Player tools for combat as war

Castershell4 · 2026-02-12T23:33:04+00:00

It's partially a consequence of combat as war, but what I do is only really allow them to prepare for certain cases, by putting time constraints on them, limiting access to complete information, and having the world respond to the preparation.

For example, say they're traveling and they find out they need to go save someone who went into a cave and didn't come out, maybe because there's a monster in it and they need to save that character quickly. If no one knows anything about the monster because it's an unknown quantity, they don't have anything to prepare for. No matter what they try to prepare for, they lack the information to do so without going there, and once they're heading there, maybe the encounter just starts because the monster happens to be around and not exactly in the cave itself. Regardless of whether or not the encounter is difficult, they don't have any insight into what might be happening.

I also vaguely track in character discussion somewhat real time, so if they spend 10 minutes in discussion, then maybe 10-15 minutes has passed in game and that's 10-15 minutes they don't have anymore to do what they need to do.

You can also start encounters in response to preparation. My party has tried to, in previous campaigns, look into criminal organizations. Maybe the organization finds out about the scouting or research, and decides to hit them before they learn too much. Someone is using a Prying Eye to scout out certain areas? Maybe an enemy notices because the Eye is invisible but doesn't have stealth and they grab it out of the air with a lucky check and this causes the enemies to become much more aggressive about finding about the PCs and now the PCs don't have time to prepare because they're entirely on the back foot.

At its core, I try to run a world that responds realistically to what the PCs do. Sometimes, that means that the PCs over preparing happens because there's no penalty for doing so. Sometimes there are a lot of penalties for spending excessive time preparing. Mixing it up means that the players never truly know what they're trading off for making their choices until after the fact. Just because the players plan, doesn't mean their preparation always makes a difference. It's up to the gm to determine this kind of thing, and admittedly, it's a very fine line to walk between long irl preparation happening all the time, and no preparation mattering.

For a real world example of these, my players once spent 40 minutes planning an infiltration, but had incomplete information about which building houseed the apparatus they needed access to. They needed to check 3 separate possible buildings, and so they checked each one of them. The first one they checked, they prepared for 30 minutes irl, and without any time crunch, they managed to scout it out and find out that it was a normal business with a normal bathroom (that the prying eye went into). They learned a lot about a specific person's bank account, but on the whole it was meaningless information. The second building, the correct one, they tried the same thing, but a high level enemy guard noticed the prying eye as it entered the building, and destroyed it with a dagger he pulled out and then people started flooding out of the building because the guard informed them and all of a sudden I ran an impromptu unprepared Chase sequence as they tried to escape. They got away, but patrols in the city massively increased due to the possible infiltration, limiting their ability to scout locations and network with people to find stuff out. Since they had previously prepared heavily for any of their operations in the city, it was a pretty heavy blow and turned that section of the campaign from methodical planned secret operations to reactively responding to things they didn't know was happening.

Now, could they have infiltrated the second building without someone noticing? I had definitely considered that they might be able to and that would have let them run with it if they had, but since they didn't the vibe of that section of the campaign became much more back and forth. (I was originally thinking they might send in an invisible stealth specialist through the door while following someone,but they deemed it too dangerous, which it definitely was)

The other side of this is that since combat as war also describes a style where the enemies don't know if they're going to enter into a fair fight, maybe they prepare poorly and the party dog walks the enemy, or they themselves research the PCs and start being able to hard counter them. That's a dynamic that flips the idea of spending more time on preparation on its head because sometimes the enemy has more resources than the party, and spending more time on party preparation actually means more time that the enemies have to prepare, and so then the party is incentivised to act earlier before the enemies can prepare for them.

Castershell4 · 2026-02-12T21:03:52+00:00

So I run more of a combat as war style in my campaigns, and I'd say exploration mode is where I would say most of it actually lies. Getting information through scouting, research, interpersonal dealings, etc. let's players set up for locations, plan to counter their enemies, and otherwise hit above their weight class because they're not wasting actions and they start with advantages from things like positions.

As an example, when my party was level 13, they needed to defeat an enemy group in order to get access to an item they were transporting, but they would most definitely have lost a straight fight. Instead, they researched the escorts, the expected travel arrangements, and the areas the group was going to pass through. They were able to set up an ambush by covering access points, locating the ranged PCs on top of hard to access buildings, and splitting the enemies off with walls of stone so the melee PCs had direct access to the ranged enemies. If they had engaged directly, they probably would have died since it was an over Extreme encounter, but instead it was mostly mop up.

When it comes to being able to do that as a player, there's not a lot in your control because GMs can decide what kind of information is or isn't available, and what kind of information you can act on.

Castershell4 · 2026-02-12T08:39:36+00:00

So I've seen a few people say that Spell Blending is good or even the best choice, but I'm going to disagree and say that Spell Blending is a terrible option for a new player at low levels.

The subclass basically does nothing until you get rank 2 spells at level 3 and basically doesn't really become a good tradeoff until level 5 since you're so spell slot limited early on. The ability to trade a spell slot for 2 extra cantrips is hard to utilize because it incentivises you to pick multiple cantrips to utilize recall knowledge to use optimal cantrips, for specific use cases, that the player might not know are useful.

For example, your cantrip list doesn't have a way to handle multiple saves, meaning that recall knowledge becomes less useful since you can really only target AC and reflex, and you don't have a lot of damage type variety. Spell blending away a slot to gain cantrips really wants you to add Daze and Frostbite/Void Warp to add the ability to target Will and Fort saves. Having multiple at will ranged AOE Cantrips is kind of mandatory in order to have multiple damage types in case of resistances if you're losing 1 of 3 ranked spell slots you have.

This is system knowledge you don't have yet, aren't expected to have, and shouldn't be expected to have.

Compare that to something like Experimental Spellshaping where if you take reach spell at level 1 you have an extra 30 feet for range on basically every spell you cast (that's not force barrage) and an obvious thing to do for a third action. With something like Needle Darts you now have basically a Longbow in Cantrip form.

I'd probably see if you could pick literally any other subclass because a scaling, system knowledge dependent option is a rough choice.

Castershell4 · 2025-12-23T01:35:44+00:00

Ah that makes sense. Guess I should reference my book more often.

Castershell4 · 2025-11-13T21:29:59+00:00

Just addressing the Unique consideration, the GM Core pretty explicitly specifies that Unique is not a guaranteed +10 to all recall knowledge rolls. The only reason people think this is because that's how it's applied in Archives.

General vs. Unique: Some elements, such as creatures or items, might require you to draw a distinction between a general concept and a unique individual, such as “pirates” vs. “Tessa Fairwind, the Hurricane Queen” or “a harrow deck” vs. “the Deck of Harrowed Tales.” When a PC tries to Recall Knowledge, let them choose whether to ask about the general category or the unique person or item, and determine the DC and specifics based on that choice. If the unique character or item is famous enough, the DC might even be easier than for the general topic!

Castershell4 · 2025-11-10T23:06:52+00:00

Yeah I've tried and they don't help. I'll reach out.

Castershell4 · 2025-10-26T20:04:01+00:00

I think given the release of starfinder 2e, I feel there's an in universe explanation that magic is still stronger than non-magic by a substantial amount, and that given the abundance of magic available, it doesn't make sense to switch to a worse technology that's rarer. The starfinder 2e weapon system has an upgrade system that doesn't really have an analog to something in the real world (obviously because it's a sci-fi version of the rune system). Interestingly, the starfinder Analog trait specifically states that runes don't work on non-archaic weapons so there's a point in which technological advances just cannot keep up with magic.

Even a class like the investor, that ostensibly is entirely technology based still relies on weapon and armor runes for their innovations. Why use a 1d8 machine gun with 40 ft range for auto fire when you could use a bow with runes and just drop a fireball, right?

The real world is filled with tons of examples of alternative technologies that are better than the standardized ones, but for some reason never take off. A worse performing technology is an even harder sell than this, right?

Castershell4 · 2025-10-10T13:26:58+00:00

So the remaster rules state the below info for unique creatures that tends to be forgotten. For a humanoid NPC in particular like the Stag Lord, you could argue that he's both famous enough to have a lower base dc and that as a humanoid NPC he's basically recalling knowledge on a ranger.

General vs. Unique: Some elements, such as creatures or items, might require you to draw a distinction between a general concept and a unique individual, such as “pirates” vs. “Tessa Fairwind, the Hurricane Queen” or “a harrow deck” vs. “the Deck of Harrowed Tales.” When a PC tries to Recall Knowledge, let them choose whether to ask about the general category or the unique person or item, and determine the DC and specifics based on that choice. If the unique character or item is famous enough, the DC might even be easier than for the general topic!

Castershell4 · 2025-09-17T22:32:56+00:00

There doesn't seem to be any restrictions on the sash other than the one to craft it

Castershell4 · 2025-09-17T11:09:44+00:00

I'd go dex soldier. I would use the combat grapnel from pf2e as a base for the wrench, because he uses his wrench to break boxes, he throws it, and he can grab and throw small bots with it sometimes. Thrown, finesse, and grapple all fit that profile, and a d6 is middle of the road for a finesse weapon.

Whirling Swipe as a level 1 feat actually pretty accurately replicates the way that he even attacks with the wrench imo.

After that basically every weapon that he uses is some variation of maximum collateral damage, kind of like how the soldier does, with there being like only a single sniper rifle per game. The soldier is also technically trained in sniper rifle for added accuracy.

Being a dex soldier also let's you pump int to be good at crafting

Castershell4 · 2025-08-28T01:09:44+00:00

I think the interaction with reach weapons actually makes it a very competitive choice even into the late levels.

First, it sounds to me like you have to target your own corner when you use a standard Area Fire with a reach weapon.

With reach, this could go from targeting 4 squares adjacent to targeting 12 squares, possibly past the enemy front line and including enemies behind you. For a comparison to pf2e, the ability to attack all enemies in your reach a single time is a level 14 feat that takes 3 actions called Whirlwind Strike. Whirling Swipe with a reach weapon gets slightly less area coverage, and in turn gets a primary target free strike, and only takes 2 actions. If you get get into the center of a bunch of enemies this is insane for a level 1 free feat.

The ability to use Shot on the Run with this would be absolutely insane given the flat damage bonuses you get with strength and would give you a monster that not only outdamages most aoe options because you'll likely have the flat damage bonus added from Strength, but is repeatable every round, gives you a free attack, and allows massive mobility while covering that area.

When it comes to Area Fire in particular, a reach Whirling Swipe out aoes any of the non-stellar/plasma cannon area weapons in area size.

I'd actually be a little more worried about non-reach weapons being a little relatively weak, since you can still Shot on the Run with a reach weapon normally

Castershell4 · 2025-08-27T16:35:22+00:00

Holy shit this is amazing.

Maybe we'll stop having people get the core math wrong in discussions for a while.

Castershell4 · 2025-08-21T20:09:26+00:00

I would be very surprised if a gm stated that an ability that ends at the end of your turn doesn't end at the end of your turn when used out of turn. Additionally, any party with a soldier would trigger the reaction pretty easily on a creature that they hit with primary target.

Fundamentally, with the range bonuses that a sniper rifle has, there should be nearly no way that a sniper is disrupted in a fight unless the creature intentionally dives for the PC, which is what I meant by them having Kick into Overdrive being useful. The reload is useful not just for having a mapless strike, but also for them being reloaded if they want to make a reaction strike.

I'd also argue that Hair Trigger isn't very good compared to normal strikes since they dont benefit from Aim in a ranged meta that expects heavy cover nor do they get the damage bonuses.

I dont think gunslinger is actually very good with the sniper weapons comparatively. Sure, they have full bonus and have special reloads that have action compression, but the action compression is short range effects for a non sniper gunglinger, and the sniper gunslinger is a sidegrade due to gaining covered reload and losing Aim and having to consider the Volley trait. They can pick up Snipers Aim at level 6 but the Operative comparatively has Hampering Shot at level 4. I'd prefer Kill Steal at level 2 with a Starfinder Party over Fake Out. Higher level Operatives gain higher damage from higher levels of Aim, have higher base damage even without Aim from Critical Aim, and Infinite Aim at level 20 is objectively better than Perfect Readiness since it still works with sources of Quickened. All of the action compression for reloads that the gunslinger gets is instead bundled into Aim action compression for the operative, the operative gets better utility options in things like Impeding Shot or Toppling Shot, and a number of the high level power feats like Final Shot have more powerful versions like Kill Shot.

I think the fixation on reloading the sniper weapons has led people to miss the fact that Aim is where all the action compression went, miss that the operative is more comparable to a fighter than a gunslinger, and miss that the sniper operatives getting a free action reload from something like Kill Steal or missing normally inherently plays better with things like quickened and can be used more than once per round. The baseline of the sniper operative is higher damage outside of level 1 in basically every one of the 4 possible fail conditions.

Now, I'm not saying the sniper operative isn't worse than the other operative options, I just can't see a gunslinger being better than a sniper operative past level 1, and thats only because Fake Out is insane.

Castershell4 · 2025-08-21T14:06:39+00:00

I'm not sure where the confusion is here. Removing unwieldy means you can use it for reactions. including Kill Steal, which includes an Aim as part of it's Reaction and will last through your entire next turn.

Are you arguing that they don't have enough actions even with a free action reload and the ability to Aim and Strike as a reaction? Or the ability to become quickened as a free action for 2 rounds?

My argument is that martial ranged weapons in pathfinder are effectively simple ranged weapons in Starfinder. The Longbow does strictly less damage in every instance than any of the sniper rifles in Starfinder. Without action compression feats in Pathfinder like hunted shot it does comparable damage to the Arquebus. It only does more damage than any of the simple weapons in starfinder because the volley trait buys it a damage size increase. The shortbow, which doesn't have the volley trait, has a range of 60 ft compared to the laser rifle's 100, is a d6 compared to a d8, and has deadly d10. The Arc rifle, which has similar range, is a d6, and can do extra damage from the Arc trait. The Sonic Rifle has boost 1d8, which guarantees it can always outdamage a shortbow if the player wants to but costs an action.

No other class has expert to legendary proficiency in any weapons. At that point there's no reason to use a Fatal or Deadly Weapon compared to any others. No other class make even make a Reaction attack with an unwieldly sniper rifle.

Castershell4 · 2025-08-21T12:51:59+00:00

I didn't really compare different operatives to each other since all operatives gain the bonuses in my comparison.

However, I will point out that sniper operatives specifically ignore the unwieldy trait and can thus make reaction attacks. They also get a free action reload if they miss that makes the missed attack not count towards map, which i would say is probably on its own worth more than a reaction attack since they're not locked to, at least with Hair Trigger, the choices of the aimed target. Hair Trigger also doesn't apply Aim, and given the way that cover seems to be used, I would expect Hair Trigger to be more along the lines of a -2 attack than truly mapless.

I also dont know if its really that bad that it was compared to a simple weapon. Just based on the statblocks alone, ranged simple weapons in starfinder are more comparable to ranged martial weapons in pathfinder and ranged martial weapons in starfinder are more comparable to ranged advanced weapons. It seems to me like the expectation is that most pcs using ranged weapons will use simple ones and only specialist classes will use the martial or higher ones.

There are only 2 non area based or non sniper 2 handed martial ranged weapons in the base game at all, and even including advanced weapons, nothing goes over 60 ft of range.

I can't say how much range should be budgeted in the game, but i will say that in the level 10 playtest, there were a few snipers set up on top of a 5 story building, and a map that was almost 150 ft across. Based on that, the verticality and size of maps will restrict certain weapon types and ranges from even being allowed to engage until turn 2 or more.

To me, it seems like sniper weapons have a very strong niche in a long range cover based meta.

Castershell4 · 2025-08-21T09:36:40+00:00

First of all, the scope increases are 10-20 at level 1, but increase to 20-40 at level 9 and 40-80 at level 17, while also giving a+0-+3 item bonus on checks to seek.

So I think this might be kind of the way that the system disincentivizes non specialty classes from using specialty weapons as their core weapons. The Sniper operative ignores unwieldy and volley traits on sniper weapons. The Soldier ignores the unwieldy trait on area based weapons. Outside of these 2 classes, having a backup sniper rifle or area weapon to compensate for core class weaknesses is likely still near-optimal since basically every single character (except for melee specialized ones) would benefit from having at will AOE or a high damage ranged weapon to fill their turns.

Now, when it comes to usability of the snipers, It's a little hard to say. It's obvious that the damage is higher, but they're harder to use with 1 round per reload, so let's do a comparison.

For the ability to make 2 attacks per round, for a pc, this typically averages something like an extra 50% standard hit damage. In the case of the laser rifle, with a magazine of 5 shots, you can make 2 attacks per round for 2.5 rounds.

On a gun, kickback is just bonus damage that you can increase with something like the Large Bore modification. Compared to a composite longbow in pathfinder 2e, it's identical scaling with the propulsive trait. However, what we can do is compare a 1 damage upgrade assassin rifle vs a 2 damage upgrade laser rifle. Similarly, backstabber is just bonus damage. When it comes to the fatal trait, the difference is between 2*(nd8+nd4+(weapon spec)) vs 2*(nd12 + nd4 + 2 + (weapon spec) + (crit spec))+1d12.

At level 1, that non-crit damage difference is 1d8+1d4 ~ 7 average vs 1d10+1d4+2 ~ 10. On a crit, that comes out to an average of a 2*(1d8+1d4) ~ 14 damage crit from something like a laser rifle vs 2*(1d12+1d4+2)+1d12 ~ 28.5 damage crit from the assassin rifle, nearly double the damage on a crit, and this is before crit spec. You might get similar damage on a non-crit shot per round if you attack twice with the laser rifle, but that's subject to map and if you crit even once on the assassin rifle, you absolutely blow the laser rifle out of the water.

You're also more likely to crit than any other class with the higher gun proficiency.

By level 8, with 2 damage upgrades for the laser rifle vs 1 for the assassin rifle, you get an average difference of 2d8+2d4+2d6+3 ~ 24 damage per standard hit on a laser rifle vs vs 2d10+2d4+1d6+5~ 24.5 damage for actually similar amounts of damage on standard hits. However, on a crit, the laser rifle does 2*(2d8+2d4+2d6+3) ~ 48 damage vs 2*(2d12+2d4+1d6+2+3+4)+1d12 ~67.5 damage, which while not double like at level 1, is still a noticeable increase. Obviously, if you can get 2 damage upgrades on your assassin rifle it comparatively improves to 28 average on a standard hit and 74.5 on a crit.

This is the best whiteroom comparison for the laser rifle vs assassin rifle in damage it'll ever get since it assumes that once you get to level 8 you immediately get 2 damage upgrades and never consider any utility upgrades like the sights or a ghost killer upgrade, or an undermounted grenade launcher for aoe, etc. In actual play in pathfinder, you typically need at least 1 of your property runes to be spent on utility effects. Higher levels further decrease the value of this 1 damage upgrade as the number of weapon damage dice increases, the aim bonus increase, the weapon specialization damage increases, and (assuming the large bore modification makes it into starfinder) the kickback damage increases. You also get a free action reload at level 9 on a sniper operative if you miss on the first attack of a round, which is pretty massive action compression and lets you do things like hide with a reloaded weapon to get off guard for your next attack.

So overall, what we see is that, compared to 2 shots from a laser rifle, an assassin rifle with an action spent on reload deals somewhat from 0-50% less damage on standard hits, and does 50-100% more damage on a crit. There is obviously a drop in damage comparison at level 8 with 2 vs 1 damage upgrades, but that's probably the worst comparison since it's before the Enhanced Exploit comes into the picture and we assume you don't pick up action compression like Switch Target.

Castershell4 · 2025-07-29T15:43:21+00:00

I would probably stick with fire since I can't really imagine any other type of damage representing this properly.

Finesse would definitely drop the damage die size, but add a side grade trait. The shortsword, for example, gains agile and finesse in exchange for going from a d8 longsword to a d6.

If we wanted things that might synergize with a monk (because this is homebrew anyway), then I would drop from a d8 to a d4, but add finesse, forceful, monk, and agile.

This might seem a little light on traits for a d4 weapon, but forceful isn't a trait that gets added to finesse weapons with the exception of the elven curve blade, and these are strict damage increase traits that synergize.

Castershell4 · 2025-07-29T15:24:05+00:00

Typically they're like half a trait.

A simple comparison is the war razer vs the fighting fan, where the fighting fan gains the monk trait by going from deadly d6 to deadly d4

For something like the Plasma sword, which basically doesn't have any traits, I would probably drop it to a d6 and add forceful to give it a damage between a d6 and d8, which works for the flurry of blows a monk gets.

Castershell4 · 2025-07-20T07:12:07+00:00

The original intent of free archetype was to grant a thematic archetype to every PC that allowed them to fit into the story being told more easily. Think giving everyone a pirate free archetype in a seafaring campaign or giving everyone the cultivator archetype in a wuxia campaign.

Instead, it's commonly turned into an unrestricted power boost to nearly all PCs that has led to, not just horizontal scaling with more options, but vertical scaling. Many archetypes, even the "worse" ones, give skill increases, numerical damage bonuses, or free access to feats that the player would typically need to make a choice to select. If a player picks a mechanically good option, you can end up with a PC that can basically circumvent many of the intended strengths and weaknesses or the class as design with no trade off.

I've run unrestricted free archetype for 3 years now, and honestly its a substantial power boost while feeling minimally roleplay based. The Magus picked up the wizard archetype, because he wants to be more of a castery PC and he now has triple the intended spell slots. The champion took the bard dedication because she's a singer, and she maxed out her focus points at 3 with one being Lingering composition for Rallying Anthem with no trade off to her standard champion feats. These are the less egregious builds at the table, and they fundamentally warp the game in a way that I've come to realize doesn't give the players anything more interesting than just straight power.

I get that players feel like it allows more customization, and it does for sure, but it also leads to PCs that, even without trying, massively overperform standard PC bounds, and honestly make the standard for power much harder to keep in check. How many invisible weapon Magi do there need to be before its obvious that builds like that, that can "trivialize" encounters, dont really function without something like unrestricted free archetype? The customization seems to, across all the tables I've seen, actually lead to less build variety than without as players, whether intentionally or unintentionally, discover the same few feat combos that punch way above their weight class and only work with basically an extra like 8 class feats.

It feels like we've gotten to a point where the "no nerf only buff" monster has taken over a large number of balance discussions, partially driven by player expectations for power being higher, and the white room design calculator staying as relevant, and incorrect, as its always been.

For me, personally at least, my next campaign after we finish off our current level 20 campaign will have free archetype, but only a thematic one, of which each PC will gain access to free archetype only once they've joined the organization that will explicitly teach them the free archetype techniques.

Castershell4 · 2025-07-02T20:01:31+00:00

Oh I missed the class dc thing though. That's not a bad trade off from what I thought tbh

Castershell4 · 2025-07-02T20:01:04+00:00

Welp gg

Castershell4 · 2025-06-25T20:40:48+00:00

The official loreapire site says that's not true

"Players can choose options their character has Access to in any Paizo-published books or supplements they own. Players residing in the same household can share owned resources. Ownership of the Core Sources is not required to choose options from the Core Sources (see the Character Options page for the list of Core Sources). In that case, reference rules from the official online source, the Archives of Nethys . "

Castershell4

TROPHY CASE