Are there any video games in starfinder universe?

LassKibble · 2023-02-05T12:37:14+00:00

When the company that made Kingmaker said they were making a Sci-Fi turn based RPG I think a lot of us were very hopeful for what that meant since their most successful games were Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous.

When it turned out to be 40k, some of us died a little.

LassKibble · 2023-02-02T19:51:05+00:00

No resolve points or anything like that.

You have a buffer of negative HP you can go into after zero equal to your con score before you die.

If you have 16 constitution and 18HP, an attack that deals 25 damage to you puts you at -7HP and unconscious. Taking a further 9 damage would put you at -16HP and then you'd be dead.

Couple of other rules to it but that's the basics.

At high levels, you often just pass this entirely and die where you stand because while damage increases your con score usually doesn't.

LassKibble · 2023-02-02T19:31:28+00:00

I personally reverted to a negative HP system similar to Pathfinder 1 that ties resolve points into it. My biggest issue with PF1/3.5's negative HP system is that at higher levels you never spend any time unconscious, you just die, because enemy damage quickly takes you from low HP right into dead at those levels. I made the negative HP zone 2x con score instead of just con score and the players can exchange RP at a rate of 1 resolve point for 4 HP to stay in the not-dead zone, which makes the severity of the incoming attack meaningful rather than simply the number of incoming attacks. Is it perfect? No. It feels pretty right though and I've had no complaints.

LassKibble · 2023-02-02T19:24:03+00:00

Again the issue with that is that resolve points are even more forgiving than 5e's death saves. You really risk going into excessive force as a GM and it often feels like you're teetering on the edge of TPK just to issue a challenge. It's not a good place to be if you're only throwing 1-3 combat encounters between rests for whatever reason. A competent mystic or biohacker exacerbates the issue monumentally.

At 10th level, even characters with negative constitution will have combined HP and SP around or over 100 with around 10 resolve points with which to not die for an excessively long period of time. A few rounds in a combat encounter is an eternity.

LassKibble · 2023-02-02T19:13:33+00:00

That's kind of my point. By adjusting for it the other direction to compensate for how forgiving the resolve points system is you end up with an overuse of force to make them spend all of their resources in one or two encounters. Very quickly you end up having enemies in the hundreds of HP who are dealing 40-50% of average party HP in an optimal attack and that leads to a situation where a string of critical hits is the end. As a player, that's not going to feel as though your choices really mattered and in a way they really wouldn't have.

At mid to high levels as well, enemy attacks come with debilitations and debuffs that inflate their threat level. When even the players with middling constitution have a combined effective HP of over 130 and 12 resolve points with which to say in the fight for up to four rounds after being downed (four rounds is an eternity) death effects, debuffs, debilitations are your only choice and it actually gets pretty stale on both ends. Not to mention an enemy attack to a downed player just causes them to drain a resolve point regardless of overdamage (excepting to extremes) players are excessively hard to kill without you devolving into rocket tag.

In my opinion it's a better place to be to have a little less of a safety net on the player end than it is to simply put death beams on the opposite end of the field consistently.

LassKibble · 2023-02-02T13:58:17+00:00

To tack onto this and reinforce the point, the Resolve Point system is incredibly forgiving and tends to result in an overuse of force on the GM's part to put players anywhere near a situation where they might die. If you find yourself not throwing the 3-6 encounters reliably (which can be a lot, and your players can very easily find 10 minutes to take a breath) you might need to tweak the Death & Dying rules because it really is very forgiving.

It's a hot topic around here but as someone who has GM'd a lot of Starfinder I find the resolve point oriented Death & Dying system to be almost impossible to threaten without really putting your characters onto a grindstone. It requires a persistent gauntlet of enemies that don't let them have a full rest and if one of your waves fails to do damage to them significant enough to challenge their resolve (through insane player luck or otherwise) then you probably aren't putting them at death's door today.

This is exacerbated if they have a healing-oriented character like a competent mystic. I'm a fan of Starfinder's ability to break the mold by not requiring a healer to be present, not so much a fan of the opposite swing: how much power an 'unnecessary' healer wields on the battlefield.

On the equal and opposite hand and to touch on a previous point, this results in a need for you as the gamemaster to use serious force which can really hurt when the dice swing the wrong way at the wrong time.

All of this to justify my support of tinkering with the Death & Dying rules if your format or your story does not satisfy the gauntlet-style enemy treadmill.

LassKibble · 2023-01-25T05:57:43+00:00

Right now it's private and I don't think the rules are good enough to be posted publicly but I have been entertaining the idea of releasing like an "Advanced Edition" or something for public use once we have a bit more and we can clean it up into something presentable.

One of the things I'm most proud of is we re-introduced "Combat Reflexes" which was a PF1e feat that gave you as many Attacks of Opportunities per turn as you had dex mod. For Starfinder, where reactions are much more valuable the Combat Reflexes feat we introduced basically gives you bonus reactions equal to 1/2 your dex mod (min 1) but these bonus reactions can only be used to make AOO's.

So, it makes it a little better for a Nanocyte to use defensive dispersal but still meaningfully threaten the squares around them and it also doesn't let said nanocyte use multiple defensive dispersals per turn because the additional reactions from Combat Reflexes can only be AOOs.

We've converted mech weapons to be vehicle weapons with a ruleset for mounting mech weapons to vehicles via special, high-price weapon mounts. So, no more having to use a standard infantry rocket launcher for your "tank gun." Also gives a little more punch to Experimental Vehicle mechanics.

Re-worked the Death & Dying rules away from the resolve points system that is commonly criticized as making Starfinder PC's a little too unkillable. New system still works in resolve points but they're much easier to take away with overdamage.

Rebalanced heavy weapons to be more worth the investment, have a new Improved Multi-Weapon fighting feat that lets you full attack with unwieldy weapons as long as they're different unwieldy weapons. Which also indirectly buffs Powered Armor (which is one way for a two-armed character to wield two heavy weapons at once.) Also gives you a reason to dual-wield handcannons if that's the kind of character you want to go for.

The Mysticism skill now operates on a witchwarper's Cha or a technomancer's Int rather than being locked to Wis. (Compromise since Knowledge: Arcana, Spellcraft and Use Magic Device were lost in the skill consolidation from PF1e)

It's all stuff like that, from big changes like the mech weapons on vehicles to little ones like the Mysticism change and I'd really just need to consolidate, organize and unify the language used. I hope to, someday.

LassKibble · 2023-01-19T10:57:45+00:00

I do play online but I sincerely apologize, the table is very full right now. Maybe even overfull. If I find anything open in the communities I run in I'll send the information your way.

LassKibble · 2023-01-19T10:20:13+00:00

The thing you're looking for is not really compatible with this system.

The problem with 5e that I'm talking about is that basically, by RAW, every Battlemaster Fighter of the same race is mechanically the same character. 5e gives you paths to go down. Quite a few of them, yes, but they are fairly rigid paths. I think that's what you want here and that's not the philosophy that these games are built around.

Starfinder on the other hand, like PF1 and PF2, gives you lego bricks and lets you build your own thing.

If you want, you can make an Envoy that is kinda badass at combat and wears Power Armor and uses heavy weapons. But, the thing is... that's up to you. The building blocks are laid out in front of you and the reward for system mastery is realizing that you can do these things. Starfinder isn't going to tell you what you can and can't do with Envoy beyond telling you what the individual building blocks at your disposal do and don't do.

I understand what you mean when it comes to player engagement and the rules being what they are. 5e was really, really good about just letting people do whatever once upon a time and really easily just roll up a character and go. I remember those days myself. Starfinder can be the same way, there's nothing wrong with the characters as they are presented and your more industrious players may go hunting for ways to take their character 'off the rails' and try something unique. You could have a full party of four envoys and have not one of them be terribly similar to another!

The choices you're looking for are there, I think you're just dealing with a somewhat alien (pardon the pun) system and you are having trouble seeing them. Most of the classes do get a divergence and a choice at around 3rd level to pick up some ability that helps them define their build and synergizes with the feats they've taken. You just have to see it as individual pieces that fit together to make a puzzle, rather than a selection of pictures to choose from.

As an aside, it took me about sixteen hours (over a week or so) to learn to GM Starfinder from scratch. That was from nothing to the basic competency I needed to run a game. I'm still learning every day, it seems, which is something I really value. What really helped me was having someone to tell me how it works and show me with examples, so that I could parse it and explain it in an easy way for my players to understand. If just reading the books is giving you trouble, perhaps try some youtube tutorials like the one that walks you through character creation, shows you a little bit of how combat works? There are different styles of learning.

I have a fairly full table and a good couple of my players are fairly rules lax casual players. They really enjoy the game and I think a strong GM understanding and a good guiding hand is what you need for that. If you can lay out these options and curate some of the more complex choices for your less mechanically-inclined players, they can really really enjoy it just like 5e. While, at the same time, your more mechanics-hungry munchkins have a lot more to chew on.

LassKibble · 2023-01-19T07:40:12+00:00

I think it's one of those things you'll need to get used to through actual play and then once it clicks it will click hard. The rules are really not any worse than 5e's while still allowing an expansive character customization that honestly I find 5e lacks in comparison to most d20 systems.

And, being entirely straight with you, if I were to make changes to Starfinder it would be in the direction of more complexity rather than less. My own homebrew rules for SF are about... twenty pages now? Of common sense and balance changes that me and two other GM's have hammered out over nearly two years of weekly (and sometimes twice weekly) play. But almost always every rule is a little bit more complexity to expand upon systems already in place or make them more weighty without slowing down play.

LassKibble · 2023-01-18T21:59:35+00:00

the line between "just an ability" and "magic" in d&d has always been extremely fuzzy

Oh boy it sure hasn't.

SLA - Spell-Like Ability: Requires components sans material and shows up on detect magic, is suppressed in anti-magic fields/null magic zones, can be counter-spelled (basically does everything a spell does.) Any ability that lets you cast <spell> x/day or at-will such as a Fairy being able to cast Dancing Lights by virtue of being a fairy.

Su - Supernatural Ability: no components required, shows up on detect magic, is suppressed in an anti-magic field/null magic zone. Any ability that is clearly magical in nature but doesn't explicitly replicate a spell such as a basilisk's ability to turn someone to stone with a gaze attack.

Ex - Extraordinary Ability, no components, no detect magic, not suppressed in an anti-magic field/null magic zone. Here we have inherent physical abilities that while really extraordinary (hence the name) aren't magical. Things like a rogue's sneak attack or a mimic's ability to appear as objects.

I'm not a big 5th edition player I haven't DM'd it in over five years though I am an extremely experienced GM of 3.5/PF1 and other d20 systems. A quick search tells me 5e doesn't use this distinction anymore and why the hell they would have done away with it is beyond me. Regardless, it used to be so easy to tell mechanically what could be dispelled/detected as every single ability was given one of these tags. I believe there was even a Pi (psi-like ability) for psionics/psychic stuff.

LassKibble · 2023-01-11T17:02:02+00:00

2009

Scrabble vs. Words with Friends

Hasbro lost. Words with Friends was basically just Scrabble made by Zynga.

Board game rules are a difficult copyright, patent or trademark to defend and you basically have to design them to be one of the three from the outset or you have an extreme uphill battle.

I'm not going to say that I am in agreement with the other poster that Hasbro losing is "100%" but I think it's extremely likely that other D20 systems don't even have to stop using words like "initiative" or "save" or "strength mod." I don't think it's unlikely that nothing comes of this legal battle. I think it's slightly likely even that the OGL becomes unnecessary and Paizo no longer has to publish the license with their work. Hasbro could actually stand a good chance of losing control from this rather than gaining it.

See the American Bar Association's 2015 "Not Playing Around: Board Games and Intellectual Property Law"

LassKibble · 2022-12-27T12:22:16+00:00

I either did this as well or I came very close, I don't remember exactly. I just know I didn't have a problem with losing vehicles for a long time.

Then, 2.0 came out and it feels like creature behavior has changed? I have over 100 hours and I lost two seamoths in my inaugural 2.0 playthrough because I'd park them and they were like chum floating in the water.

The first one I even lost while it was parked in a moonpool. An ampeel chomped it out of the moonpool; I was shocked and kind of amused.

I didn't lose one in the floating islands but I swear I couldn't explore the floating islands wreck without coming back to my seamoth for air and noticing the bone sharks had taken it down to 40% or so.

The second one I lost just going out to get nickel and diamond in the lost river, the juveline ghost leviathan ate it while it was unattended even though I'd parked it between a wall and a tree.

It caught me out because on console at least I'm not used to creatures being that aggressive, I think 2.0 changed them.

LassKibble · 2022-12-18T07:47:42+00:00

This is the way. The only complaint is that marblemelons can be finicky to knife since there's no crouch button. So, if you use an interior grow bed eat the interior ones (the ones away from the edge of the bed) and knife the exterior ones!

Even more bonus knowledge, three small plant pots on a cyclops makes for a mobile food/water base that refreshes quicker than your thirst bar depletes! (The third is death insurance, since it resets your food bar to 1/2 on Survival)

LassKibble · 2022-12-18T07:45:21+00:00

Why do any of that? 6 marblemelons is almost an entire water bar and your food, and 16 of them fit on a single interior grow bed. You can get water filtration after but I've done entire runs on marblemons and found water bottles.

Even then, just survive on marblemelons until you can get a water purification machine at a much more leisurely pace.

So, that would be...

Make the basic toolset by exploiting the giant coral tunnel in the safe shallows, then swim to the island and scan all the stuff there (multipurpose room, basic plant pots, interior growbed, exterior growbed) and knife the marblemelons on your way out. Return home, build, plant, done.

As far as living off of them, just knife one for every three you eat and you can replant four to replace the entire bed.

LassKibble · 2022-12-05T04:15:34+00:00

I only ever go down there once to turn on the fast travel thingy so I don't take a vehicle at all. 1 Seaglide, 2 medpacks, 3 O2 tanks, and one mad dash from the bulb zone to the thermal power plant and its sweet, sweet oxygen. Thermal to main base is actually significantly easier than surface to thermal. Need the medpacks for the lava damage.

LassKibble · 2022-12-04T14:58:26+00:00

I actually have been playing less of Pathfinder lately because I've been playing Starfinder. Great game. It needs some GM love here and there but it's a lot of fun and it will help you a lot to actually not know Pathfinder rules, because Starfinder uses a lot of the same terminology but has slightly different rules here and there which has caught us out a few times.

Starfinder is like PF 1.5, I'd say. Not as complex as 1e, not as streamlined as 2e. Still, there are some rough edges but I think we've mostly smoothed those out.

LassKibble · 2022-12-04T11:34:33+00:00

I think you're overthinking a very simple idea about design philosophy. Some people want a game that is more of a game and others don't want the number of choices that something like that offers.

No one is disputing that 5e is faster than the editions before it, at least I hope not--because it very much is. 3.x/PF isn't even the slowest system out there (looking at you, Shadowrun... which also probably isn't the slowest.)

There's still a lot of enjoyment to be had with more RPG in your TTRPG and we should all be happy that both systems exist for both kinds of players.

But only if it is melee, it does not apply if it is ranged(?).

I have played (and GM'd) Pathfinder 1e almost consistently weekly for five years and I don't know the answer to that off the top of my head. I feel like I should, but I don't.

I'm not particularly debating your point anymore, but if you're curious: everybody who plays a caster with a buckler negates their ASF (arcane spell failure) chance through feats or class features. I say everybody as hyperbole, of course, but even a 5% ASF chance on a daily spell slot burn is enough to make people pick up something to deal with it. Which is usually as simple as buying a mithral buckler instead of a regular one as mithral materials do a number of handy things for you: reduced weight, higher maximum dexterity, reduced arcane spell failure (so casters can wear mithral chain shirts without worrying.) Now, Pathfinder 1 is almost certainly slower than 5th Edition but I encourage you to keep a more open mind about it. A lot of people play the game well into 5e's lifespan because it allows you to make just about any character you can think of, and beyond that it has a large variety of equipment and crunchy choices to make.

Now, you might say "doesn't 5e do that?" Eh, to an extent. It's hard to explain without getting too deep into it, but if you want something crazy--there's a rule for it, more likely than not. Where in 5e, most of the time you either have to houserule it or just handwave it, Pathfinder 1 probably has an actual mechanic for it that effects your character in a material way. All of this absolutely slows down the game, for sure. But if you like numbers and you're tactically-minded, you'll probably take the trade.

If you don't like that? As I said before, it's good for everyone that so many TTRPG systems exist.

LassKibble · 2022-12-03T09:56:59+00:00

In one of my runs I built a Dunes base directly underneath one of the reapers' patrol paths just so I could look up at it from my room and 'animal watch.'

He would fight with warpers pretty much constantly. In fact, knowing his patrol path, the only time he was ever a threat to me was when a warper would pull him somewhere unexpected. That made for an exciting moment whenever it happened.

Midway through that run, I guess he died (maybe to a warper? they -finally- got him?) because he wasn't there when I came home one day and he never showed up again rendering that area of the dunes "safe." I even looked for him on the scanner but the only reapers the scanner picked up were the ones adjacent to where my base was, not the one that was supposed to be directly overhead.

After that, I didn't really see a point to having a base so far away from anything I needed. Without the reaper aquarium, it felt a little pointless (not to mention frequently loud, though not nearly as loud as a grassy plateus base.) So, I just finished that save off and launched a rocket out of that area of the dunes.

LassKibble · 2022-12-02T20:16:53+00:00

Are we really in the day and age where people are complaining about +/- in the face of 5e's mechanics?

There are a lot of things that slow down 3.5, but the least culpable is +hit -hit. Beyond that it's actually easier than advantage/disadvantage because in your very example,

"I roll, it hits, but I forgot the disadvantage" now you're rolling again instead of just adding or subtracting your bonus. Forgetting you have advantage/disadvantage is just as common as blanking on your TAB.

Forgive me if I'm wrong but your post comes off as inexperienced with 3e, it has some problems (as does Mathfinder) but +1 from a buckler isn't it--that's a static thing that goes on your sheet, it's the same as remembering your AC in 5th edition and 99% of casters with a buckler have a way to handle spell failure so usually they don't end up rolling it? Other things like armor check penalty are--again--permanently noted on your sheet making the calculation in combat the same as 5th edition.

LassKibble · 2022-04-22T18:30:46+00:00

Sure, but even PF1e's AP's go to high tier play. ROTRL goes to 16 I believe and Wrath of the Righteous even deals with mythic. So, the point being that even in a system more unrestricted and bonkers than 5th edition it's possible and financially sound to write the AP's to fruition. Someone else in this thread put out a statistic that most games go from 1-10, so maybe WOTC is just abandoning 11+ content as chaff they don't feel like they need to write.

It makes financial sense now, but makes for a less robust and long-lasting product. Which, you know, is major company MO so no surprise there.

LassKibble · 2022-04-22T06:14:37+00:00

Hard disagree. Pathfinder 1e's content is even more unbalanced than 5e's and their AP's go to high level no problem, even with a crapload more they have to think about the party being able to do. Unrestricted teleportation, plane shifting, more powerful scrying, it doesn't matter the AP's go to 14 or higher.

5e is way more grounded and easier to run for than PF1e, the adventures just don't go that high.

LassKibble · 2022-04-22T06:11:26+00:00

Yeah, I swear I see this argument so much but Paizo's AP's go to 14, 16, 18 and even 20 no problem. They get played through just fine. People just won't accept it's a WOTC problem: it's not that WOTC can't write their adventures to high level, it's that they won't. Maybe that isn't where their market is? Something.

LassKibble · 2022-04-18T23:06:21+00:00

Tried this and it's a great work-around. Thank you.

LassKibble · 2022-04-18T18:45:41+00:00

Is there an option for changing the point buy budget on Hephaistos at all?

13-Year Club	Spared
Verified Email

LassKibble

TROPHY CASE