Anybody playing Starfinder?

[MeeposFire]

Apart from the 'there are some places where you can travel to them in 1d6 days no matter where you are' bit it's really not much different from other variable speed hyperspaces. Sure it has that 'stealing bits of other planes' thing (I bet the gods are happy about that), but in practice that's not much more than 'boy you can encounter a lot of weird stuff in hyperspace'.

To be honest Starfinder wouldn't change much if instead of the Drift ships travelled through the astral plane and had a chance of running into outsiders travelling across it to get to other planes. I suspect the Drift is mainly there to have unanswered questions, of which some but not all will be answered via subsequent books.



The question is why fdoes the starship need to upgrade? It's not a big thing in most of the media SF is inspired by, where upgrades are generally a big thing that happens rarely. I don't remember the Enterprise getting a new set of phasers, but I do remember stuff like ships being destroyed and replaced with better models.

Well in the 1st Star Trek movie (Star Trek the Motion Picture) they did upgrade the Enterprise though it really did not amount to anything except as a way to explain the new look and as a plot point to show why Kirk no longer knew the ship like he used to.

[Psyren]

Been watching the Mandalorian and now I reeeeeally want to build an Operative with a sniper-rifle-taser-staff combo.

The question is why fdoes the starship need to upgrade? It's not a big thing in most of the media SF is inspired by, where upgrades are generally a big thing that happens rarely. I don't remember the Enterprise getting a new set of phasers, but I do remember stuff like ships being destroyed and replaced with better models.

Completely agree.

Also agree. Like I say, I don't particularly mind that the system exists, but it's not the way I would have chosen to go myself.

Two big reasons:

1) The other fiction/systems you're thinking of generally only have ship vs. ship battles. Starfinder has those too, but also has more traditional ship vs. monster fights that just happen to be set in space. Upgrading the ship lets the designers throw things like Novaspawn or Endbringer Devils into an AP without having to wonder if the high-level party never swapped out or upgraded their garbage scow or mid-range frigate.

2) At the risk of repeating myself, the rules are designed for less experienced DMs/playgroups first and foremost. You can run non-upgrading ships just fine if you feel that's more realistic; but that comes at the cost of needing a group with the system mastery to pursue those manual upgrades when they're supposed to. Providing the GM with an easy-to-use-but-gamist guideline is going to beat the alternative any day of the week, especially since Starfinder was likely the first space TTRPG for a large number of players, ever.

[Milo v3]

Two big reasons:

1) The other fiction/systems you're thinking of generally only have ship vs. ship battles. Starfinder has those too, but also has more traditional ship vs. monster fights that just happen to be set in space. Upgrading the ship lets the designers throw things like Novaspawn or Endbringer Devils into an AP without having to wonder if the high-level party never swapped out or upgraded their garbage scow or mid-range frigate.

Except you can just give the protagonists a ship on the tier appropriate for the stories starship conflicts from the get go. There is nothing unbalancing about a level 1 group having a tier 6 starship for the entirety of a 1-7 adventure path for example, because starship combat is completely separate to local-scale combat.

2) At the risk of repeating myself, the rules are designed for less experienced DMs/playgroups first and foremost. You can run non-upgrading ships just fine if you feel that's more realistic; but that comes at the cost of needing a group with the system mastery to pursue those manual upgrades when they're supposed to. Providing the GM with an easy-to-use-but-gamist guideline is going to beat the alternative any day of the week, especially since Starfinder was likely the first space TTRPG for a large number of players, ever.

.... so you think the "complex starship creation system + having to add things onto your ship and deal with PCU shifting as you add more things" is more helpful for people with low-system mastery than "just the complex starship creation system"?

[Knaight]

The question is why fdoes the starship need to upgrade? It's not a big thing in most of the media SF is inspired by, where upgrades are generally a big thing that happens rarely. I don't remember the Enterprise getting a new set of phasers, but I do remember stuff like ships being destroyed and replaced with better models.

In most of the media SF is inspired by the same applies to characters. There's arcs, sure, but I don't remember Jean Luc Picard changing in ways remotely analogous to leveling up.

[Psyren]

Except you can just give the protagonists a ship on the tier appropriate for the stories starship conflicts from the get go. There is nothing unbalancing about a level 1 group having a tier 6 starship for the entirety of a 1-7 adventure path for example, because starship combat is completely separate to local-scale combat.

And if they have 1-7 starship fights in that path as well?

.... so you think the "complex starship creation system + having to add things onto your ship and deal with PCU shifting as you add more things" is more helpful for people with low-system mastery than "just the complex starship creation system"?

"Adding things as you level" is literally the core of the system.

[Telok]

We have a party of seven, so all the roles are filled (in fact, the solarion doesn't bother to do anything, since we have the envoy as captain and none of the other roles he can really fit at - since gunner (+0 Dex) and engineer are the only ones with more than one slot.)

Were you playing before or after the completely errata'd all the DCs for Starship combat? Now they're mostly down to stuff like 15 + 1-1/2 CR, they're not unmanageable. For the people who have specialised of course. My Goblin Operative has a 70% chance of making his engineering checks, and he's got the highest engineering score.

Though Starfinder does seem to have an issue that "if you haven't specailised to the max, don't bother" with skill checks overall; DCs in general seem a bit high.

(Treat Deadly Wounds (DC 25) and Long Term Care (DC 30?!) for one, and the AP we're running has had quite a lot of DC 25 checks (at levels 2-3) which are difficult to make (mostly not made any of them even when I rolled well), even for my operative when playing to his highest skills; 25 is a lot when you're looking at maybe only +11, +12 at the outside. It means a party without someone maxed-out basically only has a 10% or less of making those checks, which seems... Harsh.)

Weirdly enough the old 10+(level * 2) was about 5 points easier at first level, about 5 points harder at 20th, and the same at 10th. Not actually a huge difference, although it did punish people even more for not maxxing the skill checks at higher levels.

Your 70% success rate comes from high starting int and keeping up the level bonuses, being an operative with the all-skill insight bonus, best or second best personal enhancement into int, race bonus, possibly theme bonus. That's basically putting the max possible of character resources into being good at that check.

My experience was a technomancer taking race and theme for the story & character, then discovering in play that enemies made saves 75% and switching to no-save spells, and putting the personal enhancements in dex & con because the DM used lots of single/paired over-level beat stick monsters. From several pc deaths & replacements the technomancer ended up being the only one in the party (of 4) with engineering and computers at 10th level. So the character had +19 at 10th level in computers, but +16 in engineering because technos don't get a class bonus there. The DCs at that point are all 30, 35, and 40. Space combat was really really boring, just tossing a d20 and telling the player with the ship sheet 'balance' or 'nothing'. Even with a 70% success rate it would have been boring.

I'm playing in a group with non-optimizers right now. The best pilot is a soldier, the engineering checks are done by a mystic. To me it's obvious the DM is lowering DCs for stuff by 5 and 10 points (and npc skills by that much too) just to keep the party at around a 40% to 50% success rate. In the last three starship combats our pilot has won initative on two rounds.

The devs set up a skill system that assumes a level of optimization that I don't think actually works all that well in real play.

[Milo v3]

And if they have 1-7 starship fights in that path as well?

I mean it'd only have 3 because 1-7 is only 3 parts worth and they have 1 starship fight per path, but... I don't actually know what your concern is? You're raising it as if I should just assume how that sentence acts as an objection but I don't want to assume your position, I would rather know what the actual disagreement is.

"Adding things as you level" is literally the core of the system.

And? The thing I was arguing against was the idea that things like advancing ships Helps people with lower system mastery. Which seems the opposite of true. Doing x & y is more complex than doing just x. Not that "adding things as you level" isn't a mechanic in the game. Though .... it does work differently to normal leveling because in normal levelling you have a proper progression that keeps around the sort of math the game expects with things like specialization, BAB, and saves from class levels automatically scaling rather than needing to guess what sort of stats the game will want of you at tier 11.

[Knaight]

And? The thing I was arguing against was the idea that things like advancing ships Helps people with lower system mastery. Which seems the opposite of true. Doing x & y is more complex than doing just x. Not that "adding things as you level" isn't a mechanic in the game. Though .... it does work differently to normal leveling because in normal levelling you have a proper progression that keeps around the sort of math the game expects with things like specialization, BAB, and saves from class levels automatically scaling rather than needing to guess what sort of stats the game will want of you at tier 11.

It certainly fits thematically - though I will say it would probably have worked better if they had gone the whole way and just had ship classes the same way they had character classes. There's obvious archetypes too - battleship, carrier, science vessel, cargo ship (though that has NPC class written all over it). Sure, it doesn't particularly make a lot of sense, but it doesn't make sense in a way consistent with the way the rest of the system doesn't make sense.

[Psyren]

I mean it'd only have 3 because 1-7 is only 3 parts worth and they have 1 starship fight per path, but... I don't actually know what your concern is? You're raising it as if I should just assume how that sentence acts as an objection but I don't want to assume your position, I would rather know what the actual disagreement is.

More plainly - what if they want you to experience low level starship combats as well as mid and high? Would just giving you a high-end ship regardless of party or enemy level help with delivering that experience?

And? The thing I was arguing against was the idea that things like advancing ships Helps people with lower system mastery.

It helps them relative to a DM that has to guess how strong the party's ship should be. Not relative to an already-leveled ship that needs no decision-making at all. But my point was that, if you want to play something without any leveling or decision-making, maybe an RPG isn't the best choice.

[Knaight]

It helps them relative to a DM that has to guess how strong the party's ship should be. Not relative to an already-leveled ship that needs no decision-making at all. But my point was that, if you want to play something without any leveling or decision-making, maybe an RPG isn't the best choice.

Not this specific RPG - but leveling is a comparatively rare system quirk, and while there's always decision making there isn't necessarily mechanical budgeting and numerical optimization. Starfinder being a bad choice doesn't mean that, say, Traveller is too. Let alone something like Bulldogs.

[Milo v3]

More plainly - what if they want you to experience low level starship combats as well as mid and high? Would just giving you a high-end ship regardless of party or enemy level help with delivering that experience?

If the story requires a high level ship and some points and a low-level ship at others, that doesn't contradict with the mindset of "Just have the ship of the right tier for the story". You can have advancement without having 1 to 1 be the default. Maybe one adventure path has you start with a medium tier ship, that then gets damaged or sabotaged lowering it, and then further on you end up getting a fully high tier ship for a climatic finish. And none of that requires your ship to upgrade as you level, and is actually a story the default system's assumptions wouldn't let you tell because of your ship by default being assumed to be equal in tier to your level.

It helps them relative to a DM that has to guess how strong the party's ship should be.

1) You can have different tiers of ships without having ships advance with the players level. Having ships be different tiers != all levels need to be directly linked.
2) The current system doesn't really help you guess how strong the party's ship should be. Since it gives you 0 guideance on what sort of things the system expects of a ship of x tier. It's easy to picture one group spending their BP on weapons that turn out to be not as great as they expected and tonnes on say armour past what their level assumed, which might make a starship combat in your story now immensely slow as the enemy is taking forever to win while making it very unlikely for the players to succeed because they unknowingly shot themselves in the foot.

Not relative to an already-leveled ship that needs no decision-making at all. But my point was that, if you want to play something without any leveling or decision-making, maybe an RPG isn't the best choice.

No one said no decision making, I just find the idea of "Doing X & Y" being simpler than just "doing X" flawed. The starships leveling with you does not make it more accessible. And as stated above, there are RPs where not everything is levelled.... Even starfinder has things that don't level with you like Feats. Which Could be rewritten to scale, but if they did it would make the game more complex rather than less (though I would prefer if Feats scaled in Starfinder regardless that increase in complexity).

[Gnaeus]

You can level ships without abandoning player input.

Imagine using the downtime system and infamy systems as a base. Give a ship a level based cost. Like: a tier 3 cruiser requires x labor, y goods, z tech parts and w magic resources/trip. Then you allow the characters to produce resources with relevant checks, with number of resources produced based on check results. Some gear might require a certain amount of fame to access. Upgrades also cost resources.

Disadvantages: it is more complicated

It may not exactly track every other level 8 ship for your AP.

Advantages: your ship is based on your character actions, giving you an actual stake in its success. It’s now worth more than a hand grenade, because you worked on it and can’t replace it for free.

You could salvage resources from captured or destroyed ships. Making those combats meaningful.

You could get ship rewards as quest rewards

You could go further. Spend a week and x resources and y skill check for temporary bonuses. Because you stocked the small arms locker or provided luxuries for crew or fine tuned the engines or whatever. Make the jobs more meaningful than one dice roll per combat round. Make people care that the engineer spends shoreleave upgrading the drive.

You could buy resources, but make them expensive. Or let characters sell them at 10% like any other gear. Shouldn’t destroy WBL.

It could tie the ship growth to the party. A bunch of magic guys might find it easier to do magic upgrades. Teciies might have a more high tech ship. Social types might need to role play to negotiate for needed supplies. Make P.C. choices matter.

It could differentiate ports. Port X has lots of labor but magic resources are expensive. Port y has only luxury goods. Port z doubles costs for everything but magic. Now rather than “inhabited planet” I suddenly care where my favorite port is.

[Psyren]

You can have advancement without having 1 to 1 be the default.

1) You can have different tiers of ships without having ships advance with the players level. Having ships be different tiers != all levels need to be directly linked.
2) The current system doesn't really help you guess how strong the party's ship should be. Since it gives you 0 guideance on what sort of things the system expects of a ship of x tier. It's easy to picture one group spending their BP on weapons that turn out to be not as great as they expected and tonnes on say armour past what their level assumed, which might make a starship combat in your story now immensely slow as the enemy is taking forever to win while making it very unlikely for the players to succeed because they unknowingly shot themselves in the foot.

1) Of course you can have advancement without linking to level. I never said you can't. They playtested and chose not to make that the default. You are still free to do that on your own.

2) This scenario is about as likely as a party sinking all their WBL into armor and none into their weapons or vice-versa. Could it happen, sure, but any scenario can be skewed to unreasonableness if you actively try. What's more important is the comfort that they have the right amount of BP to spend in the first place.

[Gnaeus]

I never said you can't. They playtested and chose not to make that the default. You are still free to do that on your own.

Is this not true of every decision in every game ever? Aside from purely artistic decisions I can’t think when it wouldn’t apply. It’s hardly a defense. Hopefully no professional company will release a product with 0 play testing. And they make choices. That doesn’t mean those choices were good, or justified, or made to benefit the users rather than the AP writers. Every bad rule/class/game ever discussed on this board was probably at some point a result of choices backed by some kind of play testing. You can rewrite truenamer or planar binding on your own. They play tested and chose to make those the default.

[Psyren]

Is this not true of every decision in every game ever? Aside from purely artistic decisions I can’t think when it wouldn’t apply.

It is. They can't please everyone and it's foolish to try. They made the decision they felt would benefit the greatest number of tables, and I agree with it.

Truenamer actually wasn't playtested, to your point. Nothing in ToM was except Binder.

[Gnaeus]

It is. They can't please everyone and it's foolish to try. They made the decision they felt would benefit the greatest number of tables, and I agree with it.

Your agreement with it is valid. And you should defend it on those lines.

I disagree with the first two statements. They made a decision which was lazy and would benefit their AP writers. I think benefiting the greatest number of tables was given as much value as a ship in their system: 0 credit.

[Psyren]

Your agreement with it is valid. And you should defend it on those lines.

Thanks.

I disagree with the first two statements. They made a decision which was lazy and would benefit their AP writers. I think benefiting the greatest number of tables was given as much value as a ship in their system: 0 credit.

I don't view those as mutually exclusive though. As I mentioned, space opera games haven't exactly been mainstream until now (the sales figures support this), so I would wager that this game would be the first such experience for many groups, and that APs are how the majority of those will experience this game for the first time. Making life easier for the writers of those APs therefore does benefit tables in the long run.

[Aotrs Commander]

2) At the risk of repeating myself, the rules are designed for less experienced DMs/playgroups first and foremost. You can run non-upgrading ships just fine if you feel that's more realistic; but that comes at the cost of needing a group with the system mastery to pursue those manual upgrades when they're supposed to. Providing the GM with an easy-to-use-but-gamist guideline is going to beat the alternative any day of the week, especially since Starfinder was likely the first space TTRPG for a large number of players, ever.

That would be news to me, actually.

(Why would that even be, though? What prompted them to think Starfinder would be more popular than Pathfinder (or at least attract that big of a new audience)? Starfinder really does nothing at all that dozens of other systems don't already do (that it is above much of the pack merely speaks to 99%-of-everything-is-crap rule), and the main strength that I thought it would have - be Pathfinder! In Spaaaaaaaaace! Which it's kind of adulterated. Which is why I think I'm perhaps harder on it than I might have been - it wasn't what I expected it to be; I was expecting Centurions and got Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors.

(Okay, no, sorry, Starfinder, that WAS uncalled for, I apologise.)

I mean, look, I'm harder on it than on, say 4E, because Starfinder at least is somethign that's close enough I can care to get irritated at it not being as good as I think it should have been (because Paizo have raised my expectations too high, perhaps). 4E I always do the curtesy of saying was a mechanically fine system that did everything it set out to do, for the most part *cough*skillchallenges*cough*, it just did the exact opposite of what I want out of an RPG's mechanical system. Although, in fairness, even it had merit; its solo monster idea turned into my defiant template which was a true quantum leap in having actually decent boss fights with larger parties.)

That actually explains a lot; though if that was the intention, in my estimation, they did a poor job of it, since the system is no less and no more impenetrable than the previous editions of D&D, and I hold 3.x as being one of the BETTER written sets of RPG rules I've come across. Is it better than many other sets of rules? Yes, but so was 3.0. (Compare to, for example, my personal favourite whipping system, AD&D...) Much as I love RM, it ain't exactly especially well-written.

An elegant set of rules and simple set are rules are not the same. Neither 3.x nor PF (nor Rolemaster - actually, especially not Rolemaster) are simple systems, nor elegant systems overall; though some aspects of them are elegant. They're levelled systems, they CAN'T be particularly elegant wit regard to being good learning systems, because it's level-based. A system without levels is a system where, at least in all cases I've seen, the characters don't significantly improve and thus you mostly flatten the curve. There's a strong arguement to be made that's the approach you ought to take if you wanted to make a learner system.

(I wouldn't make that arguement, but I graduated from HeroQuest to Rolemaster.)

There is no substitute for actually having to do some reading (or at least the DM having to do some reading) if you actually want a mechanically sound system.



(If you something that's incredibly easy to start with I mean... Like, you could literally play HeroQuest. This chap isn't wrong. No, genuinuely seriously, if you don't play it as the board game, it functions perfectly fine as a rules-lite RPG system.)

The other fiction/systems you're thinking of generally only have ship vs. ship battles. Starfinder has those too, but also has more traditional ship vs. monster fights that just happen to be set in space. Upgrading the ship lets the designers throw things like Novaspawn or Endbringer Devils into an AP without having to wonder if the high-level party never swapped out or upgraded their garbage scow or mid-range frigate.

"Traditional?" I would HIGHLY debate that is applicable, myself.

I mean, the simplest solution would have been to just y'know, not have stuff like Novaspawn or Endbringer Devils exist in the first place and keep starship combat to starships. (Where it belongs.) And thence remove the need for a more complex scaling subsystem entirely, which is not really representative of any sci-fi I can personally think of, off the top my my head. (Mind you, I can and do say that about Vancian casting, so if anyone is going to do it, a D&D dervivative ought to be the the one...)



Right, yeah, I've been using this excuse to rant to procrastinate on work again, I had better get back to it...

[Psyren]

Starfinder really does nothing at all that dozens of other systems don't already do (that it is above much of the pack merely speaks to 99%-of-everything-is-crap rule), and the main strength that I thought it would have - be Pathfinder! In Spaaaaaaaaace! Which it's kind of adulterated.

I'm not saying there aren't other systems. maybe even dozens, that can do space opera. But those have overwhelmingly been niche products. Traveller is a classic to be sure, but I haven't seen it chart at any point in the last decade. The only other space RPG that has cracked the top 5 in the last decade was Star Wars from FFG, and everything I can find on the space combat there suggests it's featherweight at best. So Starfinder is, if not charting new territory, at the very least introducing slews of new audiences to the genre. In spring of this very year Starfinder was #2 in sales behind D&D, and only got bumped down once 2e launched.

I mean, the simplest solution would have been to just y'know, not have stuff like Novaspawn or Endbringer Devils exist in the first place and keep starship combat to starships.

Why you're correct, being as boring as possible is certainly simpler I'm glad the design team chose otherwise though.

[Telok]

The way to have starship sized monsters is to stat them as starships. It's really that easy and it works in every system with starships. You may have to consider some sort of crew or subsystem equivalency, but the whole moving, attacking, and taking damage works just fine.

Honestly they could have statted the ships as really big vehicles. Actually, some of the smallest ships are smaller than some of the larger vehicles aren't they? Ah well. If they'd done that then maybe they would have managed a decent set of starship combat rules that fit into the rest of the game.

Is it weird that I think playing a npc would be easier and maybe more fun than playing a pc? Less crap to calculate, no problems from dealing with with wbl, no silly stamina/hp splits.

[Aotrs Commander]

Why you're correct, being as boring as possible is certainly simpler I'm glad the design team chose otherwise though.

Well, do you want a system that's very easy for people to learn, or do you want to have a good, mechanically deep system?

Can't have both (at least not without a loooooot of time). (It's like that thing they say - there is cost, time and quality and you can only ever have two.)

I've certainly never seen it done; 3.x/PF is about as close as I've ever witnessed.

The twain are not even particularly compatible goals in an RPG - it's not even easy to do that for something far less complex in breadth like a wargame.

Trust me, I went for the latter and moderately achieved the former in my set of starships rules, which is on a VASTLY less complex scale and it took FIFTEEN YEARS to get that written, tested and published. (I'd be interested to know how many comparative lich-years went into Starfinder, actually, I have no idea.)

And Accelerate & Attack? Is a fairly weighty set of wargames rules as far as they go, running it at 170 pages (including markers and stuff).



So, yeah, they had to make the chocie between "make this easy to pick up" verses "rules mechanics that don't suck." And aimed more for the latter than the former, which is a bit at odds if their plan was to make Starfinder more the former.

(I've actually observed that Starfinder sometimes feels like it would have preferred to not be a D20 system at all, but they felt they had to, because they weren't willing to not bank on their existing market and thus ended up aiming for something that doesn't serve either end as well.)




Basically, it comes down to the fact there are basically two groups of people; people who don't really care what game they're playing and will play anything so long as they're having fun, no matter how bad the rules are... (this describes 80-90% of my gaming group.) And the sort of people do are inveterate rules-smiths and, at extremes, will do things like spend months faffing with rules and probably spend some hours reading up before making a character in CRPGs, but I can't possibly think of any examples of that, sort of person, obviously

Y'aint gonna satisfy either end by going down the middle any more than you're going to ever resolve the issue of the "I want to be forced to manage my resources like I was playing AD&D (wizards)" crowd verses the "I don't want to be forced to manage my resources like I was playing AD&D (wizards)" crowd (as any cursory glance, at say, Obsidian's forums for Pillars of Eternity (either version) will demonstrate).



Whereas, for instance, the class stuff I've just finished doing for 3.Aotrs runs to 200 pages just on the classes alone, not counting the feats, main rules changes powers, spells and power lists.



(Speaking of feats, only got as far as "A" last night down PF's list, so better back to it, the feats document and feats list document only reach a combined total of 120 pages right now...)




I'm just sayin', though, Paizo, Accerate & Attack is D20 based, guys, you want a system that'll be (much) better than what you got, have your people call my people...

[Psyren]

The way to have starship sized monsters is to stat them as starships.

Uh... that's more or less what they did. They have starship tiers and everything.

Well, do you want a system that's very easy for people to learn, or do you want to have a good, mechanically deep system?

Can't have both (at least not without a loooooot of time). (It's like that thing they say - there is cost, time and quality and you can only ever have two.) I've certainly never seen it done; 3.x/PF is about as close as I've ever witnessed.

3.x and PF weren't "close." They did that. As did 5e for that matter.

(Unless you don't consider those to be either good, mechanically deep, or both, in which case I'll save us both some time and categorically disagree with you.)

[Anonymouswizard]

Why you're correct, being as boring as possible is certainly simpler I'm glad the design team chose otherwise though.

Question! Why ate monsters more interesting than starships/humanoids?

No seriously, I tend to see this assumption crop up a lot, and especially at lower levels I tend to find that this is untrue. It's a lot harder to bribe a monster not to fight you.

Question 2: how do they breathe in the vacuum of space? (I mean, I guess they might all be similar to androids, in that they're tech creatures that don't need to breathe).

[Psyren]

Oh yeah, almost forgot - I was able to find the explicit "guideline" text for starships, it just happened to be in the designing encounters section rather than the improving starships section.

DESIGNING STARSHIP ENCOUNTERS

From a simple skirmish against pirates to a massive fleet
engagement, designing a fun and challenging space combat
requires thoughtful planning and careful design on the part of the
GM. A crew of PCs can’t simply spend their hard-earned credits
to upgrade their starship between encounters as they could
with ordinary gear. In addition, often due to the circumstances
of the story, the characters might find themselves in a ship that
is significantly more or less powerful than their Average Party
Level might indicate. The GM needs to take these factors into
account when deciding what sort of enemies the PCs will face.

There, now we can all stop handwringing about autoscaling ships being unrealistic, you have explicit permission for a mismatch between APL and ship tier if your story requires it, since that was needed apparently; enjoy.

Question! Why ate monsters more interesting than starships/humanoids?

No seriously, I tend to see this assumption crop up a lot, and especially at lower levels I tend to find that this is untrue. It's a lot harder to bribe a monster not to fight you.

I don't understand the question; Starfinder has both, so you can run whichever you find more interesting, or both. I myself don't consider one to be more or less interesting than the other, they are tools in the GM's toolbelt.

Question 2: how do they breathe in the vacuum of space? (I mean, I guess they might all be similar to androids, in that they're tech creatures that don't need to breathe).

In general, creatures that count as starships don't have to worry about vacuum or gravity. There are also plenty of other monsters that are vacuum immune below that scale.

[Morty]

Starfinder seems to be a product for people who want a sci-fi/space fantasy game but, for whatever reason, refuse to engage with non-d20 mechanics. But it does seem to have some interesting ideas. The weapons list seems pretty baffling, though. It's the closest I've seen to a video game gear treadmill in a tabletop game.

[Aotrs Commander]

3.x and PF weren't "close." They did that. As did 5e for that matter.

(Unless you don't consider those to be either good, mechanically deep, or both, in which case I'll save us both some time and categorically disagree with you.)

Dude, c'mon, would I have spent all this effort on converting stuff if I thought either were that? (Especially given that you specifically have been pretty much the most helpful person on the board in providing advice and assisting me doing so...)

3.x/PF (or rather, more technically, 3.Aotrs) is my system of choice - has been, actually for nearly twenty years now, since 3.0 came out. Rolemaster, the previous choice? Only for a) the party I just retired for my 40th last month after over twenty years and b) the only current day-quest party for which it is better suited, where combat takes a back seat to exploration and The More Skills that 3.x/PF/SF doesn't really have for The-Aotrs-Does-Stargate-SG-1.

As I said, I thought they were among the best-written I've seen - but given the amount of reading material and complexity involved, I wouldn't say they were especially "easy to learn" as things go, if you were a complete beginner, and not someone who was picking up 3E at twenty (after dealing with AD&D and Rolemaster...) Sure, maybe if you're a PLAYER, but hell, at that point, provided you cdon't have a crippling fear of adding tens and units instead of just usually single digits, RM is actually even easier. (Fer frack's sake, I started in RM at 10!) As DM, that's still a lot of reading, and 3.5, at least, had the COMPLETE waste of space that was CR and EL, completely pointless metrics if you happen to have more than four friends, so ya gotta learn to balance by eye ANYWAY, same as in literally every other sysrtem that DOESN'T try to do that.

Starfinder?

Is not BETTER in that regard than them - it's basically at the same level (okay, maybe a fraction lower, since there are at first glance a few disfunctional bits that haven't been thought about enough, +40-anything-you-are-not-looking-at-directly-so-ambushes-cannot-ever-fail, lookin' at you); which is why I don't think trying to, for want of a better term "unclutter" (?) Pathfinder was a particularly good design goal. They were ALREADY pretty much at the best limit they could be, I think they'd have been better served capitalising on what they had more. Play to their strengths - PF isn't 5E (which from what I gather is sort of "AD&D-feel with all the stupid parts cut out and a modern design"), after all.

Heck, SF and PF have a major-leg up on basically every other RPG system I've ever seen apart from first edition WFRP - they have FANTASTIC modules and whole campaigns. THAT, if anything, is really what makes learning the game easist - a competantly written adventure, which in my opinion, Paizo are literally the joint best EVER at.



I mean, don't get me wrong here, Starfinder is getting the same treatment my grandfather got when he got back from his air-qualification exam with 97% and the instructor was like "dude, you couldn't be arsed to get the last 3%¹?"




¹He probably didn't say "dude," it was, like, the 1940s, so it was probably more like "I say old chap, jolly bad show, bit of a sticky wicket," but you get my point.

[Milo v3]

1) Of course you can have advancement without linking to level. I never said you can't. They playtested and chose not to make that the default. You are still free to do that on your own.

.... the advancement linked to level was what I was saying I don't think they should have done.... Yes I know I can do it in my home games, that doesn't change the fact that I think it Should have been the default assumption of the game.

2) This scenario is about as likely as a party sinking all their WBL into armor and none into their weapons or vice-versa. Could it happen, sure, but any scenario can be skewed to unreasonableness if you actively try. What's more important is the comfort that they have the right amount of BP to spend in the first place.

Not really, since Armour and Weapons in Starfinder give you a good idea of what levels they're associated with. If you're only using a level 6 Weapon at level 10, you know you're probably not spending enough WBL on weapons. And even if you had spent less WBL on weapons, then you still at least have your base attack bonus, ability score increases, and weapon specialization being tied to level progression to have some innate increase in the attacking department while in starships the only thing that scales is Hit Points.

Oh yeah, almost forgot - I was able to find the explicit "guideline" text for starships, it just happened to be in the designing encounters section rather than the improving starships section.



There, now we can all stop handwringing about autoscaling ships being unrealistic, you have explicit permission for a mismatch between APL and ship tier if your story requires it, since that was needed apparently; enjoy.

To be clear, the issue wasn't that the text says it's badwrongfun to it or that it was unrealistic that ships auto-levelled (I mean I was the one earlier in the thread trying to remind people that the ships didn't auto-level regardless of narrative and that it took time to even just upgrade your ship). So I should evidently be more clear with my issues to that a clearer dialogue can be had, rather than me misrepresenting myself.

My issue is that the system was made with the assumption that the characters ship will be directly tied to the level of the party, and the adventure paths following this is in my opinion negative for the game because it increases complication in a system that doesn't need it (for example, even if you wanted the ships to progress throughout the game by default, they could reduce the number of tiers to better match the 1 starship fight every 2-3 levels that the game expects in the Adventure Paths), it doesn't really match the flavour of the stories it's trying to present so it isn't something people innately will expect in the game, and it reduces the number of stories adventure paths writers are allowed to tell (when Adventure Paths are such a big part of PF/SF).

[Psyren]

*snip*

Couple of things here:

1) I still disagree that 3e wasn't easy to learn. It was definitely not just getting people in their 20s with a background in AD&D - it revitalized the hobby to a degree not seen before the Panic. And PF took it a step further with the Beginner Box, which I would describe without hyperbole as one of the greatest innovations in TTRPG history, which Starfinder then continued. You can use it to play solo even! Do I think they hit the perfect balance between smooth introduction and depth, no, but it was still more than good enough for me to say it does both.

2) Concerning CR and EL... even when you're dealing with a non-standard party, do you honestly not see the value in at least having a place to start from? It's far better than having to eyeball from scratch; "completely pointless" is a massive overstatement.

.... the advancement linked to level was what I was saying I don't think they should have done.... Yes I know I can do it in my home games, that doesn't change the fact that I think it Should have been the default assumption of the game.

Nothing for us to do here then but agree to disagree. The default is the default, you have explicit permission to change it if you see fit, I'm happy with it and you're not... there's literally nothing else to say.

Not really, since Armour and Weapons in Starfinder give you a good idea of what levels they're associated with. If you're only using a level 6 Weapon at level 10, you know you're probably not spending enough WBL on weapons. And even if you had spent less WBL on weapons, then you still at least have your base attack bonus, ability score increases, and weapon specialization being tied to level progression to have some innate increase in the attacking department while in starships the only thing that scales is Hit Points.

For starters, there are several limits that serve as guides - chief among them power consumption and expansion bays - and because you're advised to spend BP on your core and thrusters first, you end up with a natural yardstick for spending BP everything else. Heavy weapons use more PCU than light weapons and shields for example, so you're naturally discouraged from skewing too far in one direction.

Second and more important, there are over a dozen sample ships for you to use as benchmarks in core and that doubles in Pact Worlds- finding ships with decent balance to mimic (and surpass) is easy.

To be clear, the issue wasn't that the text says it's badwrongfun to it or that it was unrealistic that ships auto-levelled (I mean I was the one earlier in the thread trying to remind people that the ships didn't auto-level regardless of narrative and that it took time to even just upgrade your ship). So I should evidently be more clear with my issues to that a clearer dialogue can be had, rather than me misrepresenting myself.

My issue is that the system was made with the assumption that the characters ship will be directly tied to the level of the party, and the adventure paths following this is in my opinion negative for the game because it increases complication in a system that doesn't need it (for example, even if you wanted the ships to progress throughout the game by default, they could reduce the number of tiers to better match the 1 starship fight every 2-3 levels that the game expects in the Adventure Paths), it doesn't really match the flavour of the stories it's trying to present so it isn't something people innately will expect in the game, and it reduces the number of stories adventure paths writers are allowed to tell (when Adventure Paths are such a big part of PF/SF).

I don't buy any of these downsides. I genuinely don't see how automatic scaling could be more complicated than manual. As far as the scaling not matching source flavor, protagonists tinker with their ships all the time as the story progresses, we see it in Mass Effect, Firefly, Outlaw Star and plenty of others. And lastly, AP writers being able to count on the PCs having a certain ship minimum gives them more freedom, not less. So again, not buying it, and we'll probably have to agree to disagree here too.

[Aotrs Commander]

Couple of things here:

2) Concerning CR and EL... even when you're dealing with a non-standard party, do you honestly not see the value in at least having a place to start from? It's far better than having to eyeball from scratch; "completely pointless" is a massive overstatement.

CR has a marginal use, though to be honest, it was better as Thing That Gives You XP, which is mostly all I use it for.

EL was COMPLETELELY meaningless.

The assumptions behind CR and EL were fundementally borked anyway, because if you deviated slightly from 3.0's assumed standard of a party of four thief/mage/fighter/cleric (because the designers were still thinkign too much AD&D and no enough about what they created, which was why stupid stuff like multiclass restrictions and death from massive damage existed), they failed completely. I stopped using EL five minutes after the first time I actually tried using it in practise and realised that it was utterly, totally useless. In the running, even, for "worst idea of 3.x."

There is in the no substitute for just having to learn how to DM - balancing encounters is just one thing you have to work on, same as how to manage your players and everything else, in the end. CR in PF is slightly better handled, in that it is used as a counter-balance to HD; but even then, you still have the problems where a fighter and a wizard are classed as the same CR despite being very much a not equal threat (as ain individual creature) to a party, and that skew even inverts as the level rises.

None of the encounter design systems ever seem to take into account tactical factors (ranged attacks, lack thereof, combined arms - terrain (as a non-abstracted factor)), nor party-make-up, which are all far more determining of how easy an encounter is. In the end, you still have to balance it by eye for your specific party.



Let it be said, that DESPITE being my system of choice, 3.x still has huge flaws (PF which has retained many), but with effort, those flaws are still less huge than everyone else's. There is not, nor will there ever be, a system which does NOT have huge flaws.

[Psyren]

My point is that a solid starting position, even a flawed one, that you can build from is almost always going to be better than starting from scratch. Given the size and scope of your "3.Aotrs" project, I would have thought you'd appreciate that notion more than anyone

As for EL being "utterly, totally useless" - like I said, we don't have to agree on everything.