(Branched from Drones in Starship Combat thread)
Except starship combat rounds are not your traditional combat rounds. There's no telling how many spells you can cast in a round of starship combat, if any, or how long they would last.
I agree that this is a problem. CRB p317; "Unlike rounds in combat between characters, a round of starship combat doesn't correlate to a specific amount of time."
However, the sidebar "Other Actions in Starship Combat" (CRB 322) details that you may make a move or standard action during a starship combat round, specifically mentioning magic.
The sidebar "Teleporting Between Starships" (CRB 326) pretty much closes the case that magic is absolutely allowed during Starship combat. Disable their engines, stop yours, teleport as a boarding action.
So you may cast one spell as a standard action per starship combat round, for example moving then casting Mystic Cure after a fellow crew member takes damage (see CRB 321, right column under "Crew Damage").
However this doesn't solve the duration, and what about crew members with a natural healing ability?
Distance is another issue that I haven't seen addressed. If two ships both have their engines disabled in combat, what's the distance the crew would need to travel per hex to board the other?
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I agree that this is a problem. CRB p317; "Unlike rounds in combat between characters, a round of starship combat doesn't correlate to a specific amount of time."
However, the sidebar "Other Actions in Starship Combat" (CRB 322) details that you may make a move or standard action during a starship combat round, specifically mentioning magic.
The sidebar "Teleporting Between Starships" (CRB 326) pretty much closes the case that magic is absolutely allowed during Starship combat. Disable their engines, stop yours, teleport as a boarding action.
So you may cast one spell as a standard action per starship combat round, for example moving then casting Mystic Cure after a fellow crew member takes damage (see CRB 321, right column under "Crew Damage").
However this doesn't solve the duration, and what about crew members with a natural healing ability?
Distance is another issue that I haven't seen addressed. If two ships both have their engines disabled in combat, what's the distance the crew would need to travel per hex to board the other?
Keep in mind that if a mystic takes time to cure an injured crew member they can't do any space combat related actions during that round.
As for distance, it is undefined. We can't ram another ship. So it would be a judgement call for the GM.
As for Teleport, once both ships are stationary and not shooting ship board weapons, I don't think the party would be in space combat, but normal combat.
The lack of time is a problem for otherwise non-combat actions like starting/stopping the engines, entering the drift, and astrogating. All of which list their time in 'minutes' which have (right now) no correlation to starship combat rounds and are therefore left entirely up to the DM on how long they take or whether they're even possible to do in combat.
The lack of time is a problem for otherwise non-combat actions like starting/stopping the engines, entering the drift, and astrogating. All of which list their time in 'minutes' which have (right now) no correlation to starship combat rounds and are therefore left entirely up to the DM on how long they take or whether they're even possible to do in combat.
Exactly. The easiest thing to do right now IMHO is to state that anything with a duration or frequency listed in "rounds" equal the same number of "starship combat rounds", and that this correlation is close enough that 10 starship combat rounds is roughly a minute.
Even "roughly" gives us an estimate for how long these actions take. Some GMs seem to believe that due to the "Other Actions in Starship Combat" rules a round of starship combat is half a normal round, while others believe its much longer because more complex actions are taking place in each phase.
I think for most purposes a starship combat round takes a substantial amount of time indeed and abstracts a lot of "pew pew, vroom" going on. A single shot in combat isn't a single shot in "reality," and a Limited Fire 5 launcher doesn't really hold only five missiles.
I think for most purposes a starship combat round takes a substantial amount of time indeed and abstracts a lot of "pew pew, vroom" going on. A single shot in combat isn't a single shot in "reality," and a Limited Fire 5 launcher doesn't really hold only five missiles.
Yes that is what some GMs believe and others believe that its less than a round because why else could a PC take only a move or standard action during a starship combat round? Both interpretations have logical merit.
My personal answer is in the middle, to the latter argument I say "walking around doing things on the ship besides engaging in a starship combat role means you're not strapped in during shaky-cam time, being thrown into walls and such, which is akin to being staggered".
Herein lies the problem, when a player sits down to play Starfinder they need to be able to understand the rules of the world they're playing in without having to ask the GM what their interpretation is.
I think it's intentionally meant to be variable, but, with that said, they should have made all the starship actions variable. Like to stop your engines it should take 1 minute out of combat and X number of rounds in combat (to reflect the fact that in combat, stopping is dependent on the circumstances of the combat).
It's not feasible to perform some of the described engineering actions in 6 seconds or less. Especially with the spore missiles in Pact Worlds.
Captain: "Engineer! We've got spore gunk inflicting a critical effect on our weapon systems, I need you to scrape it all off."
Engineer: [Wipes 1' sq ft with a Clorox wipe] "Done."
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Simple question time: Why? The game literally does not exist without the GM.
Because that's the point of rulebooks. Otherwise why are you playing Starfinder at all instead of making up your own game.
To be clear, 75%+ of the time I'm GM'ing.
It's not feasible to perform some of the described engineering actions in 6 seconds or less.
That's a perfectly reasonable answer, but you have to then answer the counter-point: if a round is longer than 6 seconds, why can crew only perform a single standard or move action during that time?
Why would an overwhelmed technomancer in engineering not be able to cast Handy Junkbot which has a casting time of one full round instead of a normal engineering crew action?
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A simpler answer is that Space Combat and Regular Combat are not related in any meaningful way. The fact that minor crew actions exist, in my opinion, is because the developers realized "What if a character wants to do something that could be done in Regular Combat in Space Combat?".
How much time space combat takes doesn't really matter. Space Combat has its own timing and cadence. In ALL the space combats I have run or played in, not once did a character do anything that was outside of the actions in Space Combat.
In ALL the space combats I have run or played in, not once did a character do anything that was outside of the actions in Space Combat.
Bingo. This is the crux of the problem I have with this.
If your players only take actions outlined in the CRB or little handout cards, you'd be better off resolving starship combat on their phones or tablets. Turn-based with phases, select your action from the menu.
But we're not playing a video game, what we're left with is a simulation of a video game using ship minis, a hex map, and dice. That's not what people come to game night to play.
The only good standard action to take in starship combat is to cast Remove Radiation as a hedge against an Irradiate weapon rolling a 3 or 4 for duration, especially if you have low CR passengers or allies. (I assume that radiation that penetrated starship shields and hulls penetrates personal armor.)
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In ALL the space combats I have run or played in, not once did a character do anything that was outside of the actions in Space Combat.Bingo. This is the crux of the problem I have with this.
If your players only take actions outlined in the CRB or little handout cards, you'd be better off resolving starship combat on their phones or tablets. Turn-based with phases, select your action from the menu.
But we're not playing a video game, what we're left with is a simulation of a video game using ship minis, a hex map, and dice. That's not what people come to game night to play.
You can make this same argument for Regular Combat. Why do you want to make Space Combat harder? It is not real life.
Anyways, we see things differently I don't understand the problem that you believe needs to be solved.
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You can make this same argument for Regular Combat.
No, you can't. Regular D20 combat encourages creative solutions that cannot be resolved in the same manner of a computer game. No matter how many options a game gives you, no matter how complex or rich the combat system, it will be a very long time before it can match the reasoning of a human GM.
The first way it does this is provide objective limits. Players could never plan if they had to ask the GM each round whether they could reach a certain position, whether an effect has a certain range or AoE from that position, etc. Players need to know what they can do in how many rounds to make decisions.
If you're just rolling out a fire fight, it ends there. But creative players aren't going to stop with straight-up attacks each round, especially against a stronger opponent. They'll use the environment, distractions, stealth, banter, spells and equipment in ways they were not intended.
A good game game system, a good adventure, and a good GM encourage this while allowing players the freedom to come up with solutions the author or GM may not have considered. One of the reason I love playing magic users is the plethora of tools available via spells.
Now consider this in starship combat terms, eg Star Trek TNG when Picard was rescued in the battle of Wolf 359; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy8wqywAkrg
As it stands, you cannot generally perform a boarding action during starship combat. You cannot hack an opponents computer, fire a breaching pod vs their TL in attempt to board them, or even use a spell to buff your ship's shields.
I would love to see a technomancer use a digital doorway spell to slip onto an enemy's ship via one of the crew's personal computer or comm device, then engage their engineer in combat so he's unable to patch systems or divert to shields during starship combat.
I would absolutely love to see players trick an opponent to receive a copy of the drow death metal from SFS #1-06 during starship combat, I would love it more if they could do so as a "distracting hack" on their computer system to temporarily reduce or remove the bonuses their ship's computer would give them.
I disagree with you on this. The rules are set and that is what computers do, run rules. Maybe the rules are more complex and it be very difficult to implement as a game, but it could be done given enough resources.
You're missing the point here. That your possible actions in starship combat can be presented on handout cards, something that can fit easily into a mobile game's action menu, is the problem I have with it.
The major actions in tactical combat could be put into a similar system; hit with melee weapon, shoot with ranged weapon, move, acrobatics, etc but you'd loose the creativity a human GM makes possible.
Frankly, I think it goes as far as to break Starfinder's spirit. Starship combat mechanics and technology, no magic or fantasy components. Even having some spells to do things like buff starship shields, disguise a ship, or target it with a magic tractor beam would be a huge step in the right direction.
One of the best things Skull & Shackles did IMHO was declare ships as "constructs" allowing spells like Make Whole work on them. It opened up a lot of options that made the game more fun to play.
Basically the lack of defined time backs up the 'spells and other effects don't work in starship combat unless they say so' with none such saying so. The trouble is, that's a clumsy hack in itself. There's no good reason in many cases, it's just a blanket ban which allows the designers to get away without defining how they might interact.
As for distance, it is undefined. We can't ram another ship. So it would be a judgement call for the GM.
One thoughts on the ramming. I know the rules currently say you can't do it and generally it'd be a bad idea.
However, years ago I played a lot of Star Fleet Battles. That, too, had a rule that the speeds and distances involved prevented anyone from ramming. I developed some rules for a race that, due to race-specific technology, COULD ram and created the ramming rules for that. Steve Cole, the SFB driving force, initially rejected the idea and the race, but later published my rules (almost verbatim) as an optional rule in the monthly newsletter.
So, who knows, maybe someday we'll have an option to ram ....
One thoughts on the ramming. I know the rules currently say you can't do it and generally it'd be a bad idea.
As for distance, it is undefined. We can't ram another ship. So it would be a judgement call for the GM.
While 3PP, Starships, Stations and Salvage Guide has rules for ramming prows and displacement of damage. Rather than visiting the Paizo boards to work out that which I thought weren't mentioned or not explained well in the Core, I thought them out myself and another designer, then created our own rules supplement to include those in a SF game.