Questions on SFS #1-04 Cries from the drift

[Adder007USA]

I didn't see any thread regarding this scenario, and the errata/faq thread for the "first wave scenarios" indicates it's just for the gen con released scenarios, so I'm starting this one. Mods feel free to move this to the errata/faq thread if it belongs there.

Anyways. Just a few questions that I feel need clarification. Add any that come to you guys.

1-04 questions:

1. The turret traps aboard the Struggle's Scholar are described as "laser turrets", but their stat blocks list "Projectile turret traps" that do piercing damage. Laser attacks use EAC and typically do fire damage. Piercing indicates a physical attack, which would target KAC. Are they truly laser turret traps, and if so what stats should we use, or should we use the stat blocks as listed, targeting the player's KAC instead of EAC?

2. The xill larvae in the bodies, is it assumed that once they do their burst damage, they are trivial enough to kill that they don't require combat?

3. Also relating to the traps on board. Both the turrets and the larvae have activation conditions; The turret must have power from the mess hall doors, and the larvae won't jump out unless the bridge doors are powered. Prior to these conditions being met, can the traps still be detected at this point, or only when active?

[crashcanuck]

Flagged to be moved to the Organised Play GM forum.

To address your questions::

1) I just ran them as projectile turrets that target KAC

2) Exposed larva should be easy to just stomp on and kill

3) The larva jump further if the bridge door is open, they can still jump out if a PC approaches the bodies close enough. I let the PCs notice that "something" was up with the bodies when they made a perception check to look at them from a distance. The turret they never bothered to check the mirrored position of the faulty turret.

[Freedom Snake]

Adder007USA wrote:

I didn't see any thread regarding this scenario, and the errata/faq thread for the "first wave scenarios" indicates it's just for the gen con released scenarios, so I'm starting this one. Mods feel free to move this to the errata/faq thread if it belongs there.

Anyways. Just a few questions that I feel need clarification. Add any that come to you guys.

** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:

1) I also ran this against KAC, based on it fitting the majority of information given.
2) I ran it as the larvae couldn't survive out of a host long enough for it to matter, thus no action required.
3) The larvae burst is predicated upon them being "full" the first time the PCs pass them by and hungry again the second time. There is a perception check to notice the puncture wound, but because the larvae were internal I made them not visible or audible to the naked eye, requiring inspection of the puncture wound (which required a perception check to notice) via medicine check or something similarly sufficient to detect lifeforms inside of a corpse. That said, the second time I ran this, the group elected to "space" the body as soon as they detected a puncture wound the first time, while the larvae were still sated.

[Thurston Hillman]

Cries from the Drift Answers:

1. They should be renamed Projectile Turrets and target KAC. This was an omission when I was developing, as I changed them from lasers to projectile weapons (since we've seen a lot of energy traps).

2) No combat. Trap occurs once and that's that.

3) PCs should be able to observe the traps prior to their triggering, especially in the case of the turrets.

[Adder007USA]

Thank you Thurston for the quick answer, and thanks Graham, I'll make sure any future posts are in that forum.

[Cirion_cz]

What prevents PCs from plugging in one battery in "Engine room" to open "Mess", go to "Mess" and then player in "Engine room" from reattaching that battery to "Bridge"? My players solved the puzzle this way, and I let them (they were aware of the incorporeal in the "Captain's quarters" and did not want to disconnect the second battery from the powered armor).

[BretI]

I had the batteries only be powerful enough to open a door once.

I also solved the issue of someone trying to operate it off a laser battery by saying the difference in power rating between a ship battery and a gun battery was too great. Draining a full gun battery was less than a single charge in the ship battery.

I did not have anyone ask to pull power from their own ship. At that point, I would have just given up on the carefully laid out plans and gone with it — reducing credits earned and crossing an item off the chronicle.

Your mileage may vary.

[Freedom Snake]

I'm speaking from aircraft design here, so my perspective is different. If the door was unable to be opened without electricity (notice I didn't say unlocked) then the doors are forced to the closed position through mechanical means as a "default" position and powered open.

This means that the battery is required to power the doors open in order to overcome the force keeping the doors closed that the PCs were not strong enough to overcome manually. Thus, when the battery is removed, the doors return to their closed state with the same force that prevented them from manually opening them in the first place. Therefore, your "battery swapper" is stuck outside the mess hall and cut off form the party until such time as you replace the battery.

Aircraft wing anti-ice valves work this way. In the event of complete and total power failure, the valves are mechanically forced open by default to prevent the wings from icing up, just in case you are in icing conditions. The valves are electrically closed. In fact when "throwing the switch" you are actually flipping a valve hold-closed on/off switch.

This same effect could be easily accomplished through a gear/pulley drive mechanism in the doors, even for side-opening doors. It would also be a sound practice to compartmentalize the aircraft in the event of a power loss to avoid rapid-decompression. If this weren't the case, airlocks could just be pulled open by hand. Having the doors act as airlocks at the bulkheads for each compartment seems pretty legit.

[thistledown]

Played this Tuesday night. We talked about doing things with the door so that we wouldn't need to wake up the ghost, but agreed to play along with the scenario instead so that we didn't break the story.

First thing we considered was using a stick to keep the first door open then attaching the battery to the other door. GM decided it had used its last charge on the first door. Then we considered getting some jumper cables from our own ship, but decided not too for story.

What we ended up doing was trying to haul the powerarmor with the battery still attached over to the door connections and double-tap the terminals on the battery. In character anyways. Then (what we all expected out-of-character) happened, and the wire came undone while hauling the armor, and yay.

Aside from that railroady bit, I think this is my favorite SFS scenario yet. The space combat was actually good, and exploring the ship was fun.

[Adder007USA]

Further question for this scenario.

Can the driftwraith use its melee attack against a PC with a force field upgrade in their armor? Since incorporeal can't pass through force effects, and the wraith was trapped inside the power armor using a purple force field upgrade, this seems to be an easy way of combating incorporeals. I'm assuming the ranged attack would still work normally though, if melee doesn't work.

I've added a question to the standard starfinder rules questions forum, since I feel this is a good general question for the FAQ

[Adder007USA]

Going to be running this scenario tomorrow with my group. Has anyone had a ruling yet on this interaction?

[Gary Bush]

Flagged to be merged into the other thread on the same topic.

[Nathan Monson]

Freedom Snake wrote:

I'm speaking from aircraft design here, so my perspective is different. If the door was unable to be opened without electricity (notice I didn't say unlocked) then the doors are forced to the closed position through mechanical means as a "default" position and powered open.

This means that the battery is required to power the doors open in order to overcome the force keeping the doors closed that the PCs were not strong enough to overcome manually. Thus, when the battery is removed, the doors return to their closed state with the same force that prevented them from manually opening them in the first place. Therefore, your "battery swapper" is stuck outside the mess hall and cut off form the party until such time as you replace the battery.

This is how my gm ran it, of course we just used the table to jam the first set of doors open so we could swap the battery and get the bridge open without having to deal with the undead.

[Gary Bush]

Nathan Monson wrote:

Freedom Snake wrote:

I'm speaking from aircraft design here, so my perspective is different. If the door was unable to be opened without electricity (notice I didn't say unlocked) then the doors are forced to the closed position through mechanical means as a "default" position and powered open.

This means that the battery is required to power the doors open in order to overcome the force keeping the doors closed that the PCs were not strong enough to overcome manually. Thus, when the battery is removed, the doors return to their closed state with the same force that prevented them from manually opening them in the first place. Therefore, your "battery swapper" is stuck outside the mess hall and cut off form the party until such time as you replace the battery.

This is how my gm ran it, of course we just used the table to jam the first set of doors open so we could swap the battery and get the bridge open without having to deal with the undead.

The way the adventure is written, the battery has only enough power to open 1 door. To allow a party to use the battery from the robot to power both doors is against what is written in the adventure.

[skb]

I am preparing to run this scenario in a week. What is preventing the PCs from ransacking their own ship for the 2 necessary batteries. I was thinking something along the lines because the ships are not compatible. Has anyone else ran across this option and how did you handle it?

[Gary Bush]

The scenario calls out that only batteries found on the ship will work. See page 15 under the Door Access paragraph.

I encourage you to read the extended debate we had about the batteries and determine how you are going to handle them.