In particular I'm thinking about destroying cover. Depending on the circumstances, blowing up someone's cover could be less bothersome than trying to shoot past it round after round and it could possibly even happen incidentally if you're using area attacks. I know exactly how to determine an object's armor class and saving throw bonus in SF1 (page 409) but I don't know the corresponding rule for PF2. I found the table for object hardness and HP but couldn't find the rules for object armor class or saving throws. The Creative Cover operative feat gives you an object providing cover that has its own AC so that seems to be a thing at least in principle. The feature doesn't say anything about the cover's saving throws, and that's actually the part that I'm most interested in.
Yeah this is unfortunately a sore spot in PF2, some people go so far as to say you can't target/damage objects since there is no explicit means listed, while there are certain things in game that are used expressly for that purpose (like razing).
So unfortunately I wouldn't expect it to be run consistently or clearly, and I personally would avoid plans that interact with this topic.
Now your question is for the Starfinder playtest and not PF2, but the systems have been homogenized and I hope it's something that would be resolved in both.
Yeah this is unfortunately a sore spot in PF2, some people go so far as to say you can't target/damage objects since there is no explicit means listed, while there are certain things in game that are used expressly for that purpose (like razing).
There are other people who go even farther and argue that you can use 'am I able to target and shoot that object with an arrow?' as a means to in-game test whether an item is a Mimic or not.
I feel like those people are not being completely honest about their purpose for arguing that.
I dunno, that's what I did in OG Dark Souls after I found my first mimic. As long as they only start doing that after they run into one seems fine to me.
Comparing a single player video game to a TTRPG lies the way of madness, IMO.
And I'm honestly surprised that OG Dark Souls worked that way (I played it but can't remember). Knowing the difficulty of those games, I would have assumed a mimic wouldn't have been targetable until they revealed themselves to be a mimic, presumably after attacking you.
I dunno, that's what I did in OG Dark Souls after I found my first mimic. As long as they only start doing that after they run into one seems fine to me.
I might be wrong, but it sounds like the tactic is not, "I shoot the chest and if it flinches then it's a mimic," but rather, "I ask the GM if I am, by RAW, even allowed to target the chest at all, and if the answer is 'no', then I know that I'm not dealing with a mimic."
Which honestly seems to me ridiculously wrong-headed on the part of both parties.
I dunno, that's what I did in OG Dark Souls after I found my first mimic. As long as they only start doing that after they run into one seems fine to me.I might be wrong, but it sounds like the tactic is not, "I shoot the chest and if it flinches then it's a mimic," but rather, "I ask the GM if I am, by RAW, even allowed to target the chest at all, and if the answer is 'no', then I know that I'm not dealing with a mimic."
Which honestly seems to me ridiculously wrong-headed on the part of both parties.
Yeah, that is basically the argument.
And as far as I can tell, the argument is made - not because they actually run the game that way - but so that they can justify changing the rules. And then use those changed rules for other things such as using a runed up adamantine warhammer to tunnel through dungeon walls instead of going through the challenges.
Or at least, that is what the opposing side of the arguments starts listing out.
This discussion regularly devolves into a heated debate involving quite a bit of exaggeration, hyperbole, and straw-man logic.
Yeah, there's a middle ground of "how we want the game to be played" between you can't even target objects and players go "destruction-hobo" and start destroying the dungeon they're in to avoid the challenges the GM set.
Though, for example, PF2 has the razing trait which has certain weapons deal more damage to buildings. So it's not completely unreasonable to do it to some extent.
Seems like their could either be a gentleman's agreement between players and GMs, or the GM could make the dungeon react if players start trying to dig through everything. The dungeon occupants complete whatever they were doing and leave, or something like that. Party finds empty dungeon rooms with no useful loot and the plot advances without them.
Or just go for the classic "Oops, that was a load-bearing wall. The entire dungeon starts collapsing on top of you and you take..." /rolls an arbitrarily large number of dice "...enough damage to kill you."
I have fond memories of a time the GM gave our party a golem at one point, and we proceeded to just use it as an excavator to go through a dungeon.
It took time, encounters kept investigating the noise and we'd have to fight to defend the thing, etc. It worked out, we went into the boss a bit underleveled and kicked it's butt. (Much more dangerous in PF2/SF2 than that campaign, which was, iirc, 5e)
But, the GM rolled with what our party was trying to do rather than saying 'no'. Knowing the dude, if he didn't want us to do that he would have had us sit down and talk about why, and what we as a party wanted in that situation, which is what any good GM should do.
I guess, the point I'm trying to make is that targeting and affecting objects/walls/etc. should be the purview of the GM, rather than granulated and defined by the rules, but we could benefit from a sidebar paragraph with a few examples.
I guess, the point I'm trying to make is that targeting and affecting objects/walls/etc. should be the purview of the GM, rather than granulated and defined by the rules, but we could benefit from a sidebar paragraph with a few examples.
I strongly agree with this.
We don't need a bunch of discrete rules, because that would potentially encourage players to do certain things that a GM might not want. But for GMs that are open to it, there's not a lot of guidance on what might be a fair way to handle it.