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thelastorphan
2018-02-03, 06:27 PM
Started digging around in it and I am wondering what the general consensus for the system is and what pitfalls may not be obvious.

I want to run a game using it soon and am looking for pointers about the system in general. What differences in scaling or challenges, and looking at the weapons, damage numbers, might sneak up on me. That sort of thing.

Telok
2018-02-03, 09:09 PM
Use the errata for the skill DCs, hover drones make sad faces, automatic weapons are a bad joke, grenades are a worse joke except for smoke grenades which can be over powering in some situations, pistols are only good for Operatives, and never ever ever let the players realize that the cheapest and wimpiest orbital shuttle is a nigh invulnerable and omnipotent thunder god compared to any vehicle that they can ever buy.

But really it's mostly the skill DCs and an occasional snark about having to level up in order to find someone to sell you a used car or a quadcopter.

Weirdly the computers hacking rules a acceptable (especially the root access part) and computers are one of very few non-level-limited items in the game. So a level 1 character with enough money can buy a (or several) quantum supercomputer with every add-on available, but they can't find anyone willing to sell them a car. They will also not be able to use that computer if they ever forget or lose their root password.

thelastorphan
2018-02-04, 01:18 AM
The leveled item thing is something that looks kind of jarring to me on the surface and something I would likely ignore to some capacity. How much does doing so affect the power level of the game? And how much of doing so is okay balance wise?

Florian
2018-02-04, 03:34 AM
The leveled item thing is something that looks kind of jarring to me on the surface and something I would likely ignore to some capacity. How much does doing so affect the power level of the game? And how much of doing so is okay balance wise?

WBL is basically even more "locked" than it´s in basic PF and comes close in rigidity of D&D 4E.

Take a look at enemy numbers and design. Pretty linear progression here, from hp to AC and so on.
So characters must continuously upgrade their armor and weapon(s) to stay relevant and perform as expected for their level. You'll notice that when someone sticks to only one weapon type, say Zero Rifles, performance will begin to drop noticeably before the next "jump". Also keep in mind the limit of just having two magic item slots, that also plays a role here.

It also has a very positive effect, tho. As there´s no "Wizard BAB" anymore, everyone starts at least with light armor and pistol proficiency, and enemies scale to fit "low BAB (Envoy and such)", any class and character can function on an adequate level of combat competency without having to resort to extensive self-buffing first (notice the lack of spells like Mage Armor or Divine Favor). So there's no reason for the "caster types" to not also invest into standard combat equipment and do some pew-pew instead of overly relying on magic, which they can´t anyways, both essentially using the PF Bard Spells Known/Spells per Day table. Note that bonus spells per day due to high attributes is very low and limited compared to PF.

So, personaly, I´ve no problem with that part being a bit "gamey". Playing the Dead Suns AP and so far, the dreaded caster / martial divide hasn't raised its ugly head.

Knaight
2018-02-04, 03:47 AM
The book also has tendencies to get really stupid whenever the authors are involved in math that has actual physical units, because they don't have the math skills needed to handle that or much in the way of intuition for it. Examples of this include downright hilarious starship masses, but I'd recheck creature sizes, temperatures, etc. for basic first order reasonableness. It's not subtly wrong, and using those values verbatim will get noticed by players paying any attention.

Telok
2018-02-04, 05:10 AM
We just got to 5th level recently and have returned to civilization for the first time since third level. As a player it's pretty jarring. Take your basic survival knife for instance: level 1, $95, 1d4 damage. Then there's the level 7, $6000, 2d4. Then level 12, $32,800, 4d4. Then level 14, $64,400, 6d4. Then level 17, $275,000, 10d4. You get the same sort-of-a-pattern-but-not-really for all equipment.

So we're experiencing this weird sort of spike and lag in our combat prowess. You get a new level of item (it's mostly obvious with armor and weapons, but it applies to some other stuff too) during an adventure and suddenly you're awesome for the rest of that level, then you and the npcs and the monsters al level up but your equipment doesn't. So you're ok for a level after that, then you go and spend two more levels feeling like you're using a larp boffer while the bad guys beat you with aluminium baseball bats. Then it gets even stranger when you fight an npc built by the PC rules....

We're doing one of the APs, we fought some sort of undead solarian guardian guy who was built on the monster/enemy formula. It was throwing about a +14 versus our 17 and 18 ACs with something like 1d8+1d4+9 damage. It took seven rounds of four people and a combat drone shooting at it (the technomancer went down in three hits on the second round after missing with an attack spell), so something like 90+ hit points and a 22 or 23 AC on that thing. Then we turned around and fought an NPC built with the PC rules and using the same sort of level 1 to 3 equipment that we were using. He had about a 16 or 17 AC, his pistol did 1d6 +4 or +5 damage. We all shot him once and he fell over dead before the end of the second round of combat. And that NPC was supposedly as high or higher level/CR than the undead guy.

It's just really off-putting for some of us that your character can't buy consumer electronics type stuff in a major starport that we can have delivered overnight to our doors at almost any address in North America, because you're level 3 instead of level 4.

I honestly don't know how this will play out in the game over the long term. We haven't been playing it that long. My personal guess, if I ever end up running this system, is that I'll change item level to tech level. Give everything (PCs, NPCs, critters) the HP and $$ appropriate for level 8, the majority of the setting will run on that money and tech level. Higher tech stuff will cost massively more money and is harder to use, lower tech stuff is cheap but crappy and easy to use or hack. PCs will level up normally except for the HP/stamina which will be stuck at 8th level and only changes with the Con score.

Additionally I think you should pray that the payers never notice that some starships can be smaller and lighter than modern RL fighter jets, and can mount a 4d4x10 area damage weapon with a base range of 56.8 miles.

Edit: In addition to what Knaight said, you may or may not care that the basic civilian passenger 'car' has the same hardness and hit points of two wooden doors. Also, starships are basically immune to personal and vehicular weaponry so far.

thelastorphan
2018-02-04, 12:22 PM
These are the kinds of things I was wondering about. Wrapping my head around the scaling of this game is confusing. So I guess given these sorts of complaints what do we get out of the system in exchange for these problems? Is it really more balanced? Does it offer something I can't do with 3.5 or Pathfinder without a lot of houserules?

Knaight
2018-02-04, 01:22 PM
These are the kinds of things I was wondering about. Wrapping my head around the scaling of this game is confusing. So I guess given these sorts of complaints what do we get out of the system in exchange for these problems? Is it really more balanced? Does it offer something I can't do with 3.5 or Pathfinder without a lot of houserules?

It's built for space fantasy, 3.x (including Pathfinder) aren't. That's what you get out of the system, and that's what it offers that 3.x doesn't.

More than that, straight up space fantasy is actually a surprisingly minimally supported genre among broader RPGs. Space opera is everywhere, fantasy is everywhere, but the actual overlap is covered mostly by generic systems by virtue of them covering most everything.

Anonymouswizard
2018-02-04, 01:39 PM
There's the standard d20 love it or hate it stuff. I've seen a pdf because I have friends who like all D&D-likes and they'd want me to have access if they ever ran it, and it's good enough that I'm planning to get a physical copy at some point.

Levelled weapons is going to be a love it or hate it thing. I personally dislike the idea, especially as some weapon categories in SF have large gaps, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it. It's essentially equivalent to +X weapons in normal d20.

Also, if you have any interest in realistic spaceships, then the starship design rules aren't for you. Thrusters are reactionless, and Drift Travel uses entirely random times that, RAW only depending on the destination and not the origin. Also it uses speeds for it's spaceships rather than acceleration (and the associated delta-v), which is a dealbreaker for some and an oversimplification for others.

Others have brought up more specific problems and benefits, and they're likely more qualified to talk about it than I am.

Knaight
2018-02-04, 02:25 PM
Also, if you have any interest in realistic spaceships, then the starship design rules aren't for you. Thrusters are reactionless, and Drift Travel uses entirely random times that, RAW only depending on the destination and not the origin. Also it uses speeds for it's spaceships rather than acceleration (and the associated delta-v), which is a dealbreaker for some and an oversimplification for others.

Plus, big starships have a density on par with the Earth's upper atmosphere, at LEO levels or so. If you have interest in spaceships about as realistic as Star Wars, you'll still be disappointed.

Florian
2018-02-04, 02:38 PM
Is it really more balanced? Does it offer something I can't do with 3.5 or Pathfinder without a lot of houserules?

Yes, it is pretty well balanced. Not perfect, but impressive for something based on D20.

If you contrast PF with the Technology Guide to Starfinder, it´s easy to see the differences, why it is a complete rework of the system core and you probably can´t house rule PF to that level.

SF basically uses class/character level for to hit and to damage (Weapon Specialization is a freebee for all classes) with only a bit of attributes coming into it. Weapon scaling covers the +1 to +10 static bonus chart on converts that to die values instead, so 1d6 to 10d6. That's pretty much a 180 degree reversal of how we're mainly used to it working and should also explain why the old classes didn't make the transfer. And so on, no need to go into the details.

What you get is Space Fantasy, which has already been said and you can do a lot with that, starting with Jupiter Ascendant. You don´t get a Type S Scout or Type A Free Trader ship, but expecting that would be as false as expecting that from Rifts.

Grod_The_Giant
2018-02-04, 03:04 PM
We just got to 5th level recently and have returned to civilization for the first time since third level. As a player it's pretty jarring. Take your basic survival knife for instance: level 1, $95, 1d4 damage. Then there's the level 7, $6000, 2d4. Then level 12, $32,800, 4d4. Then level 14, $64,400, 6d4. Then level 17, $275,000, 10d4. You get the same sort-of-a-pattern-but-not-really for all equipment.
Hearing about this sort of thing makes me wonder how easy it would be to houserule the cost-and-level based scaling to just "when you hit level 7, knives deal an extra 1d4" (or whatever). I've gotten real sick of systems (well, D&D) that associates WBL and character power too closely-- it creates weird metagame-y conflicts where you as a character don't necessarily care that much about money, but you as a player kind of do because you don't want to fall behind.

Anonymouswizard
2018-02-04, 03:20 PM
Plus, big starships have a density on par with the Earth's upper atmosphere, at LEO levels or so. If you have interest in spaceships about as realistic as Star Wars, you'll still be disappointed.

I'll admit I never got that far into the Starship system, I got turned off of it pretty quickly. The rest of it is a cool system, but I cannot stand the spaceships.


You don´t get a Type S Scout or Type A Free Trader ship, but expecting that would be as false as expecting that from Rifts.

Let's look more at that a little closer.

Of course we don't expect to get a Type S Scout or a Type A Free Trader, they're Traveller ships, but we do expect something close to be buildable.

The Type S is a ship with two primary features, it has long endurance and good sensors, as it's primary role is to jump into a system and investigate it for both signs of life and useful planets. It's not got great acceleration, because it doesn't need it (it's not meant to be used to scout during wartime). But it does have enough (in-universe if not strictly by the laws of physics) to skim a gas giant for fuel and extend it's operating life/give it the ability to jump back. It carries drones so it doesn't have to do all of this itself, but has essentially no cargo space (although there is a variant that rips out the drones and reduces the endurance to have more cargo capacity, it's still not overly useful as a trading ship). Notably they have a secondary role of delivering messages, but one that won't be important to most PCs.

The Type A meanwhile is a ship designed to transport cargo which is high enough value to be worth cross-system trading, but not in high enough demand for bigger ships. It has low acceleration and a practical range of only one parsec (although a variant doubles this range), but plenty of cargo space and the ability to carry passengers. It can hold itself well enough in a fight that it can potentially fire up it's jump engines, but that's not it's primary purpose.

So if the system can build an exploratory vessel and one to transport small amounts of valuable cargo, it can essentially build the equivalent of a Type-S and a Type-A. Maybe not something exactly like that, but Starfinder uses Drift Engines, not Jump Drives, so quite a bit of the specifics of how the Type-S and Type-A work just don't apply.

Morty
2018-02-04, 03:24 PM
The levelling weapons seem like an attempt to deal with the health inflation, which is going to be even more of a problem in a space setting than it is in fantasy. A rather crude one... but it's there.

Florian
2018-02-04, 03:48 PM
Hearing about this sort of thing makes me wonder how easy it would be to houserule the cost-and-level based scaling to just "when you hit level 7, knives deal an extra 1d4" (or whatever). I've gotten real sick of systems (well, D&D) that associates WBL and character power too closely-- it creates weird metagame-y conflicts where you as a character don't necessarily care that much about money, but you as a player kind of do because you don't want to fall behind.

Sorta-kinda. PF has rules for Automatic Bonus Progression (ABP) and they work surprisingly well. With one caveat: Damage Reduction. You'd hit the same point with SF, DR and Energy Resistance/Immunities. An option could be to key it to having one attuned weapon per proficiency, else you'd have to drop the whole concept of DR and ER.

Milo v3
2018-02-04, 06:40 PM
Devs have said that a quick way to deal with "The weapon group I'm using has gaps between levels (like sniper rifles)" is to use the fusions on the weapons. Also, the Alien Archive + Adventure Paths add new items in (like a lot of new sniper rifles and acid-based weapons) to better fill in the gaps.

My current issue with Starfinder is that most of the content is coming out of the Adventurer Paths and I just cannot justify buying them when I only get to play an RPG with a Adventure-Path-Sized-Group maybe once every three months.

Rhedyn
2018-02-04, 07:13 PM
The leveled item thing is something that looks kind of jarring to me on the surface and something I would likely ignore to some capacity. How much does doing so affect the power level of the game? And how much of doing so is okay balance wise?You should not do this.

I ran the numbers (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jBZlEtNIWRtErMJMS1eUwIFSU06lUT4MyBJnu3EH7EQ/edit)

Item level restrictions are essential to the overall balance of the game. If strange meta restrictions like this are a "no sell" aspect then Starfinder may not be for you. Personally, the system looks fine and interesting and I would be excited to play in such a game, but I do not have the interest in selling this game to other people or running the game to teach people it.

Telok
2018-02-04, 07:16 PM
Devs have said that a quick way to deal with "The weapon group I'm using has gaps between levels (like sniper rifles)" is to use the fusions on the weapons. Also, the Alien Archive + Adventure Paths add new items in (like a lot of new sniper rifles and acid-based weapons) to better fill in the gaps.

My problem with that is the fact that the current fusions don't add any damage that I can recall. On-crit effects, shoot underwater, the 3.p called effect, bypassing dr good/evil, changing the damage type. None of it mitigates the fact that using CR -2 weapons feels like participating in a padded sumo combat scenario.

Knaight
2018-02-05, 12:49 AM
I'll admit I never got that far into the Starship system, I got turned off of it pretty quickly. The rest of it is a cool system, but I cannot stand the spaceships.

I was skimming the SRD, when a table popped up, and some of it immediately popped out at me. Specifically, it was the ship size categories, and the definition of colossal as over 15,000 ft long, and at least 8000 tons. It was just so mindbogglingly wrong. So then I thought to check the rest of the table, and do some quick scaling math to see how it scaled up (as the 3-20 tons for a 20-60 ft craft at the beginning of the table sound at least somewhat reasonable). It's a janky, linearish length to mass curve, and it's terrible.

With that issue so prominent in my attention, the subtler ways the designers got things just unreasonably wrong also started poking out, and it became a prominent weakness that needs replacing. Fortunately it's an easy replacement.

Starbuck_II
2018-02-05, 05:17 PM
We just got to 5th level recently and have returned to civilization for the first time since third level. As a player it's pretty jarring. Take your basic survival knife for instance: level 1, $95, 1d4 damage. Then there's the level 7, $6000, 2d4. Then level 12, $32,800, 4d4. Then level 14, $64,400, 6d4. Then level 17, $275,000, 10d4. You get the same sort-of-a-pattern-but-not-really for all equipment.

So we're experiencing this weird sort of spike and lag in our combat prowess. You get a new level of item (it's mostly obvious with armor and weapons, but it applies to some other stuff too) during an adventure and suddenly you're awesome for the rest of that level, then you and the npcs and the monsters al level up but your equipment doesn't. So you're ok for a level after that, then you go and spend two more levels feeling like you're using a larp boffer while the bad guys beat you with aluminium baseball bats. Then it gets even stranger when you fight an npc built by the PC rules....

Sadly, it is hard top buy the top value stuff every level. You will lose more wealth than you'll gain if you do this every level. They ran the numbers on Starfinder forums. You need to be careful as you don't have that much money: and grenades are very expensive for 1 useage.



It's just really off-putting for some of us that your character can't buy consumer electronics type stuff in a major starport that we can have delivered overnight to our doors at almost any address in North America, because you're level 3 instead of level 4.
The book says +1 your level is not a issue to find. So what you meant was Level 5 not 4 since that is +2 your level.

Anonymouswizard
2018-02-05, 05:43 PM
Honestly, the idea of 'you can't but anything above level+X because it'll unbalance the game' rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Especially in a science fiction setting, as they could have solved it through some other method.

I literally can't think of a non d20 RPG that limits equipment with levels. Scaling is normally since via skills instead of equipment.

Then again my favorite science fiction and science fantasy system is GURPS, GURPS Space is the best book I've seen on designing a galaxy (and those aliens in it are cool, I love the Parchekki), and GURPS Spaceships has decent discussion on how to change ships to get different styles, so I'm biased as anything. Each to their own I suppose.

Knaight
2018-02-05, 06:50 PM
Honestly, the idea of 'you can't but anything above level+X because it'll unbalance the game' rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Especially in a science fiction setting, as they could have solved it through some other method.

I literally can't think of a non d20 RPG that limits equipment with levels. Scaling is normally since via skills instead of equipment.

I can think of exactly one: Carnage 3:16. It's an incredibly specifically aimed microgame, level corresponds to military rank and the limited equipment is restricted military ordinance, and while it works for Carnage 3:16 it's pretty glaring in something nominally broader.

It's actually pretty impressive. I would have expected a Pathfinder derivative's trait that got on my nerves most to be from Pathfinder, given how much I dislike that system. Paizo exceeded my expectations here, managing to get on my nerves most with something brand new. Level gated equipment that drags the concept of levels yet further into the setting itself? The level of work that went into the rules as a game, and the sheer level of laziness that went into thinking about the setting as a setting at times? That's new, and it's those factors that really soured me on Starfinder.

Rhedyn
2018-02-05, 07:36 PM
I do applaud Starfinder in that they prioritized the game being fun to play without needing a degree in system mastery.

Some of what they did is not immersive, but it seems to me each of those decisions was done to make the game fun to play.

The setting has problems though. "A universe without history" is novel, but perhaps a novel idea for a reason.

The Random NPC
2018-02-07, 01:56 PM
The thing that irritated me the most about the game was fusions and fusion seals, which is really just a subset of the level-gated equipment problem. As you level up you'll need new weapons, which seemed irritating but fair enough. What if your character was a holy knight or something? Simple, just put a hoy fusion on the weapon. But then you'll have to pay to transfer that fusion to your new weapon as you level. Oh but look, fusion seals are built to transfer to other weapons. Except that you can only afford seals that go on low-level weapons. So you'll be paying 110% and you'll still have to throw it away in a few levels cause you sell at 10%.

And with all that the fusions are boring. Your weapon damage is half cold now! Okay, how does that help me? It doesn't! Unless you know what you'll be facing!

It's just terrible.

Pex
2018-02-07, 07:56 PM
Equipment cares about what level you are? You have to be level X before you can buy something? That's dumb. The cooler the item the more expensive it should be. If something is too powerful for your level you ought not have it because you can't afford it, not because it refuses to exist until a particular number is written on your character sheet next to the word "level".

Alternatively the item can get better as you level, i.e. increase in damage potential if a weapon. It's not because the item got better but your skill got better allowing you a deadlier attack.

Thirdly, the paradigm of power should shift with the paradigm of the game universe. Interplanetary Teleport is a rare 9th level spell in Golarion fantasy adventure. Going from Planet Earth to Mars in a sci-fi adventure game is a Tuesday, remembered for you wholesale.

The Random NPC
2018-02-07, 09:58 PM
Equipment cares about what level you are? You have to be level X before you can buy something? That's dumb. The cooler the item the more expensive it should be. If something is too powerful for your level you ought not have it because you can't afford it, not because it refuses to exist until a particular number is written on your character sheet next to the word "level".

Alternatively the item can get better as you level, i.e. increase in damage potential if a weapon. It's not because the item got better but your skill got better allowing you a deadlier attack.

Thirdly, the paradigm of power should shift with the paradigm of the game universe. Interplanetary Teleport is a rare 9th level spell in Golarion fantasy adventure. Going from Planet Earth to Mars in a sci-fi adventure game is a Tuesday, remembered for you wholesale.

If I remember correctly, as you level, your character is wheeling and dealing in the background to get merchants to trust you with higher end weaponry. Thus, you only have access to equipment of level +2

Caelestion
2018-02-08, 05:20 AM
The salient text from Starfinder is thus:

All armor, equipment, and weapons (whether magic, technological, or hybrid) are assigned an item level. While characters can utilize items of any level, Game Masters should keep in mind that allowing characters access to items far above their current level may imbalance the game.

An object’s item level represents the scarcity and value of the technology and/or magic employed in its construction—higher-level items generally incorporate more advanced technology or mystical forces. An object’s item level also determines its hardness and Hit Points (see Breaking Objects) and is an indicator of the level at which a character should typically expect to both have access to the item and be able to craft it (see Crafting Equipment and Magic Items).

Item level also helps convey the fact that buying equipment is more involved than just placing an order. Even finding the items you desire isn’t always easy, and those who have access to things such as powerful weapons and armor tend to deal only with people they trust. Legitimate vendors don’t want to get reputations for selling hardware to pirates or criminals, and even criminal networks must be careful with whom they do business.

Rather than meticulously track every arms dealer, contact, guild, and license a character has access to, the game assumes that in typical settlements you can find and purchase anything with an item level no greater than your character level + 1, and at major settlements items up to your character level + 2. The GM can restrict access to some items (even those of an appropriate level) or make items of a higher level available for purchase (possibly at a greatly increased price or in return for a favor done for the seller).

Anonymouswizard
2018-02-08, 05:56 AM
Equipment cares about what level you are? You have to be level X before you can buy something? That's dumb. The cooler the item the more expensive it should be. If something is too powerful for your level you ought not have it because you can't afford it, not because it refuses to exist until a particular number is written on your character sheet next to the word "level".

IIRC higher level equipment also scales up in value fast, which is another thing I dislike. If I begin the game dealing in tens of credits then I want to be dealing in single digit kilocredits by the end at most.

Just checking the srd, a 1st level laser pistols costs 350Cr, while a 17th level costs 245kCr. Weapons get up to ~900kCr for 20th level laser rifles.

I suspect it's a fix mechanism to stop players from selling their starship for better guns.


Alternatively the item can get better as you level, i.e. increase in damage potential if a weapon. It's not because the item got better but your skill got better allowing you a deadlier attack.

I'm agreeing here, I'm generally against equipment as a required bit of progression.


Thirdly, the paradigm of power should shift with the paradigm of the game universe. Interplanetary Teleport is a rare 9th level spell in Golarion fantasy adventure. Going from Planet Earth to Mars in a sci-fi adventure game is a Tuesday, remembered for you wholesale.

Sure, except for the games where you're stuck on Mars and have to get back to Earth. But in such a game you warn your players you're banning the 'interplanetary portal' spell.


If I remember correctly, as you level, your character is wheeling and dealing in the background to get merchants to trust you with higher end weaponry. Thus, you only have access to equipment of level +2

If it's based on my wheeling and dealing, surely my charisma or merchant skill should come into it?

Grod_The_Giant
2018-02-08, 09:30 AM
All armor, equipment, and weapons (whether magic, technological, or hybrid) are assigned an item level. While characters can utilize items of any level, Game Masters should keep in mind that allowing characters access to items far above their current level may imbalance the game.
Why do I feel like this is going to be the "can't spend more pp than your manifester level" of Starfinder? (ie, an easily-overlooked rule which "fixes" a problem people love to rail against).

In any case, it's... I can understand why they're doing it in such a way. The progression from crappy equipment to fancy stuff is part of the core D&D type experience that Starfinder is moving into space, and I do like the idea of uncoupling it from being a purely wealth-based restriction-- it lets you play around with very rich verses very poor characters (and, as Anonymouswizard mentioned, allow for expensive starships) in ways that 3.x's "wealth=power" equation makes difficult. It's maybe not the best way to handle things, but it at least has the benefit of being simple and hard to game. I dunno, maybe a houserule of "you can find items of up to your Barter* rank automatically; anything above that requires an increasingly difficult check" would be a decent way to smooth things out?


*Or whatever skill is most appropriate)

The Random NPC
2018-02-08, 12:34 PM
Starships are a part of a completely separate meta-economy. You can't save up for a starship, nor can you sell it to buy food when you retire.

Telok
2018-02-08, 12:38 PM
Starships are completely disassociated from wealth. You can't buy or sell them.

There's a point build system for starships and the party gets points according to the average character level. Everything about improving or replacing the ships is a big hand waved offscreen don't-look-behind-the-curtain kind of thing.

What happened with my group is we parked the ship in a remote canyon, went off and adventured in a wilderness for two weeks, leveled up twice, and when we get back the starship faeries will have magically upgraded the engines and weapons.

Anonymouswizard
2018-02-08, 01:51 PM
Starships are a part of a completely separate meta-economy. You can't save up for a starship, nor can you sell it to buy food when you retire.

The thing is that, unless there's an alternative convinient method of interstellar travel (such as a rail network that utilises planet-bound wormholes) the there's always going to be a demand for starships. Maybe not to the point where individuals can afford to buy one for what it's worth, the cheapest possible ship to build (an interplanetary craft that carries one person and a suitcase) probably costs in the MCr range, so the ships most PCs begin flying are likely to be worth at least 50MCr secondhand, likely closer to 100MCr, two to five times that amount new (because there is almost certainly enough of a market for secondhand starships to keep the price up). Large transports and military vessels could feasibly stretch into the GCr range brand new, maybe even TCr for the largest battleships.

This means that nobody apart from governments and the largest corporations (who are likely building the things) are going to pay up front to buy one, most are likely taking out bank loans or making similar arrangements, because as long as intertellar trading is possible and there's no viable alternatives people want starships.

This means that having a starship means you have an insane amount of wealth tied up in this asset. It's incredibly hard to free this wealth, but if you're willing to accept say 1-10% of the 'worth' then you can likely offload a ship at any planet. It's a horrifically stupid idea, especially as if you have a starship the GM wants to run a starship-focused game, but it's possible.

Steel Mirror
2018-02-08, 02:00 PM
I don't play Starfinder myself, and only looked through the rules a couple times, so I don't have much to share that specifically relates to the Starfinder ruleset. I did play in a game once (different system) where we wanted our own ship, but didn't want to have to save up several hundred times the net wealth of all our characters combined to do so. We end up basically getting a ship lease from a ruthless AI to buy our vessel, with monthly installments due to pay off the mortgage that we had to earn through our various acts of derring-do. It fit the kind of game style we wanted, where we constantly scraping and scrambling to make ends meet and get that payment in on time every month, as well as keep the ship maintained and our characters outfitted, but it let us do that without having huge mismatches in the amounts involved like paying $10,000 in a session for a gun and some ammo while shopping for a ship worth $10,000,000,000 over at the other store.

We ended up crashing the ship and having to do a frontal assault on the AI's synthetic moonlet to kill it before it killed us, so the deal sort of turned out not so well, but in terms of letting us have an expensive toy without paying for it up-front or breaking our in game economics game loop, it worked out very well!

The Random NPC
2018-02-08, 02:22 PM
The thing is that, unless there's an alternative convinient method of interstellar travel (such as a rail network that utilises planet-bound wormholes) the there's always going to be a demand for starships. Maybe not to the point where individuals can afford to buy one for what it's worth, the cheapest possible ship to build (an interplanetary craft that carries one person and a suitcase) probably costs in the MCr range, so the ships most PCs begin flying are likely to be worth at least 50MCr secondhand, likely closer to 100MCr, two to five times that amount new (because there is almost certainly enough of a market for secondhand starships to keep the price up). Large transports and military vessels could feasibly stretch into the GCr range brand new, maybe even TCr for the largest battleships.

This means that nobody apart from governments and the largest corporations (who are likely building the things) are going to pay up front to buy one, most are likely taking out bank loans or making similar arrangements, because as long as intertellar trading is possible and there's no viable alternatives people want starships.

This means that having a starship means you have an insane amount of wealth tied up in this asset. It's incredibly hard to free this wealth, but if you're willing to accept say 1-10% of the 'worth' then you can likely offload a ship at any planet. It's a horrifically stupid idea, especially as if you have a starship the GM wants to run a starship-focused game, but it's possible.

Yes, but it doesn't cost money because reasons.

Anonymouswizard
2018-02-08, 03:35 PM
We end up basically getting a ship lease from a ruthless AI to buy our vessel, with monthly installments due to pay off the mortgage that we had to earn through our various acts of derring-do

Yeah, this is what Traveller does, and it's in a case where if you have a ship you need to work to keep it flying, but if you don't it's impossible to get anywhere. Very well done, ships are expensive enough that you likely aren't selling it before the bank takes it back because you defaulted on your payments, as you'd have to spend a lot of time on a planet to sell it, and that won't give good enough money to keep the ship.


Yes, but it doesn't cost money because reasons.

Which annoys me. At least give the ship an exorbitant price that'll make it hard to shift!

icefractal
2018-02-08, 03:36 PM
I get the level-gated items thing, but I don't get why they'd do that /and/ have the prices go up exponentially. It creates a system where you can't get ahead, but you /can/ fall behind if you don't get enough cash.

My guess would be that the designers really like the aesthetics of scrambling for every last credit. So even though they wanted a system where gear was basically part of level, they specifically made sure you still have trouble affording it.

Personally speaking, that's not my jam at all, but YMMV.

The ship thing OTOH, I think works well for its purpose. Yes, it's completely meta and you probably just shouldn't think about it too much, but it solves the problem of "Having a spaceship is cool and all, but realistically we'd be better off selling it; we can't afford upgrades or repairs anyway."

The Random NPC
2018-02-08, 04:41 PM
I get the level-gated items thing, but I don't get why they'd do that /and/ have the prices go up exponentially. It creates a system where you can't get ahead, but you /can/ fall behind if you don't get enough cash.

My guess would be that the designers really like the aesthetics of scrambling for every last credit. So even though they wanted a system where gear was basically part of level, they specifically made sure you still have trouble affording it.

Personally speaking, that's not my jam at all, but YMMV.

The ship thing OTOH, I think works well for its purpose. Yes, it's completely meta and you probably just shouldn't think about it too much, but it solves the problem of "Having a spaceship is cool and all, but realistically we'd be better off selling it; we can't afford upgrades or repairs anyway."

To be fair, you probably wouldn't be better off selling it, because the default assumption is that you'll be traveling all over the galaxy into dangerous, monster filled areas that don't have a lot of commercial travel.

Knaight
2018-02-08, 06:19 PM
Why do I feel like this is going to be the "can't spend more pp than your manifester level" of Starfinder? (ie, an easily-overlooked rule which "fixes" a problem people love to rail against).

It makes it significantly less irritating, but then it becomes just one more way that the d20 level system bundles abilities together weirdly, only in this case instead of an internal character ability it's some sort of abstract and universal contacts/reputation metric. It's still stilted and weird, just much less so than making levels an actual in setting thing.

Telok
2018-02-08, 07:25 PM
Well the only reason for weapons and armor to scale is because hit points and attack scale. If the values scaled by x2 it could be handled by a few static modifiers or something. But AC triples or more, BaB more than quadruples, and hit points increase by at least an order of magnitude. There's just no good way to deal with equipment changes that cover those ranges.

The starship stuff is just lazy though.

Grod_The_Giant
2018-02-08, 09:18 PM
Well the only reason for weapons and armor to scale is because hit points and attack scale. If the values scaled by x2 it could be handled by a few static modifiers or something. But AC triples or more, BaB more than quadruples, and hit points increase by at least an order of magnitude. There's just no good way to deal with equipment changes that cover those ranges.

The starship stuff is just lazy though.
I mean, there are any number of ways they could deal with that sort of scaling, nevermind things you could do to keep HP/attack scaling under control. Like, if you increase class-based damage bonuses, you don't need to continually upgrade equipment.

Florian
2018-02-09, 05:24 AM
I´m confused. The big appeal of a class and level based system is power and overcoming challenges.
Ignore equipment and tie it directly to class and level, people will cry out (see 4E), tie it to equipment and level and people will also cry out (see the direction this discussion takes). What do you expect of a class and level based system? It´s d20, not Traveller.

Anonymouswizard
2018-02-09, 06:17 AM
Well the only reason for weapons and armor to scale is because hit points and attack scale. If the values scaled by x2 it could be handled by a few static modifiers or something. But AC triples or more, BaB more than quadruples, and hit points increase by at least an order of magnitude. There's just no good way to deal with equipment changes that cover those ranges.

The starship stuff is just lazy though.

IIRC the hp scaling in Starfinder is just crazy. As in, in 3.5 a Rogue gains an average of +3.5hp a level, assuming no constitution modifier. In Starfinder, from what I can glean from the levelling up section, an Envoy gets +6hp and +6 Stamina per level, almost four times what the rogue got.

This leads to a situation where to keep up you have to be doing massive amounts of damage. In 3.5 this was gained from iterative attacks, magic item boosts, and feats. In Starfinder the larger scaling is dealt with by getting bigger weapons (as in a level 20 pistol is more powerful than level 1 heavy weapons, several times over).

AC could be dealt with by giving classes a scaling defence bonus. Damage could also scale through a similar mechanism.


I´m confused. The big appeal of a class and level based system is power and overcoming challenges.
Ignore equipment and tie it directly to class and level, people will cry out (see 4E), tie it to equipment and level and people will also cry out (see the direction this discussion takes). What do you expect of a class and level based system? It´s d20, not Traveller.

Generally different people like different kinds and scales of scaling (look at how well 5e is doing with almost no scaling compared to 3.5). Also, I'd like to note that equipment was a mandatory part of scaling in early 4e, inherent bonuses were an optional rule introduced later.

Actually, 5e is a good example, as it's regulated 80% of it's scaling to damage and hit points, rather than attack and defence. Spellcasters scale their damage via higher level spells dealing more damage (and cantrips scaling every 5th level). Fighters get damage boosts via extra attacks at 5th, 11th, and 20th level. Barbarians get extra rages, extra attack at 5th level, additional Rage Bonus Damage at 8th and 16th level, and stronger criticals. Paladins get their smites, Rogues get Sneak Attack, and so on.

Morty
2018-02-09, 07:11 AM
They could also, you know, not have health scale to the point of absurdity. But that would probably be a step too far for their customer base...

Knaight
2018-02-09, 07:17 AM
They could also, you know, not have health scale to the point of absurdity. But that would probably be a step too far for their customer base...

Probably several steps too far. Absurd health scaling is a core part of the D&D identity, and a vanishingly rare feature in the rest of the industry. It's the most sacred of sacred cows, and cutting it out of Starfinder just wasn't viable.

Still, they could have chosen not to double down.

Grod_The_Giant
2018-02-09, 09:05 AM
I´m confused. The big appeal of a class and level based system is power and overcoming challenges.
Ignore equipment and tie it directly to class and level, people will cry out (see 4E), tie it to equipment and level and people will also cry out (see the direction this discussion takes). What do you expect of a class and level based system? It´s d20, not Traveller.
Tying it so directly to the supposedly abstract concept of character level feels lazy and... as much as I hate the overuse of the phrase... verisimilitude breaking. Like, there are so many better ways they could have handled it. It feels like a step back from the 3.x standard in a lot of ways, at least from an admittedly only partially informed perspective.

Caelestion
2018-02-09, 12:31 PM
IIRC the hp scaling in Starfinder is just crazy. As in, in 3.5 a Rogue gains an average of +3.5hp a level, assuming no constitution modifier.

Does any character whatsoever walk around with zero Con modifier if they can help it all?

Pex
2018-02-09, 01:08 PM
Does any character whatsoever walk around with zero Con modifier if they can help it all?

If the player has never played an RPG before and hasn't a clue to anything about them.

I've even seen an 8 in a Con score. 5E, but still.
<shudder>

:smallyuk:

I'm a firm devotee to the adventurer's tax of 14 CO. I can tolerate a 12, for another player's character, if I must but I can't keep quiet for anything lower. I know, it's not my character, but having that low hit points will hurt the party. You drop that much sooner, losing your actions. You need to use more healing resources at an increased rate. You can't need a non-prime score that high that badly to pay for a low CO.

Anonymouswizard
2018-02-09, 01:46 PM
They could also, you know, not have health scale to the point of absurdity. But that would probably be a step too far for their customer base...

Oh sure, this is also my preference. Cut down hp scaling to a handful a level, and make attack/defence scaling more important.

I've got nothing against it in D&D, I'm playing a 71hp Barbarian. But in other games I really couldn't care less.


Does any character whatsoever walk around with zero Con modifier if they can help it all?

I was more using a 0 Constitution modifier because it's supposed to be the 'human average'. While I've made characters with +0 Con before they were all casters who had other methods of avoiding harm. My current 5e character is planned to have a +4 modifier, but he's a level 6 Barbarian and decided to prioritise it over Strength.

Also, Consitution to hp scaling is the same in both games. The rest of the hp scaling isn't, and is insanely fast in Starfinder.

Psyren
2018-02-09, 01:55 PM
RE: the item-level-purchase-gating-complaining thing: The CRB specifically states your GM/group can disregard that rule for a more immersive/lawless game, or relax/waive it in specific locations while enforcing it more strictly in others. That rule is there as a guardrail for the less experienced tables, much like the equally arbitrary "You can't spend more than 50% of your wealth on a single item" rule from 3.5 and PF that nobody seems to have a problem with there despite being every bit as immersion-breaking and gamist and serving the exact same purpose in a less effective way. Cripes.


I do applaud Starfinder in that they prioritized the game being fun to play without needing a degree in system mastery.

Some of what they did is not immersive, but it seems to me each of those decisions was done to make the game fun to play.

The setting has problems though. "A universe without history" is novel, but perhaps a novel idea for a reason.

The setting has a ton of history actually, it's just that said history has a leviathan-size hole in it that each GM can fill as needed. You can actually have just about anything from PF make an appearance in SF, with sufficient tweaking.

Grod_The_Giant
2018-02-09, 02:14 PM
RE: the item-level-purchase-gating-complaining thing:
Yeah, okay. That makes good sense.

Knaight
2018-02-09, 03:55 PM
That rule is there as a guardrail for the less experienced tables, much like the equally arbitrary "You can't spend more than 50% of your wealth on a single item" rule from 3.5 and PF that nobody seems to have a problem with there despite being every bit as immersion-breaking and gamist and serving the exact same purpose in a less effective way. Cripes.

That 50% of your wealth rule only applies to starting funds, if it was enforced at the table once play had actually started you'd get way more in the way of complaints.

Arutema
2018-02-10, 09:46 AM
They could also, you know, not have health scale to the point of absurdity. But that would probably be a step too far for their customer base...
Keep in mind NPCs don't play by the PC build rules in Starfinder. They are in general more accurate than PCs, while having less HP. Getting hit more often as a PC means you need the scaled up health/stamina.


Does any character whatsoever walk around with zero Con modifier if they can help it all?
In 3.5 or PF, no. In Starfinder, health/stamina scaling makes a low Con score more survivable, barring Fort saves.

Starbuck_II
2018-02-11, 09:15 PM
That 50% of your wealth rule only applies to starting funds, if it was enforced at the table once play had actually started you'd get way more in the way of complaints.

Actually, it is enforced in most games to still be 50% in game I played.

Anonymouswizard
2018-02-12, 06:22 AM
Actually, it is enforced in most games to still be 50% in game I played.

Most games support it indirectly in my experience. By which I mean that while the rule will never be brought up, the party will be in a position where none of the items they own are worth more than half a member's WBL, and won't have the ability to buy magic items that expensive (either from a lack of funds or a lack of magic items for sale).

D&D 3.X does actually have levelled items, they're just not explicitly levelled. Wealth by level tracks the total value of equipment and treasure a party 'should' have, and magic item prices are balanced so a +5 Vorpal Sword doesn't fit in the allowance for a 9th level character. I think only a couple of official settings have magic item vendors, only one has them being common, and in all cases it's meant to be low level items only.

Rhedyn
2018-02-12, 08:07 AM
False comparison.

Rarely would you even want to spend 50% of wbl in 3.5 on one item. It is inefficient.

Psyren
2018-02-12, 10:32 AM
False comparison.

Rarely would you even want to spend 50% of wbl in 3.5 on one item. It is inefficient.

That there's good reasons not to does not make the guideline any less arbitrary (nor, simultaneously, less useful, for those without the system mastery you possess that realizes this to be a bad idea.) The main point is that if your group really wants to go wild west and buy anything you can fiscally afford regardless of mathematical necessity, even shelling out 80% of your wealth on one weapon far above your level, you are free to do so as long as your GM is on board. For everyone else, there's a guardrail, and that's part of what I at least am paying for when I purchase a rulebook.

In short, "abritrary" is not a dirty word, and neither is "gamist", if they serve the greater good - and they even provided an in-universe explanation for this rule, so it's not all that arbitrary/gamist to begin with.

Nupo
2018-02-19, 11:33 PM
What happened with my group is we parked the ship in a remote canyon, went off and adventured in a wilderness for two weeks, leveled up twice, and when we get back the starship faeries will have magically upgraded the engines and weapons.
I call this a lazy GM. In our campaign the party just rescued the kidnaped wife of a ship builder, and as their reward the shipbuilder is giving them 50 build points of upgrades to their ship. I agree it's not a perfect system, but you can make it work. We have been having a lot of fun with it.

Telok
2018-02-20, 12:21 AM
I call this a lazy GM. In our campaign the party just rescued the kidnaped wife of a ship builder, and as their reward the shipbuilder is giving them 50 build points of upgrades to their ship. I agree it's not a perfect system, but you can make it work. We have been having a lot of fun with it.

Our GM is two things. 1) new to GMing. 2) trying to run one of the adventure paths. His schedule and responsibilities are such that he does not have the time to go forum diving or to sort through and read up on bunches of advice columns. The books and AP just aren't giving him any advice or help on this or on several other subjects that have come up.

Milo v3
2018-02-20, 12:31 AM
What the book says about handling the increase in a ship's points as they level up:

"This could represent salvage gathered during their exploits,
an arrangement with a spacedock, or called-in favors from a
wealthy patron. Some GMs might require PCs to visit a safe,
inhabited world before they can spend these Build Points, but
this shouldn’t be allowed to impact the campaign too much"

Rhedyn
2018-02-20, 10:28 AM
I call this a lazy GM. In our campaign the party just rescued the kidnaped wife of a ship builder, and as their reward the shipbuilder is giving them 50 build points of upgrades to their ship. I agree it's not a perfect system, but you can make it work. We have been having a lot of fun with it.
Following the rules as written is not lazy GMing.

If RAW requires immense effort on the GM's part to narratively work, that is a game design failure.

Anonymouswizard
2018-02-20, 12:11 PM
Of course, of the crew has multiple tech savvy characters, access to materials, and enough downtime you could justify increasing SP via giving out generic 'ship system blueprints' as rewards that the PCs can retcon into the reason for improvements during downtime. So L6 characters could park their ship in a deserted canyon, adventure for two levels, then hide in an asteroid belt for six weeks to increase their ship to a L8 one.

Imagine some explorers waltzing into a system, finding new thruster designs in an alien run, then taking time to improve their ship, and then using that to improve their ship before leaving for their next target.

Telok
2018-02-20, 12:29 PM
While those are all good ideas on how to make the mechanics and narrative merge gracefully, it's not in the books. Milo posted the total word count on how to manage the ship build point system. That's everything that a new DM has to work with.

Nupo
2018-02-20, 01:45 PM
While those are all good ideas on how to make the mechanics and narrative merge gracefully, it's not in the books. Milo posted the total word count on how to manage the ship build point system. That's everything that a new DM has to work with.
What Milo posted is all you need. Couple that with a little creativity, and you are good to go. Yes some people have more creativity than others, but everyone has it. Some just need to wake it up, and table top RPG's are great at waking it up.

Anonymouswizard
2018-02-20, 02:24 PM
Also there's nothing wrong with the magical ship fairy approach. It could even literally be how it works in-setting, there's still enough magic around that it's not implausible.

Now I'd want more complicated rules for modifying your ship. Adding new components and power cores, gutting existing systems to make room for new ones, scavenging materials and seeing aside time until the new system becomes usable.

Imagine you just come back from a planetary survey mission to find a war broke out. You join side A and spend two weeks scrabbling to switch out your second cargo hold and factory with additional weaponry and a stronger shield. Later after a bad encounter with side B you use your new Ship Points (you levelled up recently) and several days to upgrade your thrusters and primary beam weapon, to peak a harder punch and get out of engagement range more easily.

But not having those rules doesn't make it a bad game. Partially because it's an easy thing for a GM to handwave of said rules aren't there, partially because not every group wants then. They can also easily be added in a supplement if Paizo wants.

Rhedyn
2018-02-20, 02:42 PM
You could use the ship rules from any system because those rules are so separate from the rest of the game.

Psyren
2018-02-21, 10:02 AM
My money is on them adding shipbuilding to some future supplement's "Downtime" rules. Much like Core D&D/PF has the basics for hiring laborers and materials, but doesn't really tell you how to build a castle, so we had to wait for splats on that too.

If you absolutely can't wait and are that averse to fiat, I'd follow Rhedyn's suggestion.

Telok
2018-02-21, 12:11 PM
What Milo posted is all you need.

It might be all you or I need, but this guy is still new to being a DM. New as in still reading out boxed text new. Not everyone can take a single paragraph and build the connections between a beliveable space fantasy setting and the mechanical game widgets.

I think Psyren is right, we'll have to wait a while before we see any support for the spaceship or vehicle subsystems.

icefractal
2018-02-21, 12:42 PM
Also, if he's following an AP, it assumes that the ship improves immediately. So if there's a space battle right after that time spent in the caves, it will be balanced for a fully leveled-up ship. So it's not necessarily trivial to change.

Psyren
2018-02-21, 03:50 PM
Not everyone can take a single paragraph and build the connections between a beliveable space fantasy setting and the mechanical game widgets.

It's a valuable skill to cultivate though, so no time like the present!

I agree it's not a perfect system, but I also agree that resorting to "starship fairies" is kinda lazy. Surely there's some middle ground there.



I'm a firm devotee to the adventurer's tax of 14 CO. I can tolerate a 12, for another player's character, if I must but I can't keep quiet for anything lower. I know, it's not my character, but having that low hit points will hurt the party. You drop that much sooner, losing your actions. You need to use more healing resources at an increased rate. You can't need a non-prime score that high that badly to pay for a low CO.

Con doesn't affect HP in Starfinder though. It affects Stamina, but Stamina are much easier to recover (you can refill after every fight, essentially) and don't really require any party resources. You can get by in Starfinder with a 12 or even a 10 much easier than you could in D&D/PF, and you can have viable parties without a healer or healing items being mandatory.

You also don't roll for health, instead getting the maximum every time you level (both stamina and HP).

Nupo
2018-02-21, 06:19 PM
We have really gotten attached to the stamina, hit points, and resolve points system that Starfinder uses. When a character is down to taking actual hit point damage it's a serious encounter. It ramps up the tension. We like the system so much we now use it in Pathfinder as well.

Caelestion
2018-02-21, 07:38 PM
How do you determine when to spend or recover resolve on the fly?

icefractal
2018-02-21, 09:25 PM
How do you determine when to spend or recover resolve on the fly?It's regained by resting. As far as spending it ... up to how lucky you feel? I think you'd probably want to keep a few points in reserve, unless you were confident you'd be able to rest before encountering more danger.

Psyren
2018-02-21, 09:50 PM
Specifically, it's regained by taking a long rest (8 hours) so you want to try and pace your usage throughout the day so that you're not nova-ing it all on the first encounter.

It's also what ticks down while you're bleeding out (killing you when you run dry), and many class features require 1 point in reserve, so try to keep some back at all times. Pretend your pool is smaller than it actually is, and govern yourself accordingly.

Telok
2018-02-21, 09:55 PM
It's regained by resting. As far as spending it ... up to how lucky you feel? I think you'd probably want to keep a few points in reserve, unless you were confident you'd be able to rest before encountering more danger.

On the resolve points how does everyone feel about the various abilities that require you to spend them? Given that surviving a single instance of 0hp takes from 1/2 to 1/4 of a character's total pool (and gets really bad if there are damage auras or AoEs) do you ever feel comfortable blowing them on the bonus abilities? I could see it when you're assured of a single combat or maybe a couple space ship combats and nothing else, but not if you're facing multiple fights that amount to anything more than mook/trash mob clearing.

Psyren
2018-02-21, 10:05 PM
The idea is to spend Resolve when you need to power up abilities that keep you from dropping to 0HP in the first place (especially with any regularity.)

Milo v3
2018-02-21, 11:59 PM
I dislike it, not just because it means your increasing your chances of dying each time you spend resolve to use an ability, but also because of the precedent it sets. Because of this resolve system, it is very unlikely to get a class which has an internal points system.

Telok
2018-02-22, 01:42 AM
I'm just not enthralled with the abilities that they power. Most of them aren't any less situational than the other class options, they usually aren't any more powerful, and you're trading what's essentially a 'I don't die this round' token for stuff that often requires hit rolls or offers a save.

Caelestion
2018-02-22, 07:38 AM
My question was actually aimed at Nupo and his comment that he's using it in PF as well, but just from reading the main SF book, the powers that use resolve don't seem all that more powerful than the non-resolve abilities.

Psyren
2018-02-22, 02:42 PM
I dislike it, not just because it means your increasing your chances of dying each time you spend resolve to use an ability, but also because of the precedent it sets. Because of this resolve system, it is very unlikely to get a class which has an internal points system.

I do like it. The idea is that every new class and its brother in PF was getting internal points anyway: ki pool, arcane pool, psychic pool, arcane reservoir, grit, panache, luck, inspiration etc etc. So it might as well just be a global resource that everyone can incorporate individually.

It also gave them an alternative magic costing restriction that says "this spell shouldn't be spammed" without needing to somehow immersion-breakingly slip the cosmos a bag of gold credstick, or (shudder) needing to track XP costs.

Lastly, it lets them represent a party being worn down at the end of an adventuring day without hamfisted fatigue systems. As a party gets low on resolve, the options available to even the non-casters shrink, and they start getting more antsy about finding a place to rest, adding organic tension.


I'm just not enthralled with the abilities that they power. Most of them aren't any less situational than the other class options, they usually aren't any more powerful, and you're trading what's essentially a 'I don't die this round' token for stuff that often requires hit rolls or offers a save.


My question was actually aimed at Nupo and his comment that he's using it in PF as well, but just from reading the main SF book, the powers that use resolve don't seem all that more powerful than the non-resolve abilities.

I'm not seeing how you two arrived at this conclusion mathematically myself. Looking at the Envoy's resolve abilities for example, I'm seeing plenty of abilities that outweigh one round spent bleeding - such as:

1) Automatically remove a negative condition from an ally up to 60ft away - this includes particularly nasty ones like nauseated, panicked, paralysis, confusion, fear, stun etc.
2) Give an ally your standard action.
3) Change your readied action AND its trigger any time before they go off.
4) Heal 4*level+Cha in stamina to an ally within 30 ft.
5) Make all enemies within 100ft take -4 to ranged attacks targeting your allies, no save.
6) +2 attack/damage to your whole party as a move action. (Note that attack bonuses are much rarer in Starfinder.)
7) Make an enemy up to 60 ft away flat-footed against all your allies' attacks, no save.
8) You or an ally gets to roll twice on a reflex save and take the better result.
9) Add your expertise to your attack roll (i.e. up to 1d8+3 to attack - this includes melee, ranged, and combat maneuver.)

Any one of these has the potential to save you and your group far more damage than a single round of bleeding would. And I haven't even gotten to what the other classes do with it yet.

Nupo
2018-02-22, 03:05 PM
My question was actually aimed at Nupo and his comment that he's using it in PF as well, but just from reading the main SF book, the powers that use resolve don't seem all that more powerful than the non-resolve abilities.Oh, sorry. I thought your question was more general, and others had answered it pretty well.

For Pathfinder, so far we are only using it for regaining stamina and stabilizing. There is a lot more potential for it that we will probably explore with time, but we just started using it with Pathfinder a few weeks ago.

Milo v3
2018-02-22, 05:30 PM
I do like it. The idea is that every new class and its brother in PF was getting internal points anyway: ki pool, arcane pool, psychic pool, arcane reservoir, grit, panache, luck, inspiration etc etc. So it might as well just be a global resource that everyone can incorporate individually.
Except it's not just a global resource, it's a global resource which increases your chances of dying. Not being able to add new point pools is seriously annoying for me because I dislike the resolve mechanic outside of healing stamina and not dying.

Rhedyn
2018-02-22, 05:40 PM
Except it's not just a global resource, it's a global resource which increases your chances of dying. Not being able to add new point pools is seriously annoying for me because I dislike the resolve mechanic outside of healing stamina and not dying. On the flip side it's helps naturally balance out the cool moments of optimizers and those who don't.

It's most optimal to use resolve points on cool actions rather than the "not dying" mechanic. Meanwhile those who don't optimize are more likely to end up in situations where they do need to use their resolve points to not die.

Milo v3
2018-02-22, 05:46 PM
On the flip side it's helps naturally balance out the cool moments of optimizers and those who don't.

It's most optimal to use resolve points on cool actions rather than the "not dying" mechanic. Meanwhile those who don't optimize are more likely to end up in situations where they do need to use their resolve points to not die.
.... Except it would be better for everyone to be able to do cool actions without screwing themselves over.

Rhedyn
2018-02-22, 06:02 PM
.... Except it would be better for everyone to be able to do cool actions without screwing themselves over.
You've never seen a level 20 druid with full Pathfinder WBL sit on the couch and pout while playing his phone rather than bother to learn the vast array of his abilities and attempt to be useful in the final boss fight?

Because I have. Some people REFUSE to learn how to work their character. Once they spent their designated amount of effort and if that doesn't work right away, they shut down. Adding more abilities or pools doesn't mean people will use them.

So a mechanic that benefits people for being passive helps balance groups with those kinds of people.

Milo v3
2018-02-22, 06:07 PM
You've never seen a level 20 druid with full Pathfinder WBL sit on the couch and pout while playing his phone rather than bother to learn the vast array of his abilities and attempt to be useful in the final boss fight?

Because I have. Some people REFUSE to learn how to work their character. Once they spent their designated amount of effort and if that doesn't work right away, they shut down. Adding more abilities or pools doesn't mean people will use them.

So a mechanic that benefits people for being passive helps balance groups with those kinds of people.

Bad players will be bad players regardless of whether classes points pools are separate or linked to stamina recovering point pools.

Anonymouswizard
2018-02-22, 06:37 PM
I do like it. The idea is that every new class and its brother in PF was getting internal points anyway: ki pool, arcane pool, psychic pool, arcane reservoir, grit, panache, luck, inspiration etc etc. So it might as well just be a global resource that everyone can incorporate individually.

I'll be honest, I love systems that concentrate resources into Health (when you run out you die, although you might enter different states first) and Energy (when you run out you get exhausted), so my main problems with Resolve are the fact it running out only really means you don't have any more, and that it didn't nab spell slots as well.

I like systems where the same resource fuels all costly abilities, it makes bookkeeping easier. You might have to bump up the basic Resolve of characters so low level casters don't get frustrated, but to me it's better than tracking Resolve, six sets of spell slots, and HP/Stamina. I'm also not adverse to abilities running off the 'health track', where uses cause damage, as I'm already tracking that number/numbers.

Even Stamina has interesting connotations as a spendable resource. It brings you closer to taking real damage, but it also refreshes quickly.


But I'm not who Starfinder was aimed at, and I can run science fantasy games in systems more suited to me.

Psyren
2018-02-22, 08:23 PM
Except it's not just a global resource, it's a global resource which increases your chances of dying. Not being able to add new point pools is seriously annoying for me because I dislike the resolve mechanic outside of healing stamina and not dying.

Failing a reflex save, or your mystic being nauseated/your soldier paralyzed, will do far more to "increase your chances of dying." I still don't see the issue with it being a resource.


On the flip side it's helps naturally balance out the cool moments of optimizers and those who don't.

It's most optimal to use resolve points on cool actions rather than the "not dying" mechanic. Meanwhile those who don't optimize are more likely to end up in situations where they do need to use their resolve points to not die.

Yeah, that.


.... Except it would be better for everyone to be able to do cool actions without screwing themselves over.

Don't run out of HP and you won't be screwed over. To update a classic RPG truism: "The only hit point/resolve point that actually matters is your last one."

Telok
2018-02-23, 12:53 AM
I'm not seeing how you two arrived at this conclusion mathematically myself. Looking at the Envoy's resolve abilities for example, I'm seeing plenty of abilities that outweigh one round spent bleeding - such as:

1) Automatically remove a negative condition from an ally up to 60ft away - this includes particularly nasty ones like nauseated, panicked, paralysis, confusion, fear, stun etc.
2) Give an ally your standard action.
3) Change your readied action AND its trigger any time before they go off.
4) Heal 4*level+Cha in stamina to an ally within 30 ft.
5) Make all enemies within 100ft take -4 to ranged attacks targeting your allies, no save.
6) +2 attack/damage to your whole party as a move action. (Note that attack bonuses are much rarer in Starfinder.)
7) Make an enemy up to 60 ft away flat-footed against all your allies' attacks, no save.
8) You or an ally gets to roll twice on a reflex save and take the better result.
9) Add your expertise to your attack roll (i.e. up to 1d8+3 to attack - this includes melee, ranged, and combat maneuver.)

Any one of these has the potential to save you and your group far more damage than a single round of bleeding would. And I haven't even gotten to what the other classes do with it yet.

Eh, I may not be seeing it mostly because I've been focused on the technomancer ones since that's the character that I'm currently playing. At 4th level with 5 resolve, 52 health, and facing stuff with 1d8+9 damage you really didn't want to use resolve on anything but health (30 health for 1 resolve) or not dying. At that level you're looking at damage boosts or an extra spell slot or spending a resolve point to become proficient with a single weapon for 4 rounds of combat. Given that we're playing an adventure path that has us under WBL and no enemy had had a weapon of better than 1st level at that point...

Even looking ahead to the 5th and 8th level features I see spending resolve to get extend spell, distant spell, reroll one die of damage, a crappy version of dispel magic, a limited version of the spellthrower weapon fusion that only works on grenades, give about a -5 to hit from tech weapons, teleport 30', or two resolve points to use widen spell. The only one I'd consider is the teleport one, but with stopping dying costing 2 resolve points for most of that time and being able to get 40 to 80 health back for one point even that would be a rare and situational ability.

Most of the effects the use resolve just aren't 'cool actions' for the class, more like 'modest bennies'.

Psyren
2018-02-23, 12:26 PM
Technomancer has probably the best use for Resolve in the game (Wish.) But even at lower levels, they can use Resolve to:

- Apply various metamagic effects to their spells with no level or casting time increase, nor even feat expenditure
- Deliver touch spells via grenades
- Teleport short distances as a move action (You can Guarded Step + Flash Teleport to escape many hairy situations)
- Give an enemy disadvantage on their next attack, no save

Again, all of the above are much more likely to keep you from dying than using the resolve point the standard way. It's about active mitigation during an encounter, rather than waiting until a fight ends or until you're dying to draw on your resolve. (Even typing it out that way sounds silly.)

Telok
2018-02-26, 02:06 AM
Technomancer has probably the best use for Resolve in the game (Wish.) But even at lower levels, they can use Resolve to:

Finished playing a session tonight. But before I go into that I'd like to say that since I'm actually playing an AP with a real character 20th level theorizing is pretty much meaningless to me. Actually I've come to realize that I usually don't care about the last couple of levels of a class because they never see play in my groups. So for a technomancer you get 5 magic hacks ever, resolve points are the only way to recover stamina between fights, and other than the 30' teleport or maybe one of the 14th level hacks all the ones that require resolve are extremely situational. There are something like four different hacks that result in more spellcasting power which is always useful and available, and they don't cost you what are essentially hit points and death save tokens.

Edit: Also 'metamagic' costs one of your 5 ever picks and takes resolve every time you use it. I'd prefer it as a feat since you get feats every odd level and the core book is kind of running short of feats that I'm interested in for my character.

So our party of four 5th level characters (techno, mystic, two mechanics, they guy playing the envoy couldn't make it today) faced two CR 6ish critters in combat and 20+ skill checks today. We're under WBL since we apparently haven't said the right things to the right NPCs to keep up with money. Verbal pixel clicking isn't our thing, go figure. So we're all in 5th-6th level armor and using 1st level weapons. Thus we all have 20-21 ACs and do a uniform 1d8 or 1d10 +5 damage. Everyone also has 18/19 dex scores and a +3 BaB, so we have +7 or +8 to hit. The critters had +17 and +18 to hit, got automatic surprise both times (one had +32 to stealth, the other just got auto-surprise) and did 1d8+9 damage. One critter had 18 AC while the other had 21 AC, both took 5 rounds of combat to down and did about 60 damage spread across a couple characters each time. This isn't really to bad since we have two drones from the mechanics so we have 6 characters making attacks and the drones are basically free meatshields, they have worse AC and to-hit but given an hour the mechanics can repair them from 0 to full hit points.

The skill checks were evenly split between engineering, computers, perception, and everything else. This seems to be a pattern in the APs, piloting is used in space only, culture and diplomacy make a few appearances with NPCs, and everything but the big three is rolled once a session at most. I suppose if we had an operative we'd see stealth checks sometimes. All DCs seemed to be in the 19 to 28 range, 17s and 18s failed checks while the DM rolled his eyes every time we got a 30+ result. Note that our best skills are at +14s (5 ranks, 3 class skill, 2 class bonus, 4 stat) and if something isn't a class skill with class bonuses and a high stat we tend to top out at about +9.

Also the spell Life Bubble got nerfed. In the past three levels it's negated something like 4 environmental hazards/gas traps, so the DM decided that it now only provides breathable air. Which means that it goes from being really good to getting traded out at next level-up. That will result in my character only having one spell (and one cantrip) that does not appear in my AD&D books. Invisibility has been giving the DM issues too, mostly because we fight a fair number of animals and robots that have no innate counter and can't really out-think it. I'm hoping that it's not next on the chopping block.

Milo v3
2018-02-26, 04:58 AM
Also the spell Life Bubble got nerfed. In the past three levels it's negated something like 4 environmental hazards/gas traps, so the DM decided that it now only provides breathable air.
That makes it literally worthless, considering even the most basic armour (even something as minimal and fragile stationwear bikinis/labcoats) provides breathable air + many other forms of environmental protection.

Florian
2018-02-26, 05:13 AM
@Telok:

As usual, the AP is very basic and should be doable for a group of any system mastery level. As usual with Paizo, the list on non-player-instigated feats is small and really any AP can be handled with low skill classes just fine.
I'm just wondering a bit, tho, we seem to be roughly at the same point of the overall storyline and besides some interesting loot, I just keep my players supplied with credits and upgrade opportunities. So far, this is practically a cake walk and not all too challenging. (Group´s very "classic". Solarian, Envoy, Mystic, Technomancer)

Rhedyn
2018-02-26, 08:23 AM
Finished playing a session tonight. But before I go into that I'd like to say that since I'm actually playing an AP with a real character 20th level theorizing is pretty much meaningless to me. Actually I've come to realize that I usually don't care about the last couple of levels of a class because they never see play in my groups. So for a technomancer you get 5 magic hacks ever, resolve points are the only way to recover stamina between fights, and other than the 30' teleport or maybe one of the 14th level hacks all the ones that require resolve are extremely situational. There are something like four different hacks that result in more spellcasting power which is always useful and available, and they don't cost you what are essentially hit points and death save tokens.

Edit: Also 'metamagic' costs one of your 5 ever picks and takes resolve every time you use it. I'd prefer it as a feat since you get feats every odd level and the core book is kind of running short of feats that I'm interested in for my character.

So our party of four 5th level characters (techno, mystic, two mechanics, they guy playing the envoy couldn't make it today) faced two CR 6ish critters in combat and 20+ skill checks today. We're under WBL since we apparently haven't said the right things to the right NPCs to keep up with money. Verbal pixel clicking isn't our thing, go figure. So we're all in 5th-6th level armor and using 1st level weapons. Thus we all have 20-21 ACs and do a uniform 1d8 or 1d10 +5 damage. Everyone also has 18/19 dex scores and a +3 BaB, so we have +7 or +8 to hit. The critters had +17 and +18 to hit, got automatic surprise both times (one had +32 to stealth, the other just got auto-surprise) and did 1d8+9 damage. One critter had 18 AC while the other had 21 AC, both took 5 rounds of combat to down and did about 60 damage spread across a couple characters each time. This isn't really to bad since we have two drones from the mechanics so we have 6 characters making attacks and the drones are basically free meatshields, they have worse AC and to-hit but given an hour the mechanics can repair them from 0 to full hit points.

The skill checks were evenly split between engineering, computers, perception, and everything else. This seems to be a pattern in the APs, piloting is used in space only, culture and diplomacy make a few appearances with NPCs, and everything but the big three is rolled once a session at most. I suppose if we had an operative we'd see stealth checks sometimes. All DCs seemed to be in the 19 to 28 range, 17s and 18s failed checks while the DM rolled his eyes every time we got a 30+ result. Note that our best skills are at +14s (5 ranks, 3 class skill, 2 class bonus, 4 stat) and if something isn't a class skill with class bonuses and a high stat we tend to top out at about +9.

Also the spell Life Bubble got nerfed. In the past three levels it's negated something like 4 environmental hazards/gas traps, so the DM decided that it now only provides breathable air. Which means that it goes from being really good to getting traded out at next level-up. That will result in my character only having one spell (and one cantrip) that does not appear in my AD&D books. Invisibility has been giving the DM issues too, mostly because we fight a fair number of animals and robots that have no innate counter and can't really out-think it. I'm hoping that it's not next on the chopping block.

I personally think the optimal technomancer hacks are the ones that create technology.

Telok
2018-02-27, 01:26 AM
That makes it literally worthless, considering even the most basic armour (even something as minimal and fragile stationwear bikinis/labcoats) provides breathable air + many other forms of environmental protection.
Hence why it's getting dropped fast. I've avoided taking things like the illusions because he's new to DMing and I've avoided things like Microbot Assault because it's so ill-defined in it's capabilities. Weirdly so many of the technological spells are weak or terribly limited and situational. Supercharge weapon is pretty much the only technology spell I've had any reason to cast more than once. Even that's iffy since we only have about a 35% hit rate, but the DM was getting cranky about us spamming Magic Missile.


...besides some interesting loot, I just keep my players supplied with credits and upgrade opportunities. So far, this is practically a cake walk and not all too challenging.
We aren't getting anything that isn't in the book. My character, who will be level 6 at the start of the next session, has $6992 in gear and $1400ish in money. I'm not expecting to have even $12k total when we get to 7th.


I personally think the optimal technomancer hacks are the ones that create technology.
I think they'll be dependent on the DM you play with. Our guy is new enough to be a bit inflexible and fuss when we have an ability or item that no-sells or auto-succeeds at anything. So the "can't make... items with limited uses or charges" in Fabricate Tech is likely to be interpreted in the most restrictive way possible. The weapon/armor one could be passable but I know that I wouldn't be allowed to create weapons with batteries, charges, or ammo, and anyway the +5/+6 damage from specialization with a 1d8 weapon outweighs the one extra die from a higher level weapon. Maybe if it were the jump from 3d weapons to 6d weapons, but that won't be until 12th+ level and does us no good at 5th when you take the hack. Plus the short durations don't help, it's like taking summon monster on a low level caster.. or not even, since you'd have to spend a round loading it or handing it off to someone else.

Rhedyn
2018-02-27, 09:44 AM
I think they'll be dependent on the DM you play with. Our guy is new enough to be a bit inflexible and fuss when we have an ability or item that no-sells or auto-succeeds at anything. So the "can't make... items with limited uses or charges" in Fabricate Tech is likely to be interpreted in the most restrictive way possible. The weapon/armor one could be passable but I know that I wouldn't be allowed to create weapons with batteries, charges, or ammo, and anyway the +5/+6 damage from specialization with a 1d8 weapon outweighs the one extra die from a higher level weapon. Maybe if it were the jump from 3d weapons to 6d weapons, but that won't be until 12th+ level and does us no good at 5th when you take the hack. Plus the short durations don't help, it's like taking summon monster on a low level caster.. or not even, since you'd have to spend a round loading it or handing it off to someone else.
Part of my problem with Starfinder is that I feel like the classes don't do all that much. This particular problem here could be alleviated by an FAQ or made worse.

The game also needs way more gear than it currently has and I wouldn't want it hidden in campaign books.

Also magical item attunement is lame.

Psyren
2018-02-27, 10:20 AM
Finished playing a session tonight. But before I go into that I'd like to say that since I'm actually playing an AP with a real character 20th level theorizing is pretty much meaningless to me. Actually I've come to realize that I usually don't care about the last couple of levels of a class because they never see play in my groups. So for a technomancer you get 5 magic hacks ever, resolve points are the only way to recover stamina between fights, and other than the 30' teleport or maybe one of the 14th level hacks all the ones that require resolve are extremely situational. There are something like four different hacks that result in more spellcasting power which is always useful and available, and they don't cost you what are essentially hit points and death save tokens.

If you don't see the value in spontaneous +0 metamagic then I don't know what else to tell you. By all means, hoard all your Resolve until you're bleeding out on the floor. Or houserule it, your GM seems okay with that.



The game also needs way more gear than it currently has and I wouldn't want it hidden in campaign books.


As a reminder, Magic Item Compendium came out 4 years after the DMG and Ultimate Equipment dropped 7 years after the CRB. You may be in for the long haul on that one.

Rhedyn
2018-02-27, 11:27 AM
As a reminder, Magic Item Compendium came out 4 years after the DMG and Ultimate Equipment dropped 7 years after the CRB. You may be in for the long haul on that one. Ah but I don't because other Sci-fi games exist that also have fantasy elements.

IMO Starfinder should release an advance rule book soon to flesh out the game. Hell, even the alien archive added all important summoning spells and race options.

Psyren
2018-02-27, 11:59 AM
I'm not saying they won't add anything soon, but history has shown that "big item book" takes a while. So you may indeed have to rely on "campaign books" to contain new stuff (at least, first party new stuff) until then.

Milo v3
2018-02-27, 06:29 PM
Uh guys.... The "Big Item Book" is already stated to be coming out this year.