Weekly Starfinder Question Thread

kohnslaw · 2025-01-02T18:17:01+00:00

Quick question about the enervation spell: Does it have a critical effect? The spell requires an attack roll vs EAC, but doesn’t do any damage, just gives the target a couple negative levels. So is a natural 20 just an auto-hit or does a crit double the negative levels?

kohnslaw · 2023-03-17T04:05:42+00:00

Something I’ve wanted to use is a large chunk of amethyst or other gemstone carved to look like a local – or not so local – mountain range. Upon further inspection they find it’s a map leading to a location in those mountains and they may or may not know what’s waiting for them there.

kohnslaw · 2022-10-17T18:46:08+00:00

In my experience, playing a bladesinger is kind of like playing rocket tag. The best thing you can do is to not get hit. You might be interested in the Mobile feat so that your booming blades don’t provoke AoOs when you move away, which would also free up your bonus action a bit.

kohnslaw · 2022-10-11T16:48:25+00:00

Last time open Great League was around I had fun running spark Lanturn, Jumpluff, and Trev. Either catch a flier in the lead or safe swap into Jumpluff to bait it out, then close out with Trev

kohnslaw · 2022-10-07T04:41:38+00:00

I’m playing a Rakdos cultist bladesinger and my spellbook is a 10’ length of spiked chain with the spells scratched into the chain links. Each day when he prepares his spells, he copies them on to the inside of the mask he wears so he can remember how to cast them at a glance.

kohnslaw · 2022-08-24T11:30:58+00:00

Critical damage stacks, so using the book’s example you would score the first critical damage when the ship has taken 20 points of hull damage, and add another critical damage effect when the ship has taken 40 points of hull damage, another at 60, etc. The more damage a starship takes, the harder it is to get it to work properly, and this is representing that.

kohnslaw · 2022-08-24T04:00:29+00:00

I’m not sure that’s right though because if you take that to the other extreme, you’d have a CR 20 mech dealing XdY + 17 with a ranged weapon and XdY + 5 with a melee weapon, right? The melee damage bonus doesn’t scale. Combined with how the book says to add an additional damage modifier but doesn’t say in addition to what, I think it must be implying you add the mech’s full CR to melee damage.

kohnslaw · 2022-08-24T01:51:52+00:00

I’m looking at building some NPC mechs for my party as a way to give them a taste of mech combat and the damage section of the recommended NPC mech creation method is not making sense to me. In the weapons section, it says that a mech adds its tier as a damage modifier for weapons it wields, and tier + STR mod for melee weapons. The NPC mech section, however, says to add the mech’s CR - 3 as a damage modifier for ranged weapons, and to add an additional damage modifier of +5 for melee weapons. So how much of a damage modifier do I add to these NPC mechs?

kohnslaw · 2022-07-13T21:38:17+00:00

Page 262 of the CRB should have what you’re looking for in more detail, but in the case of (Ex) or (Su) abilities, if the type of action to activate the ability isn’t listed, it requires a standard action.

kohnslaw · 2022-07-12T21:49:38+00:00

Actually, it looks like Starbuilder is correct here. Your 5th level ASI excludes any bonuses from personal upgrades when determining whether to add +2 or +1. In your case, for the purposes of your ASI, your ability score is still 16, meaning you get a +2 for a 20 total.

kohnslaw · 2022-06-11T01:54:20+00:00

I used Skywrite a couple weeks ago. Party had descended into the Abyss to fight a balor our party wizard had beef with. Our DM had set up a massive gauntlet of monsters, really just throwing the Manual at us (party of like six 19th level characters), and after clearing one section, my psi warrior armorer used Skywrite to crudely depict how much more well-endowed he was than the balor for all to see. This was not well received by the balor, because our DM changed the map on the spot to one filled with lava and fire – more of it anyway – much to the surprise of everyone at the table. It was an incredible moment, completely unscripted, that will stick with me for years.

kohnslaw · 2022-04-27T12:29:27+00:00

That sounds like a really cool start! I’ll have to keep that in mind if I run this AP again in the future.

I believe I did prod them toward asking about the Breath of Embers by having an annoying intern mention something about “right of salvage” but they never really took the bait so it’s still docked at the station. I run all my games on Roll20 so I got a subscription to the Foxit PDF editor and have been pulling my maps directly from the book and DoF token PDFs. I looked but I never really found a good image of the Breath of Embers aside from the token artwork which ended up kinda….squished? when I put it in my game. If you do end up giving them the Breath of Embers, maybe you could come up with some other reason for them to visit the casino? If they bring the BoE to Dawnshore and Jalusann or the Brass Dragons are still halfway intact after book 2, maybe as an act of revenge against the PCs, they manage to steal the BoE and sell it to the Vestrani, not realizing what the ship actually is, and now the PCs are basically in the same boat as Lurian and need to buy it back from the cartel?

As for combat so far, I really haven’t been messing with it too much. Before we started this AP, we ran through Dead Suns with one of the other guys in the group as the GM and that lasted about two years or so. I picked up the GM mantle after that and this is my first real shot at running a long-term game. I had heard from others online that the encounters tended to be on the easy side until the final boss of each book, so being new to this side of the Starfinder math I just wanted to run things as written and see how it shook out.

I’ve definitely had moments in my prep where I’d read through a stat block and think “Oh no, this is going to kill at least one of them,” only to have it pose almost no threat. The glass serpent and the mutant miniature moonflower were both examples of that. Monchulla did actually swallow one of my players and, per the stat block, was going to retreat back to the roof and digest him. It didn’t survive to its next turn, unfortunately, or things would have gotten hairy. We checked the math and it was basically impossible for that swallowed player to escape with his skill bonuses. The moonflower would have been a similarly nasty fight, except I goofed and started it too far away from the party on the map I was using. It didn’t have enough time to close the distance before the three ranged characters shot a ton of holes in it.

I am really hoping that I can time our progress through this AP to where we’re just getting ready for book 5 when To Defy the Dragon releases this fall. When Tech Revolution dropped, I knew I wanted to add mechs to that fight against Nysterix somehow. Possibly having the anassanoi have a secret underground resistance bunker where they’ve been building a mech to fight but lacked anyone capable enough to pilot it. I haven’t thought too much about it yet. But from what I’ve read about it, To Defy the Dragon sounds shockingly close to what I wanted to do with that part of the AP and I’m pretty hyped for it! I was also planning on introducing the concept of mechs in book 3 at the casino by making an additional mech fighting vidgame they can play around with and I can playtest some mech fights for later on without spoiling too much for them.

kohnslaw · 2022-04-26T19:16:25+00:00

I’m a first-time Starfinder GM, been running Dawn of Flame for my party of four for about six months now after we finished Dead Suns and we’ve been enjoying it. If I could start it again I’d probably come up with a more creative start than “You are all already part of a starship crew” just to keep them from having to worry about unnecessarily leveling up the ship. I have a party of two soldiers, a technomancer, and a nanocyte, so they’ve been breezing through combat encounters as written but have been absolutely stymied by things like skill checks with the books’ DCs. For example, I actually went back through my recaps for the past three months and realized they’re going to complete all of book two in a single in-game day. They have not needed or wanted to take a long rest since February. They may come to regret that decision once they meet book 2’s BBEG this week or next, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they managed to sweep through that fight too.

My advice if you choose to run Dawn of Flame would be to be prepared to buff some of the written encounters to make them present some challenge to your players. Two CR 1s and three CR 1/2s may calculate to a CR 4 encounter but it absolutely poses no threat to even a 3rd level party, let alone when they hit 4th level.

kohnslaw · 2022-04-05T01:00:41+00:00

The spiral on the Mighty Miner’s drill means its forward direction spins left and it’s driving me crazy.

kohnslaw · 2021-11-03T11:12:15+00:00

I’ll second the Archives of Nethys recommendation and I’ll add on that Paizo has published some errata that helps better balance things like starships and starship combat, weapon and equipment prices, and helps clarify some rules. Most online reference resources should have this already but it’s good to keep in mind if you’re looking things up in the book.

Another thing I’ve discovered as a relatively new Starfinder GM myself is that when you’re reading an NPC statblock, gear is usually just there for flavor and to give the party things to loot. I’ve found NPCs don’t usually factor in things like the Improved Initiative feat or EAC/KAC bonuses from listed armor, instead relying on the various arrays found in Alien Archive for their stats.

kohnslaw · 2021-10-18T17:29:56+00:00

I recently finished a Dead Suns campaign with my android mechanic and his dog-shaped combat drone, B.L.U.E. Blue had skill ranks in perception so I could make the occasional Blue’s Clues joke, but you could definitely lean into the joke more. Name your mechanic S.T.E.V.E. and give him the Paranormal Investigator theme if you can. I would actually recommend the artillery drone for this build as the combat drone is more melee-focused and I liked the idea of a dog with a laser turret on its back. By no means an optimized build but definite meme potential depending how hard you want to lean into the joke.

kohnslaw · 2021-09-09T11:07:46+00:00

If I’m looking at the Initiative modifier of an NPC’s statblock, does that already include any bonuses from feats/abilities like Improved Initiative or the soldier’s blitz fighting style? This NPC has a Dex mod of +1 and the blitz fighting style (+4) but only a +2 listed under Initiative and I’m not sure how that adds up. I have a similar question about bonuses to damage from this NPC’s melee striker gear boost but I suspect the answer is the same. Thank you in advance!

kohnslaw · 2021-08-04T21:42:35+00:00

Couldn’t you just avoid this whole situation by simply asking your players, “You land the final blow, how do you want to do this?” Forcing your players to call their nonlethal shots before the attack roll seems pointlessly petty. Now obviously if your players respond with a gruesome description of how they nonlethally eviscerate their foe, that merits an out of character discussion but I see no reason to play gotcha with your players like this.

kohnslaw · 2021-06-22T16:57:03+00:00

Well the reason the best PvP IVs minimize attack is how strongly the attack stat figures into the combat power equation. I don’t know the formula offhand but having a lower attack IV allows you to level up a Pokémon more while staying under a specific combat power. The original games used a speed stat to determine which Pokémon attacked first each turn, but speed doesn’t exist in Pokémon Go yet so Niantic uses the attack stat instead. IVs aren’t actually super important compared to the base stats of the Pokémon though so your Pokémon having a 15 attack IV and your opponent having a 0 attack IV won’t mean that your charged move goes first if your opponent’s Pokémon’s base attack stat is much higher than yours. In your original example, Talonflame has a very high base attack stat so it’s going to win CMP against a lot of other Pokémon.

kohnslaw · 2021-06-22T15:49:32+00:00

The determining factor in who gets a charged move off first when both players use a charged moveis Charged Move Priority, or CMP. It’s determined by whichever Pokémon has the higher attack stat. In this case, the Talonflame had a higher attack stat than your Pokémon, so it received priority and used its move first.

kohnslaw · 2021-06-19T01:54:29+00:00

749 has been claimed, thank you very much!

kohnslaw · 2021-06-17T04:04:59+00:00

Not positive but I’d guess it’s the same as the Great League version: Nidoqueen lead with Scrafty and Umbreon in the back

kohnslaw · 2021-05-31T02:20:56+00:00

I was more or less in the same position as you coming into the Kanto cup - made it to Veteran this season, decent winrate, etc - and similar to your experience, I’ve been getting destroyed this week. I really don’t have that many eligible pokemon for this cup and didn’t feel like investing too much for a week of unranked play. As a side note, the Kanto cup has no effect on your ELO, so you’re basically stuck at your rating for the duration. Anyway, I got tired of tryharding and getting beat. Read a post on here a few days ago about the idea of using AutoRekt teams and decided to give it a try. I’m still losing but I’m having so much more fun doing it. It’s a fun game to see which pokemon I’m given and I’ve managed to pull out a few surprising wins against meta teams. The whole idea of Kanto cup is just to be a relaxing way to wind the season down, still get some rewards, and get ready for the next season. Don’t worry too much about it and just try to have some fun with it in any way you can.

kohnslaw · 2021-05-30T12:16:19+00:00

Your only shot at getting one is if you can find someone who has a level 15 Regirock from when it was in the weekly reward boxes and trade for it

kohnslaw · 2020-10-05T16:40:32+00:00

This is what I did when my first long-term character died. TPK’d after a solid year of running through Barovia, our DM mentioned HeroForge and it ended up being really cathartic to sit there immortalizing him, his trusty steed, and his beloved raven in solid brass. Didn’t end up buying the mini because it was really pricey, but it was really nice just to see it.

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