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How does Limited Starflight (for example, the Elder Thing's ability of the same name) compare with true Starflight in terms of actual time spent traveling? (considering that true Starflight has speeds varying from monster to monster)
As a Rules question, it's not defined. Limited starflight seems to be saying that the creature just travels until it gets where it is going, relying on hibernation or immortality. A trip of months, years, or millennia. Completely a story device, especially interstellar travel.
I tried some back of the envelope math on the elder thing to see if maybe it means "they move at their normal fly speed the whole trip, no building up of velocity over time." Assuming it double moves (so 40' a round), it could get from Earth to Mars in about 243 days (on average, actual time would depend on planetary alignment). That's actually in line with estimates of what we could do with current technology. So, that's reasonable. For interstellar travel that would be WAY too slow to be anything but a plot device. Something like 121,000 YEARS to the Centauri system. The elder thing a party encounters entering a solar system left the last system epochs before they were born. As opposed to 3d20 days from another system for a Star Monarch.
@Belafon, I probably would have assumed a buildup of velocity, but honestly it doesn't matter except as a plot device and how you want to justify things.
Whether the elder thing take 1 year, 10 year, 100 years, 1000 years, 10,000 years, etc....it's all pretty irrelevant except for how you want to craft your story.
Sorry, to be more clear I'm expecting that the elder thing gets into space, starts flying (and due to no friction and the demands of plot) it spends a few years flying as fast as it can before it actually starts hibernating, gaining speed the whole time beyond what its normally reflected speed would be.
I don't think there's a clear right or wrong on that, it's just how I would run it as a GM to avoid the 120,000 year flying time that would be required.
It really just depends on how and where you want to apply "realism".
Somehow the elder thing can fly in space using wings (that doesn't work based on science, so it must be "magic"). But the descriptions says it doesn't work to reach "unusually high speeds". We don't know what that means. It could mean speeds exceeding the speed of light. The Starlight ability (not limited) says it takes 3d20 days for trips outside of a solar system, which would definitely require speed above light speed. For example, the nearest solar system to earth is over 4 light years away, so reaching there in 3d20 days would mean traveling several times the speed of light. (Max 60 days of travel vs 4 years).
Now, I did end up searching on AoN which has an entry for Elder Things in PF2, and they did clarify that it travels at it's normal fly speed.....which would be absolutely worthless and I suggest ignoring the statement.
Because if it's got to hibernate for 120,000 years....it's an irrelevant thing. I would suggest allowing it to accelerate to near the speed of light with Limited Starflight, and those with true Starflight exceeding the speed of light.
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This discussion makes me want to create an adventure where a powerful (but not so knowledgeable about short-lived races) Elder thing traveled from a nearby star system to reply to a call for aid, and now is searching for the people who called it. While it traveled, the civilization that called it fell, and the species became extinct.
At a speed of 14.63 km/hour (9.09 miles/hour), travel from a solar system 4 light years away will require more than 82,000 years.
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I thought it was kinda odd that Azothath, Diego, and I all came up with different flight times so I worked backwards to figure out where the differences were.
Speed:
I assumed the Elder Thing double-moved forever, so 40'/round. Or ~4.54 mph.
Diego assumed the Elder Thing ran forever, so 80'/round. Or ~9.09 mph.
Azothath also appears to have assumed it ran, but used the wrong base speed (40' instead of 20')
Interstellar Distances:
I used the distance to Alpha Centauri of 25 trillion miles.
Diego (maybe) used 4 light years, which is closer to 20 trillion miles.
However both of us screwed our math up badly somewhere while calculating travel time. Mine should have been around 625 million years and Diego's number should have been around 300 million years.
Intrasystem Distances
I calculated the time to Mars, Azothath the time to the moon. I once again calculated my trip time wrong, should have been over 3,500 years. Azothath's math was right (using the incorrect base speed of 40' and assuming running).
Summary: We all goofed up, but I have absolutely no idea how I messed up my math so badly.
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Summary: We all goofed up,
We did some napkin math, but we aren't great mathematicians.
Actually, we probably did some PCs calculator math without writing down the formula on paper. That is a great way to miss errors that would be glaring when written down. A napkin would have worked better. ;-)
I used an 80' base speed as the Elder Thing can for some rounds after reaching space, then coast on inertia at that speed.
...they did clarify that it travels at it's normal fly speed.....which would be absolutely worthless and I suggest ignoring the statement.That's really cool for the Rules forum... 8^)
AS I pointed out - there's no Game Mechanic for them to accelerate. It's just a super simplistic handwaived rule like damage from falling.
it's essentially downtime travel and background.
Elder Thing CR5 The basic Elder Thing, like a first level PC.
Elder Thing on Pathefinderwiki
see also Strange Aeons AP where they are in lost Carcosa (Ha$tur). Bloch's Opener of the Way
I understand what you're saying....and I would normally agree with you.
The problem is that it makes limited starflight a worthless ability.
Like it takes so long for a creature to get from one place to another that basically the only reason they show up is completely unrelated to your story. It's pretty much "hey this monster showed up".
And at that point, why even bother including it.
Finally with someone advising people to ignore RAW in this forum surpassed my irony/sarcasm level to post.
Sometimes RAW really is just so uniformed bad, you shouldn't try to follow it.
This is one of those corner cases where the ability was written either without an understanding of the distances and speeds involved, or being worse at math than the people in this thread, or simply not bothering to investigate at all.
If an ability takes hundreds of thousands of years (or more) to be relevant there's no reason to even write the ability.
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A creature's ability doesn't need to be efficient or combat related to matter for a story. They can be a plot device.
Exactly. This isn't intended for character use. It's a story hook. You might as well say "why mention that Dungeon X exists if you don't provide a map of it?"
There are tons of science fiction stories where an alien enters the solar system at relatively slow speeds after journeys of thousands or millions of years. The plots vary widely, but often depend on the slow journey. Some of the more common:
1. The aliens are used to such unfathomably long timescales that the short-lived humans end up attacking them for their knowledge and technology instead of waiting for a decision on whether it should be freely shared.
2. The humans have discovered FTL travel (teleportation in Pathfinder terms) and find a once-thriving planet that has been destroyed/rendered uninhabitable. It turns out the aliens set out on their journey from that system millennia ago and might know what happened. Or even be responsible!
3. The aliens are detected years or decades before their actual arrival, which sets off a golden age of technological advancement and/or societal upheaval as factions jockey for position in anticipation of meeting aliens.
4. The aliens have no idea intelligent life exists on Earth. They aimed towards the solar system when they first detected signs of an oxygen-atmosphere planet. Can combine with any other plot device.
A creature's ability doesn't need to be efficient or combat related to matter for a story. They can be a plot device.
By the same extension, you don't need the ability exist to have the character become part of the plot device.
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Also, in 3.5, they stopped giving creatures utility powers or useful skills and just basically restricted them to combat blocks or basic common moves. Before then, Demons and Devils had abilities that let them create objects, weapons, materials and do lots of things that made it more believable that people did deals with them (other than having to go right to one with wish.
For me, the part about the creature ecology, backstory, and behavior was the best part of the old Monster Manuals. It made reading them fun. Today, Bestiearyes are only raw statistics.
So I am not really offended by its inclusion.
To be clear, I'm not offended by it's inclusion, but insisting that you need to run it as traveling at whatever it's movement speed is (whether you count it as running, or using multiple move actions in a turn to set it's speed, or whatever) leaves you in a scenario where the thing is moving at like 12 mph (100ft/6 secs). Making it absolutely irrelevant in terms of a GM planning.
Honestly if they had written the entry to say "This thing can survive space travel without any additional precautions, but it's ability to travel space is incredibly slow, as such they typically will utilize a ritual or entreat with other creatures to find a way to cross the vast distances of space" would have been better (IMO) than what we got.
But it's all just opinion at the end of the day.