To the best I can tell, these ranged weapons work in vacuum:
Disintegrator (I assume their hydrogen ions/protons come from an infinite internal reservoir, like Acid Rifles have for acid)
Lancer
Laser
Projectile and non-Projectile category weapons that nonetheless fling a projectile (Needlers, Bows, thrown weapons), aside from Flare guns.
Shock
These do not:
Fire, because Petrol does not carry an oxygenator, and neither do Flares, which are pure magnesium.
Cryo
Plasma
Sonic
(All of the above three only need charges as ammunition because they manipulate surrounding atmosphere to fire)
Do I have it right? If not, where am I wrong, how, and why?
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Yeah, the rules don't specify anything about certain weapons not working in a vacuum so they all do.
Don't penalize players for what is largely a flavor choice.
Also, the cryo weapon descriptions don't seem to indicate a reliance on atmosphere. They either throw supercold gas right on you, or use a 'carrier beam' to hit you with some sort of endothermic reaction. So those should work.
So, sonic and weapons that rely on an actual flame, I guess you could house rule into not working in a vacuum.
This is false. The carrier beam is carrying the supercooled gas; the gas is provided by the atmosphere, although there is a tank of unknown volume that holds the gas, so a strict reading would imply that a cry weapon has some number of times it can fire in vacuum, until you need to expose it to atmosphere again to recharge.
Cryo weapons generate blasts of supercooled gas that can damage or incapacitate a target. The gas is kept within a charged cryochamber attached to the weapon. While primitive models simply sprayed these freezing chemicals like a flamethrower, modern models use a containment beam to deliver deadly frozen particles to targets at impressive ranges. Most cryo weapons automatically replenish their reservoirs of reactive chemicals by drawing and processing various gases from the atmosphere, needing only batteries to maintain their ammunition supply.
Technically, they all work in vacuum, because the book doesn't say they don't.
I mean, I understand what you're doing here, so in fairness to your realism house rules, plasma would work in space. Not only are plasma weapons a sci-fi staple, but you don't need atmosphere to essentially superheat some matter and fire it at someone.
But then where does the plasma come from? The weapon only takes charges as ammunition - there's no indication of where the weapon is acquiring the matter it is ejecting.
Yeah, the rules don't specify anything about certain weapons not working in a vacuum so they all do.
Don't penalize players for what is largely a flavor choice.
But some weapons already do penalize you for a "flavor" choice - smoke protects against lasers. Why are we choosing to break immersion for some guns but not others?
Honestly, the only one I'd say shouldn't work is Sonic. The rest have no good genre-appropriate reason not to work. However, sound is sound, and you really do need a medium. If you really wanted to, you could say that most/all sonic weapons are actually gravity based, and use a gravity beam to induce vibrations on the target. . .
Similarly, why hold Sonic weapons to a different standard? Lasers have (loose, poorly-defined) rules for various intervening media, such as glass - why choose some weapons and not others for applying rules of that sort?
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This is a case where you must apply the first rule of tabletop, mainly, this is a game, logic need not apply. Since there is no where in the book that says that any given weapon does not function normally in vacuum they all do. If that is unsatisfying for you and your group that's fine. But any changes will be house rules/homebrew. Honestly it would be nice if the type of weapon had more impact, but currently it does not.
All current weapons work in a vacuum.
If you wish to change SF from the space-fantasy genre to the hard science fiction genre, that's your prerogative, but that's homebrew. Though Paizo might make a campaign supplement that addresses that, for now SF has super-science, a.k.a. magic by a different name.
Need oxygen for your gun? Well, the oxygenator 2000 comes free with every sale, converting a smidgen of every charge you use into a short-life oxygen compound just stable enough to ensure your shot works as well as in any atmosphere.
Even as a physics aficionado, I personally don't want to deal with the headache of addressing vacuums because then wouldn't I have to address different atmospheres too?
Do fire weapons do less damage if there's less oxygen, more with more, and the blast quality if there's a lot?
Do different magnetic fields affect the electric damage?
If the air is denser do I increase sonic damage? What about underwater?
Heck, what about all of this stuff underwater? Crazy physics time!
Not for me, as for every argument one way, one could argue "supertech" the other way. This is because I don't want such debates to steal play time. Sure, I might toss in a few minor circumstance bonuses or penalties, but I'll leave it to the adventure writers presenting such settings to suggest alterations. So far, there aren't any.
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I mean I don't think it says anywhere was does and doesn't work. Any distinction would have to basically be homebrew and individual GM determined until an official rule is published in a future rule book. Super popular Sci-Fis all around pretty much abandon anything that gets in the way of good story telling. It doesn't really surprise me that Starfinder (which is a science fantasy and also has magic) isn't afraid to just simply let some things be without explanation.
I would home rule anything that makes any sort of sense to you but explain it to players. Players don't live in your world and only have access to the rulebooks and therefor can only make assumptions based on the rules presented. Their characters however do live in your world and would know what does and doesn't work in vacuum. With star travel being such a normative part of travel in the Starfinder rule set, what does and doesn't work in vacuum is likely covered in basic gun training. Unless you are using a homebrew setting that doesn't have wide spread space travel.....then it is probably more of a matter of what they are and what their background is.
The void of space is effectively empty of matter, and this vacuum is perhaps the greatest danger of outer space. A creature introduced to a vacuum immediately begins to suffocate (see Suffocation and Drowning) and takes 1d6 bludgeoning damage per round (no saving throw). Because a vacuum has no effective temperature, the void of outer space presents no dangers from cold temperatures. A creature retains its body heat for several hours in a vacuum. Sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum.
Decompression occurs when a creature suddenly transitions from a pressurized environment to a vacuum, such as by being flung out of an airlock or being inside a sealed structure that becomes heavily damaged. Such a creature takes 3d6 bludgeoning damage (no saving throw) in addition to any suffocation damage.
Most creatures travel the vacuum of space in a starship.
Sonic weapons don't work in vacuum.
@ridiculon
Can you give any substantiation for that claim per the book?
@baggageboy the section i quoted is the rule for vacuum from the book, it clearly states that sound does not travel in a vacuum.
Sonic (So): Damage dealt by loud noise or damaging frequencies.
Sonic damage is just sound, sound is created by vibrating things, to project a vibration you need a medium.
@Robert Gooding in your example of the laser mic: the laser is measuring the vibrations on a solid object and then recreating them either digitally or through an analog device, but the original sound is never actually crossing the distance.
One way to use sonic damage in vacuum would be to use this spell:
School evocation (sonic)Casting Time 10 minutes
Range touch
Targets one freestanding structure or Vehicle
Duration up to 1 round/level
Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance yes
By attuning yourself to a freestanding structure or Vehicle (this doesn’t include Starships), you can create a damaging vibration within it. Once it begins, the vibration deals 2d10 sonic damage per round to the target, bypassing hardness. You can choose at the time of casting to limit the duration of the spell; otherwise, it lasts for 1 round per level. If the spell is cast upon a target that is not freestanding, the surrounding material dissipates the effect and no damage occurs.
Sympathetic vibration can’t affect creatures (even if they are constructs).
It uses the medium of your touch to transfer the vibration directly to the object to be vibrated.
You're trying to logic this though. It's a game full of "spacemagic" and lots of logical inconsistencies. At the root of the issue is it's a game, not science. IF there isn't a place where it says it doesn't work while it does say other places how it functions without any conditions, it works. It just does, no logic required.
Sonic weapons emit sonar waves at frequencies that are designed to injure or incapacitate enemies. Many of them are termed “low-frequency devices” (LFDs) and “high-frequency devices” (HFDs) based on the frequencies at which they operate and damage foes.
Sonic weapons in Starfinder use sonar waves to do sonic damage, sonar waves are sound, therefore they do not travel in a vacuum.
But looking at the list of sonic weapons there is one that isn't attempting to project sonar waves. The Pulse Gauntlets release their sonar wave directly into the target on contact, those should work fine in a vacuum.
Plasma is different from fire (generally). Well, you could say that fire is plasma that is generated by a chemical reaction. If a weapon is simply called a plasma weapon, that implies that no reaction with oxygen is required.
In scifi, Plasma weapons just lob a mass of matter that has been energized to the extreme. It doesn't require oxygen, and should actually work better in a vacuum than in an atmosphere.
Examples: The Sun is basically a ball of plasma. Also, in early star trek episodes the Romulans used "Plasma Torpedoes"
It's pretty clear that by RAW, all weapons of all damage types work just fine in a vacuum. RAW is more on the fantasy side of science fantasy than even Star Wars, more like a superhero comic or old Spelljammer.
If you're trying to houserule by realism, I guess I would suggest the following:
* Sonic doesn't work, EXCEPT at point blank range or within a short radius of a ship venting atmosphere, or in a dust cloud or gas cloud produced by another effect like a smoke grenade. If you can touch the target with your sound gun, you vibrate their body directly and space doesn't matter. I realize that real life nebulae are very diffuse but scifi nebula are always basically just space clouds, so I'd say that a sonic weapon would also work in nebula unless you're being super picky.
* Fire weapons use fuel as their ammo, which basically means they are napalm throwers, so it's hurling a physical medium (one that is very likely oxygenated by your hyperscience gun) and would work in space.
* As mentioned above, cryo weapons use batteries to gather and store a physical medium (gas) which is then delivered via containment beam. I'd go with what was suggested above that they work fine until you run out of ammo, but then you can't gather more ammo until you are in atmosphere.
* The sun and stars are made of plasma. The sun and stars exist in space. Plasma bolts would work fine in space, especially since they would have to be contained / channeled by magnetic fields to be useful as ranged weapons in the first place without immediately dissipating in a short range shotgun blast.
* Electric bolt weapons would have to work by creating an ion beam or channel to the target along which the discharge travels, like a lightning bolt, so should work fine in space.
But some weapons already do penalize you for a "flavor" choice - smoke protects against lasers. Why are we choosing to break immersion for some guns but not others?Yeah, the rules don't specify anything about certain weapons not working in a vacuum so they all do.
Don't penalize players for what is largely a flavor choice.
Because that's already in the rules and I'm not adding anything.
And cover & concealment while difficult penalties, can be overcome. You can still use the weapon, albeit with difficulty. Your proposed house rule makes the weapons unusable.