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Made in us
Terrifying Doombull




 warboss wrote:
Thanks! That went up as scheduled although it's in wiki form by fans. I wonder if Paizo will post a single art free download of the core (off to check their site!).

That isn't something Paizo does. There will be an equivalent of the prd at some point. (Compare here: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/)




Efficiency is the highest virtue. 
   
Made in us
Veteran Knight Baron in a Crusader




Oakland, CA

Now that I've dabbled in the character creation rules and some of the background, I must say that I'm impressed with the attention to balance and organized play.

I can't say I've delved far enough to discover too many "flaws," but time will tell...
   
Made in us
Veteran Knight Baron in a Crusader




Oakland, CA

While this is really old news at this point, the Alien Archive has been out for a little while, and reviews are generally positive.

Lots of new payable races, and a very good appendix on creating your own critters.

The biggest con (if you're not doing the $9.95 PDF) is the price for a fairly thin hardback.
   
Made in us
Veteran Knight Baron in a Crusader




Oakland, CA

Starfinder Armory coming this summer.

Part of me is glad that Paizo is moving at a measured pace on new releases for the game. Part of me wants it now...
   
Made in us
[MOD]
Solahma






RVA

Anybody playing this?

   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut





The Battle Barge Buffet Line

I've seen it played locally but am not playing it myself despite my interest. While you can play with just the (admittedly full featured) core book, not releasing a dedicated core three book set probably didn't help it.

We Munch for Macragge! FOR THE EMPRUH! Cheesesticks and Humus!
 
   
Made in us
Stubborn Prosecutor





There's a group playing this in Concord,CA. More people must be playing it because they keep buying the books.

Suspect a lot of sci-fi roleplaying fans are just happy to have a system that supports them with a modern ruleset

Bender wrote:* Realise that despite the way people talk, this is not a professional sport played by demi gods, but rather a game of toy soldiers played by tired, inebriated human beings.


https://www.victorwardbooks.com/ Home of Dark Days series 
   
Made in us
[MOD]
Solahma






RVA

 ChargerIIC wrote:
More people must be playing it because they keep buying the books.
Bad assumption

   
Made in us
Veteran Knight Baron in a Crusader




Oakland, CA

We're playing it, and it seems to have a pretty good following in the SF Bay Area.
   
Made in gb
[DCM]
Et In Arcadia Ego





Canterbury

..am kinda tempted.

See what the group thinks -- although it'll be me ponying up for the books as per usual one suspects



The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
 
   
Made in us
Nihilistic Necron Lord






Been having a bunch of fun with it myself.

 
   
Made in us
Terrifying Doombull




 warboss wrote:
I've seen it played locally but am not playing it myself despite my interest. While you can play with just the (admittedly full featured) core book, not releasing a dedicated core three book set probably didn't help it.


That also isn't something Paizo does. With good reason- there isn't much reason to do a 'DMG' style book that immediately suggests its aimed at ~20-25% of the customer base.

My take on Starfinder itself is pretty poor.
-I dislike several of the few classes (design approaches, abilities that don't really function or don't function out of combat- mechanic has several of both, which is shame because I like the idea of the class, at least the integrated AI variant), though nothing galls me more than the mystic. Every healer has to be a god-botherer with limited telepathy for no reason (despite that most classes get to choose class features as they go, this one doesn't. And they're themes are largely terrible, and sometimes outright offensive. The goddess of all things Noble and Good sponsors mind-rapists just like the evil gods of monsters and S&M. Er... whatnow?
Not that healing really works well in SF- if a party member doesn't have all their stamina blown away and hasn't started taking HP damage, healing doesn't do squat.

-some systems were just left unfinished (and are also mechanically bad, see archetypes),

-editing and layout is kind of a mess with a fair amount of contradiction (you can see where they changed their mind on some rules, but missed erasing it entirely, like dex to damage) and

-a lot of cross-referencing and page flipping is required (lots of see rule x, and lots of rules that look like they apply but don't (thrown grenades don't function like thrown weapons), or have an important clause just tacked on at the end (like automatic fire: surprise! it's terrible and also takes a big penalty to hit if you read to the end)

and the some of the rules just don't work (the scaling DCs for starships- you actually get worse at piloting your ship as you upgrade it).

- and a lot of change for the sake of change from Pathfinder, some of which is better, other elements are just weird and a fair amount is worse.

-Combine with the 'this tall to ride' weapon ratings, the weirdly scaling damage that really doesn't match enemy HP, and pop-gun starting weapons. And every class is best served by burning feats on rifles or something (proficiency and specialization) as most of the classes don't have combat options that are better than just shooting fools.

- a lot of weird setting/mechanics tie ins (everyone is in a spacesuit always, because all armor explicitly is a space suit and they work even when broken, so vacuum and environmental effects are basically never a problem)

-and the setting itself is... bleh. Multiversal simultaneous mindwipe even on the most powerful of beings, and every mystery in the galaxy is basically present in the home system, with layer upon layer of old gods, to the point that the High Priest of Nyarlathotep is a great and admired hero for fighting off Even Elder-er Gods.

- and a lot of basic genre tropes either don't function or are absolutely mechanically poor decisions. Heirloom laser sword? Nope, chuck it for the next upgrade. Personal sidearm like a Blastech DL-44? Nope, chuck it. Go into debt for a starship upgrade? Nope, can't buy ship bits for money because fiat. But they will come free when the party levels, so don't worry about it. Want to arm soldiers for dangerous combat? Tough, they're too low level to have real guns, break out the pop guns and watch 'em die horribly. So what if they're elite guards for the actual weapons manufacturer- the levels don't match, so nope.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/01/28 05:10:46


Efficiency is the highest virtue. 
   
Made in us
Stubborn Prosecutor





Was reminded of this thread. I live int eh concord area and right next to last weekend's RTT 40k tournament was a Starfinder game with about a half dozen players. They seemed to be having fun, altough true to RPG Law, someone named their drone 'mr. dot com' and proceeded to make puns about it the entire session.

Bender wrote:* Realise that despite the way people talk, this is not a professional sport played by demi gods, but rather a game of toy soldiers played by tired, inebriated human beings.


https://www.victorwardbooks.com/ Home of Dark Days series 
   
Made in us
Stealthy Space Wolves Scout






My group just started playing this and it seems to be a good, solid system. I'm told, by others that have played Pathfinder, that this has cleaned up a lot of the "frayed" and "messier" aspects of that system.

For miniatures, we just converted / kit-bashed a bunch of Reaper Bones Cavs, Black Stars and Fantasy minis to make a bunch in no time.



"You never see toilets in the 41st Millennium - that's why everyone looks so angry all the time." - Fezman 1/28/13
 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut





The Battle Barge Buffet Line

Sounds reasonable. There are some official minis supposedly coming out by Soda Pop Minis (or their other name Ninja Division.. can't remember which) but everything of theirs from the last year or two seems to be significantly delayed. I recommend the prepainted Star Wars minis from the old WOTC line as well as a cheap, no fuss way of filling in NPCs and enemies.

We Munch for Macragge! FOR THE EMPRUH! Cheesesticks and Humus!
 
   
Made in us
Nihilistic Necron Lord






Other than the Ysoki player, our party is made up entirely of Infinity models.

I definitely enjoy the game and the system, but the rulebook can have an annoying tendency to make to flip back and forth between different sections to figure out how a piece of equipment works. Grenades especially felt like a choose your own adventure level of page flipping to nail down.

 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut





The Battle Barge Buffet Line

I'm going to be playing my first game of Starfinder hopefully this upcoming Saturday so I'll be able to post my thoughts afterwards. Out of curiosity, did anyone here pledge for the Starfinder miniatures kickstarter? I'd be interested in buying some of the Vesk minis if possible. I think the pledge manager is still open.

We Munch for Macragge! FOR THE EMPRUH! Cheesesticks and Humus!
 
   
Made in us
Stubborn Prosecutor





Update: Apparently there are two regular Starfinder games in the Concord/Antioch area. If the old adage of every in-store prg group representing 10 at-home groups, the game might be doing pretty well out here.

Bender wrote:* Realise that despite the way people talk, this is not a professional sport played by demi gods, but rather a game of toy soldiers played by tired, inebriated human beings.


https://www.victorwardbooks.com/ Home of Dark Days series 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut





The Battle Barge Buffet Line

I've never heard of that ratio/adage. YMMV. I don't doubt that there are large groups of people who play at home. I've RP'ed long campaigns in homes but most of us met in store or through friends we met in store.

We Munch for Macragge! FOR THE EMPRUH! Cheesesticks and Humus!
 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut





The Battle Barge Buffet Line

TL: DR; We had our first game and it was... interesting. We played the introductory Dead Suns 1 adventure path by Paizo with a party of 5 players and a decent mix of abilities (two soldiers, one operative, one envoy, and one mystic). About the only core role/class we were missing was a technomancer i.e. space wizard equivalent. The setting and rules are so so and what you'd expect from Golarion in space overall but the balance in the adventure path felt off especially as an official paid introduction to the game. See the spoiler below for the wall of text review of our first game.

Spoiler:

First off I'll comment about the general overarching game mechanics. They're pretty much what you'd expect from a D&D3.X style system and it's easy to catch on if you're familiar with it. That said, there are many significant changes like being able to multiattack with penalties as a full round action without unlocking the second attack at high levels. There are also minor changes like diagonal movement costs and magic missile not scaling with level. For vets of multipe prior related editions, remembering whether the second diagonal costs normal or double movment (which seems to flip flop between various editions). All in all, it's familiar and comfortable but certainly not revolutionary or novel. It's D&D3X in space for better or worse.

The art in the books though is full color and top notch assuming you like the style (which I do). The races introduced feel different and are most certainly not just the old fantasy tropes with a "space" adjective added in front of them; if you do want to play those legacy fantasy races, the core rulebook does include them later on in the rules but I'm glad that they're not the focus. Each class is unique and varies enough from the old fantasy equivalents to feel like they're their own thing.

Unfortunately, I find the setting to be a bit of a let down despite the above. It basically is just the old Pathfind Golarian setting. Admittedly I was never a fan of it but neither was I critical of it... it just felt like their spin on fantasy and I personally preferred the Forgotten Realms. Unfortunately for me, it was just ported into space. There are new races and planets like I mentioned but the core setting and default start is basically just a big space station right above Golarion (or more correctly where it should be as it disappeared) and there are other planets that are just fantasy tropes in space (like the planet of space undead ruled by space lich overlords). Maybe it's just me but I kept finding myself thinking "oh, that's just the space *fill in the blank* equivalent). That's due in part because of the actual Golarian/Pathfinder parts ported directly over mixed as well as those heavily influenced by the fantasy setting but I would personally have preferred a completely independent setting. I do admit though that my own biases might be factoring in as well as the obvious potential business benefit of leveraging a previous industry sales leader (Pathfinder) for easy conversion into your new project.

Finally we come to the pregenerated Dead Suns adventure path. In short, as an old 3.X GM and player for years, I found the balance in the adventure path to be off. The literal first encounter after the players introduce themselves is CR4 (and that's assuming you think that rating is accurate..see below). Your first introduction before any real roleplaying with NPCs is to get your feet wet with an epic level encounter for 1st level characters. Our GM made a major mistake in each of the encounters that significantly ramped up the difficulties that definitely contributed to that feeling. Even without those errors, the CR 1/2 (as in one half) street level gang thugs we were facing had the equivalent stat wise of dex 18 weapon spec and focus shooting. No big deal, right? Just use some social skills to beat the encounter nonviolently, right? Yeah, they also had the equivalent of Cha 20 and full class skill rank in intimidate to boot. Their actual stats were nothing close to that but their end bonuses for both attacks and skills were significantly higher than any us as 1st level player characters. They were markedly better than CR1 opponents should have been let alone CR1/2 individually they were listed as. The GM took no pity on us (until he unleashed the higher level NPC to save us) and commented that his main group had a very hard time with it as well (likely he made the same mistakes there as well). I asked another Starfinder GM and he said that Paizo does that with most of the enemies and that he actively encourages his player to NOT fight but find away around combat. That wasn't an option for us in the first encounter as it was literally scripted that the shooting started right as we arrived and we were caught in the crossfire (plus the NPC skills were artificially inflated with hidden attribute boosts and free feats as mentioned above). That trend continued throughout the game and the Deus Ex NPChinima had to save us yet again later that night.

I'm willing to give the game another try (and will actually be Gm'ing next time as we convinced the GM to join us for a single game only) especially now that we know there were some major errors made. Although we didn't reach 2nd level yet, I forwarded the group a "loan" of 300 xp to reach 2nd level to see if the equity between characters and published encounters is more balanced later on. I suspect I'll still have to adjust on the fly some of the crazy bonuses down a bit though but we'll see.

This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2018/03/20 07:33:03


We Munch for Macragge! FOR THE EMPRUH! Cheesesticks and Humus!
 
   
Made in us
Nihilistic Necron Lord






In our last Starfinder game, Ash Ketchem and Earthworm Jim stole my black hole and the party ended up killing them to get it back.

 
   
Made in us
Veteran Knight Baron in a Crusader




Oakland, CA

The Pact Worlds source book is out.
   
 
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