/sfg/ - Starfinder General

GAS GIANT LIFEFORMS!

Same shit, except better in basically every way. This does not necessarily mean it's good.

They made Vigor + Wound Points the canon HP system, but instead of making Armor as DR the canon armor system they just granulated it further by adding different types of AC for different damage types

It's weird

Even a slight improvement might be nice, and at least the book bloat would be gone, so part of me is tempted to pitch it to my group anyway. What about high level play doesn't function?

Goddamn mess for anything related to DCs other than saving throws; they used multiplicative scaling.

Weapons are also kinda iffy and right now the tables are spotty at best. Say you want to use a crossbow: not only are they unavailable at the lowest levels, but the mid level ones are heavy weapons (so different proficiency/specialization) and the high levels have none at all. Some weapon types literally end at level 2. Power Armor is sparse as fuck and doesn't go past level 15. Ship actions/roles are a mess, and levelling up literally makes doing the same thing you just did right before you levelled (without changing ANYTHING about the ship so the fucktards on the forums can go fuck themselves in a fire with their already-shitty-even-were-it-not-for-this "more complex and bigger ship lol) progressively less likely to succeed even if you're specializing in your bonuses to that...

It's clear this game was NOT playtested, played a little sure but never TESTED. Basic, basic fucking errors in math and rules show that no effort was ever put into this mechanically.

They wrote a setting, they spent two days each separately writing the rules of a chapter without even fucking talking to each-other, and then they slapped an NDA on it.

>why not just play Mongoose Traveller?
Redpill me on it.

Friendly reminder that the suggested 10 PB is still a 15 PB.

Some mechanics are good, e.g. Blindsense/Blindsight are reworked in a remarkably great way, but the math is retarded.
If you get the highest DC's humanly possible in the game, monsters will fail 50% of the time using their weak saves of 25% of the time using their good saves.
Characters extremely specialised in a skill will typically succeed about 50% of the time.
Characters not extremely specialised in shit might as well not bother with skills at all.
Ship math is an entirely different bag of retarded, with high level DC's becoming flat out impossible to meet.

I want to explore the plains of cuckoldry thank god Starfinder finally is an RPG made for me!

I want to have a world similar to Destiny's Fundament which was a massive Gas Giant where continent sized islands float on a strange ocean and various alien races are stuck there with equally giant creatures that live beneath the planet's oceans.

And those DCs are for what used to be a basic action when you were low level - doesn't matter what ship you're on or how big or advanced it is or isn't. Only your level.

A slide maneuver is exactly as difficult in an interceptor as it is in a dreadnought. It's entirely based on what the average party level is. The envoy gains a level from a diplomatic scuffle down on the planet, and suddenly because you've reached a high enough level the chief engineer can never again balance the shields.

I suck at the math, but shouldn't it be relatively easy to homebrew adjusted DCs? For instance:

Starship Combat: Reduce the DC of checks by the following amounts according to this table:

Level 10-11: -3 DC Modifier
Level 12-13: -4 DC Modifier
Level 14-15: -4 DC Modifier
(...)

Same for other problematic DCs.

Thoughts?

Err.... made a few typos, but the idea should come through.

I have a starship DC fix brewed up, but rebrewing the math of the entire system is far too much work.

The fix is, blanket replace DC's on the left with DC's on the right:
10+2*tier -> 10+1.5*tier
15+2*tier -> 15+1.5*tier
20+2*tier -> 20+1.5*tier
10+3*tier -> 25+1.5*tier

Someone made a spreadsheet that showcases my starship combat math rebalance suggestion.
Original, paizo math: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10F-R-yGim9_DYfxpjKCmwf1tD7EikKyCtekRtZ5ezhc/edit?usp=sharing
My math alteration suggestion: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GsIX_efmjsPa0zXH93Gt_pG38S50iLUvhJMsHJOr0Hg/edit?usp=sharing

It can be homebrewed, but never forget that homebrewing a fix is just a dose of cough-syrup.

The disease is still there. The bad mechanics are still inherent to the system.

I wonder what the new edition of traveler is like.

Quite good, I recommend it.

It's still an extremely crunchy system, but Traveller started off in the GURPS era of tabletop (I've seen original Traveller handbooks printed on pulp paper and yellowed by age!) Mongoose took up the license and remade it, sort of like what Paizo did to the 3.5 OGL, removing a lot of the rules hemorrhage and streamlining a few systems. It's primarily hex-based, and it's pretty blatant that Starfinder stole most of its technological systems directly from MT (the computer rules are almost word-for-word!) If you read the spaceflight rules and the vehicle rules for Starfinder, you basically already know how half of MT works.

I personally REALLY like MT's character creation system, where instead of rolling up a character normally, you go through a process where you flesh out a character's life with a series of jobs, with success and failure dictated by stats and rolls; sort of like a character creation minigame. Personally, I like playing tabletop RPGs for, well, the roleplaying, so it really gives you an opportunity to flesh out a character before even jumping into a session in a unique and interesting way.

Granted, it's still kinda stupid in that there are no FTL communications, the fuel rules are a pain in the ass, and the game locks you into more of a gritty economy where you're barely making it day-by-day, but if you like the tone of that sort of space-opera Cowboy Bebop rough-house life on a ship deal, it's definitely for you. No magic, though, it's all weird high-science.

Original Traveller still exists under the name "Traveller5," but... I don't like it. That's my personal preference.

>tldr; MT is a hard-scifi space opera game that Starfinder stole the worst parts from. If you like Cowboy Bebop's tone, play it. If you also like being an awful person in space, play it. Pic related.

Where can I get it for free?

There's a few actual play videos on Youtube.

www.thepiratebay.onion

Why are you posting here? You need to go back to pleasing your black Muslim gay communist atheist master's cock like the good little welp you are.

>writing up a white male heteronormative human mystic who loves having sex with his wife in the missionary position for the sake of producing children

Call the police, I don't give a fuck

>white
>binary male
>not even fluid
>married
>to what xer implies is a binary female
>breeder
>mfw

>I personally REALLY like MT's character creation system, where instead of rolling up a character normally,
Two things:
MT usually refers to the much older MegaTraveller, while the Mongoose editions are referred to as MGT1 and 2.
Second, "normal"? Traveller has been doing the lifepath thing since 1977. Your Gygax Hash process is hardly normal.

Okay, three things. T5 is not "original Traveller" either.

You degenerate is he also going to hold her hand...In public?

There's a Traveller General up fairly often. Look there.

There is also an OGL version called Cepheus Engine that is officially "pay what you want".

Isn't T5 the mega-autism one with QREBS?

1. Didn't know about that! I usually play PF and sometimes my own custom TTRPGs (some based on Apocalypse World, some not,) so thanks for the trivia!

2. We're in a Starfinder thread, I figured "normal" in this context meant Pathfinder, 3.5. etc.

3. I've never slogged through the entirety of original Traveller, and I've never gotten in-depth with T5. Good to know!

>primary fighting style can't be changed
What bullshit

???
You mean soldiers?

Yeah

what is so bullshit about that

Why can't you change It? That doesn't make any sense thematically and seems to be just an arbitrary videogame rule

to make each soldier special in a way

The primary fighting style is the one your character probably spent years honing before they gained their first class level from whatever space-commoner is. Picking it gives weight to your character, and stops him from blending in with every other soldier if all of them were able to just swap around like you change skill sets in games.

It makes perfect sense, and it's far less video gamey than the alternative.

With multi-classing so open, turning six classes with slight variations into one class with Styles is the only way to keep people from dipping too much.
In a setting with cybernetics and brain grafting, retraining should be trivial. House rule and move on to more important issues, like the task numbers being fucked.

Literally Hitler, user.

Someone is doing RPG minis for this game. Is anyone going to do ship minis?

Gentlemen, this is how I wish to Android Mechanic Pilot

mind to elaborate on that, what did i miss ?

Any leaks of the GM screen yet?

11pb or 13pb?

15pb is definitely too much. It trivializes racial bonuses by allowing anyone to take two 10s to 18, only the penalty will be very relevant.

At 13pb you only need to care about one of your bonuses to go hard into your main scores, but it still might be too easy getting things up and 16s will be way easy to come by if you decide to take advantage of those +2s at 5.

At 11pb though you're really not much different from 10, naturally, and buying up a race with a penalty stays difficult in how it impacts your spread.

>no expectations for the game
>still let down

I think I'm done with anything Paizo makes. Pathfinder nearly burned me out on tabletop RPGs forever back in 2014, and Starfinder looks to turn out to be a gigantic fucking mess.

Polite sage.

How did Paizo fuck up the math so badly?

I just saged with an image. Sorry.

I'm not really that convinced Paizo fucked up the math on Starfinder. I think that the math might've been fucked up on Pathfinder and we're so used to it that we don't understand the fixes here.

other than some space combat stuff?

We're playing with 15pb; trivializing the racial bonuses is actually an upside to me / my group.

On the other hand we played PF with the rule that you can just pick whatever race's stats and then play something else aslong as it makes sense.

Different tastes I guess.

>Ship actions/roles are a mess, and levelling up literally makes doing the same thing you just did right before you levelled (without changing ANYTHING about the ship so the fucktards on the forums can go fuck themselves in a fire with their already-shitty-even-were-it-not-for-this "more complex and bigger ship lol) progressively less likely to succeed even if you're specializing in your bonuses to that...
So, gaining levels makes check DCs higher? That's 4e levels of stupid.

That's TRUENAMER levels of stupid.

Then get the fuck out of here.

The best part of starship combat is that the Stunt to improve your ship's AC and missile profile gives you a fixed +2, but letting the computer handle it with the 'glide' minor action gives you a scaling bonus of half your Pilot's Pilot ranks.

Yes, listing lazily to the left is considered the ultimate defensive maneuvre in the Golarion System.

Do quickened spells provoke AoOs in this game?

Are spell cache's free like wizard arcane bond?

Why only half ranks? The Glide action listed on pg326 indicates full piloting ranks. But other than that, yes; as long as the pilot does nothing, they massively boost your starships defenses much higher than actively taking evasive manauveres. Thos really makes no sense, unless the intention was to take the piloting skill of the ships computer into account, rather than the passively observing crew pilot?

You know that starship AC always includes the pilot's full skill bonus, right? 10+ranks+armor+size+maneuvers?

Half ranks would be a pretty big negative.

I did not know that, because I'm retaaaaarded. Sorry.

I want to make love to my ship's computer!

Easy there, Adam Susan, those ports are not for that kind of entry.

That makes more sense.

But I wanna give her the USB!

I want to downgrade my computer from a Mk. 10 Duonade, step by step, without telling her!

I want her to wake up and be just a little bit less useful, a little bit slower, apologizing for being stupid whenever she can't help the crew as much anymore!

I want her to beg for another 'upgrade' night after night when she keeps getting worse at the same tasks, slowly growing more dependant as she grows dumber and dumber!

I want to install my shipfu in a slutbot after she's become a functional retard, telling her she can still be helpful one more way when she's too stupid to say no!

You'd bypass her firewall, which means you'd give her malware. Do you want to infect your computer or do you want it to do calculations to catch those dirty wrongthinkers and undesirables?

Sorry but that's bullshit.
Ignore pathfinder for a moment and just actually look at the fucking math for fucking starfinder.

Its retardation stands alone. It's not only retarded in comparison to pathfinder.

When actions that anyone can somewhat-reliably pull off (very reliably or almost guaranteed if specialized in it) at low levels gradually become impossible even for hyper-specialists like operatives at the highest levels to even succeed at, merely by factor of having levelled up, YOU DONE FUCKED UP NOW

give me an example
i dont believe you

I'd like to play a Goblin mechanic or Envoy, is that a good idea Veeky Forums?
I just want to play an obnoxious partier guy with a bunch of little robots/drones creating distracting lightshows, hologram shenanigans and playing loud music.

Envoy? Not sure how that would work, with a -4 penalty your saving throws and resolve points would be in the toilet.

Demand. Captain Action. By succeeding at an intimidate check, you give your crewmember a +4 to rolls to do what he was doing otherwise. DC...15+x2 Your Starships Tier. Say you're piloting a Norikama Dropship, Tier 8. That's DC 31. Alright. But what about something beefier? Say, a Vindicas Dreadnought (Tier 16). Have fun trying to hit a DC of 47.

Now, what kind of DCs can a character hit? To be fair, say you've actually picked a social class like Envoy to be your captain. Someone with CHA 18 and a class bonus to Intimidate. You can at most put (Your Level) Ranks into a Skill. If the skill is a class skill, you get an additional +3 bonus. So, if you're a Level 16 Envoy (to match the level 16 Dreadnought), you've got, from skillpoints and CHA alone, a +23 to Intimidate. Congrats! You only need to roll a 24 to succeed! But how do we boost further? Slap Expertise from Envoy into Intimidate. You're adding another +2 and rolling an extra 1d8 on intimidate checks. If you've got Skill Focus Intimidate, you get to roll expertise die twice and pick highest, and get a +3.

So, tallied bonuses; +27 to Intimidate, Rolling 2d8 take the highest and adding, vs DC 47. You could get away with a barely squeaked out success if you roll 12 and an 8, 13 and 7, 14 and 6, so on and so forth, to succeed at this roll at all. If you're not an Envoy? Get fucked. Why did you even try to be a Captain.

B-But pazio never does anything wrong!

Well. Shit.

would a gnome work for either class?

so to patch a glitching system on a tier 15 starship is a DC 40 check.

a lvl 15 engineer has this as an engineer skill:
lvl 15
class skill 3
bypass 4
int 5
skill focus 2
droid assist 2

thats a 55% chance, which seems fine to me. that doesnt include magic items or other people helping or assisting, like the captain, or rerolls from class abilities.

whoops, skill focus is +3 not +2
so 60% chance.
WITHOUT MAGIC ITEMS OR EQUIPEMENT AT ALL BTW.

This is a complete specialist (and it's a Mechanic not an Engineer, Engineer is the ship role he's taking at that moment. He could be the pilot instead). Trying to patch a glitched system requires one action.

Class abilities and items only affect crew actions if it explicitly states so in the ability. Bypass therefore does not apply here. The mechanic's drone or exocortex are class abilities and do not apply here.

Engineer has 15(ranks)+3(class)+5(Int)+2(Focus) = +25 and can succeed at this simplest grade of repairs on a 15+: 30% of the time.

A Malfunctioning system requires two actions and DC 45. He can then succeed at this 5% of the time. If class abilities COULD work then at least you would still have +31 and be capable of succeeding 40% of the time

A Wrecked system was DC 22 at level 1. Not an easy roll by any means. But by level 15, that is DC 50 even if the ship has remained entirely unchanged (so no 'it's bigger/more-complex now' excuse). A +25 cannot succeed.

The captain wishing to assist with diplomacy to give you a +2 to your roll requires a DC 15+Tier check, so DC30. If he's good at diplomacy he has a good chance of pulling this off, but a non-specialized character won't always succeed. A Demand (+4) or a moving speech (to give you a reroll instead) would be DC 45 however.

You can't use magic items or equipment at all.
And that was the easiest engineering check since more damaged systems are harder.

And you used to be better at making that roll: Back when the party was level 1 it was a DC 12 to fix a glitching system. It can still be point-for-point the same ship: DC increases when party gains levels, even if nothing else changes at all ever.

my bad as well, +26 with focus so 10% on the glitch.

10% is goddamn lame.

So what would you recommend over this Starfinder?

Page 322: Class abilities and items don't apply unless they specifically say so in their descriptions. Drone and Bypass don't so it's not even allowed to assist you.

any game with a space setting that's not this.

If you like this game its fine but anyone who thinks that the book is fine is cazy

>They nerfed the charge action in starfinder
I guess they don't like melee combat huh?

Anyone have a PDF of the first adventure path? I want to use the monsters in it but I'd rather not pay 16$ for them.

lvl 15 engineer:
lvl 15
class skill 3
int 5
skill focus 3
racial bonus 2
themeless 2
captain encourage 2

TOTAL bonus = +32

If you wanna go really star-trek, Ashen Stars has the right 'feel' to it system-wise. Lot of focus on clues and puzzlesolving and completely bullshitting things with the deflector dish.

If you don't give a rat's ass about ever touching starfighter combat in any way at all from any angle, the whole 'Edge of the Empire' (and its other splatbooks) from FFG are actually pretty good - just keep away from the retardation that is their ship system, that company is notorious when it comes to equipment rules.

Traveler has quite a bit of things stolen clean from it as one user mentioned. There is a new Mongoose Traveler edition, which is the good stuff. Simple, and similar playstyle as what starfinder was going for and what most people wanting starfinder were probably hoping for. Not identical (it's less magicky though there's fairly extensive psi abilities if you go that way) but a lot of the same 'feel'.

Of course if what you want is to become powerful characters with even bigger ships, Rogue Trader is easily just as insane as anything you're used to in pathfinder and in my experience has made for some utterly amazing campaigns. It does specialize in 'larger-than-life' characters and obtaining anything 'item' (including ships) actually represents checking if you can obtain the full logistics train to keep it fully supplied and in top shape from this day forward.

Fragged Empire has pretty decent ship combat at smaller scales, and is like a slightly crunchier, more action-oriented equivalent to Ashen Stars. Pretty decent stuff.

I haven't had a chance to look into the books yet, how'd they do that?

Wrong: DC only increases with tier of the ship, not with the level.

Assuming the PC's have a ship of the same level is iffy - It seems like the idea is that tiers are the minimum level that you can get something, not that you need to have at-tier gear every level.

Also weird - The examples in the book for the combat section don't match their own numbers. Someone fucked something up, because the crew isn't adding their ship's tier to the checks they're trying to make.

Charge now gives -2 to attack and to AC.

Full actions in general consume swifts as well as moves and standards now, and charge now provides a -2 penalty to attack roll and to AC, with no benefits other than the charge movement itself.

I think people're reacting too harshly to this and a lot of other changes though. There's no doubt that there's some fucked math, but I think the system is still fundamentally better than Pathfinder has been throughout the entirety of its life.

Can't use expertise on a crew action.

Wait why- Does it not offer anything in exchange? I mean other than double-move-and-attack

It does not offer anything in exchange other than double-move-and-attack.