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Link to the product discussion thread.
GMing this tomorrow and I noticed that on page 7 it tells you to have the players place themselves "anywhere within the area marked on the map with a dotted line" and to then place the sand brute "in the indicated squares".
But the map isn't marked at all...
Where should everyone begin?
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Sweet. And an extra errata I didn't think to ask about!
#1
For encounter B, the map positions aren't strictly called out. The sand brute should be located between the center and southern ends of the map, roughly along the center line. The PCs should enter the area from the north-west.
#2
The 4 player Adjustment for encounter A says the Drone Launcher only releases 1 drone per round, but that is already its regular rate of fire.
I asked Thursty about it at Gencon and he suggested it be one drone launched every 2 rounds.
Another GM, Terry T, asked a similar question elsewhere on the boards but though I might ask something a little different here.
Yes, if you fulfill the mission, you get a bonus reputation. Note, this is not fame.
Yeah I got that part (re: fame). Good deal. Now I know there are not people running around with bogus rep. ;)
One of my regional VCs responding to boot lol.
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It seems like the first battle could get *painfully* long if the PCs spend their shots shooting down drones.
It will also be painfully long if they take the drake and Miss with 3 of 5 missiles.
There has to be a way to make this painful encounter work, without taking four hours to finish it. I am thinking there needs to be fewer drones in the air at once, personally.
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Prepping this for our SFS group next Monday, and I had some concerns.
Like was said earlier, seems like the first spacefight could go long, especially with 5 players and if they choose the Pegasus instead of the Warship. Plus, how are the PCs supposed to know to try and salvage the platform? They don't get to do that in the quests, the only time we've seen space battles.
My Solution: during the briefing, have the venture captain mention to bring back any space tech that the planet may have developed. After all the previous pathfinders fell victim to it, so there might be some damaged records of 'an attack' in the data recovered.
If the PCs don't participate in the dance or dinner, they lose out on fame. Or if they don't have good acrobats/dancers/roll some poor fort saves.
My solution: for the dinner, I'd allow a life sciences roll to say that the food might not be comparable with their biology.
I dunno, anyone else who run this run into these problems?
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I guess I sort of cheated. After something on the order of an hour
1) It was obvious who was going to win (the ship hadn't taken ANY damage yet)
2) People looked a little bored
3) We were running out of time.
So, I gave the players the option of calling it as a PC victory. They accepted.
Oh, players were brand new to Starfinder, first ship combat for some of them.
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Ship combat salvage - I dropped hints that the ship on scans had some clearly exotic materials, things the players had never seen before & the VC specifically asked them to bring back samples of new technology - that was enough for the boon on the chronicle sheet, does seem a bit harsh to not do this as it is the first space combat in the scenarios so the players likely wont have salvaged before!
For the dance / dinner - yeah some times its just luck of the rolls, my players actually all but 1 failed the fort saves, so give them the instant bluff chance, I also offered sleight of hand (makes sense to me) and the one that still failed I gave a diplo roll for, to smooth things over and explain that androids sometimes react badly to non-vegetarian foods!
Contributor
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I also asked this question on the Rules Forum, since there is at least one creature in the Alien Archive with this same problem:
In Area C2, the Guardbots are listed as being "vulnerable to critical hits" similarly to how robots in Pathfinder (i.e. Iron Gods) were.
Since nothing extra is written in either the Starfinder Core Rulebook or Alien Archive (or SFS guide, or First Contact) about that, should we take this to mean that on a critical hit, these creatures take one-and-a-half times the already-doubled damage? Or is that meant to be one-and-a-half times the critical effect (if the weapon has one)?
Thanks very much in advance!
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It seems like the first battle could get *painfully* long if the PCs spend their shots shooting down drones.It will also be painfully long if they take the drake and Miss with 3 of 5 missiles.
There has to be a way to make this painful encounter work, without taking four hours to finish it. I am thinking there needs to be fewer drones in the air at once, personally.
This is what happen to my group. Good thing I had the reload starship boon to get a reload!!!!
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As mentioned above the starship combat can get painfully long in this scenario. The party took the Pegasus(a problem with less guns) and the party figured out pretty quickly to shoot at the platform, they just didn't have very good shooters, very good guns, and bad rolls. They knew the system for the most part so there were no delays figuring out who should do what or looking up rules. After an hour and a half of combat the party's ship was at full health and shields, the platform had taken 27 hit points of damage had some shields left and had all 12 drones. The players looked bored out of their freaking minds. I called it at that point, I figured we had at least another 45 minutes of excruciating boredom for everyone and the players were at no risk.
The Starship combat in general is OK but it needs to go quicker. Having guns do more damage is an easy fix. An easy fix wold be either have critical hits do double damage or have each damage dice do an extra +1 to damage.
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So, we don’t have an official answer about reporting the extra faction point yet? Maybe they need another checkbox on the web page. I’m going to put 3 down for my players for now but I hope they fix it. That is if they are “really” tracking faction data.
[Edit] I changed my mind. The tracking should represent 2 for the slotted faction and the D checkbox should represent the additional wayfinder credit.
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I have an unsettled question of lore canon about this scenario that has been bothering me for months, and it's come to the fore again because of the informational article in AP #5 on the world featured in this scenario.
Into the Unknown name drops the planet 'Elytrio'.
Mission brief in 1-03 mentions:
'The starship that discovered it ... made a prudent retreat.'
I've been interpreting this as the name given to the planet by the _Unbounded Wayfarer_ (hereafter perjoratively referred to as 'cowboys' - yee haw), was 'Elytrio'. The context of this scenario implies that the cowboys did not make first contact with the ghibrani. Unquestionably the ghibrani have their own name for the planet they live on, and it's probably not the word made up by the cowboys.
It reeks of imperialism for the SFS, the Pact Worlds, etc. to use the cowboy name 'Elytrio' for a world that actually has a sophont civilization on it.
In objective terms, my PCs call the planet 'Ghibran' (trading the imperialist SF trope for the trope of naming planets after their sophonts). As a GM, I also tend toward 'Ghibran' for the simple reason that it's a bit more politically correct IMO.
Can anyone else work out a rationale for the name 'Elytrio' that I'm not getting to?
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That's a good point, Perry. Given that I don't think the Starfinder Society is in the business of being imperialist jerks, and the crew of the Unbounded Wayfarer never made contact with the ghibrani, it stands to reason that they got the name "Elytrio" from somewhere else. The only place that makes sense is that they were able to piece together the data transmitted from the mobile defense platform and determine that the sentient species on the planet call it Elytrio somehow. How'd they do that? Beats me, but to cover my butt, I'd say the data they used to piece that together was lost in the crash.
Certainly better than them naming it whatever they want. The Starfinders might not have a Prime Directive, but they're not colonizers.
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I just assumed the first crew gave it a placeholder name (in lieu of "Unexplored Planet # XF714891").
Settling on names for a place is an interesting and complex historical and cultural phenomena, and it's not so simple as "asking the natives what they call it" because different groups may have conflicting names, some may believe the name should be secret or shouldn't be uttered by outsiders, etc. Some sort of naming controversy could be a fun element of a future scenario!
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Into the Unknown name drops the planet 'Elytrio'.
Mission brief in 1-03 mentions:
'The starship that discovered it ... made a prudent retreat.'
The data from the Unbound Wayfarer contains the same audio transmission from the automated defense system as the PCs receive when they arrive.
The name "Elytrio" was undoubtedly part of that message, and the crew of the Unbound Wayfarer almost certainly included a Technomancer - specifically one who knows Comprehend Languages.