Starfinder General /sfg/

Level 1 means no AoEs if I remember correctly, or at least none that will be both repeatable and take significant amounts of health off the targets. If they aren’t working well together the goblins have a solid chance to take one down if there are enough of them. 3 isn’t enough to reasonably challenge, though. 5-6 minimum if the goblins are working together and fighting “smart”

so I should ignore the charts and just go off the xp budget? So far I got:
encounter 1) 3-5 goblins in engineering
E2) cr1 trap
E3) goblin village in cargo bay. multiple solutions, stealth, engineering, computers to dump the village into space or bypass, fighting is an i'll advised option. 10 goblins + head honcho, 10 none combatant goblins.
E4 tech based attacks from the ships AI as it comes online functions like a trap or spell based attack
E5 1-2 security bots protecting / patrolling science bay and crew decks.

I've never played Starfinder, but I've got some Pathfinder experience under my belt. I kinda like the Skittermanders, what's a good class for playing one?

Envoy with the Icon theme

Oh god, you are going to be a FF Mascot

Perfect.

If a starship has multiple PCUs and the engineer uses the divert power action to repair the shields will the repair be 5% of just one PCU or 5% of the sum of all PCUs?

It’s the sum. Can’t find my link, but all power systems are hooked together in one system. It’s why battle damage to “power” affects everything.

I see no problem with this.

This is amazing. This is a wonderful and perfect idea. I hate it so much goddamn you all.

Looks good to me. I’m assuming your players are a competent group, though. The village will likely kill a stupid one.

After reading through the first book of the AP online, I decided that it's a far too large amount of railroading and basically just a rapid-fire sight seeing tour so I want to change that to something a bit more fun for a first level adventure for the party.

I'm keeping the first encounter in the docking bay but from there I want to change it into a gang war clean-up adventure, complete with leaders and objectives for those leaders, letting the party choose to mingle with one group or another but also leaving the option open to ruin both of them.

So the question boils down to: Should I keep this in Absalom Station or maybe move it to Akiton for that Mad Max sort of rough and tumble environment? Also, what race should the leaders of each gang be and some sort of plot hook motive, like an experimental ship that both want their hands on? Already looking at doing dice rolling for the races for the basic gang members just so I can easily copy paste some vague statistics around without much hassle for random encounters.

I think it should at least be in Absalom. If the players are going to be in the default setting, the place is important and they need to be introduced.

Probably true, it's got the most information in the books so far in terms of actual development and hook ideas for places to go and things to do. Plus it's a lot more open to having people come in since it's such a hub area for things in the Pact Worlds

>Akiton for that Mad Max
akiton is total recall tho

Equal parts Mad Max and Total Recall, I'd say. The wastelands between major civilizations would be rife with marauders and bandits looking for some water and harrying convoys and travelers for it.

anyone run the broken suns yet.

Not yet. Looking forward to it, though, just assembled the group and the game starts after the holidays

I'm about to start Starfinder. I have no idea what to expect and just started reading rules right now.

Any tips, any traps of typical Pathfinder I should watch out for? Is Starfinder more about exploring space or fighting space battles? How does melee here compare to laser guns?

Overall, the balance is pretty good. Someone has the home rules to use, a little bit bigger than D&D 4e, but nowhere near Pathfinder in terms of broken stuff.

For running the game, you’ll want to channel XCOM2: really wide, open areas with plenty of chest high walls to shoot behind.

Melee is viable BUT you must insist everyone packs a pistol, even that Barbarian player who wants to play a Space Barbarian, which is just a regular Barbarian with technobabble in front of their usual abilities. I’d actually recommend punishing melee, just have them get run over or stepped on by bigger monsters

>Any tips, any traps of typical Pathfinder I should watch out for?

As a GM, I'd be hesitant about giving them anything that's too big a bonus since Starfinder has much tighter math than before.

If you want to hand out shiny magic items I'd actually look to 4e's effects more than bonuses to hit or damage. So a gun that gives a free action bullrush when it hits a guy 1/encounter or such.

Is it just me, or is the bonus spell slots chart not in the book? I can’t find it anywhere.

It's per-class now. Look on 84 for Mystic, 120 for technomancer.

How would you guys stat a UFO? Like what youd think the Greys would rode around in?

What do you mean by 4e's effects? Ive never played 4e and all i know is what people have told me.

I'd make it an odd ship. Perfect flight + shields not split between sides (But a bit lower as a result of needing to carve through all of them and the hull not fantastic). Likewise, make it all turret mounted weapons.

That way you don't have players going 'Aww shit, which side is which on the rotating identical circle?'

Here is an example of what I mean. Oddly enough, 4e's elemental weapons? Yeah, that's what Starfinder's fusions are based on (Save they do half the damage rather than all of it). The idea is that the +X on a weapon (Which Starfinder did away with) was secondary to having interesting extra effects like this one (Which takes a guy out of the battle briefly) which were often 1/encounter or 1/day. Basically, go broad with magic items (They do MORE things) rather than deep (They hit better)

Another example.

Thanks user. Got worried for a minute there.

Playing about with semi-undead for Starfinder (As full on undead have a lot of immuities/no con score.) A race of people kept on the border of life and death by technology and magic. Very damn tough to put down (Though not much harder than most to knock down. They still take the full turn to stabilise that most people do so even with Work Unfinished.)

Feedback is highly appreciated, as this is a first version.

Do the Starfinders have tenets or a list of rules? If not what would you put down as their charter?

I think Optimus Prime's "Freedom is the right of all sentient species" would fit.

Seems reasonable, though I wonder if they are as useless a group of meddlers as the pathfinder society.

So after finishing book 2 of the AP my dwarf armored storm solider is now level 5 and has picked up the battle harness power Armor. My GM has no issue letting me use the damage of the suit over a normal unarmed strike but I'm it sure which I prefer.

With 18 STR and the Melee striker gear boost I'm swinging for 1d4+8 unarmed. With the power suit of equal STR I can swing for 1d10+4. The unarmed has better average but the power suit has a higher max output. Which is better?

Unarmed strike. You won’t highroll splat anything in this game, so might as well go for the one with ~8% better average damage per round.

Higher average is generally the better option.

Being living + undead, whichever is worse seems like more of a downside than upside.

>For running the game, you’ll want to channel XCOM2: really wide, open areas with plenty of chest high walls to shoot behind.

Don't make it JUST that. Alleyways with turns are good for helping melee shine, as is room-to-room fighting.

Seems like Hellknights managed to get even more useless and retarded.

Well I spoke to my DM this morning. Turns out he's not allowing Alien Archive. "CRB only" he says, as if Alien Archive is a massive addition. I mean sure it's his first time doing Starfinder, but come on.

Actually, if it is his first time running Starfinder, you should say “I getcha senpai” and roll an Ysoki instead. There hasn’t been too much time out yet for the book and they are barely getting to deal with a lot of the bugs.

On top of that, this thread will die again and he’ll be yelled at by that one autist who doesn’t want to combine the threads

Oh I'm alright with it, I'll save that concept for later. Might do a Ysoki Mechanic or something instead, was definitely what I was thinking of before I saw the Skittermander.

>Played a single session of Starfinder
>DM has put the game on hiatus until christmas is over
This is killing me, I want to leave, but I want to play starfinder some time

Im running my first starfinder game this SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!

You got spots open?

in person game only dude. Sorry. I'm just hyped

What's that guy's fucking deal anyway?

Just be sure to play as much like the squirrel from guardians in the galaxy as possible, since everyone loves that one

... you mean the raccoon, right?

Yeah, Rocky

This is my first time GMing at all and the only way I could get my friends to play was by letting them play as more than the core races. I'm even allowing custom races on a case by case basis, but limiting people to just a handful of generic races that even I find dull sounds horrible. Your GM is a coward.

Play as a rat mascot instead.

>Valid Complaint
Sci-Fi discussion drowns out Fantasy , which it has.

Technology and Magic not always blending properly and making an ugly mess

>Invalid Complaint
Less time for talk of E-Celebs and Discord drama if more people are dropping in to talk about Games

>Play as a rat mascot instead.
Y'know, I wasn't going to because I though it just couldn't possibly mesh well, but then again...

What the other guy said. 10 + Honcho can be a VERY deadly encounter.

Its funny because I did a same encounter 3 weeks ago.

The reason they survived was because they were all lucky to save the Honcho when he screamed.

I would Advise to spread them out so that they face 6 or 7 and the rest to join in the next two rounds.

IMPORTANT REMINDER: Goblin weapons blow up when they get 1 in attack roll.
The damage is like a grenade and the radius is decent.
They can throw their soon-to-explode-malfunctioning-weapons at the players!

Also remember to have cover in the layout of the area.
This is gonna be a major benefit to the goblins.
Also some further decorations can impose difficult terrain and the players can showcase their skills (acrobatics, engineering, athletics etc) in combat.

As for E5 I would advise against using the Patrol Robot from Alien Archive against level 1 players unless the terrain is on their side. Like 2 of them got cover and the Robot does not.

Akiton is LIFE.

But in a more serious note, Akiton is many many things. Mad Max, Total Recall, John Carter of Mars -they got the shobhads and the contemplatives from that one-, The Expanse etc etc.

It is also the home planet of lizards that when they dont mate get supersized and brutal.
RIVENERS!

Pity he won’t allow the sources necessary to go full KH King Mickey.

Honestly I don't think I'd wanna go that way anyhow. King Mickey works best in KH, and that's it. Trying to pull that anywhere else just doesn't feel right.

What does a skill expertise do? An additional 1d6 roll to the skill?

Does anyone have a link for resources like tilesets and character map tokens? Even just some video game sprite sheet set in a futuristic setting would probably do well enough if it's top-down view

You mean for the envoy? It's basically just the part 2 for expertise.

Expertise allows you to add 1d6 to your skill check for sense motive. So think of it like you have a list of class skills you can roll that 1d6 to give a bonus to and it starts with sense motive by default.

Skill Expertise lets you choose additional skills to add to that list. So at level 1, if I've got it right, you get to add the 1d6 to sense motive and one additional skill from those listed in the book under skill expertise. You must have one point in the skill to choose it and every 4 levels after level 1 you get to add another to the list.

You can only choose these skills:
>Bluff (Cha), Computers (Int), Culture (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Disguise
(Cha), Engineering (Int), Intimidate (Cha), and Medicine (Int).

To clarify in case you weren't asking what I answered, when you roll a skill check for something you have an expertise in then you can roll a 1d6 as well and add that to the result.

You must have at least 1 resolve point. You don't use a resolve point to do this, but you need to have at least 1.

What's a raccoon?

On the topic of envoys, I'm wondering what anyone else has seen or figured out as far as the best or more practical in and out of a fight, a healer mystic or a medic envoy?

So sorry, meant to say trash panda.

I'd lean towards the Mystic myself, the Envoy's in-combat is rather limited.

So I want to play this. The last RPG I really played was 3.5, are there any big trap classes for players (like playing a fucking bard in 3.5 was) that I should worry about? Also I'm assuming that Roll20 is this new thing for finding games now? I've not done this in years.

>So I want to play this. The last RPG I really played was 3.5, are there any big trap classes for players (like playing a fucking bard in 3.5 was) that I should worry about?

Not really, all the classes have something going for them (Though no one really rights as well as a Soldier). Some classes have a few issues that support should help deal with (The Solarian has MAD issues, if your class doesn't have longarm prof I'd recommend making it a priority to get unless you are an Operative/Solarian) but it's got a lot, LOT less traps. Paizo actually put in the effort to do the math for stuff (And fix the math when it didn't work out).

How would you guys stat up MON*STAR from Silverhawks?

My players never watched the show and I want to bust out his motto

youtu.be/ql5q4TYxDgs

Couple of really obviously shitty feats, basically anything to do with combat maneuvers (particularly Drag Down). Deadly Aim turned out to be a turd unexpectedly, unless you either are already hitting on a 2, only hitting on a 20, or need the extra damage to punch through DR or Hardness.

Some crappy spells.

>desperately pretending that paizo is relevant in the current year
pathetic

Meh. Its a fun game that gets my circle to stop playing pathfinder as much

>retards who like a bad game like another slightly different bad game
wow really makes me think

I'm assuming because you want Charisma for your abilities, strength to actually hit, int for skills, and con so you don't explode?

And Dex if you want to shoot I guess.

Stop trying to think and go complain in a different thread, like "i hate D&D" thread number 100,003.

Eh, strength works for throwing.

shit game, sage

Envoy with Longarm Proficiency good? I want to be a supporting class, but at least be combat efficient and aid the team when they aren't getting cucked by damage/mind altering spells. Also sounds really nice with Clever Feint Attack.

shit game, nobody cares

Yes, they are.

Are you trying to scare people off because your afraid your own shit games won't get any attention?

Strength to hit, Int for skills (You actually get class boosts to more skills than you'll HAVE with 10 int), Dex to survive, Con and Will for Saves etc...

There is basically zero stat a Solarian doesn't want.

projection, sage

Realistically, that's true of all the damn classes.

Yeah but it's a bit worse than most for Solarian (Due to the addition of charisma as the primary stat, which is a bit of a weak stat in the system)

Hopefully not going to start those fetish Veeky Forums loves doing, but what's the ruling on interracial breeding? I'm just going to assume since all races have the capacity to communicate and philosophize they probably can form deep companionship, but can't ever reproduce.

Hope Soulknife updates soon. Having Cha to hit really helps them.

Yeah, Soulknife is doing wonders for Envoy and Solarian (It's not bad for other classes but not as huge a hand).

How would one go about creating an astartes in the system? Extra points if a psyker. Even more extra points if a chaos psyker. I have a campaign to break

There's likely some xenomorphic species out there, certainly, but by and large creatures with different genetic makeup aren't compatible, even when they have a common ancestor. when you toss in creatures from different planets entirely, the only way to get hybrids is through scientific meddling or a creature that can replace parts of its genetic code with that of another creature. The zerg are a good example of that, honestly.

There isn't really a good way to make an astartes; at best, you're going to end up with a particularly badass standard human soldier that's amped up their abilities with gene mods and implants.

Trick is, even if you do that, you won't be going around in power armor - power armor in Starfinder replaces your strength rather than enhances it, meaning if you want a high strength character you're often better off using a high end heavy armor instead. There's no special ways to get unique gene mods, there's no special way to get unique gear, none of it. Mybe that'll change in the future - the game doesn't have enough books at the moment to be worthwhile - but at the moment, you're kinda screwed.

Though, I will say that a level 20 soldier is almost guaranteed to be able to skullfuck a Kyokor, which is literally a kaiju. Take that as you will.

Gyrojet rifle is a high tier projectile weapon and soldiers have special stuff for power armour.

What about the symbiotes in Alien Archive?