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The more I think about it, the more I realize that for starship combat this makes sense. targeting systems would remove a need to have the enemy in a specific direction. and with three dimentional space being so hard to illustrate on a 2-d surface anyway, why not boil it down further. distance from the source of the effect is the main factor. and with the kind of distances that space entails, getting into exact feet/meters is kind of silly.
It is moving from a wing-commander/star wars style of starship combat to more a Star Trek/ firefly style of starship combat.
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Several of the developers and publishers have also commented on Reddit.
Reddit.
Even Star Wars Armada and X-Wing are 2d. I do think the FTL approach is the right direction for a TTRPG. In X-Wing, you might have 1 player controlling 8 ships, but you never have a group of players trying to play the same ship. Playing yourself inside the ship, running around dealing wiht ship damage, healing injured crew members, shooting the ship's guns, is the way to go. I'm most courious what the pilot's actions look like on the scanner map.
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Range bands should work for 1 vs many as well. It's many-to-many that would be hard. For that, I think using vehicle rules for small starfighters might be the best option.
Starfinder1e had over 180 pages of starship rules and ship examples, not including the lite rules in Starfinder Enhanced. I imagine that the new rules will be much shorter, mostly ship-building rules and options, how to use the scanner map, and rules for how the PCs interact with the ship.
One thing the new system will need is a lot of starship maps. The new maps will include a scanner map, but the scanner map could be printed separately to be used with older ship maps. I think clearly defining ship stations on the new maps will likely be something Paizo has to consider; the map of the NOVA Rush, I think, does a good job of that.
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I'm hoping for player-side shipbuilding rules too, although that's never been an option in organized play. Maybe for organized play, having some software upgrades that the PCs can take ship-to-ship.
SF1e did have some boons that give the PCs some weapon upgrades, like the one for 1-21 Yesterdays Sorrow, which gave the PCs a Tactical Nuclear Missile Launcher with 20 missiles and a Heavy Nuclear Missile Launcher wiht 10 missiles.
My shirren character has the missiles; they're saving them to take back the Shirren homeworld from the swarm someday...
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This is good, and scary news.
One the one hand, I'm very glad to see this isn't just "here's a ship statblock, bye" This is a much bolder idea and I'm all for it.
On the other hand, I'm worried about it coming out sight unseen. I have faith in the starfinder crew, but there can still be things that slip through or things that just don't land, as with Mythic. It's a real shame that playtest never materialised because it'd make me feel a lot more confident.
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Since the new system seems to use your character sheet more, including class features, I'm less concerned about not getting a playtest, although I would have loved to have had one. I'm curious how PF2e classes and New SF2e will work with the new starship system.
Just saw there are 2 new starship maps coming out;
Starfinder Flip-Mat: Player Starship. October.
Starfinder Flip-Mat: Starship Decks Multi-Pack. January.
The player starships look like they might have a more open concept, making running around fixing things easier.
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On the other hand, I'm worried about it coming out sight unseen. I have faith in the starfinder crew
I'm afraid that I really do NOT have a great deal of faith in Paizo's ability to create a fun, balanced mini game with minimal or zero testing.
My biggest beef in SF1 was something that I do NOT see addressed. Starship fights were all so meaningless. The effect of losing was almost always something almost irrelevant (start the next fight with a -2 to initiative kind of thing). In fairness to Paizo the LOGICAL and REALISTIC effect of losing a fight should almost always be a TPK as your ship blows up and that just isn't a lot of fun.
But I got really, really tired of spending 2 hours on a fight (especially in a SFS scenario) with winning or losing having no significant effect. This was exacerbated by the SF1 system, of course, where ship combat was just an exercise in rolling dice. But even if the combat was interesting the lack of actual stakes is a problem for me.
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Why do ships have to explode and be TPKs? At Pearl Harbor, 21 ships were hit; only 3 were beyond repair, and all the others managed to be returned to service during WWII. No ship at Pearl Harbor lost its entire crew.
The biggest reason naval ships are lost is that they sink, which is not a problem in space. Before torpedoes, in the age of sail, ships rarely sank, and the main goal often was to capture them. Also, pirates: you can't steal treasure if you sink the other ship.
I think we have had this conversation before, so to add something new to it, I just looked up, "would a nuclear reactor on an aircraft carrier explode if hit by a missile?" and the short answer is "no," but with possible radiation hazards.
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Why do ships have to explode and be TPKs?.
Hmm. Maybe this is a “me” issue.
But several points stand out
1) because that is what happens all the time in the fiction I consume. Many smaller ships (especially in Star Wars) are far more analogous to fighter planes than modern ships. And, at least when driven by NPCs, they blow up real good
2) quite a few ships (including large capital ships) were sunk in WW2. The shallow harbour at Pearl was largely responsible for comparatively few ships being lost.
3)in the fiction, large spaceships also blow up a lot or are totally destroyed. They’re being hit with things with the equivalent power to at least tactical nukes.
Sure, ships in space don’t sink. But once their defences are down why not just throw a cheap nuke at them and blow em up real good? The kinetic energy in just a slug going at near light speed is huge (if you want to talk realism)
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Well, we already know that we have multiple different options for escape pods, so I suspect that there will be more thought put into losing fights not being TPKs.
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Why do ships have to explode and be TPKs?.Hmm. Maybe this is a “me” issue.
But several points stand out
1) because that is what happens all the time in the fiction I consume. Many smaller ships (especially in Star Wars) are far more analogous to fighter planes than modern ships. And, at least when driven by NPCs, they blow up real good
The fighter plane analogy makes more sense, although ejection seats or just bailing out could happen too. It also has the mage advantage of only affecting 1 or 2 PCs. In general, I think it's good to avoid any situation where one event leads to a TPK, especially if it's in the first encounter. Starship blowing up = TPK is kind of like in Pathfinder; dungeons collapsing = TPK with no saving throw. Anything that can end a session early, I feel, is a bad game mechanic; there are better ways to add risk to starship combat, and I think the new FTL inspired starship combat will do that, because the PCs are on the map; when a ship system is hit, it can do localized damage to nearby PCs. This puts the risk back on individuals; there still could be a TPK, but it would be from all PCs taking individual damage.
I think Star Trek is a better analogy for ship combat; for large battles the is a large ship graveyard of heavily damaged ships that are still partially intact, floating in space.
Having the NPCs blow up makes a lot of sense, especially in organized play, because it prevents the PCs from getting sidetracked by looking for and rescuing survivors, and raiding the shipwreck for supplies, loot, and salvage, or towing the ship to try to repair it to have their own ship. Although if a scenario is running short, some of that could be ways to make the session run longer.
2) quite a few ships (including large capital ships) were sunk in WW2. The shallow harbour at Pearl was largely responsible for comparatively few ships being lost.
It's around 20,000 ship; the largest category is merchant ships. 1,200 submarines were mostly total losses because deep-water pressure is harsher on ships and people in that space. For surface ships, total loss of crew was the exception, typically caused by a direct hit to the ship's magazine.
3)in the fiction, large spaceships also blow up a lot or are totally destroyed. They’re being hit with things with the equivalent power to at least tactical nukes.
In the vacuum of space, a tactical nuclear weapon detonated near a spaceship lacks an atmosphere to create a shockwave or a fireball. Instead, it releases energy as intense thermal radiation (X-rays and extreme ultraviolet), a powerful burst of gamma rays and neutrons, and an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), causing damage primarily through thermal flash and radiation heating if it explodes close enough.
Getting a tactical warhead to explode inside of a large ship would be easier than doing so on a typical-sized ship the PCs have.
Sure, ships in space don’t sink. But once their defences are down why not just throw a cheap nuke at them and blow em up real good? The kinetic energy in just a slug going at near light speed is huge (if you want to talk realism)
Is there such a thing as a cheap nuke? The kinetic energy in just a slug going at near light speed would indeed vaporise a starship, but how do you get a slug to that speed? Most all of the methods of traveling FTL in Starfinder involve completely bypassing physics altogether.
As I said earlier, if we can get to the point where individual damage is a thing in starship combat, then we can have real risk to PCs without the only choice being a TPK for losing a starship battle. I'm hoping that's the case with the rules in Tech Core. It would also mean that healers get to be healers in starship combat.
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"May" of course rather than "will be". Whoever designed the *Nova Rush* seemingly gave no thought to such things as containing fires or pressure loss from breaches, for instance.
To be fair, Battle for Nova Rush was likely written around 5 or 6 months before the Player Core was even out. The typical deadline for physical products for Free RPG Day must arrive at the distribution point by early April.
I feel that common hazards for hull breaches and fire control should be in a rulebook instead of wasting space in every scenario with starship combat. The one hull breach the CPs have to deal with in Nove Rush is magical in nature, so real physics need not apply.
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Lots of good and smart things
You have just about convinced me that this is just a case of my not buying the tropes of the genre correctly.
I have a significant problem with willing suspension of disbelief. I'll buy almost any assumptions of a genre but then the fiction has to stay true to those tropes. I loved Toy Story, I enjoy superhero movies, etc.
But, outside of those tropes, the fiction just has to "make sense" to me.
If I'm greatly enjoying myself I'll note how silly something is but it won't bother me very much. So, as an example, the first Indiana Jones movie where Indy encounters a photo voltaic trap I noticed how silly it was but I was just having too much fun :-).
But if I'm NOT greatly enjoying myself or the thing is just TOO silly it will totally jar me out of the experience and I'll hate the whole thing. My best example is the Matrix. When they decided that the whole purpose was to use people as energy sources it was just TOO TOO TOO silly and I hated the entire movie afterwards.
Note, I don't WANT to have this issue. But it is outside my conscious control. At some point something too silly will happen and I'll be jarred out of the fiction and I can only VERY rarely get back into it.
And, for me, at least in SF1 the combination of
1) Pretty boring game play in ship combat after the first time or two
2) The complete silliness of why the bad guys acted the way they did
3) The fact that the consequences of failure were SO minor
made me dread and loathe ship combat with a fiery passion. I refused to ever play any SFS1 scenarios with it in, at the table I completely zoned out and just looked up from my book to roll dice every now and then.
The only SFS2 scenario that had ship combat was just about as awful an experience. Nobody really knew the rules and the system was almost designed to make my character feel totally useless.
I think I see "Space Combat" and expect it to at least hit the insanely low bar of "as realistic as Star Wars and Star Trek". I have to adjust my standards downwards :-(.
As for the "Loss should be catastrophic" problem I fully admit that it makes for bad gaming if the loss IS catastrophic. I think the solution has to be what, at a very high level, is the situation for normal combats.
Most encounters have a few outcomes
1) PCs kick ass and use essentially no resources (this is the default and by far the most common outcome). But there is always the risk of
2) PCs win but use some resources so there is some cost
3) PCs suffer some kind of loss but continue on. A friendly NPC dies, the PCs have to retreat to come back better prepared the next day, etc.
4) Characters or the entire party dies.
I prefer for option 4 to almost never happen but I want the THREAT of it and the ILLUSION of it to always be there. You only need 1 PC death in several levels and 1 TPK in several years to keep the threat. But the threat has to be there
I think the core problem is that the authors haven't figured out how to do 2-4 well in starship combat from a story telling point of view. Combined with far too many starship combats.
One thing that I think would actually go a huge way to solving the problem would be to bake in some "run away" option that wasn't quite certain but that worked most of the time.
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The only SFS2 scenario that had ship combat was just about as awful an experience. Nobody really knew the rules and the system was almost designed to make my character feel totally useless.
There is a 2nd Cinematic Starship Scene in season 2 2-02 Solar Shake UP. I've read it but haven't run or played it yet, but have talked ot a GM that has run it 4 times. If run well, it has something that I haven't seen done before in SF1e or SF2 that I really like
I think for CSS the funniest games will be with a GM that puts lots of work into it and/or has played that scenario a few times to work it out. My friend who ran it 4 times at Gen Con said every game played completely differently, largely because of the different parties, and also by the 3rd and 4th game they leaned hard into what's in the spoiler.
Most encounters have a few outcomes
1) PCs kick ass and use essentially no resources (this is the default and by far the most common outcome). But there is always the risk of
2) PCs win but use some resources so there is some cost
3) PCs suffer some kind of loss but continue on. A friendly NPC dies, the PCs have to retreat to come back better prepared the next day, etc.
4) Characters or the entire party dies.
I don't think it's the authors; for organized play 1), and 2) happen or don't happen because the PCs are using a borrowed ship from the Starfinder Society, so it's like being in the real-world Navy and flying a fighter jet that you don't pay for or pay to arm.
I don't see that part changing in organized play, but if the new starship rules damage individual PCs and let them use spells or other consumables during combat, there could be the same cost in consumables and risk typical of any normal combat.
3) I've seen some scenarios use a simple piloting check to determine if the PCs get to a location on time, with a bad effect if they didn't. That could also happen if the PCs lose a starship battle but survive, slowing their trip time down for repairs.
"run away" option that wasn't quite certain but that worked most of the time.
Is a chase; if you're trying to get away by doing a Drift jump, it could be a very short chase.
Good conversation, but I'm out of time for now.
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I have a significant problem with willing suspension of disbelief. I'll buy almost any assumptions of a genre but then the fiction has to stay true to those tropes. I loved Toy Story, I enjoy superhero movies, etc.
But, outside of those tropes, the fiction just has to "make sense" to me.
If I'm greatly enjoying myself I'll note how silly something is but it won't bother me very much. So, as an example, the first Indiana Jones movie where Indy encounters a photo voltaic trap I noticed how silly it was but I was just having too much fun :-).
But if I'm NOT greatly enjoying myself or the thing is just TOO silly it will totally jar me out of the experience and I'll hate the whole thing. My best example is the Matrix. When they decided that the whole purpose was to use people as energy sources it was just TOO TOO TOO silly and I hated the entire movie afterwards.
I have the same problem with D&D/Pathfinder. I used to do medieval reenactment battles and had a full suit of plate armor. I can hike, sleep, and move silently if I'm just wearing the breastplate, with no tassets, and it takes seconds to put on or take off; it's just one belt holding it closed. I also have a hard time with studded leather, too, and why it isn't brigandine, and also most as good as plate.
Note, I don't WANT to have this issue. But it is outside my conscious control. At some point something too silly will happen and I'll be jarred out of the fiction and I can only VERY rarely get back into it.
I think I see "Space Combat" and expect it to at least hit the insanely low bar of "as realistic as Star Wars and Star Trek". I have to adjust my standards downwards :-(.
When comparing Starfinder to Star Wars for PCs' ships, about the only ships to look at are the hero ships: Millennium Falcon, Ghost, and Razor Crest; somehow, they all survive or keep coming back. Even when the Razor Crest is destroyed, Mando is not on board, and new ships find him. For Star Trek a good example of a hero ship would be the Defiant in DS9.
I think with Star Wars it's a war, so ships exploding is more expected, whereas Starfinder most of the time is an adventure. Movie or TV series-wise, I think Guardians of the Galaxy or Farscape are better examples, just because they focus on a ship with a crew of the same size you would have in Starfinder. The Netflix version of Lost in Space also has a great hero ship; it's the right size crew and set up to move and live on another planet, and even has a ground rover stored inside. For Star Wars, the animated Star Wars Rebels is good hero ship series. The Ghost also has the advantage of a detachable shuttle.
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I don't think the lack of consequences for losing is the fault of starship combat itself. Rather, I think it stems from the typical Paizo adventure being extremely linear. You see the same thing happen with chase scenes, pivotal negotiations, and even on-foot combat encounters: authors often straight-up do not account for the possibility of failure, and when they do it's mostly some vaguely unsatisfying B.S. meant to stick the party back on the rails.
And like, I get it. It's a consequence of the format. You've only got so many pages to work with and a contractual obligation to get the players from Point A to Point B. If there's a risk they might go to Point C instead, then suddenly you have to write two equally fleshed-out sessions, each of which only half the audience will get to experience. It's just not a good investment of man-hours and wordcount; in many cases, railroading is a necessary evil. However, it really makes me wish Paizo sold adventure toolboxes rather than adventure paths.
Meanwhile, a homebrew campaign would have no problem implementing an appropriate aftermath to catastrophic starship damage. Worst case scenario, the GM calls the game early because the stuff they prepared no longer makes narrative sense, and then opens next session with the PCs stranded in space/zipping away in an emergency shuttle/being boarded by the enemy. Best case, they've got a clear enough grasp on the campaign world and available mechanical tools to throw together a follow-up scene after a short break (or even improvise one on the spot). You can technically still do this with a pre-written adventure, but it requires setting the published material aside and doing your own thing, and said adventures rarely offer guidance on how to do that.
It also doesn't help that, as systems with high mechanical granularity and (in modern editions) tight mathematical expectations, most Paizo RPGs make improvisation tricky. I've found the best method for taking advantage of that granularity while allowing for player freedom is to treat each leg of an adventure as its own level-bounded mini-sandbox, then prep the next leg based on what happened in the previous one.
TL;DR: The kind of heavy consequences pauljathome is looking for are 100% possible, just hard to pull off if you're writing the whole adventure in advance.
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Since the new system seems to use your character sheet more, including class features, I'm less concerned about not getting a playtest, although I would have loved to have had one. I'm curious how PF2e classes and New SF2e will work with the new starship system.
Just saw there are 2 new starship maps coming out;
Starfinder Flip-Mat: Player Starship. October.
Starfinder Flip-Mat: Starship Decks Multi-Pack. January.The player starships look like they might have a more open concept, making running around fixing things easier.
That matches with the floormap of the ship used in the nova rush/and the eox AP. The halls all were pretty set for letting large sized folks get around and a lot bigger/more open room to fit your full catalog of rando alien players.
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There's a difference between a ship breaking up and being outright disintegrated. Even with a ship breaking up, it -- and individual sections that remain -- may be quite large; and there may be magical or technological steps taken to limit the scope of such hazards as depressurization, and to facilitate survival until rescue or other escape.
"May" of course rather than "will be". Whoever designed the *Nova Rush* seemingly gave no thought to such things as containing fires or pressure loss from breaches, for instance.
For pressure loss I suspect it will be like guardians of the galaxy ships if your hull gets breached some kind of emergency force field pops up to keep the insides inside and the outsides outside. Given even basic body armors are described as having forcefields to do stuff like this it seems odd to not expect starships to have even more robust internal shield options.
Use of force fields could also work for fire control allowing you to seal off small effected areas and evac atmo in just those rooms boom no more fire.
We shall see what the rules actually say but given hardlight is a thing in the setting and complex environmental sealing forcefields are common it opens up what you can do for ship layouts a lot especially to have crew with different atmospheric/pressure likes/dislikes.
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There's a difference between a ship breaking up and being outright disintegrated. Even with a ship breaking up, it -- and individual sections that remain -- may be quite large; and there may be magical or technological steps taken to limit the scope of such hazards as depressurization, and to facilitate survival until rescue or other escape.
"May" of course rather than "will be". Whoever designed the *Nova Rush* seemingly gave no thought to such things as containing fires or pressure loss from breaches, for instance.
For pressure loss I suspect it will be like guardians of the galaxy ships if your hull gets breached some kind of emergency force field pops up to keep the insides inside and the outsides outside. Given even basic body armors are described as having forcefields to do stuff like this it seems odd to not expect starships to have even more robust internal shield options.
Use of force fields could also work for fire control allowing you to seal off small effected areas and evac atmo in just those rooms boom no more fire.
We shall see what the rules actually say but given hardlight is a thing in the setting and complex environmental sealing forcefields are common it opens up what you can do for ship layouts a lot especially to have crew with different atmospheric/pressure likes/dislikes.
We have already seen similar force fields in 1-17 Corpse Fleet Conflict. Although they are not on the player's ship, but they are on the ship that has a map like the player's ship will have in the Tech Core starship rules.
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I do have to wonder a bit how starships alter things, economy-wise.
Do the ships effectively auto-level based on characters? If they instead require investment to upgrade, do we need to increase expected treasure by level to reflect the associated expense?
Starship options don't cost credits, and it's intended that players are able to freely swap out starship part choices at ports if they want to try something else out.
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I think starship combat combing with a ship map as standard will make at least some of the logical consequences of losing a space fight easier to run at the table - heck of a lot easier to repel a boarding action (or do a combat-time skill challenge for depressurisation) when you already know what the inside of the ship looks like.
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I have a bad feeling about this. FTL isn't a multiplayer game. Its a crew management game. In my experience players don't like their turns "managed".
We are often specialized and aren't fit to take on any role. There can probably only be so many people who can plug a hole. Gods forbid that its one PC who is overworked. Gods forbid that gunners, captain, and maybe even pilot have to stop engaging in the space fight because the engineer doesn't have the speed to reach every new hole, or how that kind of emergency action could lead the PCs into a death spiral.
Ya I got a bad feeling about this...
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Ya I got a bad feeling about this...
I assure you, it cannot be worse than 1e's corebook starship rules, where most mystics couldn't do jack, and the DC scaling meant even if you min-maxed as hard as you could at a starship role, you genuinely got worse at it as you leveled up.
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I have a bad feeling about this. FTL isn't a multiplayer game. Its a crew management game. In my experience players don't like their turns "managed".
We are often specialized and aren't fit to take on any role. There can probably only be so many people who can plug a hole. Gods forbid that its one PC who is overworked. Gods forbid that gunners, captain, and maybe even pilot have to stop engaging in the space fight because the engineer doesn't have the speed to reach every new hole, or how that kind of emergency action could lead the PCs into a death spiral.
Ya I got a bad feeling about this...
SF1e, all players controlled the same pawn or token; what happened inside the ship was all theater of the mind. Although FTL is a single-player game, it easily could have been a multiplayer game. The important part is that once you have a map of the ship's interior, PCs have real choices again, sometimes hard choices.
In the US Navy, every sailor and officer assigned to a submarine has been through damage control training, which is especially cold if you did your training in the winter, since they used lake water to flood the training room. I did my training in the fall, and it was already damned cold.
In Strfinder, is the captain motivating the crew more importantly than damage control? Is the pilot turning on autopilot or letting the ship fly straight more important than damage control, or replacing an injured gunner? I've played in a game where the crew had no gunners at all because the science and magic officers also had good attack options.
Having a map of the ship means localized damage, which means that, for the first time in Starfinder, the ship healer gets to heal during ship combat.
Maybe with the new starship system it might make sense to not assign a station to one of the PCs so they are free to run around fixing things.
What happens when a ship is boarded while still in a ship-to-ship battle? Someone has to leave their station and fight; if that's on the bridge, that could be the pilot and captain.
All hard choices, just like any other combat.
Once we know the actual rules, it might be wise during character creation to think about what your character will do during ship combat.
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Once we know the actual rules, it might be wise during character creation to think about what your character will do during ship combat.
This is actually one of my biggest fears. Right now, most of my starfinder play is in SFS where I'm going to adventure with a bunch of random characters.
In SF1 and in the only ship combat scenario in season 1 of SFS2 there was the huge risk that you'd have a character who was all but useless in ship combat.
Maybe I've diverted some of my resources so I'm a reasonable pilot. But there is somebody who is a better pilot. Oh well, I guess I'll go miss with this weapon instead then :-).
Or maybe (as in the case of the SFS2 combat) I created a character with absolutely no knowledge of the ship combat rules and had just about nothing to actually do.
I'm definitely going to wait and see the actual rules before calling out "Oh woe is me, DOOM. DOOM I SAY". Maybe Paizo will manage to square the circle and come out with rules that are at least "good enough". They HAVE sometimes massively improved things from PF1 to PF2 (the swarm and troop rules, for example, are insanely better in PF2). But they also sometimes come up with rules systems, especially when not playtested, that are absolute and complete garbage. PF2 Kingmaker rules are probably the best example of this.
I can't bring myself to be cautiously optimistic. But at least I'm currently in "Lets wait and see, they may be decent" mode rather than "Doom and gloom. DOOM I say" mode :-) :-)
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It does sounds like they are leaning in more towards letting players make use of their classes strengths on the ship and not just focusing on a few specific skills and if you don't take them be kinda useless.
I am looking forward to see how this plays out I think this is probably a better direction than a full on tactical format when you have all your people driving the same bus.
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This quote from Thursty is all I need to be more optimistic than I already was.
Soldiers who are in gunnery can suppress enemy ships. Operatives can get extra damage. Mystics can add the starship to their bond... things get wacky and the combos are MUCH more than just who has best skill check.
That's from the Reddit post linked to near the top of this thread.
I imagine Pilot is kind of the exception since we don't have a pilot class, and it's its own skill. For archetypes, Space Pirate kind of fits, but I'm hoping for an Ace Pilot archetype, kind of like the Ace Pilot theme from SF1e. Pilot backgrounds are another option. Hoping these are in Tech Core, since it didn't make much sense to have them until the full starship rules are out. Maybe a solarian with staller rush can use it on the ship when piloting?
I'm also hoping that mechanics can add their turrets to the outside of their starship.
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Re: Narrative ship combat in season one of SFS2e, that particular encounter was badly balanced in general. Despite using the "easy" adjustments, the PC's ship still blew up on the second round. Continuing the scenario from there required a bit of creativity on my part, lol.
Anyway, I've been running narrative ship scenes the same way I run investigations, chases, and other "soft" encounters: if the player can narratively justify it, they can roll whatever skill check they want. This has, so far, prevented anyone from being locked out of a scene. I think about half the scenarios that include scenes like this directly tell GMs to be similarly flexible, but I'm not going to go back through my entire library and check.
So, if GMs/adventure authors are willing to accomodate improvised actions, there should hopefully never be a situation where a player "can't do anything."
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Cinematic Starship Scenes already allow players to take creative actions; the problem is that most players haven't thought of what those actions could be until the CSS starts at the table.
In a corpse fleet conflict, I had a player use Holo-Roger. It's too high-level for corpse fleet conflict, but Phantasmal Fleet would be fun in a CSS. As I prep for the Solar Shake Up, I've added this to the list of crew actions from the scenario. I also plan to give the players a heads-up the week before so they have time to think about extra actions.
Extra actions:
◇ Holo-Roger (Space Pirate Archetype)
◆ Talk to another ship (use any skill to influence)
◆ Aid another
◆ Guidance
◆◆ (engineer) Assisted Recovery reduces flat check to DC 10, allows an extra flat check to end persistent damage to your ship, once per round. (player core 438, GM Core 227)
◆, ◆◆, ◆◆◆ Get creative.
As players or I come up with more creative actions, I'll add them to my list, but most of the ones I list here are listed in the GM Core as examples of extra actions.
Solar Shake Up has a big advantage over corpse fleet conflict, because it has multiple ships the PCs can talk to in combat. A friend ran Solar Shake Up 4 times at Gen Con and said that talking to other ships is key. Don't let just the captain talk to other ships; let any of the crew talk.
As far as decreasing the difficulty of an encounter in a scenario, there are 2 posts worth reading. From the Revising Run as Written thread.
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This quote from Thursty is all I need to be more optimistic than I already was.
Soldiers who are in gunnery can suppress enemy ships. Operatives can get extra damage. Mystics can add the starship to their bond... things get wacky and the combos are MUCH more than just who has best skill check.
Thats kind of cool and all but I can see that I'm going to have major problems suspending my disbelief :-).
That just makes no sense whatsoever to me in universe. And, before anybody points it out, I know that it really doesn't make a lot of sense in universe that everybody ducks when the soldier fires his gun but ignores the envoy firing his. But that sorta kinda works in that pretty much only the soldier DOES bother with automatic weapons :-).
Also implies some weird scale issues. If the Mystic bond is going to be of any use then the ship kinda has to have ~PCish hit points.
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This quote from Thursty is all I need to be more optimistic than I already was.
Soldiers who are in gunnery can suppress enemy ships. Operatives can get extra damage. Mystics can add the starship to their bond... things get wacky and the combos are MUCH more than just who has best skill check.Thats kind of cool and all but I can see that I'm going to have major problems suspending my disbelief :-).
That just makes no sense whatsoever to me in universe. And, before anybody points it out, I know that it really doesn't make a lot of sense in universe that everybody ducks when the soldier fires his gun but ignores the envoy firing his. But that sorta kinda works in that pretty much only the soldier DOES bother with automatic weapons :-).
Also implies some weird scale issues. If the Mystic bond is going to be of any use then the ship kinda has to have ~PCish hit points.
Cast illusionary game on pauljathome to help with suspending disbelief.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
This quote from Thursty is all I need to be more optimistic than I already was.
Soldiers who are in gunnery can suppress enemy ships. Operatives can get extra damage. Mystics can add the starship to their bond... things get wacky and the combos are MUCH more than just who has best skill check.That's from the Reddit post linked to near the top of this thread.
I imagine Pilot is kind of the exception since we don't have a pilot class, and it's its own skill. For archetypes, Space Pirate kind of fits, but I'm hoping for an Ace Pilot archetype, kind of like the Ace Pilot theme from SF1e. Pilot backgrounds are another option. Hoping these are in Tech Core, since it didn't make much sense to have them until the full starship rules are out. Maybe a solarian with staller rush can use it on the ship when piloting?
I'm also hoping that mechanics can add their turrets to the outside of their starship.
Bonded starship sounds really cool. I'm picturing a shadow Mystic using Network Spell to have shadows pick off boarders one by one as they move through the corridors.
Hoping that they do a good job of keeping up on how new classes apply their stuff.
I'm curious to see if doing class stuff will be tied to particular stations or something? Regardless, very excited to see the final version.
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This quote from Thursty is all I need to be more optimistic than I already was.
Soldiers who are in gunnery can suppress enemy ships. Operatives can get extra damage. Mystics can add the starship to their bond... things get wacky and the combos are MUCH more than just who has best skill check.That's from the Reddit post linked to near the top of this thread.
I imagine Pilot is kind of the exception since we don't have a pilot class, and it's its own skill. For archetypes, Space Pirate kind of fits, but I'm hoping for an Ace Pilot archetype, kind of like the Ace Pilot theme from SF1e. Pilot backgrounds are another option. Hoping these are in Tech Core, since it didn't make much sense to have them until the full starship rules are out. Maybe a solarian with staller rush can use it on the ship when piloting?
I'm also hoping that mechanics can add their turrets to the outside of their starship.
Bonded starship sounds really cool. I'm picturing a shadow Mystic using Network Spell to have shadows pick off boarders one by one as they move through the corridors.
Hoping that they do a good job of keeping up on how new classes apply their stuff.
I'm curious to see if doing class stuff will be tied to particular stations or something? Regardless, very excited to see the final version.
Looks like a shadow Mystic might be able to conceal the ship too. Now I'm really courious what whitchworpers and solarins will be able to do with a starship? Starships with character class level of number of options is exciting!
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Looks like a shadow Mystic might be able to conceal the ship too. Now I'm really courious what whitchworpers and solarins will be able to do with a starship? Starships with character class level of number of options is exciting!
In what is definitely a weird take (even I'm surprised :-)) if they actually go full bore like this and treat the ship more or less COMPLETELY like its just another character it will actually help me to suspend my disbelief.
At that point, it becomes another setting trope. And those I can accept most of the time.
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Looks like a shadow Mystic might be able to conceal the ship too. Now I'm really courious what whitchworpers and solarins will be able to do with a starship? Starships with character class level of number of options is exciting!
In what is definitely a weird take (even I'm surprised :-)) if they actually go full bore like this and treat the ship more or less COMPLETELY like its just another character it will actually help me to suspend my disbelief.
At that point, it becomes another setting trope. And those I can accept most of the time.
I'm thinking of Moya from Farscape as a good example. Also, Starfinder Society Scenario #4-08: Precious Cargo comes to mind. Starfinder is science fantasy, so why wouldn't that apply to starship too? There was a live play series on YouTube playing Against the Aeon Throne that did a good job of making the ship's AI feel like a character; the ship thought it was a pirate.
Sure. But what if its, you know, a ship :-) :-) ?
A Huge SRO that flys?
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Ok, you're all starting to convince me and make me hopeful :-).
Of course, now Paizo has to live up to the expectations that you're giving me :-). Both story wise AND in terms of mechanics. :-).
But if its a thing that all ships (or, at least, all PC ships) are pretty much at least on the level of NPC followers then it might well work.
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I'm fully expecting a third party gold rush for homebrew PF2 class ship interactions. The design space is far too tempting, and I doubt it's something the Starfriends had the means to cover themselves.
But yeah, including the ship in your mystic bond doesn't seem weird to me at all. People getting extremely attached to their ships is a common trope, as is the magical manifestation of strong emotions. No shipboard AI, biotech components, or literal ghost in the machine required: "this is my baby and don't you dare treat her wrong" is enough.