Maybe there could be a trait that gives you a type to your magic. More of a flavour thing but gives you a bonus that fits the feel of each type of magic. Make it happen Paizo! ;)
Are there any news on publishing the playtest on official Paizo YouTube channel? I'd really love to see the game, but twitch was a bit inconvenient in my cold northern land on another part of the globe
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Will psychic magic be a part of this Campaign?No. There is no arcane, divine, or psychic magic, just magic in different spell lists.
While this is true in rules terms, the *flavor* of psychic magic is definitely still there. We've got telepathic races like the lashunta and whatnot, so you'll hear the term "psychic" a fair bit, and even see some familiar spells and powers, they just won't be split off from other magic the way they are in Occult Adventures.
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Are there any news on publishing the playtest on official Paizo YouTube channel? I'd really love to see the game, but twitch was a bit inconvenient in my cold northern land on another part of the globe
YouTube is definitely more convenient but you can still view the saved video on Twitch. Go to the officialpaizo channel and pull up the archives. When I went, the Starfinder session was at the beginning of the 7 hour clip.
No more crafting feats, this is interesting.
Not surprising.. our more advanced pieces of technology require factories to make. You really can't build an IPhone or Android tablet in the home garage. And Starfinder's tech is probably more advanced than that.
It must have been a fun day for a party when the first wizard-types figured out how to do Cure spells without ripping off bard magic. :)
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No more crafting feats, this is interesting.Not surprising.. our more advanced pieces of technology require factories to make. You really can't build an IPhone or Android tablet in the home garage. And Starfinder's tech is probably more advanced than that.
Quite the opposite, now you can craft anything as long as you have skill ranks equal to the item's level.
No more crafting feats, this is interesting.Not surprising.. our more advanced pieces of technology require factories to make. You really can't build an IPhone or Android tablet in the home garage. And Starfinder's tech is probably more advanced than that.
Even more advanced pieces of technology could allow ubiquitous 3D printers with sturdier and more varied materials than today's, which could let anyone (with the right cash and blueprints) make whatever they wanted.
I get the impression that it's more, "this costs more and is more powerful, your PCs can use it at lower levels, but that's the recommended level that they get ahold of it."This! You can totally ignore the level guidelines and economy to give your level 1 PC a level 6 hyperbazooka*, but don't be surprised when he mows through your CR 1 encounter.
*Not actually in the game.
*Yet.
That does not seem right, does it?
Hyper means rapid fire right? Because Quake II hyperblasters were automatic energy weapons. :)
Stroggs as an enemy race (basically space orcs with cybernetics) would be awesome.
The reasoning makes sense but giving numerical levels to weapons and gear still feels unnecessarily complicated. Unfortunately it's late as I write this so I'm drawing a blank on alternatives I could be suggesting to be helpful.
As I said elsewhere, the thought processes behind the UPBs is interesting and definitely encouraging though I have a few questions before I get into my quibbles. First of all, how do you handle manufacturing in the Starfinder universe? Is it conventional assembly-line production compared to what we have now in most of the real world? Or has the Starfinder universe made considerable advances in the realm of 3D printing and similar automated technologies? Like "all our vending machines are printers and if you can afford a mid-range laptop now, you can afford a good 3d printer with capabilities above and beyond modern printers in the Starfinder universe" sort of advances?
I don't think it'll be all that complicated. No more so than all the enchantments and unique magic items.
I still want to know how compatible it will be with current Pathfinder, since one of my main NPCs in my home games is actually a gunslinger/witch from hundreds of years in Earth's future... When she and the planet Earth fell into a black hole (her fault, she used a doomsday weapon to collapse the Sun... but it was for the greater good, honest) and long story short, after being rescued from the dinosaur apocalypse (look, really sorry you dinosaurs all had to die in a firey death.., but it was for the greater good, okay?) by her first mate with the Staff of Ages, they have come to Golarion to find the Staff of Ages in order to avoid a paradox.
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Precisely. Additionally, it's a useful story telling tool. It's difficult to tell how dangerous an orc in hide armor with a battle axe is, not so much the same orc wearing mk.4 Gorumtech power armor and plasma rotary cannon.
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I still want to know how compatible it will be with current Pathfinder, since one of my main NPCs in my home games is actually a gunslinger/witch from hundreds of years in Earth's future... When she and the planet Earth fell into a black hole (her fault, she used a doomsday weapon to collapse the Sun... but it was for the greater good, honest) and long story short, after being rescued from the dinosaur apocalypse (look, really sorry you dinosaurs all had to die in a firey death.., but it was for the greater good, okay?) by her first mate with the Staff of Ages, they have come to Golarion to find the Staff of Ages in order to avoid a paradox.
Q: What does it mean that Starfinder is compatible with Pathfinder? How compatible is "compatible"?
OKCS: That's one of the really big questions, how compatible is compatible. Our two most important design guidelines were that the game be the best game we can design for what we want it to be, which is science fantasy. And that means there are places where, as I discussed earlier, we have found different solutions to kinds of problems, because that is how that kind of genre, that type of game works differently. But another important goal is that it be very, very familiar to people who are familiar with Pathfinder. This is the same universe, there are a lot of the same forces at play, so we need to be able to represent those in similar ways.
When you're doing something like pulling a monster out of a Bestiary, that should work very, very similarly. We'll have some guidelines for places where there might be trickiness, but if you're a game master, you should be able to take a monster from any of the Bestiaries, and be able to say, this is what you run into. Which means as soon as we launch the game, there's a lot of stuff already available for the GM to use, to run adventures. That's important to us.
Other things are going to take more work. It's not to say that you could not decide to, for example, play a wizard or a paladin. For the most part we're trying to present what we think are the Starfinder solutions to those character concepts. So wizards aren't super common anymore, technomancers are, so we have the technomancer class. We have a different set of core races, but we still have rules for being a dwarf or an elf.
The more you get away from sort of the basic assumptions, the more work it would take for a game master or a player to say, this is the option that I want and I want to add iti to the game. It can be done, but it'll take a little more effort.
Hope that helps clear things up.
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I still want to know how compatible it will be with current Pathfinder, since one of my main NPCs in my home games is actually a gunslinger/witch from hundreds of years in Earth's future... When she and the planet Earth fell into a black hole (her fault, she used a doomsday weapon to collapse the Sun... but it was for the greater good, honest) and long story short, after being rescued from the dinosaur apocalypse (look, really sorry you dinosaurs all had to die in a firey death.., but it was for the greater good, okay?) by her first mate with the Staff of Ages, they have come to Golarion to find the Staff of Ages in order to avoid a paradox....Q: What does it mean that Starfinder is compatible with Pathfinder? How compatible is "compatible"?
OKCS: That's one of the really big questions, how compatible is compatible. Our two most important design guidelines were that the game be the best game we can design for what we want it to be, which is science fantasy. And that means there are places where, as I discussed earlier, we have found different solutions to kinds of problems, because that is how that kind of genre, that type of game works differently. But another important goal is that it be very, very familiar to people who are familiar with Pathfinder. This is the same universe, there are a lot of the same forces at play, so we need to be able to represent those in similar ways.
When you're doing something like pulling a monster out of a Bestiary, that should work very, very similarly. We'll have some guidelines for places where there might be trickiness, but if you're a game master, you should be able to take a monster from any of the Bestiaries, and be able to say, this is what you run into. Which means as soon as we launch the game, there's a lot of stuff already available for the GM to use, to run adventures. That's important to us.
Other things are going to take more work. It's not to say that you could not decide to, for example,
Hmm, yeah kinda so then maybe in the future Quinn is like a "technomancer" but when she gets stuck on Golarion she's required to rethink her methods a bit and be the gunslinger until she gets home... Thanks for the quote! :)
Are there any news on publishing the playtest on official Paizo YouTube channel? I'd really love to see the game, but twitch was a bit inconvenient in my cold northern land on another part of the globeYouTube is definitely more convenient but you can still view the saved video on Twitch. Go to the officialpaizo channel and pull up the archives. When I went, the Starfinder session was at the beginning of the 7 hour clip.
Thanks! I seldom use twitch so I didn't realize they have the archives available. Just finished watching the playtest and I Loved it!
The only thing which was a bit puzzling for me is that it seems SF has different AC types for different types of attacks. That makes sense but it seems to contradict the concept of "the most streamlined and accessible game". I often play with beginners and I had some rough time asking them to keep track of their normal AC vs touch so I wonder how these multiple ACs will work out in the game.
Also this playtest makes me wonder is there will be an open (or closed) test outside of the development team. I'd really like to try this game out as GM :)
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It would then be much easier for a GM to figure out how to do an automatic bonus progression, or to track where her PCs were sitting compared to those expectations. I certainly wish I had been able to get my hands on something like that when my group first switched to 3.0.
It's funny you should say that, because from memory that is exactly what 4th edition did. Along with the nonmagical healing during a short (10 minute) rest and the compacted skill list. If ever a PF 2nd edition came out and incorporated these elements, it would bear a much closer resemblance to 4e. Which isn't a bad thing, just funny to observe where things are at given where Paizo started from.
I personally love what we've heard about Starfinder thus far. Using skill ranks as a stand-in for level requirements is a clever but of obfuscation to help make the flavour a bit more prominebt then the mechanics.
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Also this playtest makes me wonder is there will be an open (or closed) test outside of the development team. I'd really like to try this game out as GM :)
Last I remember reading, there wasn't going to be an open playtest, but they were using hand-selected members of the community, along with internal employees, to do all playtesting. I haven't seen anything countering that info, but I have been away from the boards for a while.
One of the ways a Star Wars game from a few editions ago handled level-appropriate equipment made really good sense to me. Governments imposed permit/licensing restrictions on weapons and equipment. There was civilian-grade weapons that anyone walking down the street could own (a pocket stun-blaster, for example), weapons that only people involved in security or more dangerous trades could own (encrypted commlinks and heavy blaster pistols), weapons that only military/intelligence groups could own (heavy ordinance, etc.), and so forth. There were Diplomacy-like skill checks and higher DCs to get permits for different types of equipment, and without them PCs risked getting arrested anytime they set foot on a civilized planet. I could envision something like this in the Pact Worlds for Starfinder . . .
Watching the twitch now. Disappointed that dwarves are still as racist as evil, and that it sounds like magic was made blander.
edit: Skills sound really freeform-y, that's annoying.