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Some Starfinder changes I thought were pretty cool (the way ability score increases are handled, and the stamina/HP/resolve system,) but other stuff I was put off by. So what changes that were made in Starfinder do you hope are not transferred to 2E?
The rules on enemies dying in SF bug me - basically, when an enemy goes below 0 they die instantly, unless the GM decides he doesn't want them to die, in which case they stay alive for three rounds before dying. Now, I get that GMs are not at all interested in spending time during combat rolling a whole bunch of stabilize checks for six different mooks. I will admit to hand-waving that most of the time. But for the important NPCs who get downed, I really appreciate having rules that are there when you need them, instead of just relying on GM fiat. When an important NPC or ally goes unconscious, IMO that should be a moment of tension, where the PCs have to make tough decisions, evaluate their priorities, and decide how much they're willing to risk or expend to stop that character from dying. When it's all just GM fiat, there is no tension there.
On a similar vein, I dislike how SF did nonlethal damage - it is literally no different than lethal damage, unless you use it for the knock-out blow. So doing a bit of nonlethal at the start of a combat as a buffer so you don't accidentally perma-kill an adversary is no longer an option. Again, I get how it simplifies bookkeeping - tracking one damage total is easier than tracking two separate damage totals and having to add them up. But it really sweeps the legs out from under characters who want to play mercifully, as they can no longer do it unilaterally - unless they convince everyone to fight nonlethally, a lot of enemies are still going to be killed. And what's worse, the character who was specifically trying to fight nonlethally has now done damage that contributed to that death, which is really demoralizing.
So, what other changes do you want to see left in SFland?
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The bulk system. It's clunky, and kind of immersion breaking. I much prefer PF's weight-based carrying capacities. As they exists in Starfinder, bulk limits create comically weak creatures.
The bulk system. It's clunky, and kind of immersion breaking. I much prefer PF's weight-based carrying capacities. As they exists in Starfinder, bulk limits create comically weak creatures.
Then I'm sorry to break it, in the preview podcast they use bulk...
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The bulk system. It's clunky, and kind of immersion breaking. I much prefer PF's weight-based carrying capacities. As they exists in Starfinder, bulk limits create comically weak creatures.Then I'm sorry to break it, in the preview podcast they use bulk...
The playtest uses bulk. There's going to be 5-6 months of feedback to share that it's not working for enough players (assuming that's the case) for them to change that for the final version in 2019.
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The playtest uses bulk. There's going to be 5-6 months of feedback to share that it's not working for enough players (assuming that's the case) for them to change that for the final version in 2019.The bulk system. It's clunky, and kind of immersion breaking. I much prefer PF's weight-based carrying capacities. As they exists in Starfinder, bulk limits create comically weak creatures.Then I'm sorry to break it, in the preview podcast they use bulk...
I knew that, that's why it's important I let the devs know I don't like it.
Another thing that I wouldn't want to see in PF2.0 is monsters operating on different math than PCs. In Starfinder, PCs hit softer and are a lot tankier than monsters of appropriate CR. I get why this was done in SF, but there shouldn't be any reason to do it in Pathfinder. I'm fine with some simple monster creation system, it just shouldn't be based on different benchmarks than a creature built like a PC, thus making PC-built creatures feel out of place.
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I think the Starfinder Bulk system suffers from the same problem as the Swim skill in D&D 3.0, where a storm giant could be drowned by the weight of his coin purse. They might want to fix this in the new Pathfinder game by making some sort of adjustment to the system for creature size.
I think the Starfinder Bulk system suffers from the same problem as the Swim skill in D&D 3.0, where a storm giant could be drowned by the weight of his coin purse. They might want to fix this in the new Pathfinder game by making some sort of adjustment to the system for creature size.
Yeah, bulk would work better with size adjustments, as well as less linear scaling of carrying capacity. At that point though, I don't see why you don't just go back to using weight measures.
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Backgrounds as a replacement for traits, archetypes being prestige classes, bulk, magic item limits.
Please don't make Alignment optional. It should continue to matter in game. Please don't include Bulk. That mechanic is clunky, and I would house rule it out anyway. Basically, please keep all the Starfinder rules in Starfinder, and just streamline what is already in Pathfinder.
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Backgrounds as a replacement for traits, archetypes being prestige classes, bulk, magic item limits.
So right now "Ancestry/Class/Background" = "Race/Class/Theme"? Do we have any confirmation of that?
Race giving you hit points.
Why? Would not a race that is larger (half-orc) or more dense (dwarves) get more hit points, at least at start?
Items having "levels".
Don't they do already? They are just limited by the Wealth Per Level system rather then explicitly like in Starfinder.
NPCs working differently than PCs.
The Pathfinder Unchained monster rules (pages 194-253) are not bad. The balance they chose for Starfinder is what is actually broken.
Hmmm... let's see....
Stamina points
'One size fits all classes' resolve points
Monster Creation
Ability Scores
Items with levels
The monster creation rules
Universal Archetypes
Racial Hit points (just give the race a bonus to Con if they're hardy)
Optional Alignment
Badly-scaling numbers
Probably more, because I don't play SF. These are just all the things that turned me off the game in the first place, and if too many of them make it into 2.0, I won't play that either.
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Equipment tiers. I prefer the looseness of WBL.
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1. Give us ways to get more reactions.
2. For the love of God don't pare weapons down to a handful of weapons that are all basically the same, just with more dice tacked on.
3. Don't simplify the crit system to the point that Starfinder did. This also segways into the magic weapon system. Don't even come close to Starfinder's pointless weapon fusion mechanic. When 1/3 of the abilities you can add to a weapon are tied to rolling a natural 20, and another 1/3 are elemental replacement or alignment additives what's the point?
4. Keep concentration/casting defensively.
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Monsters and NPCs using completely different rules. Also not a big fan of Starfinder Archetypes.
The bulk system. It's clunky, and kind of immersion breaking. I much prefer PF's weight-based carrying capacities. As they exists in Starfinder, bulk limits create comically weak creatures.
It isn't about strength, it's about Valeros looking ridiculous. I used to LARP as a teenager (pre-3e) and one of the guys in the game's running gag would be to grab as many weapons as he could physically carry and insert about his person and say "Look, I'm a D&D character!"
A mattress boxspring is pretty light and you could probably physically strap 5 or more on an average person's back that they'd be able to carry, but 1 should probably make them encumbered.
In reality almost no one uses any encumbrance system in any RPG so if it isn't something players are actually going to use then don't even waste the ink. I don't know if people will use Starfinder's rules yet because the game is still too new. I know if Pathfinder's rules are retained no one is going to use them anyway.
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- Universal Archetypes because I felt they most took away the most interesting stuff of the base class and also felt more limited in the ones you could create, such as lore-specific styles of 1 class.
- Items having level. SF has HUGE weapon tables, but for a given level you didn't actually have many options. Made loot really predictable in general.
- Weapon enchantments that suck. The fusions or whatever were a waste of money and didn't do anything exciting (95% of the time they did NOTHING at all).
- The often repeated mechanics disparity between enemies and characters. This makes the game feel like a videogame and not an immersive RPG. There's nothing wrong with the "speed" of battles in 1e I think.
- Racial/Background Ability scores being pretty irrelevant. You could have practically the same stats regardless of Race and Background because the point buy system was linear. That +3 STR just meant your minimum STR was 13, but didn't actually help you max the stat! You could just as easily get the same spread with a -2 STR race.
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What scared me off from Starfinder was some of the hugely complicated aspects, like ship combat. Iirc this was based on the ship combat from Skulls & Shackles and similar, and obviously won't be part of the majority of PF2E, but the concept is the same- please god, no mandatory super complicated subsystems if possible. On top of that, the way Energy Armour worked seemed a little strange- it's a concept that could be worked on, but it left me scratching my head a little, though that's probably more a personal thing than the ship rules!
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The bulk system. It's clunky, and kind of immersion breaking. I much prefer PF's weight-based carrying capacities. As they exists in Starfinder, bulk limits create comically weak creatures.It isn't about strength, it's about Valeros looking ridiculous. I used to LARP as a teenager (pre-3e) and one of the guys in the game's running gag would be to grab as many weapons as he could physically carry and insert about his person and say "Look, I'm a D&D character!"
A mattress boxspring is pretty light and you could probably physically strap 5 or more on an average person's back that they'd be able to carry, but 1 should probably make them encumbered.
In reality almost no one uses any encumbrance system in any RPG so if it isn't something players are actually going to use then don't even waste the ink. I don't know if people will use Starfinder's rules yet because the game is still too new. I know if Pathfinder's rules are retained no one is going to use them anyway.
I wouldn't mind the bulk system too much if it scaled more like PF's existing weight tables, or if it had better guidelines for estimating bulk. In SF, a large creature with 18 strength can barely lift a medium humanoid. At least they can't if you're using the only rules in the book for lifting and carrying, the bulk system. In Pathfinder, an 18 strength ice troll can carry that 180 pounds without any encumbrance.
Maybe my games are unusual, but lifting heavy objects actually comes up a lot, and our first encounter with it in Starfinder was pretty jarring. We couldn't figure out how to interpret the rules without creatures coming out comically weak.
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What I don't want to see from Starfinder:
The NPC creation system. I don't mind a simplified NPC system for mooks, but it should produce results in line with creating an NPC "fully" for when you need to stat out a major character. NPCs shouldn't be better at attacking and skills just because they are NPCs for example. Also their ability scores and equipment should be defined and matter.
Note that I apply this much less for monsters. Give dragons and demons and such whatever stats you want. I just think an NPC human fighter shouldn't have different basic stats than a PC human fighter, due entirely to the NPC label.
Don't get rid of weapon and armor plusses. There needs to be a way to make a weapon magically better at accuracy and hurting, and plusses do that well. Starfinder weapon fusions are weak, almost never trigger, and not worth wasting money on.
Don't try and shoehorn everyone's abilities into certain levels in order to use the Starfinder archetype system.
Don't go overboard with scaling skill DCs by level such that a character can't keep up unless they min/max. A character who just keeps a class skill maxed with a moderate to good ability score, +1 to +2, should be able to do most things with that skill fairly easily by taking 10. A character who goes all out with a high score, +8 or more, Skill Focus and so forth should be able to make the toughest checks on a 1. They paid for it after all.
Personally, I don't mind the bulk system so much but I'm okay with abstract encumbrance rules.
As opposed to PF's system where you have dozens of weapons that are all just worse versions of the one everyone uses?
2. For the love of God don't pare weapons down to a handful of weapons that are all basically the same, just with more dice tacked on.
I would argue that weapons in 1e are more varied than that. As far as core rulebook to core rulebook comparisons, they have roughly the same number of actual weapons. Pathfinder's weapons are varied. You'll get a lot of scimitar users, but some people will shoot for the moon and go with Axes or Picks for massive crits. Occasionally you'll get people who use weapons like the flails for Combat Maneuver builds, and there's always people building around using reach weapons. I would say that the only truly worse weapons in the core rulebook are the Heavy Mace, the Greatclub, and the 4 light exotic weapons. Wasn't really until Ultimate Combat that we got a glut of redundant weapons.
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Let me throw another vote behind NPC stats. Nothing is more feel bad then the GM rolling a 5 for a npc and hitting your Level +2 armor-wearing vesk...
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1. Give us ways to get more reactions.
I couldn't agree more. I am desperately hoping (but not optimistic) that you still will get multiple reactions a turn. The Starfinder system is:
a) One reaction a turn.
b) Reactions happening AFTER the trigger if not purely defensive.
c) So few reactions to actually take.
This Severely limits the options and enjoyability of combat in Starfinder. We have already seen there are going to be different ways to use reactions (shields being one of the few things revealed) so point c) I am not worried about, but not having any way to take more than one reaction, or disrupt spells, disappoints me immensely.
Keep Combat Reflexes, or something similar. An X number of reactions at each level would be fine as well, feat locked or otherwise.
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Yeah, not much caring for Bulk, too vague and clunky, though the 2nd Edition might be more, what's a word, ... I don't know, better than Starfinder's.
And I do not like Starfinder's system for making NPCs and monsters. Noes I don't. I like the Class grafts that were introduced in Monster Codex, but making them the default and having them apply to PC races such as humanoids as well? No. If I want to make a Lamia or Human Alchemist... I want them to actually be an Alchemist, not a bag of HP with a face painted on and the ability to throw a bomb or two.
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And I do not like Starfinder's system for making NPCs and monsters. Noes I don't. I like the Class grafts that were introduced in Monster Codex, but making them the default and having them apply to PC races such as humanoids as well? No. If I want to make a Lamia or Human Alchemist... I want them to actually be an Alchemist, not a bag of HP with a face painted on and the ability to throw a bomb or two.
No to mention the requirement that the GM needs to learn an entirely different game to create/use NPCs.
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I love bulk. Don't kill bulk. Bookeeping is so much easier with it.
Gotta say as a Pathfinder player and Starfinder GM that bulk is pretty ingenious. I honestly don't want to add up the individually weight of 50 items, I like saying "these 6 things are one bulk, these thirty are all 'light' so thats another 3, boom, done. I can still carry 3 more Laser Rifle sized/weighted items if need be.
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Item level.
My only real problem with it in Starfinder is that there are too many gaps in the table.
Item level adds a lot of bloat to a system without adding much substance.
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Item level.
My only real problem with it in Starfinder is that there are too many gaps in the table.
Item level adds a lot of bloat to a system without adding much substance.
I agree, I don't want Item Levels.
I also would rather that monster creation was more like Pathfinder Unchained than Starfinder... to-hit bonuses shouldn't be that high on baseline monsters, IMO.
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I love bulk. Don't kill bulk. Bookeeping is so much easier with it.
Wait, what?
In Pathfinder, you just add up the weight of all you carry. It's addition... the first mathematical function a kid is taught.
In Starfinder, it's mostly add up the number of bulks, only some things aren't bulks at all, and some times are part of bulks and so many of those become bulk.
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I don't like the ability score limitations. It makes no sense how a race that is inherently stronger, faster, etc than another race has the same ceiling on an ability score.
If I ever run a Starfinder game that is one rule I'm throwing out the window.
Item level.
My only real problem with it in Starfinder is that there are too many gaps in the table.
Item level adds a lot of bloat to a system without adding much substance.
I'm not sure how item levels work to be honest. If it means I can't use weapon ___ because I'm not level X then I don't like that either. If they are just saying we suggest to that you not give players weapon ___ too soon I can deal with that.
I don't like the ability score limitations. It makes no sense how a race that is inherently stronger, faster, etc than another race has the same ceiling on an ability score.
If I ever run a Starfinder game that is one rule I'm throwing out the window.
I mean, you *could* stretch it to make sense in a sci-fi setting, where selective gene therapy and affordable self-modifications available from birth could theoretically make the weaker races just as strong as the more naturally strong ones (that only works, though, if someone with an 18 STR in SF is actually much stronger than someone with an 18 in PF, and everything else is just higher that, gamewise, it all balances out).
But not in fantasy. If I can, at character creation, make a goblin that's just as strong as the strongest orcs, we have a problem. Being able to say that your fighter is as strong as a giant and have that actually be the case is half the fun of a power-fantasy game like PF.
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I love bulk. Don't kill bulk. Bookeeping is so much easier with it.Wait, what?
In Pathfinder, you just add up the weight of all you carry. It's addition... the first mathematical function a kid is taught.
Only somethings don't have weight, and other things are odd numbers or halves that don't add quickly. THEN you have to cross-reference a table with different weight limits and gods help you if you find a Str belt in the middle of an adventure or start taking ability drain.
Bulk is all decimal math. Either 0, 1, or 10s. Your limits are easily derived from your ability score, no tables involved.
Bulk isn't a perfect system, but it is way easier.
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Monsters and NPCs using completely different rules.
This so much. They way monsters and npcs use the same rules as the players in Pathfinder is one of the biggest strengths of the system. It is very important that players feel like their enemies are the same as they are rather than being a bundle of stats that don't follow the same rules that they do.
In pathfinder, monsters effectively just have a stronger starting race than the players. They can even take class levels. Turning monsters into meaningless stat blocks would mean we lose all of this.
That being said, I am not opposed to monster and npc creation being simplified in some way as long they're still generally interchangeable with players.
There is nothing from Starfinder I want to see in PF2E.
So what changes that were made in Starfinder do you hope are not transferred to 2E?
Is 'all of it' an option? If so, that's my vote.
Please don't make Alignment optional.
I agree: it's time to jetision alignment altogether or at the very least remove any mechanical relevance.
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If I can, at character creation, make a goblin that's just as strong as the strongest orcs, we have a problem.
This is what I was talking about. It happens in SF because they have a cap that cant be passed by the official rules so the race that naturally starts off with a +2 is the same as the race with no modifier at character creation.
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If I can, at character creation, make a goblin that's just as strong as the strongest orcs, we have a problem.This is what I was talking about. It happens in SF because they have a cap that cant be passed by the official rules so the race that naturally starts off with a +2 is the same as the race with no modifier at character creation.
I did the Math and you can do it even with a -2 on the stat without hurting your spread. Made races ability scores pointless.
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I love bulk. Don't kill bulk. Bookeeping is so much easier with it.Wait, what?
In Pathfinder, you just add up the weight of all you carry. It's addition... the first mathematical function a kid is taught.
Only somethings don't have weight, and other things are odd numbers or halves that don't add quickly. THEN you have to cross-reference a table with different weight limits and gods help you if you find a Str belt in the middle of an adventure or start taking ability drain.
And gods help you if you play a small character, who can carry only 75% of the weight of an equivalent medium character, but then you have to deal with a lot of fiddly rules on what weighs 50% for small characters and what weighs 25% for them. Divide that all out, then add up all the resulting fractions.
Contrast a 12 Str Ysoki. You have a reaction cannon of 3 bulk, a hygiene kit of 1 bulk, and 10 bits of gear of light bulk. Total 5. unencumbered carrying capacity of 6. Done.
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I actually liked two page Alien Archive format, though I suppose knowing more about creatures' ecology and biology might be more fitting for scifi game than fantasy game :P
Given how much I liked the ecology articles way back in Dragon Magazine and how I love the bestiary format in the AP issues, I think it's the other way round ;)
I'm not a fan of the way items were handled in Starfinder. Also, Spaceship combat didn't do it for me but as that shouldn't be a big factor in Pathfinder, I'm not worrying about it too much.
Contrast a 12 Str Ysoki. You have a reaction cannon of 3 bulk, a hygiene kit of 1 bulk, and 10 bits of gear of light bulk. Total 5. unencumbered carrying capacity of 6. Done.
Bulk sounds a lot like systems used in other RPG's to slim down the math and complexities of carrying stuff. I approve.