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I have a question about the cybernetic tyrannosaurids. Their size is listed as large but their space and reach are listed as 15 ft as though they were huge. Does anyone know which is correct. They are nasty enough with the swallow whole ability so I am inclined to give them the space and reach of large creatures i.e. 10 ft.
Contributor
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There was a similar issue with another recent scenario where it said "large" but still had 15 ft for its space. In that case, the creature was listed in both the low level-range and the high, so it was easier to see that the "large" listing was incorrect (since it was listed as "huge" in one but not the other).
In this one...that's a tough call. Gary is absolutely right about needing to run as written with their 15' reach, but whether or not they are size 10' or 15' becomes a bit of a toss-up.
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Contributor
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A question I had was something I wish I had caught before the scenario was updated and re-uploaded.
(Important note, that - the scenario originally was missing the encounter page for the Pterosaurs, but the SFS organizers caught it and re-uploaded the scenario just the other day. If your scenario is only 49 pages long and not 50, you should grab the updated version!)
For the starship encounter, both tiers of the Pilgrim have stats for Captain, Engineer, 2 Gunners, Pilot, and Science Officer...but the ships themselves only have a listed complement of 4 and not 6. The other available ships have a complement that lines up with the roles presented.
Given how the ship encounters are for promotional footage and only fought until half hull points rather than a full starship combat, it's hard to tell whether or not that ship is intentionally left with less than a full crew or if this is another typo.
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If I was to guess, they have really long necks and that is why they have the 15' reach.
If you are running the adventure as a Society Legal table, you can't change the NPCs abilities so you should not reduce the reach.
Run as written.
Reviewing this after having played it, the dinos are written as size large with both 15' size and 15' reach, as Charles pointed out. The stat block is internally inconsistent, so you need to pick one or the other.
Short of developer/author clarification, I personally would recommend Huge. The numbers are more specific than the written size, so I tend to lean their way anyway--you can also look at other similar creatures, and other therapods in the Starfinder universe typically weigh in at Gargantuan.
Besides, while there's a fairly wide range of sizes for tyrannosaurids, smaller members of the family like Albertosaurus were still on the order of 30 feet or so from nose to tail as adults. They're big mothers.
Venture-Lieutenant, Canada—Manitoba
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I see the author has decided to write himself into the scenario! Cunning, Lamplighter, cunning.
Caught that, hey? But believe it or not, I am not the originator of SFS Lamplighter - that showed up in an earlier scenario, and so I figured she was fair game.
On the Robo-rexes, they were supposed to have the extra reach, but it looks like it didn't carry through both subtiers. There is an inconsistancy with listed size versus Space, and since changing Space can have major issues with combat I elected to give them extended reach instead. (Although, on this particular map is probably isn't much of an issue.)
The complement inconsistency is a straight-up error on my part. The numbers are balanced assuming the crew that is listed, though, so I wouldn't add any extra folks.
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I see the author has decided to write himself into the scenario! Cunning, Lamplighter, cunning.Caught that, hey? But believe it or not, I am not the originator of SFS Lamplighter - that showed up in an earlier scenario, and so I figured she was fair game.
Really? That's great. Fair game indeed.
Pterosaur question--I see we have the page with pterosaurs now! What didn't seem to get carried along with it was their special abilities block. I think we're missing Spring Attack. Is that right, and was anything else supposed to be there?
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Contributor
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I'm looking forward to running this today! It looks like a lot of fun.
I did want to call something out for GMs running this. Normally, NPC starship statblocks are presented with the Piloting ranks already included in AC and TL. The Starfinder Society Gorgon, as it was written to be a PC starship, does not have the Piloting ranks added, so you'll need to. The other starship options already have this value included.
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Hah. Hahahahaha. Oh boy.
I'm laughing because I just spent an hour working through the logic with my wife. By negating both of the conditions, it can make it hard to grok, it's true. Something about negation is just difficult. We never got to a NAND gate though; that's a bit of an odd one.
I think there's some simpler wording, but it took me a little while to get to. If we simplify the wording a bit for brevity's sake, a condensed version she found helpful was:
A combatant is shot at by a laser unless the combatant moves or is in melee.
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Just ran this myself. A brief after-the-game synopsis:
The Bad:
The Good:
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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One of my GMs introduced them as "lazy lasers". Each PC has a blue spotlight following them lazily, each NPC has a red spotlight following them. If the spotlight comes to rest on your spot, the laser fires. If you're moving enough during your turn, you stay ahead of the spotlight and don't get shot. If you're in close combat with an enemy, the spotlights overlap, which makes the light turn purple, and no shots are fired.
Practically speaking, the system punishes people who find a safe spot to camp and shoot. Because that'd be boring for the audience.
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There's some great tips in here - very helpful thread. Thanks y'all!
Very Important Question: why does the Zo! Crew member in the picture have a box of hands? Are...are those real? Are they prosthetics? Are they, like, snacks for undead members of the audience, or, aha, stage hands, or..?
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Venture-Lieutenant, Canada—Manitoba
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There's some great tips in here - very helpful thread. Thanks y'all!
Very Important Question: why does the Zo! Crew member in the picture have a box of hands? Are...are those real? Are they prosthetics? Are they, like, snacks for undead members of the audience, or, aha, stage hands, or..?
Zo! productions take advantage of the undead crew not needing to eat or sleep to survive. Given this, many of the crew bring along snacks to make sure their hunger doesn't make them get too shaky on the camera drone controls...
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Venture-Lieutenant, Canada—Manitoba
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if the combatant did not move at least half their speed on their turn and is not engaged in melee combat, a laser fires at them...Is written as an AND gate... thus requiring both be true for the conditional to be true...
Lau has the intention correct. If players don't move AND are not in melee, then they are making boring holovid content and get shot. If they move at least half speed, OR they are in melee, they are interesting enough for the cameras and don't get shot.
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There's some great tips in here - very helpful thread. Thanks y'all!
Very Important Question: why does the Zo! Crew member in the picture have a box of hands? Are...are those real? Are they prosthetics? Are they, like, snacks for undead members of the audience, or, aha, stage hands, or..?
Finger food...
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Was building macros for some of the shobhads and realized that the 7-8 subtier shobhads have the same attack bonuses (+13/+10) that the 5-6 subtier shobhads have. The damage goes up by a couple points, each. Was that intentional?
Other CR 6's in that subtier have +16 or +17 to hit with their primary attacks, give or take. Even the CR 5's have a higher bonus (+14/+11).
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Oh, here's one more, since I apparently need to read things more closely.
The robot hydras have a breath-weapon pounce, which I've never seen before:
Pounce (Ex) When a robot hydra charges, it can also make a full attack. It can use either its Multiattack or both of its ranged attacks for its full attack.
Working through the text of charge and how it's worded, I think what happens is that you declare a charge, pick a target (preferably one in the back), and move in a straight line over unobstructed terrain until your target is just inside your smaller breath weapon range. Both breath weapons are cones, but one's a 20-foot cone and the other's a 30-foot cone. Couldn't keep things simple, eh? ;)
So, that's my simplistic read on it. Is that what's intended, though? This is an awfully interesting ability that doesn't seem particularly clearly-defined. I could see variation in terms of whether you charge until the target's in the 20' cone or the 30' cone, for example.
Here's the full text of charge, for reference:
Charging is a full action that allows you to move up to double your speed and make a melee attack at the end of the movement. You can draw a weapon during a charge attack if your base attack bonus is at least +1.Charging carries tight restrictions on how you can move. You must move at least 10 feet (2 squares), and all movement must be directly toward the designated opponent, though diagonal movement is allowed. You must have a clear path toward the opponent, and you must move to the space closest to your starting square from which you can attack the opponent. If this space is occupied or blocked, you can’t charge. If any line from your starting space to the ending space passes through a square that blocks movement, slows movement (such as difficult terrain), or contains a creature (even an ally), you can’t charge. You can still move through helpless creatures during a charge. If you don’t have line of sight (see page 271) to the opponent at the start of your turn, you can’t charge that opponent.
Attacking on a Charge: After moving, you can make a single melee attack. You take a –2 penalty to the attack roll and a –2 penalty to your AC until the start of your next turn. You can’t move any farther after the attack. Some classes, including solarian and soldier, grant abilities that modify attacks made on charges.
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Venture-Captain, Georgia—Atlanta
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I ran this scenario twice in the past 72 hours with very different experiences.
The party on Saturday was 4 Operatives (one was an Operative / Biohacker) and a Mystic. The APL ended up in the high range at 6.8, making 2 of the operatives play up. The scenario took 7 hours to complete with this party mix after getting bogged down in the first match for about 3 hours of the session. The second session had a greater variety of character classes and completed the scenario in just over 5 hours.
One player raised a question as a result of the scenario. Given that the Society is furnishing members for Zo!’s shows, and this scenario in no way required non-lethal damage, not was there a direct mention of the defeated opponents being brought back to life after the show, does this now mean the Society is supporting premeditated murder, and if not, does that indicate that players participating in Zo’s murder games should expect their characters to gain infamy?
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One thing to note about starfinder and critters with regeneration: Starfinder doesn't have negative hitpoints. The lowest HP total you can have in starfinder is zero. They gain the HP at the start of their turn. This means that a regenerating creature is ALWAYS getting up on its turn and taking an action. (or doing something from the ground if it can) Even if it only has regeneration 1. You either need to shut off its regeneration, Kill it with massive damage, or bind it up while its unconscious and throw it through a jet engine or something.
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One player raised a question as a result of the scenario. Given that the Society is furnishing members for Zo!’s shows, and this scenario in no way required non-lethal damage, not was there a direct mention of the defeated opponents being brought back to life after the show, does this now mean the Society is supporting premeditated murder, and if not, does that indicate that players participating in Zo’s murder games should expect their characters to gain infamy?
Since you're required to warn the player about accruing infamy I would say not.
1)There's some very good moral arguments to make about gladiatorial combat to the death being premeditated murder and evil, but infamy and evil aren't the same thing. What the audience at home sees is two groups of people in a fair fight. Killing people in a fair fight doesn't cost you in most public opinion polls.
2) Its eoxian tv. If you're tuning in you expect people to get blow up. The overlap between the bleeding hearts from option 1 and Eoxian TV viewers is pretty narrow (and consists of a lot of hypocrites) :)
3) Depending on how the DM runs the death and dying rules, there should be very little chance of anyone dying.
Quentin Tarantinos chunky salsa rules: A monster or NPC reduced to 0 HP is dead, unless the last bit of damage it took was nonlethal damage, in which case it is knocked unconscious.
Gi Joe rules: If it is ever important to know exactly when a monster dies, such as if you want to capture the creature alive, the GM can decide that a monster reduced to 0 or fewer Hit Points with lethal damage dies in 3 rounds unless it takes any additional damage or receives healing.
With the second DM Option (which i greatly prefer) you shouldn't blow anyone's head off unless you do twice their HP in damage (these being npcs, they have a LOT of HP) Under pathfinder where washing your hands was the huge medical advancement, a peasant with his dirty shirt stuffed in an open artery had a good chance of stopping a bleed out. But in the future with anatomical knowledge and machines that go ping people are just irrevocably dead the second they drop?
Three rounds is long enough for most fights , so the EMT or Mystic or Emergency Mystic Technician can keep people alive once they're swept off screen. (give them a costume change and bring them back in 3 seasons)
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Can someone explain the Meteor Glaves to me?
1. I assume the C damage type is just a left over from cryopikes. (Altough it still *says* they are using Cryopikes.
2. Capacity 40, Usage 40 can't possibly be correct? That would mean you get 1 shot and then they are done?
Regarding #1, I assumed typo and just went with fire damage.
Regarding #2, it's a typo, which I'm guessing was imported from the Archives where the typo was first introduced as far as I can tell. In the print and PDF versions of the Armory, meteor glaives're Capacity 40 / Usage 4, which makes a lot more sense than Usage 40.
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Further question.
The chronicle lists Tactical Meteor Glaives, Liquidator Rifles, and Vesk Overplate 1 in the Tier 5-6 equipment (all of which come from the Tier 7-8 Nuar), and Advanced Meteor Glaives and Vesk Overplate 2 in the Tier 7-8 (which aren't even in the adventure.)
Should Tier 7-8 players be getting the Advanced Meteor Glaives and Vesk Overplate 2?
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There's some great tips in here - very helpful thread. Thanks y'all!
Very Important Question: why does the Zo! Crew member in the picture have a box of hands? Are...are those real? Are they prosthetics? Are they, like, snacks for undead members of the audience, or, aha, stage hands, or..?
Finger food. Stage hands for the stage hands.
