How long after the book is out will it be before they update the Additional Resources page with the Character Operations Manual? Dying to play as a biohacker in society play
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I have a Level 2 Vesk Vanguard GM Blob and a Level 4 super-Skittermander Witchwarper GM Blob anxiously awaiting their first real mission.
For Biohacker, I'm torn between Elebrian and Ghibrani.
Either way, Thurston was really on top of sanctioning things quickly, so my hope is that the book will be available soon, but Developer shortage hurt SFS, too, so it might be awhile.
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AA3 and DoF AR are waiting on the web-team alas.
I've finished my work on them.
I'll see where they're at?
COM, as stated, will take a bit longer (especially since I want our AR Review folks to get a good look at them)
What about Attack of The Swarm?
I'm currently waiting on getting the full AP in my hands; that way I can wrap all the sanctioning in one go.
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I'm still digesting *races*.Haven't even *looked* at classes yet.
Hopefully the sanctioning isn't very nitpicky!
Alt racial stats are almost certainly a no-go for Society, at least without a boon. Society races have to be properly curated; letting Lashunta start with +2 to all mental stats and -4 Con is one of those things that I'd want to ask the GM, "are you SURE you want to allow that?"
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I got my copy of COM today. I do not envy Thursty's work weeding out the balanced stuff from the bonkers crazypants stuff.This book has more crunch than a shobhad's recommended daily fiber intake.
Just started yesterday. It is a lot to take in.
At least people can finally play those Vesk/Dwarf/Elf/etc Androids they've been wanting to for a while!
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Alt racial stats are almost certainly a no-go for Society, at least without a boon. Society races have to be properly curated; letting Lashunta start with +2 to all mental stats and -4 Con is one of those things that I'd want to ask the GM, "are you SURE you want to allow that?"
I'm still digesting *races*.Haven't even *looked* at classes yet.
Hopefully the sanctioning isn't very nitpicky!
I'm hoping that it is open, otherwise it pretty much *guts* the benefit of having the expanded racial information in the COM for SFS. Telling folks to 'get a boon for it' is not very player-friendly.
As far as -4 to CON? That means that a player making a character interested in survival is going to have to spend 4 of their 10 points to get to a non-negative CON modifier. So it actuallly works out, imo.
The thing I'd be watching more for is the Themes like Noble Scion, for the same reason that similar Traits were banned in PFS -- the 'free money' ones, that is.
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Uh, "get a boon for it" is literally the way Paizo's chosen to reward players. That Cantina Feel is 2 years into boon rewards allowing additional races, and honestly the hope of getting a skittermander or whatnot is what drives a lot of players in my area.
Want to play Data Analysis Vesk? Sure, just get a GM boon or play an upcoming scenario located at the Veskarium's Warfare Analysis Municipality.
Honestly, they should probably treat all of the alternate racial options as separate personal boons, with the caveat that you can combine them if they don't alter or remove the same racial trait.
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Honestly, they should probably treat all of the alternate racial options as separate personal boons, with the caveat that you can combine them if they don't alter or remove the same racial trait.
Oh hell to the No. Basic character customization is an integral feature of the system and what attracts a lot of people to d20 based games. It shouldn't be gated behind one particular form of play or the potlock of playing the right scenario with the right character.
Save the con boons for the weird stuff like hyper-intelligent shades of blue or the not evil Jinsul drizzts.
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Tying it to Boons like that is effectively making the benefit of having the Core Rulebook (required for SFS) and the additional source material (the COM) to utilize the item a 'sunk cost'.
'Just get a GM boon' is NOT nearly as easy in some areas as others.
Particularly when they are Region-locked.
Particularly when one's availability/confidence in GMing is not the greatest.
Some will say "Well just run it online!"
...it's not that easy.
If it gets Boon-locked behind a scenario, that scenario will be played obsessively for the first month or so, then it will be VERY difficult to get that scenario to run no matter the region.
I don't have a problem with races from the Alien Archives having a higher hurdle to access, though.
It's not CORE(And Legacy) races, which have been in need of some serious love since launch.
Taking the love and locking it behind bureaucracy removes love from the system which is desperately needed.
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The problem is that some of the options are just plain better than the core book. Warblood Vesk get +Str/Dex and -Cha... Mechanically that's superior than +Str/Con and -Int even for a classic meat shield vesk tank. They've carefully curated what races could be in Society; letting anyone use any of the alternate racial bonuses basically throws that to the wind.
Scenario boons are a great way to incentivize players and GMs to organize games. Desire for skittermanders, for example, has triggered many a game in my locality.
I don't see Paizo just throwing up their arms and abandoning their careful character allowances. Either they won't allow alternate race bonuses at all, or they'll stick them behind boons. Just my educated guess.
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Scenario boons are a great way to incentivize players and GMs to organize games. Desire for skittermanders, for example, has triggered many a game in my locality.
If something is cool or fun or just plain weird having it as a reward for convention play is one thing.
But getting something more powerful for convention play is more or less literal pay to win.
The option might need to be ban hammered Or we might need to just accept the power creep for everyone. But convention goers get power creep and other people don't? Not cool.
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Yes, we don't want another repeat of the 'great Aasimar and Tiefling influx' when their alternate racial traits were allowed, and they were still 'open access' races in PF1...I don't know what this means!
*sits down in the rocking chair*
Pull up by the fire.
Eons ago, at the dawn of time.. somewhere around season 5, when allosauruses roamed the druids pet companion lists, Aasimar and tieflings were allowed freely as player options to celebrate the year of hitting demons in the face with cold iron objects.
Aasimar and tieflings are fine, but the splatbooks that came with them introduced 42 flavors of outsider, most of which had stat lines of +2 +2 -0. So for whatever two stats you really wanted there was probably SOME variation of outsider that had those stats. That was on top of immunity to x person spells, darkvision, and a host of minor and unique racial abilities.
Nearly every character made in those dark times was an aasimar or a tiefling, in no small part because they were clearly the best mechanical option for damn* near anything you would want to make.
*pun intended
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Venture-Agent, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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I don't see Paizo just throwing up their arms and abandoning their careful character allowances. Either they won't allow alternate race bonuses at all, or they'll stick them behind boons. Just my educated guess.
It isn’t Paizo making the determination, it is the Organized Play Foundation. It is good to keep in mind that the people making the rulebooks are serving a wider audience than OPF.
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*sits down in the rocking chair*
While I did laugh reading this, I don't think it's a good analogy.
I look at COM as being equivalent to Pathfinder's Advanced Race Guide.
There were a couple alternate racial abilities that were banned from that book, of which most were drow-related, but the vast majority were open.
And you saw really varied characters come out of it. Were their munchkins, too? Sure. But there were munchkins of all the races. And, ironically, the Aasimar/Tiefling heritages weren't even in that book!
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I would be surprised if most of the new racial ability sets did not become legal.
While Additional Resources serves a gatekeeper function, the function is not to completely redo the job of the game designers. It's one thing to bad an archetype or feat or item, it's another to ban a fundamental revision of a part of the game.
Because that's basically what this is: previously the core races had specific stat arrays with strengths and weaknesses. Starfinder already pushed the envelope compared to Pathfinder 1 with regards to nearly every race doing every class passably, and no race clearly dominating a class.
But then you got soooo many new races with so many arrays, many of which were more optimal than the CRB ones.
So now, giving more options to the CRB races seems to me like a balancing out of things: shifting the balance back to favor the core races, or at least not have them be at a disadvantage. For any class you should be able to say "there's three core races that do it very well".
It is power creep. Effectively, you should be able to have both your +2s in a stat you wanted to have above 10, and the -2 in something you can afford to ignore for a while. That's about +2 better than it used to be for many race/class combinations.
But I think in SFS the impact of that will not be so heavy. There are already a lot of "+2 to a stat not higher than 14" boons going around, but none of them are for core races. So this will help pull them even.
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If something is cool or fun or just plain weird having it as a reward for convention play is one thing.But getting something more powerful for convention play is more or less literal pay to win.
The option might need to be ban hammered Or we might need to just accept the power creep for everyone. But convention goers get power creep and other people don't? Not cool.
That is fair, but maybe there is some way to handle it that works for everyone. Maybe make the alternate race bonus boon purchasable as All Factions Boons in the Society guide, perhaps as a capstone, or as a RSP boon. That way it's available to most folks (or everyone), but you don't get a swarm of these advanced character options.
Venture-Agent, Minnesota
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Alright, let's look at this more broadly. What COM does is make sure that core races can actually do other class combinations. Although I knew a few vesk mechanics, that int penalty made them painful to build. Having more options mean that we'll see more representation of core characters throughout the class list, and more diverse characters all around.
It also means that you might see more people playing core characters, period.
I have three characters whose races hail from the CRB:
Everything else that I have created has a race boon attached to it. Even looking around my lodge, what did I see as race selections in Starfinder? Lashuntas, that were good at most classes. Vesks that were awesome in battle-oriented classes. Ysokis, because cheek pouches, yo! Androids, because that int+dex bonus is awesome all over the place.
Poor kasathas and shirrens just did not get played much, because the options to make them interesting mechanically were a little lesser. COM makes all these these races playable in different ways, opening up more character concepts and making the core races more appealing.
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"I always thought that I was appealing before this!" Cosmo considers. "That said... I am Hmm's -702. I received game credit at GenCon opening weekend and I am still only Level 3. Mom does not love me as much as the gnome, the elf, or that darned nuar that keeps charging everything. Heck, her two skittermanders just passed me by. I am the saddest, loneliest bug."
The sounds of a weeping shirren fill the thread.
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It isn’t Paizo making the determination, it is the Organized Play Foundation. It is good to keep in mind that the people making the rulebooks are serving a wider audience than OPF.
I am still very confused on the actual split when it comes to this stuff. So far everyone I've seen comment on sanctioning has been a Paizo employee and they've been open that it's on their list but it can't be the top priority.
It doesn't seem like OPF is actually in place yet to take over the sanctioning setup at this time?
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Campaign Leadership is made up of paid Paizo employees. Very few of them.
The Organized Play Foundation is made up of unpaid volunteers.
I think they mean they don't follow the logic of "who the hecks in charge of the additional resources". It's Thursty i think), but from a sane point of view the OPF would normally decide what rules the OPF played by wouldn't it?
Of course sane points of view are so... limited.
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OPF is still very new. I don't think Paizo quite knows yet how to utilize them. I imagine right now it's messy.
OPF is spending their time updating the online Guide, organizing volunteers for Conventions, and offering insight into what content to sanction.
Campaign Leadership has to review and correct what's being put into the Guide, coordinate their schedules with the OPF, and finalize what goes into Additional Resources.
It's like having a volunteer base to do the time consuming legwork, but you still need to finalize the business side of things.
Sorry, things seem to have gotten a bit off track. So was the answer months from now? That was the only one I saw in here
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Sorry, things seem to have gotten a bit off track. So was the answer months from now? That was the only one I saw in here
The answer is that Thursty is trying to get it done ASAP. How soon is possible is up in the air. The rest is all just speculation and argument about what is balanced enough to make the cut, colored by individual posters' biases.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Sorry, things seem to have gotten a bit off track. So was the answer months from now? That was the only one I saw in here
We can't say with any kind of precision. Everyone wants it to be done soon, but it's really a big book with a lot of stuff that needs careful vetting.
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Venture-Agent, Minnesota
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Yep, we're still waiting on:
Alien Archives 3
Dawn of Flame for items and such
COM -- ton of things to review
Attack of the Swarm -- for the AP to finish.
I know that I am eagerly awaiting the sanctioning of two items in AA3, a certain chapter of Attack of the Swarm, and most of COM. However, there are so many options already out there there that I can still keep building interesting characters. One of my level one characters is in STASIS waiting for Attack of the Swarm, and I'm pretty content to keep them there for a while.
We know right now there is only one Thursty, and until the Org Team gets their backup developer, a lot of this sanctioning has to be put on hold so that he can keep developing awesome content for us.
Hmm
Regional Venture-Coordinator, Appalachia
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As someone with a technomancer who is a Kasathan though, I will say that when you want something you can make it happen. Whether its GOOD is an entirely different discussion.
It is power creep. Effectively, you should be able to have both your +2s in a stat you wanted to have above 10, and the -2 in something you can afford to ignore for a while. That's about +2 better than it used to be for many race/class combinations.
This has really been at the core of many of the AR team discussions.
There is a lot of stuff here that IS power creep. Shields for instance are UNDENIABLY power creep and I do fully expect that once writers get a feel for where shields push ACs that there is going to be a concomitant increase in to hit modifiers - this is what it is and there's not anything AR can do about it - this was a deliberate design decision made by the design team.
There being options for +4 Dex races is undeniably more powerful than there not being such an option but is it really ban worthy?
Bans are really just for options that are truly a little bonkers and/or throw the game balance out of whack in ways that probably weren't intended. Or for stuff that simply isn't well suited to org play specific issues.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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There is a lot of stuff here that IS power creep. Shields for instance are UNDENIABLY power creep and I do fully expect that once writers get a feel for where shields push ACs that there is going to be a concomitant increase in to hit modifiers - this is what it is and there's not anything AR can do about it - this was a deliberate design decision made by the design team.
Starfinder has had a bit of a learning curve for me as a player but past low level, it's definitely possible to have functional layered defenses as a melee character. It really seems like low level is the bumpiest, at level 4+ things stabilize a lot. Shields will add to that but it was already there.
As for the "arms race" aspect, I think more could be gained out of a reappraisal of encounter building guidelines - I don't think the "find your XP budget, select many or few monsters as long as the XP adds up" method works. It assumes that 4x CR3 = 1X CR7, against any party. But that's not true at all, and in fact it's untrue in different ways against different level parties. A level 4 party expects some scratches from the CR3s and a very hard fight against the CR 7, while a level 7 party expects no damage at all from the CR3s and only some wouonds from the CR7.
There being options for +4 Dex races is undeniably more powerful than there not being such an option but is it really ban worthy?
My take is that a +2/+2 on two stats you both wanted to raise for your build is just as powerful as +4/+0; you're going to spend the same amount of ability points to raise that array to your desired build.
The real issue is whether both +2s are in something you care about, and the -2 in something you don't care about. If only one of the +2s is useful to you then it's weaker than if both are useful.
COM adds so many new arrays that finding an optimal one will be easier, and therefore that's like a +2 across the board.
Bans are really just for options that are truly a little bonkers and/or throw the game balance out of whack in ways that probably weren't intended. Or for stuff that simply isn't well suited to org play specific issues.
Indeed, in the AR we're always hoping to allow in everything that's safe to allow in. One of the things that drew me to organized play was a home campaign with an extremely restrictive GM ("cleric fighter rogue wizard only, and don't count on getting new spells"). The "stuff is allowed unless there's a good reason against it" setup is an asset and we intend to keep it.
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There is a lot of stuff here that IS power creep. Shields for instance are UNDENIABLY power creep and I do fully expect that once writers get a feel for where shields push ACs that there is going to be a concomitant increase in to hit modifiers - this is what it is and there's not anything AR can do about it - this was a deliberate design decision made by the design team.
I disagree on the basis that I think AC is under-performing in its role as damage mitigation currently. "Creep" is only adjustment to somewhere it might be useful.
Currently NPC hit is so high that I don't find any value in armor class, at all. My mystic hangs in the back and went till level 9 before getting himself some level 6 armor, I have two strength operatives that wander into melee with second skin and 12 dexterities. Armor is a place to slap upgrades.
What I think gets overlooked a lot is that you don't always have on level armor. You have to go 3-4 levels between upgrades. Having a shield over that period puts it slightly ahead after an upgrade, but probably more in line with where it belongs in between level ups.
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Don't forget that shields will now be money sinks for most characters that get them, and may possibly delay armor and weapons purchases, which will probably balance out all but the extreme cases.
That may mitigate some of the concern.
I think that's a minor concern at best. Shields scale very slowly, such that the shields you might care about are levels 1-5. There is no AC benefit to upgrading them again until 13. In fact, the Field and Advanced Tactical Shields are mechanically identical save for hardness/HP, but are 2500 and 17500 creds, respectively. Would you pay 15k more for hardness/HP?
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I think that's a minor concern at best. Shields scale very slowly, such that the shields you might care about are levels 1-5. There is no AC benefit to upgrading them again until 13. In fact, the Field and Advanced Tactical Shields are mechanically identical save for hardness/HP, but are 2500 and 17500 creds, respectively. Would you pay 15k more for hardness/HP?Don't forget that shields will now be money sinks for most characters that get them, and may possibly delay armor and weapons purchases, which will probably balance out all but the extreme cases.
That may mitigate some of the concern.
Well you can jam more fusions on the Advanced, and the calculation for save effects are going to be different. Still not that significant unless you are doing a Captain America build.
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Well you can jam more fusions on the Advanced, and the calculation for save effects are going to be different. Still not that significant unless you are doing a Captain America build.I think that's a minor concern at best. Shields scale very slowly, such that the shields you might care about are levels 1-5. There is no AC benefit to upgrading them again until 13. In fact, the Field and Advanced Tactical Shields are mechanically identical save for hardness/HP, but are 2500 and 17500 creds, respectively. Would you pay 15k more for hardness/HP?Don't forget that shields will now be money sinks for most characters that get them, and may possibly delay armor and weapons purchases, which will probably balance out all but the extreme cases.
That may mitigate some of the concern.
I would guess that more characters will use shields for the AC bump, but your point is fair. I suspect we'll see some heavies with Riots and most others with Knights. The Cap builds are probably going to revolve around Knights because of the damage type option, as well.
I've just been slightly mystified by some of the balance choices on shields. I get that it's all supposed to be pretty tight math, but it's a weird thing to say "there's virtually no benefit to this 15k additional cost unless you're sinking more credits on buffs."
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There's a benefit, it's just not on the scale that I think it would be considered "creep". Right now it really just feels more like opening up the system to new styles in general. I don't think there's enough baseline content to really hit "creep" yet if that makes sense?
I mean, if anything "creep" in Starfinder came baseline with how good DEX is :P
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Regional Venture-Coordinator, Appalachia
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There is a lot of stuff here that IS power creep. Shields for instance are UNDENIABLY power creep and I do fully expect that once writers get a feel for where shields push ACs that there is going to be a concomitant increase in to hit modifiers - this is what it is and there's not anything AR can do about it - this was a deliberate design decision made by the design team.
I disagree on the basis that I think AC is under-performing in its role as damage mitigation currently. "Creep" is only adjustment to somewhere it might be useful.
Currently NPC hit is so high that I don't find any value in armor class, at all. My mystic hangs in the back and went till level 9 before getting himself some level 6 armor, I have two strength operatives that wander into melee with second skin and 12 dexterities. Armor is a place to slap upgrades.
What I think gets overlooked a lot is that you don't always have on level armor. You have to go 3-4 levels between upgrades. Having a shield over that period puts it slightly ahead after an upgrade, but probably more in line with where it belongs in between level ups.
Perhaps its my exposure to higher tier content lately but it's started getting to the point where I am practically EXPECTING level+2 armor on anyone who plans to melee. Its not quite "20 or nothing" but it's really close. One of the key things I like about GMing Starfinder is that generally the monsters that are supposed to be good at hitting things hit them quite well and for that to go away would be a true body blow to the system.
Think of how 'whatever' Dhurus would have been if when he opened up for a full attack he missed 4 times.
I simply dread going back to the old PF1 "ah yes you have a 38 AC and my to hit is +17" days - especially when Enhanced Resistance exists and is standard issue for anyone in melee.
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...I am practically EXPECTING level+2 armor on anyone who plans to melee...Think of how 'whatever' Dhurus would have been if when he opened up for a full attack he missed 4 times.
I mean, even at L11 with +2 you're looking at roughly the same AC values (+2-+4 at extremes?) and no change in Max DEX. With a Shield, someone is going to spend their credits for another handful of AC? So, lets say they're rocking a what, 19 Armor + 3 DEX + 3 Shield for 25?
I just pulled up a random CR13 and they're rocking a +20 melee/+22 ranged attack with a bunch of SLAs toboot.
A random CR 8? +19 melee.
I guess it just seems like we're not "there yet" to me in so far as "creep" being a thing.