Venture-Lieutenant, Ohio—Dayton
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I've had the misfortune to be part of a couple TPKs in PFS (shakes fist in direction of Bonekeep), so I feel I know how to handle things if it comes to that in SFS player combat.
However, we've got fairly low level PCs running around in starships for the immediate future. Say, both the PCs ship and the adversary ship get reduced to 0 hull points and disabled during the same gunnery round. None of the PCs have any UPBs needed to enact repairs and no one has the Fame to get the ship towed. Is this a mission fail? How about a TPK in the expanse of the Vast as they drift on? Can the PCs attempt to scavenge from the disabled adversary ship? I've looked through the Guide, but honestly am at a bit of a loss if I find myself as a GM in this situation.
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Bear in mind that the Starship Towing boon is unique in that multiple PCs can contribute Fame. So the only way you should be unable to use that is if the PCs can't come up with 5 Fame total between them all.
According to that boon, the scenarios are supposed to detail what happens if you can't afford towing. So far so good on that point.
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According to that boon, the scenarios are supposed to detail what happens if you can't afford towing. So far so good on that point.
I think I may know the situation the OP is referring to. Into the Unknown, the quest pack, has 2 starship combats and neither of them state what happens if your ship is disabled. The situation would imply that the enemies kill you, but would also suggest they would be more likely to board your ship than to destroy it. And since this is likely to be the characters' first scenario, it's entirely possible that nobody has any fame.
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According to that boon, the scenarios are supposed to detail what happens if you can't afford towing. So far so good on that point.I think I may know the situation the OP is referring to. Into the Unknown, the quest pack, has 2 starship combats and neither of them state what happens if your ship is disabled. The situation would imply that the enemies kill you, but would also suggest they would be more likely to board your ship than to destroy it. And since this is likely to be the characters' first scenario, it's entirely possible that nobody has any fame.
Hmmm... yup, you are correct. I believe it was in the GenCon GM discussion group that it was clarified what to do in that situation. (A rescue ship retrieves the PCs but they don't succeed on that quest.) I had forgotten that wasn't in the scenario itself.
Well, hopefully Thursty is reading this and makes sure that future scenarios detail what the results of losing a starship combat are.
Starfinder Society Developer
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It's something we're aware of. For the quests, it's simply a matter of not completing the assigned quest.
For all other starship encounters, we include information on what happens if there's a failure. And yes, I've made sure to include similar supporting text in #01-04 for later this month... in fact, I'm pretty proud of how that entire starship combat scene turned out!
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Venture-Lieutenant, Ohio—Dayton
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According to that boon, the scenarios are supposed to detail what happens if you can't afford towing. So far so good on that point.I think I may know the situation the OP is referring to. Into the Unknown, the quest pack, has 2 starship combats and neither of them state what happens if your ship is disabled. The situation would imply that the enemies kill you, but would also suggest they would be more likely to board your ship than to destroy it. And since this is likely to be the characters' first scenario, it's entirely possible that nobody has any fame.
It was 1-03.
The battle of attrition wound down to us having 3 hull points and 7 shield points, with the carrier having 1 hull point and 0 shield points. The next round we hit the carrier and 2 of the drones hit us. Everyone disabled or dormant in space.
The fight took us over 4 hours. Lots of small things went wrong along the way that stretched things out so long, including only 1 person having played starship combat before. It was roughly 10:30 pm of a Con that started at 8am. We missed the exception that starship towing could be pooled Fame. We spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out a way to repair the ship. The poor GM hadn't run starship combat before and was a bit at a loss on how to handle things at this point (he did really well handling the combat).
Not being able to figure out a way to communicate back to the Society or fix the ship, we rode our escape pods down, played the rest of the scenario, and "found" some UPBs on the surface. We rode our escape pods back up (yeah, I know, but it was midnight at this point) and patched a few bits together and went home.
The crux of the issue was we missed the pooling Fame option for the Towing boon.
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The fight took us over 4 hours.
It took some considerable GM cheating for us to finish in a little less than 3 hours.
A lot of that was bad luck, us having 5 players, etc.
But this combat really IS too complicated for players and GMs at their current stage of knowledge.
I've GM'ed it twice and both times it took well over an hour with my having to use considerable "judgement" (read - simplifying and ignoring lots of stuff) in order to get it done.
I'd urge Paizo to make future starship combats simpler, at least until
1) The known rule issues get resolved
2) it is reasonable to expect the GM and players to be fairly experienced (ie, NEXT season)
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It was 1-03.
** spoiler omitted **...
It isn't quite in line with the Core Rulebook's normal rules, but 1-03 does have text telling you what happens if your Starship is reduced to 0 Hull Points.
Again, the CRB indicates that you have an uncontrollable ship, but the scenario says to act as if it is controllable. I suspect the discrepancy is a result of the newness of the rules, but there is direction on what to do.
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It was 1-03.
** spoiler omitted **...
That particular combat is...well...incorrectly CR'd based on the current rules.
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The fight took us over 4 hours.
Us too. It was stupid. The entire encounter was ridiculous.
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I GMed 1-03 a week and a half ago. I called the starship combat 2 hours into the scenario. It was clear that the PCs had the upper hand, but finishing the fight would take another 30-60 minutes.
