Okay.
So our party, which is starting at level 1, consists of 7 characters. Which is inconviently more than you can fit on the standard-issue Medium explorer frame (or the Kevolari Venture).
One obvious option is to swap out the science lab for guest quarters.
Of course, the problem is, that the number of expansions are so limited, it basically means the group having to pay an opportunity cost mechanically (i.e. loose 25% of any potential upgrade slots) just because we happen to have seven actual people who want to play the game.
(Never mind the fact that the woe betide if your PCs ever want to have, like, a relaxation room or something, given the need for medical bays, workshops or escape pods (seeing as we'd need to bays to have enough...)
Has anyone else had this issue and how was it resolved?
What do you think might be a fair compromise to suggest to the DM? Just ignoring the 6-crew maximum completely (I mean, we have one goblin and a Ysoki, which is two small creatures...) Increasing the BP or the number of expansions slightly? Maybe icnreasing the the latter slightly, but keeping the same BP which would keep a budget as it were?
I would welcome any suggestions.
(Unrelated, but as a starship freak, professional starship designer and rules-writer, the starship size/weight classifications compared to the stats make me cringe SO HARD. I maybe wouldn't have as much of a problem is the starships were in the same order of magnitude scale, but a 3-mile drednought's improvements in capacity over a vessel 125000 times smaller than just feels... So very wrong - even accounting for the fact fictionsl starships tend to scale closer to linear by length than volumetrically... Mini-rant over.)
Adding guest quarters gives them extra places to sleep, it doesn’t change the maximum of 6 characters taking combat crew actions in starship combat. House rule it or they need a large ship which won’t fly at all if they drop to 5 characters.
Two ships that start at tier 1, but afterwards remain at tier = APL -2. Balancing of encounters might be required. Both ships should have full BP for each ship and sharing BP between ships should be prohibited.
Ignore the 6 crew thing if you are all comfortable with the ship roles you've decided on.
Two ships is possible, but tricky. The system isn't really rigged for it but it might be more fun. You'd need enough diversity of skills
The problem would be each ship would take a different time to travel a given distance and you would split the partyIgnore the 6 crew thing if you are all comfortable with the ship roles you've decided on.
Two ships is possible, but tricky. The system isn't really rigged for it but it might be more fun. You'd need enough diversity of skills
I believe when you link two drift drives together they can arrive and depart at the same time.
I think that was in the drift article of one of the dead suns AP books.
Yeah. The easiest solution would be to increase the maximum crew of one of the existing frames.
-----
Having two PC ships would be interesting. Certainly more impact of actions from each individual on the ships. If all the players are on one ship, then they still could have only one pilot (and captain, but that is less of a problem from what I have seen).
Balance for starship combat would be a bit of a challenge. Treading into uncharted waters here. If the two PC ships have their own BP budget and are kept at a reasonable level with the PC player level, then they would squash opponent ships even more than normal. But dropping the individual tier budget of each ship or making the PCs split the normal budget across both ships could risk having the PCs get squashed instead. And as I have mentioned before, starship combat RAW is an all-in experience.
I don't think it is a stretch of the rules at all to have the two ships be able to tag along with each other when doing normal travel or drift jumps.
I know I saw something about linking drift engines. That's a problem easily solved.
The one I'm wondering about is a 7 person ship. Even if we assume the party is well distributed - captain, pilot, engineer, science, gunner gunner gunner?
That requires a lot of guns, and stuffs some people full time into some roles we've had better luck/satisfaction with rotating.
I'd almost suggest doing the two-ship thing, and being willing to rewrite history if it doesn't work. But then you need two pilots, two gunners, hopefully a computer/engineer on each ship, and one captain.
hire one of those plant people, they increase the maximum of the ship by 2
They don’t.
That already exists, the Launch Tube from Pact Worlds.
That already exists, the Launch Tube from Pact Worlds.And this is what I get for only checking the Core Book.
Do you know of the Archives of Nethys? It's the official rules repository for all things Starfinder. It has all of the races, classes, feats, gear, and other rules from all of the books all in one place.
You know, once The Character Operations Manual Drops there will be two new roles for starship combat.
-Beta
Whaaaaa?? (I haven't read any of the beta test stuff)
Whaaaaa?? (I haven't read any of the beta test stuff)You know, once The Character Operations Manual Drops there will be two new roles for starship combat.
-Beta
It was a Paizocon reveal. One role is Magic Officer, we don’t know the other.
Yeah, but I've noticed the odd error there, and it's often easier to CTRL+F through the PDF if I remember the language more than the location.Do you know of the Archives of Nethys? It's the official rules repository for all things Starfinder. It has all of the races, classes, feats, gear, and other rules from all of the books all in one place.That already exists, the Launch Tube from Pact Worlds.And this is what I get for only checking the Core Book.
I've found the archive's search function to be more than adequate. Unlike the PDFs, where I can only find a single item at a time, the archive allows me to search by theme. For example, if I want to make a telepath, I can quickly search every feat, device, racial ability, and spell with the word "telepathy." Or when making a sniper, I could reorder the weapons tables to show me all the weapons in order of longest to shortest range.
Though you're right that there is an odd mistake here and there, I usually just hit the "contact us" button in the left sidebar and email a quick link and note to them so that it gets fixed right up (which they're really great about).
Yeah, Oras has been missing forever, I mentioned it two nights ago on the Discord, a guy said he'd fix it the next day, still no Oras.
There are also a lot of Armory weapon errors. Ranges on grenades, armor slots on higher level shout projectors, stun vs. nonlethal on higher level shout projectors are the ones that come to mind.
Making a low level ship which carries another within the BP budget is basically impossible though, assuming you want both to be armed. The launch tube is how to do it but you need to add some to the budget for this to work at all.
Making a low level ship which carries another within the BP budget is basically impossible though, assuming you want both to be armed. The launch tube is how to do it but you need to add some to the budget for this to work at all.
Which is why I suggest using the 'designing ship encounters' blurb to let the PCs build two ships at APl -2. No sharing of budgets.
For pre-written adventures they should still stomp all over encounters.
The minimum ship size for a launch tube is medium. The minimum BP for a medium ship with a drift drive and a launch tube (unarmed, unarmoured, no shields, cut-rate sensors, M4 thrusters, pulse gray power core) is 36. A 40 BP, 1/2 level ship doesn't work with this; it only barely begins to work with a level 1, 55 BP ship, which by your measure Garretmander they wouldn't get until level 3.
I'd start them on two tier 1 ships if they need ships by level 1, only letting them upgrade by level 4.
But, with seven players, I would recommend two medium explorers over a medium explorer and a tiny fighter that launches from it. At least until level 10 or so.
That way the loss of one ship in battle isn't potentially a TPK like losing the mothership would be.
Missed the edit window...
Alternatively if it's not a pre-written path, give the PCs two ships at APL, and design their opponents at +2 tiers over what it would have been if the PCs had a single ship.
The DM has decided that, after considering the options, he's just going to slap an extra engineering slot on the ship and pretend it's the premium model or something. Thanks for the suggestions, everyone.
The DM has decided that, after considering the options, he's just going to slap an extra engineering slot on the ship and pretend it's the premium model or something. Thanks for the suggestions, everyone.
An extra engineer is useless until you have a glitching system without an additional house rule.