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My friend ran a homebrew one-shot!
Party:
Ysoki Analyst Witchwarper Mil (Broke post-grad who failed to flee college debt despite experimental reality transposition)
Skittermander In the Spotlight Envoy Mitzi (Unethical streamer exploiting misfortune and even tragedy for followers)
Shirren Sniper(?) Operative Mik (Recent ex-Swarm Shirren trying out different jobs)
Borai Solarian Maia (Ghostly arm, Hades II style)
Gear: Weapon, armor, five consumables, adventurer's pack, kits required for skills. GM ruled that since there were no uncommon weapons for Unconventional Weaponry, all advanced weapons count.
Level one game, livestock (hereafter referred to as "cows" despite any unsettlingly horse-like faces) has been going missing on a planet. The livestock is mainly used as food for workers in the main industry of super-resilient glass exports.
We show up, and are given the options of interviewing the farmers or talking with the Governor. We go to the farm. The farmer is a skittermander, and one of Mitzi's 500 followers. One wounded cow was recovered, and we inspected the wounds. A mix of successful and failed knowledge checks eventually got us to laser wolves, and recalling knowledge about them indicated fire resistance. Attacks on livestock are rare for laser wolves. Knowledge checks were a bit of a mess.
We voted to go out to the forest. Mil used his high society and his comm unit to look into what was happening locally that might have changed the laser wolf behavior. The information seemed to be censored, and he followed up with a computers check to get access to more clandestine sources revealing overhunting of glass snakes, the laser wolves predator. From there, it was an obvious conclusion about population explosion and low resources.
By then, we encountered two laser wolves. The first one scores double-crits, one with low damage and one with high, but both with 2*1d4 persistent fire damage. Mil had a hard time juggling low range on the available attack cantrip with trying to set up the quantum field so he could use Warp Probability to reroll a failed attack. Maia and Mitzi mostly tried to stay alive using med patches and patting down (making an attack or two that mostly missed), while Mik did most of the damage and Mil's cantrips got some regular hits in- no rerolls needed. Quantum field knowledge checks weren't useful because we already knew the important things beforehand. The wolves are downed, and the Maia succeeds on ending the persistent damage right after dropping to 0. A medpatch gets her up, and we head back to the farm to recover and report.
We head to the governor's office to report and propose selling hunting licenses to keep the laser wolf population down without needing to address or confront the larger issues with glass serpent over-hunting that are obviously a touchy point. Mil presents the proposal, but has to rely on Mitzi for the actual charismatic presentation. (A business background would have been more helpful here than Scientist.) The presentation is a success, and the one-shot is over.
BUT.
In time-honored tradition, we fight the "you screwed up" encounter anyway. In another reality, the governor pulls a gun on us and calls in some security drones. The Solarian takes him out immediately in one hit. (Turns out he's a level -1 merchant.) That leaves the two drones- Mil didn't touch his spells, and just spams Force Barrage for the fight. Mitzi finally gets to use Get 'Em! and her battle ribbon, enjoying the extra damage. Operative shoots stuff. Solarian plays around with Solar Rush just to try it out. It's a pretty straightforward fight.
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Witchwarper feedback:
- Analyst field effect felt useless. Getting to apply the same result to two creatures was unclear- did that mean two pieces of information if two of the same creature are in the field? It pretty much had to be two of the same creatures, because it has to be two things applicable to the skill. Outside combat, there's no use checking two things at once, and inside combat, we'd already researched them. Making a bunch of repeated knowledge checks doesn't do much anyway, and needing to Seek in combat is really rare. So, it ended up being an action to prep to use a reaction, that didn't end up getting used.
- Needing the field up to use focus spells means it's all the eggs in the same basket. If the base field effect isn't fun, the whole class isn't fun- you've got no feature without spending actions on it. Getting any additional effects on the field takes a feat and an action.
- Knowledge skills are in a bad place with the addition of Computers. I took Computers, Crafting, Arcana, Occultism, Society, Nature, and Religion just so I could actually make those knowledge checks I would be making over and over. That's too many skills! I'm an Int-based class, burning almost everything just to be able to roll against creatures.
- Knowledge skills are too fantasy-oriented. For some reason, being smart is useless for medicine and biology. Physics and engineering questions are open-ended about where they belong.
- The extra spell slot was helpful. Even focusing on cantrips, having three spells for the day instead of just two made a difference in how free I felt in choosing things. Similarly, the extra hitpoints made being in ranged combat not as worrisome.
- The game needs a long-range attack roll cantrip. The most painful cantrip absence was Needle Darts. Telekinetic Projectile only being a 30ft. range was rough, and the Analyst subclass favors attack roll spells because of their reroll reaction.
- No real fits for background. Scientist background didn't really do what I wanted it to. If I used Assurance, I'd be losing out on the +4 Int bonus. It seems like there should be a Dubious Knowledge background for being from a similar-but-different reality.
- The party would have lost a member if we had been using the starting wealth rules as they're written. You can't afford armor + weapon + basics + a healing consumable or two.
- Arcane/Occult is nice on Witchwarper. If I'd known the party in advance, I'd have probably gone Occult to provide healing.
- The new combat spells lost out to just hitting with Force Barrage, unfortunately.
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Hi! I am the GM for this oneshot!
The oneshot was a mostly homebrew, tarot card randomized, minimal prep kind of game. I was so excited to play Starfinder and wanted to do it immediately.
Goal: THE HANGED MAN | Confinement, Perspective, Sacrifice. looking at things from a different angle | trying to contain something before it becomes a bigger problem?
Target: R THE DEVIL | Freedom, Detachment, reclamation. | I like the idea of a species native to the planet going haywire because of urbanization. maybe its natural predators were wiped out because they were messing with livestock?
Obstacle: R THE STAR | Pessimism, Despair, Discouragement. defying comprehension, recklessness, loss of faith, hardships | the politicians and homelanders of the planet believe it to be a lost cause and are particularly stubborn. combat wise I’d keep it to animals, but maybe theres poachers trying to get rid of one of the last animals of this species? They are hired by the politician because they think the issues are not connected
NPCs: R THREE OF WANDS | Negligence, setback, restrictions, keeping too strongly to initial plans, delaying actions | a+~&!$~ politician definitely.
Setting: THE WORLD | Fullfillment, completion, masterpiece | A space colony that is seen as an incredibly successful project.
Start - INVESTIGATION. Introduce the problem, and hint at the solution. | The grass is having problems growing, causing livestock to die off. at the start of the colony, the planet was much more well off.
if inspecting the grass the players will see that it’s obviously diseased. the livestock are generally healthy, but have clear signs of malnutrition. they can catch the bugs responsible and find out its natural predators. the city is a major exporter of Laser Wolves pelt, but it has become extremely rare in the recent years, and the Laser Wolf does not respond well to captivity.
Middle: WORKING ON. A Laser Wolf pack has been spotted recently on the outskirts of town.
End: RESOLUTION. Confrontation with the major.
As Quid mentioned, it ended up careening to the side a little bit because the "first draft" didn't make enough sense for me, but anyway, we're not here to discuss story stuff.
MY IMPRESSIONS AS A GM
- Roleplay wise, there is way more room to "have fun with it"- I am not the best at descriptions, but the Starfinder world is a very colorful one, and it really allows GMs to stretch out their creative muscles- This is in general a strenght of the sci-fantasy setting itself, but I think it needs to be praised!
I had some issues switching the setting since I primarily GM Pathfinder (I briefly forgot that cars exist) but I have the blessing of players that buy into the game very easily and thus everything went very smoothly.
The use of comm units (and technology being widespread in general) made for interesting applications of skills such as Mil's on-the-go research, or the Envoy using Diplomacy to ask the chat she was streaming to about the "laser snake" (Dubious Knowledge, my beloved.)
- Level one is very swingy
This is a problem in Pathfinder too, and of course the die do what they will, but it is an issue. one crit from a level 2 creature meant that the character was out of the fight because of the actions needed to take out a medpatch and apply it.
- Operative is very strong
I wouldn't call it unbalanced, but while Mil shined because of being the only spellcaster, and Mitzi shined because of the roleplay, the Operative was just doing the most damage out of everyone. It didn't lower the enjoyment of the game thankfully, but I think Operative could benefit from Aim only applying once per shot.
There are also other issues with Operative, but I'll wait for the player to add their thoughts and speak for themselves in this thread.
- Enemies have a wider variety of speeds
This is an upside! again, even at level one, things are kept interesting, and I think it's a really good idea. The game's "ranged meta" mostly centers on the 30-60 feet range, which feels comfortable and most importantly doesn't end up being a slog of "shoot, cover, shoot". it also assumes more verticality and better use of terrain, which if it's something the GM or players aren't used to could be a problem.
Spellcasters and Solarian however still feel a bit ill equipped for this shift in priority- especially solarian, for which Solar Shot scales in a pretty baffling way (I am of the opinion that if Solarian is a str based class, the solar shot should scale with STR to be actually viable) and has really bad range (15ft for gravitron and 30ft for Photon are completely useless, especially without being STR based: They barely hit, and even if they could, they don't feel like a ranged option at all)
- Pathfinder skills don't translate well to the setting
Maybe it's just us being massive nerds, but there have been certain questions we had to stretch definitions for (The one in question being "what temperature could cause burns like these?")
"crafting" really doesn't feel like it should help you in questions related to physics, and while Nature could be a strong contendent it being a wisdom scaling skill doesn't feel very Science-based, and would not be a good idea for an int-based scientist character to invest in.
All in all however, it was very fun and I am excited to run more of it! I think moving starfinder to the PF2e chassis was a really good move, as combat felt really fluid, and it's a joy to gm for.