A new AP this week means new PC rules options. Here's a brief summary.
Archetype
Deep Culture's Specialist
9th: Identify as an SLA 3/day is pretty bad, picking up Retrocognition at 16th is better, but it only works in solar locations.
12th: Once per day you can take 10 minutes to add a free flaming fusion, plus a weak burn crit effect, to multiple weapons. It only lasts one hour. If you have a pressing problem at 12th level that can solved by converting half your damage into fire you probably aren't playing SF and you certainly aren't playing inside the sun in SF, but if you somehow are this is a thing, I guess. As long as you have 10 minutes to prepare.
18th: You get Fire Resistance 20, and treat radiation as one level lower before applying its effects to yourself. It's not, precisely, just way late to be a marginal improvement over armor protections and the ubiquitous (and cold protecting) Thermal Capacitor armor upgrade.
Hybrid Items
Antipathy Unit, level 10: A bulk 5 item that can make a 100' radius field that keeps people out if they don't pass a DC 19 save. You can set it up to exclude your party from its effects, making it potentially useful for thinning out melee opponents who want to close with you. Put it on the back of some power armor or a vehicle, maybe.
Psychic Resonator, level 12: Bulk 100. Effects: (1) Doubles the range of all telepathy on the same planet(!) if I'm reading this right. Expect some redundant installations on Castrovel when the technology leaks. (2) If you have (limited) telepathy you can use it as a system wide comlink to talk to anyone you know who is in the same star system. Expect this to be installed in a few high end command ships when the technology leaks; I'm guessing there's no widespread jamming/interception technology or light speed delay. (3) If you don't know the recipients, you can broadcast telepathatic messages to large groups of people at range of plot.
Vehicle
Protector Chariot, level 12: Very racially locked, you need a race, a feat, and an alignment to bond with a specific vehicle. For those few this is a huge land/air vehicle that can transform into other vehicles.
Starship Options
Psiostatis Pods: Expansion bay option that provides total stasis for populations doing sublight travel over centuries or millenia. Doesn't work in the Drift. Not useful to PCs.
Solar Shield Channel: A special ship upgrade that lets you go solar exploring but when active hurts your shields, gives you protection against certain solar themed weapons, and prevents your use of the same types of weapons. A necessity for solar explorations, useless otherwise.
PC Races
Anassanoi: + wis/cha, -con, full (not limited) telepathy, some other normnal stuff like blindsense and skill boosts. Also a big weakness: you treat dim light as total darkness.
Planar Scion, Oread: +str/wis, -cha, acid resistance, darkvision, can convert dealt acid damage to bludgeoning, energy ray SLA but acid (or bludgeoning) only, so what's the point.
Bottom Line
Not a lot of rules content this month, and nothing to get excited about.
Whoa, Oreads are not worth being excited about? I beg to differ. Oreads are the best.
I really like the Anassanoi, and can't think of a reason for the PCs not to have a Psychic Resonator on their ship if they're telepathic.
I really like the Anassanoi, and can't think of a reason for the PCs not to have a Psychic Resonator on their ship if they're telepathic.
Sure, get into the brains of 5 crew members spending a month in the drift with nothing to do but sit and think. and think. What could go wrong..
Sure, get into the brains of 5 crew members spending a month in the drift with nothing to do but sit and think. and think. What could go wrong..
less awkward silence and more convoluted silence, a weird habit of talking really fast, and people coming up with mental fart jokes.
less awkward silence and more convoluted silence, a weird habit of talking really fast, and people coming up with mental fart jokes.Sure, get into the brains of 5 crew members spending a month in the drift with nothing to do but sit and think. and think. What could go wrong..
Wouldn't this be an issue even without the psychic resonator?
Finally a high level only archetype, and yet again the powers sound so weak only a soldier would bother with them.
What do these anassanoi look like?
Finally a high level only archetype, and yet again the powers sound so weak only a soldier would bother with them.
What do these anassanoi look like?
Triangular heads, three eyes, two vertical mouth skits.
Triangular heads, three eyes, two vertical mouth skits.Finally a high level only archetype, and yet again the powers sound so weak only a soldier would bother with them.
What do these anassanoi look like?
Pale skin with pink and violet pigmentation along the edges of face and hands, they also have a slim body type and look really cool. Lol mouth slits..
Also two arms and legs.
Also two arms and legs.
Also, three-fingered hands and two-toed feet.
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I really like the Anassanoi, and can't think of a reason for the PCs not to have a Psychic Resonator on their ship if they're telepathic.I can think of a reason: if it really does grant those effects at planetary range? Its a giant psychic "LOOK AT ME" beacon. Hope you enjoy having literally every species that has any psychic ability or technology at all immediately knowing that your ship has arrived and where it is, 24/7.
It doesn't say anything about serving as a beacon or otherwise transmitting its presence, so I'm not sure where you're getting that idea from. It would be more like "that's odd, I can communicate telepathically farther than I could yesterday."
It is producing an effect with literally planetary range. To argue that this somehow does *not* involve transmitting anything detectable, would require more than a little explicit statement to pass the plausibility test. Otherwise, your basically saying "It is imbuing people thousands of miles away with fairly major magical effects, but no, really, its not actually transmitting any detectable signal".
There’s precedent from planar enhancements to magic. They just give you a boost, they don’t make you sense it coming from a source.
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The resonator is not a repeater, it is explicitly not transmitting anything in its passive function. This is clearly evident from how it is possible to invert the effect of boosting psychic ability.
From the description of its effect, the resonator affects the psychic medium around a planet, allowing telepathy to travel more easily through the ether increasing the effective distance. Likewise, as a dampener it causes the ether to resist the psychic energy of telepathy. These passive effects do not imply any transmission effect from the psychic resonator itself.
... if it is altering the psychic medium of an entire planet, in what way is *that* not detectable, like a giant beacon?
I would assume it's obvious that the resonator is somewhere on the planet.
Finding where it is would be more difficult.
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... if it is altering the psychic medium of an entire planet, in what way is *that* not detectable, like a giant beacon?
If you dropped a drop of dye into a swirling tank of water (the swirling in this case being representative of the telepathic communication occurring on the planet anyways, which would theoretically muddy the telepathic medium), even a minute later would you be able to look at the now colored water and pinpoint where the drop of dye was dropped in? Because I think that's the comparison (or at least similar to it) they're making. Using it changes the entire medium of the planet via a cascade reaction, rather than a constant input.
Of course it's not quite a perfect comparison given the effect does change if you remove the device, but then the water would revert to colorless if you removed the dye too, that's just a bit more complex.