling like fiddling with game systems as of late, but I'm also aware of my own very low burnout threshold, so if it ends up as #1 or #4 I'm sure life would go on. :P
If the former occurs, I'd be sure to share with folks here on the boards. Probably after building most or all of it so I wouldn't feel like i was letting everyone down if I just gave up with a small, mostly-useless conversion.
Anyhoo. Back to your regularly-scheduled program. :)
Not every intelligent undead on Eox is a Bone Sage, right? Are there undead citizens with autonomous wills?
The Bone Sages are the *leaders* of Eox. There are tons of other undead citizens (and even some living ones, thanks to interplanetary trade) who are not Bone Sages.
2): If the system's pretty good, and seems capable of accepting stuff like Proficiency bonus, advantage/disadvantage, backgrounds, and such with minimal fuss, I might just slap those on, make a quick "here's how to do it" PDF, and...
Proficiency bonus is the only problematic area, as it assumes completely different math.
(Dis)Advantage is already in the game- it's just rerolls, already handed out by several skills and abilities. 5e just takes handing them out to extremes that flatten out the probability curve.
Backgrounds are, honestly, nothing. Mechanically they just cut half the class skills out of the classes and assign them pretty loosely (and the rules for class/background skill duplication basically tell you that you can basically pick whatever you like) to a vague concept and attach a paragraph on the type of people that will offer you a bed.
My biggest questions are setting and tech based as I am already putting together story ideas. Communications tech is my big question. Is there FL radio and can you communicate with ships in the drift?
How long has it been between The Gap and the development of Drift travel and did Triune appear to people's all over the galaxy creating multiple interstellar cultures.
Oh and can ship sensors generate accurate enough image for a reliable teleport spell (space pirates!)
About spaceships:
Will I be able to pick and choose my own spaceship systems to have exactly the ship I want? (e.g. I choose to have a pretty weak shield system but I have a very powerful engine or whatever)
Also, will there be pre-made spaceships in the book to quickly choose from?
About spaceship combat:
Will damage be modular, as in, can certain systems be damaged to disable them? Say I'm the gunner and I fire on their engines so they can't make evasive maneuvers or something.
I'm asking this because I've played the indie game FTL and I really liked the modular way the spaceship worked and how you could strategize about what enemy systems to shoot.
I thought I read somewhere that the starting point of the Gap is supposed to be the "present" of any Pathfinder campaign that you might be running. The general idea is that nothing that happens in your Starfinder campaign should present any clues about how near future events in your Pathfinder campaign will turn out.
Regarding FTL radio, there are already magical means of instantaneous communication across smaller distances in Pathfinder... i would expect there will be something similar enough in Starfinder that we at least can talk across system in real time.
I thought I read somewhere that the starting point of the Gap is supposed to be the "present" of any Pathfinder campaign that you might be running. The general idea is that nothing that happens in your Starfinder campaign should present any clues about how near future events in your Pathfinder campaign will turn out.
Those both make a heck of a lot of sense.
As a means of making exploration more exciting and dangerous though I would actually like it if FTL between systems was more difficult or not even possible.
Indeed. I don't imagine it would be a stretch for a ship's communications suite to become damaged enough to achieve this.
Speaking of which, I couldn't help but notice the GM's dismissal of critical damage to ship subsystems in the space combat demo video. Things like power and life support systems "glitching" seemed to have no effect whatsoever on subsequent rounds. It seems to me that the impact of such damage could be quite significant. It'd be easy to roll %'s for the resulting effects based on how many times a system has been affected by critical damage, but are there going to be rules for this?
Say one critical multiplier = "Glitching:" 25% chance of inoperability/round; two multipliers = "Damaged:" 50% chance of failure lasting d4 rounds; three = "Failing:" 75% of permanent failure; four = "Destroyed." Every step would increase the repair check DC by say 2, and every successful repair could restore the system's operation and lower the multiplier effects by 1. Except for "destroyed," of course.
For anyone who missed it, here's the demo.
Dear starfinder staff, one question regarding the starfinder miniatures. The images from the sculpting process were pretty impressive with nice details (especially the ratling and the starships). But why PREPAINTED?
A hyped but concerned starfinder fan
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Dear starfinder staff, one question regarding the starfinder miniatures. The images from the sculpting process were pretty impressive with nice details (especially the ratling and the starships). But why PREPAINTED?
A hyped but concerned starfinder fan
A combination of what made the most sense for the business and the fact that few of us find time to paint our own minis anymore. :P
I don't think it was so much that glitching systems weren't important so much that space goblins don't care if their sensors go out or if they might have trouble breathing soon. Crazy little things were too wrapped up in shooting.
Could be misremembering, though.
Maybe, but the ship's power and life support systems "glitching" would affect the crazy little thing's ability to shoot or breathe at all, which should have consequences, no?
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A combination of what made the most sense for the business and the fact that few of us find time to paint our own minis anymore. :PDear starfinder staff, one question regarding the starfinder miniatures. The images from the sculpting process were pretty impressive with nice details (especially the ratling and the starships). But why PREPAINTED?
A hyped but concerned starfinder fan
What are the chances of a contract with Reaper to add Starfinder minis to their metal and bones lines?
Wouldnt a ship's life support going down still leave you with several hours of breathable air before CO2/O2 balance got bad enough to affect crew? As for power while i would expect a lot of power is being used in combat, are there any batteries or capacitors in use or is the full power draw coming straight from a generator to the guns? (Or if you want to get Trekkie with it, straight from the generator to the navigator's console and then out to circuit breakers and sub systems)
In that case, and to make this a circular argument, what's the point of having critical hits damage critical systems? Crits should have consequences. Why am I apparently the only one who thinks this is so?
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I've been converting Skulls and Shackles to a space theme lately in anticipation and preparation, and I must say it has been making the wait soooo much harder! It got me thinking though..
You've done two hardcovers now and it's been made clear that they are not normal or to be expected for every AP, but only in special cases where they make sense. So, in the case of one or two that may be awesome plaything through the Starfinder lens, it seems like it would be a low resource consuming project with a lot of upside. It would not compete with either the original AP or Starfinder's AP line and would generate a large cut of content for a new line that people are ready to gobble up everything in.
So, are you, Paizo, even remotely open to the concept of publishing a hardcover of a Pathfinder AP converted and re-imagined in Starfinder?
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For Starfinder Society play, will each character be assumed to have their own ship or will that be something that is taken care of by the Starfinder Society?
I really would like to have my own ship/home setup like in the Video Game Warframe. Plus, I want to be a Space Ninja too. Will that be possible?
Every character should have a space-bike as part of their starting kit. One (1) economy-class Drift engine interfaced with an economy-class power plant, economy-class piloting controls, short-range comm system, and navigation system, and an economy-class O2/H2O recycler compatible with your personal vacuum suit, all held together by a non-pressurized saddle-style chassis. Boom, space-bike.
Will Paizo (or anyone else) be releasing deck plans to go with the ships?
What size will a ship be for a typical (4-6 member) party? Will they be small like the Millennium Falcon or Serenity, or something bigger like the Raza? Will they need crews larger than the party like the Enterprise or Normandy, or will there only be enough work to go around for a few people?
What is the size range for ships in the setting?
Are transport/cargo ships the norm, or do parties of adventurers fly around in gunboats all the time (ya know, to shoot up space dragons)? If freighters are standard for party ships (kinda like Star Wars), are there rules for converting ALL of the excess cargo space to missile launchers?
Well I like to see the ships and their relative positions to each other, I'm not a fan of abstract rules and range bands. I like to know how many miles away the target it, how fast they are moving and in what direction, at what rate they are accelerating and so forth.Gotcha. *snip*I don't want to derail the thread so I'll just say that while I wholeheartedly agree that Pathfinder has a bloat problem, I wouldn't necessarily say that it's been sapped of creativity, since that's subjective. Some folks enjoy the mini-game of building their characters, and more often than not surfing through all the options available to them stokes their imagination in terms of character backstory/personality/etc.
As much as I enjoy 5e's (and Shadow of the Demon Lord RPG's) approach to things way more, I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy spending countless hours on Hero Labs building cool Pathfinder characters, then forming a backstory around whatever build I did. Still, I'm ultimately hoping that Starfinder's rules are less pedantic than Pathfinder's.
Doing my research, it looks like starship combat is going to be the biggest concern for me. I've never been a fan of relying on miniatures and a map to simulate combat, more so for spaceship stuff, and MORE so if things like positioning are entrenched into the rules.
I'm aware that appeals to people. In fact it appeals to enough people that I'm pretty sure that spaceship combat is going to mandate having miniatures and a hex map with no room for anything else.
Which I hate. But, not much I can do about that I guess, except not play it.