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Same thing but at level 3, pre a bunch of errata
A few things changed this time, mostly in relation to party B. Party A feels very similar.
We also decided to try out massive maps (enemies and players deploy ~200ft away from each other) and... they really didn't go well.
In case we don't manage to finish level 20 by the 31st December deadline, I'll just leave my general major system issues here as well.
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Major system issues
1) Cover, AoEs, ranged combat and map design. Grouped together for being very related.
This is not in reference to any specific rules, because specifics can be fixed, but rather a ground up design problem. One that Lancer actually dealt with a lot during its development, and eventually (mostly) solved.
The core issue: Ranged combat as a default makes it very easy to just stand wherever, and kite forever if your speed is higher. Which makes it very hard or near impossible to land any sort of AoEs on more than 1 target.
If you respond to this by making the map littered with tight chokepoints, low ceilings and narrow corridors, it becomes a melee centric game where no one can shoot each other because no one can really see each other.
The core combat mechanics are really not designed with ranged-as-a-default in mind and its impacts on positioning. It still fundamentally feels like many options were designed around melee blob positioning being a default when it just isn't.
Cover is really easy for a ranged character to maneuver around unless you start combat really far away, in which case it's two sides barely hitting each other and is kind of a slog.
How did Lancer solve this? Objectives. It's an extremely simple solution that does so much to make ranged combat more dynamic. Essentially, forcing PCs and enemies to be on certain points if they want to actually win the combat. Also comes with the benefit of defeat != TPK. Needs either a round limit or constant reinforcements to work correctly, and even then some balancing needs to be done on the rate of reinforcement/round limit, but it solves practically all the issues that ranged combat as a default creates.
I don't think Starfinder wants to go this direction though - that every combat or nearly every combat should have an objective that is the "main" threat.
In which case you need to create general incentives for people to group up. You need to make it so that indefinitely kiting enemies with superior range and speed isn't the way to win every combat against slower opponents. You need to make maps that have sensible sight and cover lines, not too open, but also not line of sight blocked in every direction.
The current flip-mats really don't work well on the third front.
2) Economy. This is both the action economy and the wealth economy.
It genuinely feels really, really difficult to have or use multiple weapons, and as far as I understand this is a core thing that Starfinder wants you to do. The action economy to swap weapons feels rather stifling with many of the existing classes, drawing and throwing grenades, etc. Then comes the cost of actually having multiple weapons against WBL guidelines. You do really feel like you just have 1 main weapon, and that's all.
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Core system mechanics and class-agnostic things not mentioned before
1) As an experiment, I decided to give out 4 ultimate missile launchers, 4 superior undermounted grenade launchers, 4 ultimate grenade launchers and 100 of each type of paragon grenade and missile, with the stipulation that none of these items could be sold, just to see if these above-levelled items would be useful at all. The answer was no.
Because of how heavily incentivised everyone is to use a two handed ranged weapon, grenades are effectively 3 actions (draw, throw, interact to regrip), and for that price they're really not worth it. The superior undermounted grenade launcher isn't worth the loss of an elemental damage module. Even at 1 action (such as for the Solarian, which still comes at a cost of not having their agile, twin weapon offhanded) they still don't feel particularly impactful. There's no "free draw" things like Sleeves of Storage, Retrieval Prism or an Independent+Manual Dexterity Familiar (to hold 2 items and hand one to you as its action) to do this more than once per combat, though. When you add on the cost of actually using them (in credits) it becomes so much worse.
There was some point of confusion about how both of these work with the Soldier's primary target feature - do you get 2 grenade shots or missile attacks? They are Area Fire. Ultimately, though, neither Soldier would have used them because of the capacity limit. The Grenade launcher has 6 grenades, the missile launcher has 4 missiles. The Soldiers currently burn through ammo extremely quickly - Area Fire, Primary Target, Fanning the Hammer, Overwatch and Soldier's Training for another Overwatch - that's five shots per round. They'd much rather be using battery weapons for a 50 or 100 round clip.
2) Singularity Seed. Is it busted? Yes.
More expounding on that. Athletics only to Escape, while being unable to do anything else is a start, but its more on how it works alongside that. Moving away from it is difficult terrain, and after every move action and at the end of your turn, you have to save or get dragged closer to the center. Any enemy with a speed of 40 or less is going to find it incredibly difficult to ever get away from this thing, and even if they do manage to escape... where can they realistically go before they end of turn save prompts to force them back in again?
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Envoy
By this point Directives are not being used at all aside from the 1/combat Show Em What You Got! (and even then that might not be used) and Ready to Roll.
The reason for this is Ready for Anything. The Envoy now has 2/round easy to trigger reaction strikes with That'll Show Em and Ready for Anything, which increases their damage substantially despite their lack of any actual damage booster without Get 'Em, and attacking on a secondary stat.
Get 'Em is really just... not that good at this level, advanced cloaking skin making everything off guard already, swarms of lower level enemies are much more dangerous than a singular higher level enemy, and Get 'Em falls off if the target dies. You have to wait until level 18 to have Get 'Em function the same way that Courageous Anthem does at level 1.
So essentially this is playing as a featureless class with 2/round reaction attacks, and it's effective at that but quite boring. Even if this wasn't the case, it's not like the Envoy has many real options for its actions - Get 'Em, Demoralize, Show Em What You Got!, Strike. That's practically it.
The other directives have never been used.
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Mystic
Plays essentially the same. Infusion, anthem. Some of these encounters even required dipping into slots for Heal. Gasp, the horror. None of its feats have really changed anything in regards to play.
Still effective just being a healer.
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Operative
The two operatives diverged a bit in feats here.
Striker Operative went for Instant Reload, giving them insane mobility... that mattered a couple of times, but 100ft range and Aim really limited the need for them to even use it. Clustered Shots for single targets, Line 'Em Up for swarms. Hair Trigger for a free reaction attack every turn.
Ghost Operative took Dual Aim because they had a problem where after a crit Line 'Em Up, all those stunned enemies couldn't trigger Hair Trigger because they couldn't act (suffering from success I know). Again, Clustered Shots for single targets, Line 'Em Up for swarms. In one instance a level+3 boss spent half the combat stunned by the Ghost Operative.
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Solarian
This class just feels like it's falling further and further behind. Big Bang was essentially just a worse Supernova, 3 actions and disharmony, for less damage and no blind? Why is this level 15 feature worse than the level 1 feature? As such it wasn't used aside from just using it for the heck of it because it's really hard to use.
Its damage falls behind due to lack of elemental module stacking. Graviton has never been intentionally swapped to because it's just not relevant. None of the feats its picked up since level 6 have been useful.
We were debating whether Stellar Shield Collapse with cheese (have an ally punch you and keep blocking it, Dermal Plating prevents you taking damage but the shield loses HP) to put the shield down to 1-6 hit points, so it would be destroyed in 1 block, would be worthwhile. Ultimately the issue is that you still have to raise the shield, be attacked (the Solarian is the lowest priority target) and the attack has to be shield block-able. So it wasn't taken.
Note from Edna (verbatim)
The higher-level solarian is, earnestly, genuinely, one of the most miserable experiences I have had playing a tabletop RPG character. It feels so outdated, falling behind due to itemization (or lack thereof) and a dearth of good feats.
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Soldier
Fanning the Hammer is a crazy feat. We emergency ruled it to be [Flourish] so triple Fanning the Hammer turns didn't happen, but it's still an incredibly overpowered option.
It skyrockets soldier's damage against single targets to be on average above the operative, and yes this is an AoE class that does AoE damage with it.
Due to map constraints (still) because many enemies simply cannot deal with a 60 foot fly speed, the AoEs are much more effective. Doesn't really matter though because the Soldier's single target damage is still above the operative's. AoE is a bonus.
The Bombard has swapped their Stellar Cannon to a Zero Cannon. Much easier to hit 2 enemies on area fire with it, and due to the rate of ammo consumption reloading the Stellar became a real problem. The Zero Cannon never needs to reload.
For the same ammo reason, the action hero is now using a Rotolaser as their main weapon.
I can't stress enough just how much better many of these area and auto weapons feel with Spatial Drift adding just 10 feet to their range.
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Witchwarper
Feels exactly the same as they did 3 levels ago. Twisted Dark Zone is a gamechanger, everything else... not so much, they're just a basic caster.
I'm looking forward to picking up Complete Transposition at level 18 - that's the kind of thing I feel my Quantum Field should be able to do. I don't understand why it takes that long to get it.
The actual effect of the quantum field is still not relevant. The speed penalty doesn't stack with suppress, and the speed bonus doesn't stack with tailwind/on the move.
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Encounters
Encounter 1 - 8x Elite Shimmerspawn (160XP)
- 25 foot speed, low range (it has a ranged attack but its a full 3 points of attack bonus behind its melee attack) monster with only a 15ft cone as its anti-invisibility tool.
- Party A only takes some damage because the Solarian is forced to melee these guys, everyone else can just fly 60 feet away where they can't hope to damage them (even if they could use the cone, 3/4 party members have evasion).
- Party B - well, a stack of low speed, low reflex, enemies with weakness is just food for Anchoring Impacts double soldiers. They take no damage. Twisted Dark Zone helps a bit too.
Encounter 2 - 2x Elite Makosa, they start ~200 feet away from the party's deployment zone. (160XP)
- Of course this is stacked in the Makosas' favour, due to their 500ft range spells, whereas the party with their max 100ft range increment weapons needs to close distance.
- Party A needs to do this twice, some bad luck against Telekinetic Tantrum the first go around and some Phantasmal Calamities later, they're pretty badly beat and the mystic cannot get in range to heal people due to the short 30ft range. They're essentially turn skipped in their first round due to needing to close distance. A better initiative result just lets them brute force it.
- Party B only needs 1 try. No Solarian, the soldiers are capable of closing distance rather quickly and still dealing damage with shot on the run + cardiac accelerator. Fire weakness 20 is a great time for the soldiers.
- Witchwarper feels rather useless this encounter, with many spells being limited to 30ft range, and the Quantum Field being limited to 100ft range, they just can't get in range to do anything. Being constantly stunned and proned by Tantrum doesn't help.
Encounter 3 - 16x Kurshudi (160XP)
- At least it has an invisibility answer due to Area Fire being its main attack.
- Singularity seed utterly destroys these 30 speed low reflex monsters though.
- Party A takes a really long time to kill these guys even with the Seed taking out 10 of them. High HP + Regen deactivated by acid (only the operative has an acid weapon in the acid dart rifle) + resist to all the damage modules = a long time to die. Mystic takes about 50 rockets to the face and still doesn't go down due to energy aegis cutting the damage a bit, and self-healing.
- Party B takes less time, and that's despite the operative crit failing twice against divine wrath. Seed takes out 10 of them, Line 'Em Up acid shots and Scare to Death take out the rest.
Encounter 4 - 8x Atrocite, again they start ~150ft away, preventing use of Opening Roar + Terrified Retreat (160XP)
- 2x Void Scours, high attack and high damage ranged strikes, x8, with inherent true seeing to get by invisibility.
- Party A is more suited to dealing with this, with 3/4 characters having evasion, and even then they need 2 tries. These things just output so much damage that the Mystic ends up hitting 0, and once they're at 0 void scours are still hitting them along with the rest of the party.
- Party B needs 3 tries and even then they barely get over the finish line with the third try. Eight rounds of suffering, won mostly because the Atrocites ran out of void scours and relied on their strikes (which still hit very hard).
- Again, this high range start feels really, really bad for the party while the enemies who have a 500ft range spell are barely effective. If both characters were limited to the same range, it would just be one side gap closing on their first turns.
Encounter 5 - 8x Elite Shimmerstone Robot (160XP)
- Low speed, mostly melee enemy with only a short range area fire and weakness to 2 damage types that are on elemental modules. Can't see this going well for team enemy.
- Party A elects to use absolutely zero resources, and due to an incredibly fortunate series of rolls on the Robots' part, Mystic nearly hits 0. Very easy cleanup afterwards.
- Party B... well, Anchoring Impacts + Soldier AoEs with enemies that have effectively weakness 20 to the damage. Gets out of this having barely taken any damage and no resources used.
Encounter 6 - 16x Elite Sihedron Guard Specialists (160XP)
- I used the Undercity map here because I felt these dudes might be able to do something with Wall of Plasma. They mostly just ended up walling themselves though. Again, no invisibility answer (Aside from dropping Wall of Plasma directly on top of someone) makes these guys virtually a non threat.
- Party A finally uses Wormhole at least to jump by some Walls of Plasma (otherwise Solarian would have to cross 5 of them to deal damage which would be pretty bad for them). Eight round kiting slog that really can't inflict much damage through hidden.
- Party B gets the more aggressive variation of the specialists who try to inflict damage using Battle Casting, Promession and Caustic Conversion, alongside opportunistic walls of plasma dropped on top of people to deal damage. They also kind of fail miserably at that, though out of 8 scare to death criticals, 7 of the guard specialists rolled 18+ (where a 17 or less on the fortitude save against the heroism 6'd action hero soldier would have killed them). Still not threatening.
Encounter 7 - 1x Ancient Fortune Dragon and 4x Elite Sediya Vrath (160XP)
- Simple concept, the healers heal the boss.
- Party A gets kind of lucky with the Mystic escaping from Quandary (they need a natural 20 to do so, any other result is a fail or critical fail), but even then the dragon has no invisibility answer outside of its AoEs, and party A can just kite it around walls so it can't use those if it wants to Sustain Quandary. If it doesn't Sustain Quandary, its damage can't outpace the Mystic's healing. Not a difficult encounter.
- Party B chain stuns the dragon with Ghost Operative, making this a fairly easy win even despite some bad saves against its AoEs on the rounds it can act.
Encounter 8 - 1x Tarn Linnorm (160XP)
- It has True Seeing and Party A does not have hidden mind.
- Party A needs 2 tries and even then they barely win on the second try, with multiple opportunities where a crit -> crit failed poison save, or hit->crit failed poison save, or crit->failed poison save could have killed someone outright. Mystic deactivates regen with Impaling Spike, operative finishes it.
- Party B has hidden mind from the witchwarper, which negates true seeing on everyone but the bombard (crit failed the counteract check), making this fight pretty trivial. Operative even rolls badly, scoring 0 crits despite offguard, heroism 6, aid and clustered shots (no Synesthesia to lower defences because that's PC2). Witchwarper kills it with Vision of Death.
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How did Lancer solve this? Objectives. It's an extremely simple solution that does so much to make ranged combat more dynamic. Essentially, forcing PCs and enemies to be on certain points if they want to actually win the combat. Also comes with the benefit of defeat != TPK. Needs either a round limit or constant reinforcements to work correctly, and even then some balancing needs to be done on the rate of reinforcement/round limit, but it solves practically all the issues that ranged combat as a default creates.I don't think Starfinder wants to go this direction though - that every combat or nearly every combat should have an objective that is the "main" threat.
In which case you need to create general incentives for people to group up. You need to make it so that indefinitely kiting enemies with superior range and speed isn't the way to win every combat against slower opponents. You need to make maps that have sensible sight and cover lines, not too open, but also not line of sight blocked in every direction.
The current flip-mats really don't work well on the third front.
A couple of thoughts on the use of objectives, maps, and encounter design. I do like the idea of objectives, They don't have to be used all the time.
I wonder if objectives work better on large maps. For example, if you have to do something at points A, B, and C that keeps things moving around and not becoming a static fight.
Having both sides with the same objective I think becomes more predictable which is fine some of the time. If only one side has an objection or both sides have different objectives could mix things up a lot. Alos if the PCs don't know what the NPCs objective is, it could add a bit of a puzzle to the fight.
Combat at long range becoming a slog, I'm assuming because it's harder to hit at long range, also if there is cover on top of that. One idea is to have really weak opponents with good weapons, this way they are easy to kill, I'm thinking like only being able to take 1 or 2 hits, but they have good weapons so they have some chance to hit the PCs to make up for being low level NPCs.
Not having all the NPCs start on the map, could help keep a battle from getting static, and could be used to guide the fight around the map more as new NPCs appear.
Having more than one type of opponent, for example, you are in long-range combat, both sides shooting at long range, but the cover you are using is infested with rats you also have to deal with. This also lets the ranged PCs range and the melee PCs melee.
Makes maps can be hard because the number of PC can change as well as the use of ranged weapons in each party. Using movable objects like the tech terrain pawns to add cover to maps would be one way to adapt maps to the party.
I'm curious if you can find any maps you think do work well that you could link to to show us.
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Combat at long range becoming a slog, I'm assuming because it's harder to hit at long range, also if there is cover on top of that. One idea is to have really weak opponents with good weapons, this way they are easy to kill, I'm thinking like only being able to take 1 or 2 hits, but they have good weapons so they have some chance to hit the PCs to make up for being low level NPCs.
It's
1) Harder to hit (range penalties, cover, no off guard from flanking).
and
2) Does less damage than melee equivalents (Soldier and Operative's damage expressions are currently very far above even a melee PF2e equivalent but your average ranged character will be lacking in some damage from no str, and a lot more damage from no consistent reaction attack).
You could make the PF2e equivalent of minions where they have a very small amount of health, say something like 1/3 of the health for -2 levels, no other adjustments. It would make AoEs like missiles and grenades more valuable if they were commonplace, as it would deal with these low health minions much better.
Makes maps can be hard because the number of PC can change as well as the use of ranged weapons in each party. Using movable objects like the tech terrain pawns to add cover to maps would be one way to adapt maps to the party.
I'm curious if you can find any maps you think do work well that you could link to to show us.
And speed. These parties are somewhat indexed into speed, with all of them having Speed Suspension and Tailwind Wands at 8th, then Superior Ultralight Wings at 13th. A slower party would need a smaller map (not that these options are particularly expensive, it's just that you can't assume people have them), but a party of this speed needs a larger map to make distance mean anything.
Maps that have been good... I find flip-mats tend to end up in one of two categories
1) Massive featureless plain
2) Excessively line of sight blocked
If you restrict some flip-mats to just a small section of them, they can be decent enough. For instance, if you cut the 2nd Space Station map (the brown one) to just the middle bit, removing most of the rooms and walls, it's okay.
The front side of Solar Temple is also okay, there's line of sight blocks, but only a few, and its hard to dart "between" the line of sight blocks constantly.
Then, of course, you end up at levels where high-speed flight is commonplace (i.e. as soon as enough people have advanced ultralight wings), and any map without a ceiling can be turned into a featureless plain. You can argue Lancer has the same problem, but flight in that game is
1) More expensive build-cost wise.
2) Not necessary because the majority of enemies cannot fly, unlike Starfinder where a flying enemy is fairly common and you might need flight to answer that.
and
3) You still need to play the objectives, so you can't just spend the entire encounter 10 hexes in the air shooting at melee enemies who can't hit you or you will lose.
So flight is more of an opportunity cost to ignore terrain there, than an option everyone is going to have that just so happens to also make every map featureless.
Certainly cover and line of sight should play a factor in ranged combat, but depending on PC and enemy speed the distance between spots of cover/line of sight need to vary significantly.
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Maps for ranged combat when flying is common, could still have cover, a forested area could count as cover from above. Objets like tables could be used that way too, or being under an elevated walkway.
I had to look up PF2e minions, that minion only has 2 actions might help too.
I meant the PF2e version of a 4e minion (which has 1 health)
Cover from above sounds nice in theory but its incredibly painful to measure cover in 3d in practice. If you make the entire top forested that's basically like adding a ceiling with extra steps.