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He did say "seems to be" so its implying that is his impression of what they were going for.If it's not reflected in the rules, then I am curious as to where was this goal divined from. Also, my reading with comprehension skills are quite fine, I'll let you know when they falter.
Make sure you do If I didn't help I wouldn't be near as handy.
Bags of feather should stick together... Or... Something like that :)
I initially misread that as "bags of leather."
I feel like I should say something more here... uhhh... Inanimate objects, who don't have stamina, unite?
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Bags of pleather will stick together. On really hot days when they have been left in the car anyways.
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Granted, Spell Points was not a good example. I retract that portion of my post. I stand by the rest. "We" should have been defined as "me, my gaming group, and the community I am part of", not the whole of every gamer everywhere ever.
Since I have nothing more to say on the Stamina system except that I advocate its replacement, I will refrain from further posting. Have a nice day.
Another benefit for stamina; I don't know about you guy but I'm not going to calculate stamina for minor enemies that come in large groups. Basically so I have enemies that are strong enough to be a threat but still eat it by the dozens.
As to jNot liking the game for not being Pathfinder; I keep saying this but I think it keeps being relevant, but I've spent a year playing Pathfinder in Space. I used rules from third party sources and since then even more third party stuff has come out. We didn't even touch the paizo classes because we had so much.
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Enemies don't have stamina points as it is. It's just a PC thing.
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Enemies don't have stamina points as it is. It's just a PC thing.
With Starfinder it's amazing how much me and Paizo have been on the same page.
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Wow. I already pointed out I was wrong and there's still several posts after the fact trying to argue against me when I already agree with them.
In regards to realism - the Wounds and Vigor system of Pathfinder was an attempt to better explain Hit Points. It was still very game-y, but said "Here is you actually, really getting hurt, and here is you shrugging something off." The two concepts were much more separated than Stamina, here, but the similarities made me think that they were more similar than they are.
That all said, Stamina mentions how it is your ability to shrug off damage - not necessarily in a way of not caring about wounds (which is what HP is for) but in regards to just taking bruises, small cuts, dings, that sort've thing. To me, the design looks as if they added Stamina as a point of "realism" (as much as you can get in a game) to say "Look, yes, people can't take several dozen shotgun blasts to the chest and be A-okay, here's the reason why that's not happening." It seemed like it was trying to separate itself from HP. Basically, the way it is explained in the book, HP is an abstraction of physical wounds, and Stamina is an abstraction of smaller, less important injuries.
To then take a blast to the head, like from a critical hit, and be like "Nope, am fine, just gotta catch my breath a bit from that" with no actual damage at all seems weird.
To be hit by a motorcycle going at max speed and colliding with you directly in the chest to then get up and not be more than a bit bruised, starting from as early as 1st level, feels a bit weird.
It seems gimicky. It just seems like a second pool of hit points, acting like hit points, in regards to the abstracted nature of these two concepts in a thematic scene as compared to its gameplay mechanics.
If Stamina was defined differently (and yes, maybe even renamed) I might be able to take that better - mechanically, it functions as bonus hit points to protect your main hit points, but thematically, it's supposed to be... Well, your stamina. Your fatigue, how tired you are, how much pain you're in.
That's my criticism in regards to "realism" - I'm aware HP is also not realistic, but it seemed like the reason they even added Stamina was to help tailor the abstraction of HP and give more realism, only for it to have just the same issue.
Explosive decompression in space is a complete myth. Though trying to hold your breath is a good way to pop your lungs, so there is that.
That may be, but is not the case in Starfinder space, as per its rules.
In Starfinder, if you're in space, you start suffocating unless you hold your breath.
In space, you take bludgeoning damage just for being out in space.
If you enter space after being in a pressurized area, you take additional damage for the pressure change.
Sure, real space may not work just like that, but that seems to be what happens here when you're exposed to a vacuum. If that's incorrect, I'm not the guy to talk to.
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To then take a blast to the head, like from a critical hit, and be like "Nope, am fine, just gotta catch my breath a bit from that" with no actual damage at all seems weird.
Right, but as far as I can tell that's not what's supposed to be happening. It's you using up your stamina to avoid getting a shotgun blast to your face, perhaps turning it into a minor graze by moving aside at the last moment.
If greater realism is important, you can houserule that certain injuries go directly to HP; bleed damage, fall damage above 1d6, critical hits, things like that.
It sounds like Paizo didn't care that much about realism. They want simplicity, and less dependence on magic healing.
Right, but as far as I can tell that's not what's supposed to be happening. It's you using up your stamina to avoid getting a shotgun blast to your face, perhaps turning it into a minor graze by moving aside at the last moment.
Which, from a scenic standpoint, sorta defeats the thrill and tenseness of critical hits - and also faces the exact same problem that the original premise of Hit Points did.
Again, totally cool, now, with the way HP/SP works, mechanically. It's that the explanation, then, of how it works from a flavor and setting standpoint seems a tad silly.
Edit: Part of my sentiment here comes from a quote from Paizo, as well. From their Wounds and Vigor forward -
Each loss of hit points, in this case, suggests that he is becoming progressively less nimble over the course of combat—in other words, that the decreasing hit points are a marker for his overall endurance and condition. It's not quite as satisfying, however, to roll a critical hit and then tell a player that his opponent ducked out of the way, but that the sword's slash made the enemy a little less lucky.
So Stamina seems to double back over onto the same issue, especially given Stamina does not entirely function like Vigor does. It works for Starfinder, and I concede it's a functioning mechanic, but thematically runs into the same issues HP did.
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... I see more and more ego trips and snide behavior from the designers and less and less of them actually listening to feedback. It's not okay. Unchained was full of cringe, Occult Mysteries was a trainwreck, but Starfinder is an outright affront....
I disagree, and in fact my table uses unchained summoners, monks, and rogues, unchained poisons and diseases, unchained mobile melee, and unchained background skills because we liked the direction Paizo was going with it. And i really haven't seen ANY evidence of Paizo staff getting ego trips.
Plus, Starfinder WAS playtested. We are now starting to hear from people who were in on the closed playtesting (Like Alex Agunas from Know Direction) but they did playtest, and apparently not in an echo chamber. According to some, there was a good bit of back and forth. Open playtesting, while a great community outreach technique, often leads to more noise than signal.
Open it up, Paizo. Let us playtest again. Let us decide again. That's what built this community, that's what will sustain it into the future. A bright, shiny future with hit dice, spell points,
level 9 spells, iterative attacks,...
Our group actually dislikes all of those, and is kind of glad Starfinder didn't use it.
That said, I do agree that I dislike the stamina system, but i will wait to see how it plays out at the table.
Yes and no.
If you are in a tube that is under pressure and it is torn open there is going to be an effect very similar to an explosion.
After that the water boils away from your body.
So just being tossed into space does not cause it no, but it can occur.
During high Altitude training folks get high on all counts, to the point of not remembering they started singing or trying to do things, the video afterwards is quite sobering.
Not sure how true but a Russian told me during their first space walk they had an issue. The walk was fine, but the suit expanded more than they thought it would, keeping the man from being able to fit back through the lock.
The Russians came up with a simple solution, poke a hole in the suit and pull him in.
That had to be a fun talk.Yes now just stay still while I use this knife to slice your suit open on our first space walk.
My guess is most war ships would drop to very low or no pressure while in combat. Having the crew in suits.
I also do not think anyone would blow out air out of locks except under special needs,...
You should read through this.
Not sure how true but a Russian told me during their first space walk they had an issue. The walk was fine, but the suit expanded more than they thought it would, keeping the man from being able to fit back through the lock.
The Russians came up with a simple solution, poke a hole in the suit and pull him in.
That had to be a fun talk.Yes now just stay still while I use this knife to slice your suit open on our first space walk.
It's partly true. I heard the story at space camp, except that version had him opening his wrist cuff to let air out. Guy's name was Alexey Leonov.
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Granted, Spell Points was not a good example. I retract that portion of my post. I stand by the rest. "We" should have been defined as "me, my gaming group, and the community I am part of", not the whole of every gamer everywhere ever.
Since I have nothing more to say on the Stamina system except that I advocate its replacement, I will refrain from further posting. Have a nice day.
I was very active during the playtest of Pathfinder. Our group were running the end game for Age of Worms at the time and also mid game Savage Tides.
The pure vitriol on these threads during play testing was horrendous. And it all stemmed from folks saying "we know better than you so our way must be right"
I remember posting a game summary from one of the Age of Worms sessions we ran using some of the trial rules at the time. I included observational notes on what we saw happen at the table. Man was it torn up and personal attacks were made purely because what we observed wasn't in line with other people's theory crafting at the time.
It turned out to be almost pointless as an activity. Huge amounts of time invested by the staff to sift through the mostly tripe in order to find the occasional gem of insite.
But it's been a long time between the edition wars and now. Paizo has a great deal of experience in design and testing game material. They also have a long term strategic goal you're not privy to. So maybe the stuff you're complaining about works perfectly fine with those goals in mind.
The fact you feel you and your group could have done better than the professional designers speaks to exactly what happened in the original playtest.
And finally, just because you and your group weren't consulted does not in any way indicate that Paizo didn't use a large pool of other groups to test the system. Given their unique position in the gaming community, I suspect they have more than a few reliable groups to be used in testing this stuff.
To put it simply, it divides your damage taken into "Out of breath" and "Actual injury." I'm liking the little I've seen since it makes having a Mystic or a ton of healing consumables available not a requirement.
The mechanics you mentioned do the same thing but in a more circular manner. Healing shouldn't involve "if/then" statements.
This isn't a rules questions as much as me questioning the design philosophy present in the game.
Before I get into this, a preface: From my understanding, many of the rule changes from Pathfinder to Starfinder were made either for the sake of the larger system (with it being space-based and all), or were to simplify rules (in the case of full-attacks). When I question the rules, here, I question their point in regards to that principal.
So, in essence, why is Stamina simplified, more convenient, or more logical than just regular ol' Hit Points?
I only ask because the Stamina and Hit Point system has one glaring flaw as per RAW - any and all damage dealt to a character (with no exceptions that I've noticed thus far) deal damage to Stamina first, in all given scenarios.
Damage from a vacuum? Stamina damage.
Critical hits? Stamina damage.
Disintegrate? Stamina damage.
How does this make this different from just normal Hit Points then? Mechanically, Stamina is no different than HP, and is used in the exact same way, albeit recovered differently (see below). Why not just provide a character with twice as much HP per level if fights are meant to last longer?
Now, you may say "well, Stamina is there to quickly recover after a fight" which is all well and good. But, if all damage was HP, those healing rules could read as "Spend 10 minutes and 1 Resolve to recover up to half your Hit Points". Similarly, long rests could have a ruling of something like "Recover up to half your Hit Points, plus a number of additional Hit Points equal to your character level".
For most characters, Stamina will make up very nearly half of their total damage pool, and this only really changes if you're really Con-focused - which would otherwise not really benefit you since Con is only the Key Ability Score for Barbarians (a Legacy class), holding your breath, and Fort saves. No other class uses it for class features, and it benefits no skills. It would only otherwise change notably if the character's...
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I feel I needed to clarify my position in response to the repeated misunderstandings. No animosity intended.
Things are changing out from under me (again) and I don't like it. That's what I'm saying once you cut through all of the hurt feelings and frustrated rhetoric here. I want 3.5 to continue to THRIVE and this move is too similar in my mind to how Wizards released their "improved" Saga Edition before they announced 4th Edition. It's making me paranoid that I've wasted a LOT of money just to watch my favorite system die AGAIN.
As for the thread's topic:
I prefer Vigor and Wounds to Stamina. It reminds me of Star Wars Revised Core and I liked how deadly that system was. It was exciting to me. Stamina feels like unnecessary complication to me, and I am afraid I will start seeing abilities powered by it and then watch the whole SWRCR/Engel/Babylon 5 cycle happen again. Something about history and "doomed to repeat it." I love everything else about Starfinder, especially the art, the thematic, and the story. The big mystery of where the big G went is a clever and fascinating way to continue both timelines without interference. My compliments to the chef on that one. The only things I dislike are the stamina system, the loss of iterative attacks, which makes me feel like having a full BAB is now useless, and the low magic power level, which I can even understand from a story perspective because technology is easier to master, so it makes sense the traditions of old might weaken. Finally, while there is a conversion document, the official Starfinder Society events are going to use the default system, which means I still have to use it at the local gaming store or just not participate. This relegates me to home games, and I feel left out. I'll cope, but I get to complain about it.
Hopefully that is on-topic enough to excuse my return to this thread.
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I think the major misconception is that this is Pathfinder or 3.5 at all. Though it clearly shares roots with both it IS a new system and is moving away from 3.5.
I for one am glad. I didnt want Pathfinder in space. If all I had to do was re-skin pathfinder.. why buy Starfinder at all?
As for the topic at hand from what I can see it is mainly a vehicle to make healing classes less necessary and a mechanic to keep the party in the fight longer with less lengthy resting down time.
The biggest funky thing to me with the Stamina system is actually a sub-set of the "crits still hit Stamina" thing, and namely how that interacts with the Wound/Severe Wound crits. Which is to say you can literally lose an eye or limb from nothing but stamina damage. 10 minutes after the combat, your eye, arm, or leg is still on the ground, but hey, you've healed all the damage.
I'm not sure what this "Wound/Severe Wound" crit system is you're referring to, unless you're talking about an option system from Pathfinder that you're now trying to apply Starfinder...
I'm not sure what this "Wound/Severe Wound" crit system is you're referring to, unless you're talking about an option system from Pathfinder that you're now trying to apply Starfinder...
I thought the same thing too, but it's actually a weapon property in Starfinder. And it sounds like a horrible idea on its own, independent of Stamina. I suppose it's supposed to be offset by how cheap prosthetics are in Starfinder, but I'm not a big fan of randomly losing body parts.
I'm running a (mostly) Fading Suns game on top of D20 Modern right now. We're testing out Starfinder as a system improvement over what we've hacked together.
What we're doing right now is the same as what Starfinder does, using some variant rules from the D20SRD. We replaced critical hit multipliers with hits directly to HP. Normal hits do Stamina damage - glancing off of you or making you struggle to barely evade - as described.
Might be an option to consider?
In addition to those that have it natively, the Vorpal weapon infusion grants the Severe Wound crit ability, I forget the name of the Wound one.
I'm not sure what this "Wound/Severe Wound" crit system is you're referring to, unless you're talking about an option system from Pathfinder that you're now trying to apply Starfinder...I thought the same thing too, but it's actually a weapon property in Starfinder. And it sounds like a horrible idea on its own, independent of Stamina. I suppose it's supposed to be offset by how cheap prosthetics are in Starfinder, but I'm not a big fan of randomly losing body parts.
Frankly, this does sound rather dumb and it's the first thing I've heard that I don't actually care for with Starfinder
it also appears on flame doshkos, plamsa doshkos, the strongest longsword, and stellar cannons. Honestly some of the options aren't that bad, it's just the limb-severing that can be awkward. That said, mechanically it is super easy to fix, a prosthetic limb costs all of 100 credits in town, a mere 10% of starting credits (let alone higher-level funds.)
When I started a game one of my players started with all of their limbs prosthetics just so they could avoid wound crits.
When I started a game one of my players started with all of their limbs prosthetics just so they could avoid wound crits.
That...wouldn't work. They'd just lose and have to replace their prosthetics.
I mean a Wound crit on a character with prosthetics would still cut off the prosthetic. And it's debatable how hard it would be to put it back on.
I mean a Wound crit on a character with prosthetics would still cut off the prosthetic. And it's debatable how hard it would be to put it back on.
How hard would it be to put a computer back together that has been cut in two?
I mean a Wound crit on a character with prosthetics would still cut off the prosthetic. And it's debatable how hard it would be to put it back on.
According the Engineering skill? About an hour per robo-limb, if we're counting prosthetics as equipment.
Frankly, this does sound rather dumb and it's the first thing I've heard that I don't actually care for with StarfinderI'm not sure what this "Wound/Severe Wound" crit system is you're referring to, unless you're talking about an option system from Pathfinder that you're now trying to apply Starfinder...I thought the same thing too, but it's actually a weapon property in Starfinder. And it sounds like a horrible idea on its own, independent of Stamina. I suppose it's supposed to be offset by how cheap prosthetics are in Starfinder, but I'm not a big fan of randomly losing body parts.
It costs 110 credits to "buy" a new flesh and blood limb that is, for all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from your old one.
I wouldn't sweat it too much. Not every PC is going to be a cyborg by the time they reach level 20, not unless they want to be.
I've always just assumed stamina was an artificial way of saying your characters don't get hit. For some reason, most people can't wrap their heads around the idea that their superhuman characters can take enormous damage before dying, when dealing with just hit points. It's okay for that to happen in movies, comics, novels etc. but not in Pathfinder for whatever reason.
I've always just assumed stamina was an artificial way of saying your characters don't get hit. For some reason, most people can't wrap their heads around the idea that their superhuman characters can take enormous damage before dying, when dealing with just hit points. It's okay for that to happen in movies, comics, novels etc. but not in Pathfinder for whatever reason.
If it were superhuman resilience it would need justification. Magic, genetic enhancement, really rare naturally occurring genetic variant, etc.
If you are a Pathfinder player, think of it like this: every class gets full HP from their Hit Die. Half of that HP is actual HP, and the rest is Stamina.
Basically, it's just hit points that can be healed in combat, but are more expensive to heal. And hit points that are hard to heal in combat, but are cheap to heal out of combat. You can make justifications for that mechanic to fit your tastes, the same as with Pathfinder hit points.