Starship combat - is it really 2X starship tier added to DC

[Battlegamer]

Hi everyone,

My campaign’s party has now progressed to level 3 — and in a starship combat session last weekend it we came up against the issue that with — as we understood the rules — adding 2 times your startship tier (which would be 3 per the party progression rules) they were adding 6 to DC....

Seems that if your BAB goes up by 1 each level — and you can add a max of 1 appropriate skill point per level — the party becomes **extremely** type-cast as the levels go up. The gunner becomes practically incompetent at taking the pilot’s seat when he or she is sick.... (Because we simply don’t have enough skill points to all add to computers and piloting and engineering each level.)

Are we getting something wrong??

Why is a Tier 3 starship harder to barrel roll than a Tier 1 starship?

I wondered if I’m confusion Level Tier and Size Tier ??

Thanks :)

[pauljathome]

Paizo is aware of the problem and have stated that they'll address it.

Sometime.

Hopefully before people level up far enough that this becomes a major issue :-)

[Torbyne]

pauljathome wrote:

Paizo is aware of the problem and have stated that they'll address it.

Sometime.

Hopefully before people level up far enough that this becomes a major issue :-)

Well what i think this is illustrating is that it becomes an issue by level 3 and just gets worse from there.

[Claxon]

Type casting is an issue no matter what, that will happen regardless of what you do because of how the skill system works. The current DCs just means it becomes more apparent at earlier levels that you can't get by just throwing one rank into the skill and using class skill bonus and attribute to carry you for a while.

Characters get pretty type cast in Pathfinder too, it's just the nature of how the skill system work in these game.

[pauljathome]

Torbyne wrote:

Well what i think this is illustrating is that it becomes an issue by level 3 and just gets worse from there.

Its not a significant issue at low levels.

At level 4 the DCs have gone up by 6 (relative to level 1) but your skill has gone up by 3 (level) + 1 (stat boost item) + likely 1 insight .

So, you're down by 1. That really is not a big deal.

At level 5 the DC has gone up by another 2 but your skill has gone up by 1 or 2 (stat boost, another rank).

One of the PFS adventures has level 1 characters in a level 4 ship. The effect was noticeable but NOT crippling. And the fact that the ship itself was way more powerful compensated a lot.

Now, by level 8 or 10 or so the effect IS becoming VERY noticeable. But hopefully Paizo will get around to fixing it by then :-)

[jozh]

FWIW, while we wait for Paizo to address this, I've implemented a house rule for Starship Combat DCs. Any time the DC includes a multiplier to the tier, I increase the base DC by 1 and remove the multiplier.

For example, the Engineer Action Divert, RAW:

DC = 10 + 2 x your starship's tier

Under the house rule:

DC = 11 + starship's tier

DCs are effectively unchanged for Tier 1 starships, and they increase at the same rate as character skill ranks, for those who choose to keep pace with the relevant skills.

It ain't perfect, but it works for us. :)

[Benjamin Medrano]

Looking at the math, I'm guessing that ships were originally only tier 1-10, and that the DCs were based on that. Because of it, I'm halving the multipliers (x2 becomes x1, x3 becomes x1.5) and I think the math works out about right. Maybe other people will agree, maybe not, but it feels right to me.

[Battlegamer]

Hi everyone, thanks for the replies. I was worried that I was messing up the RAW. It’s some comfort to know that I hadn’t.

I’m going to propose to my group that we try the house rule that jozh and Benjamin suggested above and cut the multiplier in half.

Thanks again :)

[Nixitur]

pauljathome wrote:

Paizo is aware of the problem and have stated that they'll address it.

Do you have the source on that? I want to be prepared for our game.

In a similar vein, 13+4xComputer tier for Computers checks is pretty ridiculous, but that's a different story altogether.

[Benjamin Medrano]

Nixitur wrote:

pauljathome wrote:

Paizo is aware of the problem and have stated that they'll address it.

Do you have the source on that? I want to be prepared for our game.

In a similar vein, 13+4xComputer tier for Computers checks is pretty ridiculous, but that's a different story altogether.

I remember Owen mentioned as much in one of the first threads on the issue after GenCon, but I'm afraid I don't have time to go digging for it at the moment. It was a simple comment, though, something to the effect of "We know, and it will be addressed.", possibly in that many words.

[Hithesius]

Nixitur wrote:

Do you have the source on that? I want to be prepared for our game.

Here.

While something will eventually be done about it, no time frame was provided. An official fix will exist at some point in the future, but I do not think it likely it will exist soon enough to warrant preparing for its arrival in the short term.

Naturally, I would not object to being wrong.