So about building characters for starship stuff. . .


General Discussion

Scarab Sages

So, looking into it, I find a problem with the starship stuff. Mainly that the game seems to expect starship combat to happen, but, well, then each character has to be able to do something in starship combat.

So what if you play, say, a Mystic, or a Solarian? Or a melee soldier?

Mystic seems the worst off since they don't get computers, Engineering, or pilotiing as a class skill. Their BAB is probably bad for shooting, and even though they have Diplomacy, with little incentive to invest in charisma, being a captain is probably not going to end well for them.

Soldiers and Solarian also have a limited skill list, not a lot of skill points to toss around, and though they have a good BAB, they are unlikely to have great dex for shooting.

It just, seems like space combat could be reduced to "Okay, the envoy, mechanic, and Technomancer are going to go save the ship. You guys go play some video games and occasionally roll a d20 to see if you roll a nat 20 and actually hit something."


Mystic does indeed have it rough. The other two make decent gunners.

Themes can potentially save the day. We've got our soldier doing the main piloting work because she's an ace pilot.

You could also pop some feats into Skill Synergy and/or Skill Focus, I suppose, if both your class and theme really don't want you doing the job you want to be doing.


The problem, specially at higher levels, is that DCs are too high.

Investing in diplomacy with low charisma should be just fine for most standard starship things. If you don't want to invest into starship related skills, well, then you will be bad, but that would be your problem, not the system.

The DC need a review. Specially the ever-increasing DC based on Character Level that force you to keep running in the mouse wheel to stay in the same place


Nothing wrong with being a Diana Troy! The mystic might not be very useful in combat, but when that alien pops up on your view screen we all know who we want to negotiate a deal for the crew.

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travis Carson wrote:
The mystic might not be very useful in combat, but when that alien pops up on your view screen we all know who we want to negotiate a deal for the crew.

The envoy?


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Having Pilot as a class skill does nothing for the gunner position.

A gunner's attack roll uses either BAB or Ranks in the Pilot skill.


Epic Meepo wrote:
travis Carson wrote:
The mystic might not be very useful in combat, but when that alien pops up on your view screen we all know who we want to negotiate a deal for the crew.
The envoy?

there are 7 classes, and the typical group is 4-5. Some have more, some have less (I have played with as low as 2, and as high as 10). Sometimes, more than one player will want to play a certain class (such as someone wanting to be a melee soldier ando someone else wanting to play a sniper soldier)

So not every group will have one of every class. A bit of overlap between classes is a good thing, not every group will have an Envoy.


The rest repel boarders. Or aid another those insane repair checks.
;-)


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Zombie Lord wrote:

The rest repel boarders. Or aid another those insane repair checks.

;-)

If non-officer crew on a big starship can make Aid Another checks to assist the officers, that would actually more than take care of the skill DC scaling problems for those officers who actually have such assistants. The remaining problem would be how to make similar aid available to the captain and the pilot.


Zombie Lord wrote:

The rest repel boarders. Or aid another those insane repair checks.

;-)

Boarding seems to have been intentionally shut down as an option in starship combat- there's no option to board manually, and teleportation is specifically noted as automatically failing during starship combat. It's probably because Paizo doesn't want to deal with what happens when the PCs start collecting a fleet- their vision is that the PCs have one plucky small to large ship that can defeat groups of fighters or battleships single-handedly.


Aratrok wrote:
Zombie Lord wrote:

The rest repel boarders. Or aid another those insane repair checks.

;-)
Boarding seems to have been intentionally shut down as an option in starship combat- there's no option to board manually, and teleportation is specifically noted as automatically failing during starship combat. It's probably because Paizo doesn't want to deal with what happens when the PCs start collecting a fleet- their vision is that the PCs have one plucky small to large ship that can defeat groups of fighters or battleships single-handedly.

Alternatively they saw what happens when boarding IS allowed from other games and promptly washed their hands of it in order to not have one strategy invalidate the rest of starship combat.

I personally remember that bit of nonsense from Rogue Trader (although to be fair the balance was such a mess, you could have a PC frigate cripple a grand cruiser in around two volleys and probably leave it dead in the void in 3 so I guess there were options in how the PCs would run roughshod over the enemy)


Tarik Blackhands wrote:
Alternatively they saw what happens when boarding IS allowed from other games and promptly washed their hands of it in order to not have one strategy invalidate the rest of starship combat.

That was more due to 'I can command stack to 120 in a d100 system without trying' than the actual boarding/hit and run rules.


Well that and NPCs were repulsively inept at countering H+R/Boards even if they got +30 due to being Orks or whatever.

Still, you see this sort of thing in other games too. 7th Sea is another game where you could spend your time duking it out with enemy ships with sailing around and broadsides. Or you could just board them and just massacre everyone with a lot less fuss and muss.

Silver Crusade

Tarik Blackhands wrote:


Alternatively they saw what happens when boarding IS allowed from other games and promptly washed their hands of it in order to not have one strategy invalidate the rest of starship combat.

One of those "other" games being Pathfinder :-).

The ship to ship rules in Pathfinder pretty much lead to PCs always ignoring them and just boarding the enemy ship

Sczarni

This stuff is so sad to me. I mean what's an SF game with out ship maps?

My Pact Worlds now have borders.

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