Are there any rules for space hazards?

[Senko]

I was wondering are fhere any rules for space hazards in one of the books? For example I know one AP has a unique ship capable of travelling into a star but I can't find rules for how class a normal commercial ship can approach them before radiation/heat overwhelm its defenses or the gravity well of a black hole captures it?

[Alangriffith]

Senko wrote:

I was wondering are there any rules for space hazards in one of the books?

The new Starship Operations Manual has some. There is currently a sample scenario from it on the forums (A Singular Notion) which contains a space hazard called Time Eaters.

Link:

https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6shbe?STARFINDER-ENCOUNTER-A-SINGU LAR-NOTION#discuss

Quote:

For example I know one AP has a unique ship capable of travelling into a star but I can't find rules for how class a normal commercial ship can approach them before radiation/heat overwhelm its defenses or the gravity well of a black hole captures it?

There aren't really any exact distances or speeds in the game at all (ship speeds are in hexes of unspecified distance, space travel within a system or via drift is all XD6 days not any real distance or speed given), so there definitely won't be any in the books. I don't know whether Starship Operations Manual lists any normal space hazards like 'near a sun', or just whacky sci-fi ones like the time eaters.

This is the sort of stuff the GM makes up or is only relevant for a specific scenario, and then not in real units (e.g. "the event horizon of the black hold is 20 hexes away, if the Devourer cult ship can drag the hostage ship there with their Gravity Gun tractor beam then the hostage ship is pulled to its doom").

[Claxon]

Does the exact distance matter for some reason?

As far as I know, there isn't anything like a generic list of space hazards that you can throw to spice up space travel.

And in your example above, the PCs should probably know (even if their players don't) that they can't just fly a normal space ship into a star.

But you could always have players drift jump too close to a star due to mysterious energy and make up a series of checks for the pilot/engineer/captain etc. to make to get far enough away before they're destroyed.

[Senko]

I've had experience with rules lawyers there's plenty of plot hooks i can do with this but i want to check if there's official rules before they crop up. Planning to get that manual when it goes to PDF on the 30th.

[Senko]

Twitch, twitch they're mocking me deliberately now.

New starship operations actually has space hazard then I see this . . .

Star Corona
Flying near a star without specific protection is never a good idea. If unprotected, a starship can take between 1d6 and 20d6 damage each round from the heat given off by a star’s corona, depending on the intensity of the star and the distance to the star’s surface. Some stars also discharge radiation that bypasses normal defenses and can affect the crew on board (see Radiation below).

So yes stars are hazards that deal damage but they DON'T list any guidelines for distance/damage its just left in the DM's hands "Yes this brown super giant deals 20D6 damage when your within 1 million hexes." 2 hours later "You accidentally crash into the blue super giant you take 1d6 as you turn around to fly out of it."

Not to mention the other rules I'm going to be grappling with understanding in this section like . . .

At the end of each round of starship combat, all starships in a damaging zone take damage from the hazard, distributed evenly across all quadrants. As a crew action during the helm phase, a science officer can align the starship’s shields to specifically protect against the active hazard (DC = 10 + 1-1/2 × the starship’s tier), negating any damage to shielded quadrants; quadrants with depleted shields can’t be protected in this way.

Soo its harder to protect more advanced ships? To shield a tier 2 ship against a hazard its DC 10 + 1.5 x 2 = 13 whereas a tier 20 ship is 10 + 1.5 x 20 = 40?

or

Radiation is most often adjudicated like a damaging zone (page 135), but instead of dealing damage to the starship, it exposes crew members to radiation as if the ship were hit by a weapon with the irradiate property that lists low (for starship tiers 3 and below), medium (tiers 4–10), high (tiers 11–17), or severe (tiers 18 and up) radiation.

Again more advanced ship takes worse damage from the hazard? A tier 2 ship getting too close to the sun exposes the crew to low radiation whereas a tier 20 exposes them to severe?

I have got to be missing something in these rules. Still at least we have some.

[Pantshandshake]

Things being harder/worse or having higher DCs based on the tier of the ship/vehicle is pretty standard Starfinder stuff.

[Metaphysician]

They *can't* list guidelines based on objective distance, because objective distance does not exist in Starfinder. How big a hex is depends on circumstances and game style.