Venture-Captain, Pennsylvania—Pittsburgh
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I'm looking forward to running this! The ambiance is fun. The race against the hellknights is a nice way to keep this from being a run-of-the-mill dungeon crawl, too. (That, and the relative lack of combat compared to your typical dungeon crawl.)
One thing I'm not 100% on: the infrared laser trap. I'm guessing that the assumption is that if someone has darkvision, they see the lasers. Should be a pretty safe bet that out of 3+ high-level Starfinders someone will have darkvision up. The thing I'm less sure of is, how frequently should a PC make the save? The trap's less a triggered single effect and more an environmental challenge. I'm thinking that it'll be a once-per-round thing, at the start of the PC's turn.
One other thing I'm excited about--a varied team to challenge the PCs at the end! I have to imagine those hackers will go down easily, but if they don't, for some reason, this could be fun.
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I was wondering about the IR lasers too. It's probably not worth collating rules too much on who can see IR vs who can see UV and all that, but since I'm a dork and will do that anyways: plain ol' Darkvision wouldn't let you see IR, since that operates using magic/natural abilities to 'see' without light at all. IR is just another wavelength of light, so I'd guess Darkvision doesn't help with seeing light in any wavelength. Nor would Darkvision Capacitors work, since they operate on UV, not IR wavelengths.
However, Infrared Sensors, Enhanced Scanners and Wide-Spectrum Ocular Implants look like they'd work, as they specifically work on IR?
I'm also curious about how the data retrieval / data deletion race in the finale goes. If I read it correctly, PCs need to spend 1 Standard Action beside the data towers to start the download, and then just a Free Action (without having to be beside the tower) to maintain it, for 5 rounds.
However, the Hellknight hackers need to spend a Standard every round, and remain beside the Towers, to make progress deleting the data. Sounds like the deck is stacked against the Hackers; but that's probably a good thing. The Hellknight team does have one ace up their sleeve, in that Setys beings interfering with the link if the PCs have 3 rounds of progress?
What are peoples reads on if those "rounds of progress" can happen concurrently by multiple people? I.E. If two PCs have each spent a Standard Action to start two downloads, does that count as 1 round of progress, or two? Similarly, if both Hellknight hackers spend a standard action to delete, is that 1 or 2 rounds of progress?
I'm leaning towards multiple efforts don't stack, since it makes the fight more interesting if it that "race" can't theoretically be blitzed by 5 PCs in 1 round.
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Well, for starters its a trap. You can't say that the trap is unspottable without a specific form of vision. Even if someone can't see the lasers, they can always spot the emiter and reciever. You might give a bonus or autopass to someone with those extraordinary senses though, since it would look like they're about to walk into a rave...
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Venture-Captain, Pennsylvania—Pittsburgh
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I don't think Darkvision is necessarily always weird and magical so much as it's just loosely defined. It's doing the work for both the UV ocular sensors and the infrared vision, both of which grant darkvision--they just happen to say how it works! Our local meta sees a ton of infrared sensors, though (so do the skittermander scenarios!), so that was my base assumption.
I think my read on the PC's efforts stacking was that they wouldn't, because it shouldn't be a one-round-success thing like you said--but I wouldn't have particularly strong feelings about it. If I remember correctly, if the party was quirky enough to try it, they're upping the CR of the encounter on themselves. They're getting hit pretty hard without much retaliation, and they're bringing the technomancers into the battle all at once when they weren't supposed to get involved immediately.
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I don't think Darkvision is necessarily always weird and magical so much as it's just loosely defined. It's doing the work for both the UV ocular sensors and the infrared vision, both of which grant darkvision--they just happen to say how it works! Our local meta sees a ton of infrared sensors, though (so do the skittermander scenarios!), so that was my base assumption.
I think my read on the PC's efforts stacking was that they wouldn't, because it shouldn't be a one-round-success thing like you said--but I wouldn't have particularly strong feelings about it. If I remember correctly, if the party was quirky enough to try it, they're upping the CR of the encounter on themselves. They're getting hit pretty hard without much retaliation, and they're bringing the technomancers into the battle all at once when they weren't supposed to get involved immediately.
Except that as soon as they succeed, the commander calls a retreat and the enemies all flee...