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Dallbun posted:185: First Flight Catbirds are the best. E: Any adventure that can get you a catbird is a good adventure. I've never gone wrong with having pet catbirds in any RPG. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Nov 18, 2017 |
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Nov 18, 2017 23:09
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 Starfinger Alien Archive Part 13: "The spores must be fertilized beforehand in a process that resembles sexual congress between two ksariks, leaving both with a supply of seeds that remain viable for months afterward." Monsters starting with K today, not O.
  Kalo Sharkhunter (CR 2) and Kalo Deepspeaker (CR 5) From the The sharkhunter... wait, they have sharks on Kalo-Mahoi? Well, I guess they must. The sharkhunter has blindsight, swims very well, has a knife and rifle, some soldier abilities, and get a nickel bonus to attacks if they've moved in a round at all (not just a move action). The deepspeaker is a xenodruid mystic that's supposed to be able to summon great creatures of the depths, but can only really summon your normal dinky level 2 summons in the actual statblock. I can only imagine their peans to the deep, the rising music, a crescendo and then... a 3' fish swims up and is like "'Sup, I swam all the way and boy are my fins tired! Ha ha!" They have some spells and an ability called "grasping vines" that seems to have no actual description or rules in either here or the Core Rules. For player material, there's the PC version that gets the aquatic subtype (meaning you need water to breathe), cold resistance, slowed land movement and fast water movement, sonar that gives them blindsight, and a bonus to Stealth checks while in water. There's also rules for weapons designed to be used underwater, and that's that.  Ksarik (CR 4) Wait, haven't we seen this before? Wasn't it called the caypin? Well, no, this turns out to be a different four-legged predator with a face full of tentacles. Instead, this is an animate plant predator from Castrovel (yes, yes, it has all of the plant immunities despite clearly being a specialized predator, like the frujai). They're psychic and mainly feed on corpses, but when two Ksariks gently caress "in a process that resembles sexual congress" they grow thorns which they can fire into live prey. The thorns have spores that then grow inside the target, and eventually a bunch of ksarik "seedlings" bust out. They also have the ability to assimilate DNA with their tentacles and create new adaptations based on that. Lastly, they sing with their skin, but attempts to try and communicate with them through song just anger them. You know. Angry plants. So, they're climbing and running predators with fast healing and plant immunities, can slap you with a tentacle, spit acid, or shoot thorns. The tentacle slaps allow it to gain one ability the target has, like: darkvision, blindsense, blindsight, energy resistance, burrowing, flying, swimming, language comprehension,or weapon proficiencies. It can only have one of these at its time. The thorn darts can inflict "carrion spores", which act as a disease and cause damage when the seedlings burst out. For player material, we have an "adaptive serum", which is a potion that allows you to gain energy resistance when you're hit with damage of that type for a limited time, but only one type per dose.  Kyokor (CR 20) If that creature looks familiar - and it took me a little bit for it to click - it's the bastard child of EVA-01 from Neon Genesis Evangelion with some Pacific Rim stylings mixed in. With that out of the way, they're one of the "colossi" that rampage across Daimalko, a "kaiju" ravaged world from back in the core rules. They're 150' tall city-smashers that can somehow detect concentrations of population and love wrecking poo poo and eating people. Why?  In any case, they have ridiculous numbers including heavy cold and fire resistance, a multiattack that's bite/claw/claw/slam, can breathe underwater, and have an ability called "massive" which I can find no description or rules for. (Yes, that the second ability in this update I can't find in either book.) Their special abilities are to ignore hardness in order to smash buildings, have a psychic effect where sentient creatures in a building it's smashing have to make a Will save to flee, and it can sense concentrations of 2,000 people or more. It's basically supposed to be the tarrasque of the setting, but without all of the tarrasque's myriad immunities, it seems likely high-level characters could pull shenanigans against it. Lastly we get some armor crafted from hulls that kyokor shed from their teeth. Ironically, all of it is underleveled for actually facing off against kyokor in. No creatures starting with L, so we can move on to... Next: M is for Seven-Sexed Simians. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Nov 19, 2017 |
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Nov 19, 2017 00:22
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I like the look of the Kalo Sharkhunter, but I'm a sucker for fish people in reverse huge diving suits.
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Nov 19, 2017 00:49
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Young Freud posted:I'm still waiting for a humanoid race that has a plant reproductive organs replacing the male-female reproductive organs. Like has flower for a crotch,
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Nov 19, 2017 01:10
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Cassa posted:I like the look of the Kalo Sharkhunter, but I'm a sucker for fish people in reverse huge diving suits. Yea I'm 100% into the 'fish person who needs a portable aquarium to move around' aesthetic.
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Nov 19, 2017 03:46
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Yeah, it's a nice design. I mean, it's not a goldfish bowl atop power armor, but nothing's perfect.
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Nov 19, 2017 06:19
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Alien Rope Burn posted:- whups! I didn't know it split into a swarm of nanites. That's what, the sixth monster that splits like a banana? I'm fuckin' done here. Also there are rules for "nanite weapon fusions" that cause a weapon to inflict acid damage and can nauseate targets as it grey goos a foe. Pretty sure that violates the Space Geneva Conventions, but okay. Done! Space Hague Convention. The Space Geneva Convention is the one about treatment of space-prisoners.
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Nov 19, 2017 06:46
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Starfinger Alien Archive Part 14: "This bonding can seem strangely caring; as soon as its victim’s fate is sealed, a marooned one gives every appearance of sympathizing with its prey, even giving advice on how to continue to survive in their current environment as long as possible." Mm-hm.
  Maraquoi Hunter (CR 0.5) and Maraquoi Shaman (CR 8) Not macaques. Maraquoi. These are bug-eyed monkey people from Marata, yet one another of Once again, the spellcaster is the more advanced of the two character statblocks. Funny, that... so the hunter has a spear and rifle and climbs well. The shaman is a mystic healer, but given the disparate CRs, it makes me wonder who they're supposed to be supporting. Unless it's something like "You run into 12 hunters and 1 shaman, CR 9, fight!", but that doesn't sound like a great encounter. Their PC writeup gets them blindsense, a climb speed, low-light vision, a nickel bonus to Survival, and they can hold an extra hand's worth of equipment with their tail. Ho-hum.  Marooned One (CR 8) These come in either solitary or "desolations" of 2-5. If four show up, are they marooned four, then? makes u think So these are undead born when somebody is left stranded in space to die. While still intelligent and skilled, they're obsessed with forcing others to meet the same fate, and try and trick or disable those it encounters into being stranded. Once they do, they're actually friendly, but will never act to allow somebody to be rescued or escape. We actually get a list of tactics - a rarity for this book, including setting up false distress beacons, or sneaking aboard ships to disable or take control. They're mostly just smart zombies with blindsight to notice life signs, and come with a free knife and pistol. They get a bonus on skill checks to disable life support (and specifically only that, oddly), and can strangle people during a grapple for extra damage and Constitution damage. There's also a template graft so you can make other sorts of creatures into marooned ones, if you like.  Mountain Eel (CR 6) So, these look like eels with fins, but actually live in the mountains of Castrovel. They're voracious, sneaky, and generic predators, and have a paralyzing gaze. We get a nearly a page of detail on their life cycle and who likes to hunt them but let's not pretend there's more to them than "tries to eat person, players shoot the poo poo out of it, a winner is they". Gotta fill two pages either way! That's why we also get details on how to make no less than three types of magic items, including... gloves that assist with driving, one that lets you reroll a Fort save once a day, and boots that let you trample targets. Do those have anything to do with mountain eels? gently caress eels, got two whole pages to fill! Every monster is two pages! Nothing in the writeup you couldn't predict from the above. Biting, Kaa's hypno-stare, 60' long, done. Feels like it bounced out of a Palladium book where a writeup was built based on the art rather than vice versa. Next: N is for Lich, Rebranded.
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Nov 19, 2017 09:48
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So they don't have space skellies, buk have weird looking space zombies? Meh. Also, what wouldn't count as a nickel bonus in Starfinger? I don't know the system or maths enough to understand. What I do now to be a nickel bonus is the Space Wolf giant wolf pelt in Death Watch that gives whooping +2 to intimidate.
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Nov 19, 2017 10:12
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, it's a nice design. I mean, it's not a goldfish bowl atop power armor, but nothing's perfect. Hello extremely! We hope you like to *play*!
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Nov 19, 2017 11:40
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-MONIvP6kI By popular demand, we are going straight to the section on the Pak in the Creatures book. After this we'll go through the Creatures book proper. If our archivist wants to rearrange this and omit this paragraph, go nuts. The Pak are native to a world with a higher baseline radiation rate than the loving shores of Earth, because that planet is nearer to the Galactic core. (Alert students may ask, wasn't the Galactic core exploding? Yes it is. Did the Pak do it? Unknown, but let's be honest: Probably.) The Pak are, to quote the book: "Extremely intelligent, strong, and warlike xenophobes." Their life cycle has three stages, which we discussed but we'll hit again: CHILDHOOD: Self explanatory. BREEDER: Sub-intelligent bipedal primates. In the original novel, they were presented as explicitly Homo habilis, which was less implausible than it was in 1984, given the knowledge of the time, and how much of it had worked its way to Larry Niven. (A character in "Protector" objects to this theory and is not well rebutted.) This book walks this back by saying that Pak breeders resemble Homo habilis; basic tool use is within their grasp, but their brains are limited. As the name suggests, these folks mostly produce babies and perhaps provide some basic care. PROTECTOR: Around age 42 (UN standard years), a breeder who didn't die somehow becomes sensitive to the aroma of a common hardy perennial bush, whose roots become alluringly delicious. The breeder, inevitably, chows down, and is exposed to a symbiotic virus that produces CHANGE.  a flattering portrayal of a protector The skull grows and the brain gets bigger than a human's. The hair falls away. The gums and lips fuse together into a durable "beak." Hair drops off. Gonads and genitals are resorbed. The joints swell, giving a protector "increased moment-arm" or whatever, but which I choose to parse as the same phenomenon that makes a gorilla able to murder you without trying hard. The skin gets thick enough to be light armor. Fingernails become like claws. The back petrifies into a durable hunch. A backup heart develops where the junk used to be. A newborn protector awakens and (in the case of Pak) figure out a lot of poo poo really fast. Pak protectors are smart as hell. Yet they are bound by a burned-in motivator to protect their relations, who they recognize both by the obvious expedient of looking at them and remembering who they are AND by their "smell." Any other Pak breeders are the enemy, although it seems as if temporary cooperation is possible. Pak protectors build nuclear, chemical and biological weapons; their secrets are lost in their use or counter-use, or neighboring protectors attacking; temporary alliances form to rehabilitate areas devastated thus; they collapse when the areas become viable breeder habitat. The Pak try to colonize other worlds. It usually falls apart because the colonies get continually invaded by Pak ships from later waves, who want this land for themselves. They do not deal with aliens save to study their weaponry. "A protector's intelligence is certainly high; but intelligence is merely a tool to be used to reach a goal -- and goals are not always chosen intelligently." Protectors can be chill, if their breeders are fine for the moment. They lapse into a drowsy state and dream. If their bloodlines are extinguished, this state can become permanent and they starve to death. There are protectors who manage to convince themselves that some great project makes it worth continuing to eat, as ultimately they're all Pak. There's a Library of knowledge, in a desert seeded with radioactive cobalt (protectors don't care), where childless protectors may go and study or help with the library itself. Why do we care about these guys? Some of them had the idea of moving WELL away from Pak - indeed, one of their earlier interstellar flights. A vast colony ship! The trip was long enough that protectors died of old age, which was medically remarkable enough that they sent detailed accounts back to the Pak Library by message laser. By the time they got to the third planet of a yellow star, there were thirty protectors left. They turned loose the breeders, mostly in Africa but with some in Asia and Australia. They zapped some of the menacing creatures and went out to build some industrial infrastructure. Everything was coming up roses, and there was no fighting among the protectors. What was to fight about? There was an entire world out there. Room enough for all, at least for a long while. A year later it turned out that for whatever eccentric reason, Tree-of-life didn't grow right in Earth's soil. It was edible, it grew, but the virus didn't carry over. The surviving protectors thought, well, maybe it's the lack of starlight, but their experiences bore no fruit, and they were now on a hard limit - their remaining root stock was a hard cap on protector work-years remaining. They built a message laser to beg Pak for help for the breeders, strewed around some radioactives and did some bioengineering so the breeders better suited Earth's ecological systems, and died out. That was Earth, 2.5 million years ago. The Pak breeders evolved to become us and all the other species of genus Homo; it is suggested that some of them became Devo and also became gorillas, chimps, orangutans, etc. It is also suggested that many aspects of human religion (this is one of the weaker ones) are furtive half-abbreviated yearnings to become protectors, as are the specific symptoms of old age. The problem, it turned out, was a thallium oxide, and the guy who ran into Jack Brennan was coming in with a big supply of that chemical along with some notes. This protector thought he was a great and selfless hero. Jack Brennan killed him before he could realize exactly how badly humanity had diverged from the Pak baseline. Anyway, the scent of tree-of-life root attracts humans, although it is possible for humans in turn to resist. It takes immense willpower; recovered drug addicts appear to do the best at it. If you're too old, you die in the transformation. You may die anyway. (It's unclear if many Pak protectors also die in the transformation. Wouldn't surprise me.) Human protectors are smarter (if somewhat weaker) than Pak protectors, and have significantly more mental flexibility, as well as retaining things like humor, artistic desires, et cetera. They have empathy, which Pak do not have. They can also get bored. Every human protector's first post-transformation thought is something along the lines of: "I've been INCREDIBLY stupid..." Humans also have a genetic flaw in their protector programming, so to speak: They don't give up, sit down, and let themselves starve to death nearly as easily. This is arguably a feature, not a bug, but not if you ask a Pak. Human protectors are not good guys; they are entirely willing to do things like sacrifice entire colony worlds or make major adjustments to humanity in general. However, most of them are also focused on figuring out how to gently caress with the Pak, who are, after all, probably fleeing the Core explosion - and heading towards a nice, safe, distant colony world whose only problem was a lack of soil minerals... We're not done here, but this is getting long. Next up, the plot of the novel "Protector" and a discussion of the actions of the Pak with regards to the Ringworld. I'll give you a hint: Guess why we've consistently heard about "Ringworld hominids?"
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Nov 19, 2017 12:20
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Ancient aliens stuff has gotten a bit old, but it's still fun when done interestingly. The closest thing to Pak Protector society is Protectors from the same family, I'm guessing?
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Nov 19, 2017 12:32
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Inescapable Duck posted:Ancient aliens stuff has gotten a bit old, but it's still fun when done interestingly.
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Nov 19, 2017 12:50
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The Pak are one of Known Space's weirder ideas, imported into the wider universe from their appearance in a single one-off novella. They add to the general sense of background alien-ness that's one of the setting's big strengths, but they warp the setting in strange ways and are harder to use well than e.g. the stasis boxes and associated backplot. I imagine they'd be hell on earth to do well in an RPG. Any humanoid character can stuff their face with a particular root and suddenly they turn into a super-fast, superintelligent teflon psychopath of the worst murderhoboing kind? I'll be curious to see the game mechanics but I have serious social contract misgivings about a Pak PC.
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Nov 19, 2017 13:40
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That and the Library, yeah. Also, unrelated: monkeys with seven sexes, but the art only features the standard pair. Funny, that. E: a Protector would be a terrible PC
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Nov 19, 2017 13:48
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Loxbourne posted:I imagine they'd be hell on earth to do well in an RPG. Any humanoid character can stuff their face with a particular root and suddenly they turn into a super-fast, superintelligent teflon psychopath of the worst murderhoboing kind? I'll be curious to see the game mechanics but I have serious social contract misgivings about a Pak PC. Now there's a campaign idea: Normal murderhobo gaming except you discover that you're actually all protector-variants of whatever species and that's why your abilities and priorities are so extreme.
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Nov 19, 2017 13:51
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Mordenkainen and Elminster hang out at Ed Greenwood’s house every month to feast, swap spells, and share the secrets of The Deck of Encounters Set One Part 32: The Deck of Harpies, Haunts, and Hell Hounds 188: A Foul Wind, Part 1 of 2 A desolate, rocky coastline. Ten harpies attack a fishing boat within sight of the PCs. If they try to reach the boat, four harpies will break off and attack them with their charm song. There’s some nice detail about how long it takes the harpies to reach the boat, when they start singing, how many fishermen fail their save, and how long it takes the uncharmed ones to lose the fight, etc. I read it as “if the PCs don’t intervene, this is what will happen,” though I suspect the card-writer might have meant “make sure this happens!” which is less cool. Assuming the harpies get away with a couple captives, “the fishermen will offer an entire day’s catch (worth about 20 gp) if the PCs save their comrades.” Is that worth the risk? Hahaha heck no. But nobody said the PCs have to butt in. Keep. 189: A Foul Wind, Part 2 of 2 So, the PCs may be pursuing the harpies to their lair in a cave above a rocky shoreline. It’s easy to spot, what with all the bones and refuse outside. The fishermen are standing around being charmed while the remaining harpies argue over who gets the biggest pieces. They’ve got about 8,500 gp worth of coinage and gems (boring), and the ring of a noble which can be turned in for a 100 gp reward since it’s proof of his death (eh, at 100 gp it’s hardly worth the side trip). These two cards together are a reasonable side encounter that the PCs can meddle in. Keep. 190: Late Vengeance Near an ancient ruined castle. “Duke Rucher, called the Black Duke, swore on the day of his death that he would smash Holdings Castle to the foundation. However, Sir Unther, master of Holdings Castle, slew Duke Rucher in battle in front of the castle. Now Rucher haunts the castle looking for a physical form with which to complete his mission.” As a haunt, Rucher appears as a will’o’wisp on the walls at night. He’ll try to possess a PC and then destroy the castle. Which is already in ruins. So, destroy it more? I guess he wants no wall left standing or something. The card suggests that siege engines might help, if the PCs are trying to lay his spirit to rest the cooperative way. Keep. 191: Dead Justice A bounty hunter pursued the evil Red Bandit across three kingdoms, but was ambushed and killed with his companions. Now he’s a haunt, who will try to possess a PC to finish the job. (The Red Bandit, having successfully killed his pursuers, is sauntering down the road a few hours away, probably whistling a tune). The haunt doesn’t need to bring the Red Bandit to justice, just capture him, to be satisfied. I like that the PCs might very well want to drag him back to where he came from anyway for the (apparently highly motivating) reward. Keep. 192: The Sleep of the Dead The villagers in a seaside town offer the PCs 5000 gp to get rid of the ghost of a seaman who’s running from the port to the graveyard every week at midnight. When it reaches its grave, its arms fall off, it looks at the PCs in horror, and it dissolves. It’ll attack them if they dig up its grave at night. If they do so during the day, they see its coffin was too small and its arms had to be cut off to make it fit. It’ll move on if they rebury it in a bigger coffin. I suppose the hard part here is solving the case without someone being hit with supernatural aging. Keep. 193: The Call of the Wild Medium danger, in the arctic. It’s snowing heavily, and the PCs hear a hollow, mournful baying that they may recognize as coming from hell hounds. It’s a small pack of them, struggling through the snow. They “broke their bondage from an arctic shaman and fled into the snowy wastes.” At this moment, “two of the smaller ones have fallen into deep drifts, and the other hounds are trying to get out.” If the PCs leave them be, the trapped hounds will struggle out, and then they’ll attack the PCs. If the PCs go to help… they’ll attack the PCs. Look, they’re demons, okay? I guess this is fine. It provides an unusual arctic encounter, and there’s probably a chance for the PCs to evade them if they want. Keep. 194: Wizard's Fires Two wizards in the city had a feud. One called up a pack of hell hounds to destroy their rival, which they did, then came back and killed the first wizard. So there’s a pack of hell hounds loose in the city, eating and burning things. They sleep in the ruins of the house where they were summoned by day. They don’t fight to the death; they try to fight smart. “They are smart enough to remember a face or a name.” This isn’t quite an encounter as such - the card gives no indication about how the PCs might run into the hounds or anything - but it’s a reasonable mini-scenario that could be happening in a major city. Keep.
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Nov 19, 2017 15:58
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I think that's the first update where all the cards were keeps.
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Nov 19, 2017 17:16
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Mors Rattus posted:E: a Protector would be a terrible PC
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Nov 19, 2017 17:40
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Mors Rattus posted:Also, unrelated: monkeys with seven sexes, but the art only features the standard pair. Funny, that. I was going to say that seven illustrations would take up a lot of space, but then I realized that they could have used a group shot, probably. In any case, it seems that many RPGs have the problem where writers and illustrators don't really discuss what they're planning. Like how the D&D 3e (or was it 3.5?) Monster Manual mentioned some sort of giant, ten-foot-tall or so bird creature early on, but the illustration showed a bird the size of an emu.
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Nov 19, 2017 18:01
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Robindaybird posted:I think that's the first update where all the cards were keeps. Pretty sure we've had at least one all-pass update as well.
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Nov 19, 2017 18:09
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Inescapable Duck posted:Hello extremely! We hope you like to *play*! Whoever did the design work for these critters is a *silly cow*. Edit: I'm willing to give the seven-junked monkeys a pass, because sexual septimorphism wouldn't necessarily be obvious to a human observer.
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Nov 19, 2017 18:12
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JcDent posted:So they don't have space skellies, buk have weird looking space zombies? Meh. Sorry, I realize I'm not sure I ever explained myself on that one in this review. To me, a +5% bonus - that is, a +1 in a d20 game, is a "nickel bonus". +2 is a "dime bonus". That is, they end up being extra stuff to track - and d20 traditionally loves giving you tons of them. But on their own, they don't have much of an impact on the game. In fact, in a combat where you're getting that bonus on a roll once per turn, given the usual d20 combats of about 3-6 rounds, chances are pretty decent that the bonus may not even have any impact at all. Combine it with the fact that some are situational - like a Starfinger dwarf's +1 to hit against goblins (of which there are two types of goblin in alien archive) and orcs (only ever referenced in the monster creation section), and you start to wonder what the point of them is. I mean, most of the Starfinger races are better designed than that, but you still have stuff like androids getting a dime bonus against Sense Motive, but how often do PCs get Sense Motive rolled against them...? In any case, the skeletons will come later under U.
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Nov 19, 2017 18:25
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Sorry, I realize I'm not sure I ever explained myself on that one in this review. Well, that explains it. But how many bonuses can you expect to stack on an attack? I was running the DnD starter set for a couple of evenings and I was amazed at how many modifiers the players got. Are situations were the enemy reduces your to hit? Reading through the archivied section of Starfinger and I just got through the gun section. Jesus Christ, it's worse than just lovely-looking weapons, they also have the stupid names of a gear mill, too. I loving hate their naming, and I think your point about how idiotic the gun disparity is stands.
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Nov 19, 2017 19:02
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I sort of like 5e's advantage (roll more dice, but still only keep one) as a replacement for +1/+2 bonuses, but it has problems stacking up. It might be best to do it like HeroQuest does Mastery levels, and just let whoever has more advantage levels roll however many extra dice they beat the opponent by.
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Nov 19, 2017 19:41
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JcDent posted:Well, that explains it. But how many bonuses can you expect to stack on an attack? I was running the DnD starter set for a couple of evenings and I was amazed at how many modifiers the players got. Are situations were the enemy reduces your to hit? Not particularly often do you have enemies directly reduce players accuracy, most of the time thats accomplished by jacking up their defenses rather than some interactive defensive or accuracy lowering ability. When it does happen get out your ledger because between innate benefits (situational, some non stacking), caster buffa (situational, some non stacking), debuffs on enemies and allies (situational, some non stacking) youre going to be adding a lot of pluses and minuses together to find out youve all of a 5% better chance to hit
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Nov 19, 2017 19:47
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I want to play a Pkunk on Ringworld. Or in any game, really.
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Nov 19, 2017 20:03
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FMguru posted:Yeah, by Niven's writing, Protectors are so smart and so logical and so problem-focused they effectively have no free will. To them, the entire universe is just a list of problems, sorted by genetically hard-coded importance, to be solved in the most direct, ruthless, and efficient way possible. And it sounds like at the same time they're kind of dumb, because they're so hard-coded to avoid risk to their families that they won't take even minor risks like "cooperating with other groups", thus severely limiting their potential for growth.
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Nov 19, 2017 20:03
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Rand Brittain posted:And it sounds like at the same time they're kind of dumb, because they're so hard-coded to avoid risk to their families that they won't take even minor risks like "cooperating with other groups", thus severely limiting their potential for growth. This is deliberate. Protectors are all geniuses, but also an exploration of the different kinds of intelligence. They have immense problems thinking about the long-term consequences of their immediate actions, like taking a small loss now for an acceptable status quo in the future.
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Nov 19, 2017 20:18
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JcDent posted:Well, that explains it. But how many bonuses can you expect to stack on an attack? I was running the DnD starter set for a couple of evenings and I was amazed at how many modifiers the players got. Are situations were the enemy reduces your to hit? Well, you have your base attack bonus from the class and the ability modifier. There are extremely few feats that improve attack bonus. Some actions will improve attack bonus (like harrying fire) but surprisingly there's no aim action in Starfinger, which is particularly odd given the emphasis on ranged combat. (Sniper rifles can improve their range at the cost of only making one attack, but that's as close as I could find.) The fact that ranged combat is a big deal also means that range penalties and cover bonuses definitely will play into combat, as will conditions like off-target. Of course, some classes grant conditional bonuses to attacks, like an Envoy's Get 'Em or a Engineer's Combat Tracking. Weapons and weapon fusions don't generally affect attack rolls directly but there are some that have corner-case effects (like a seeking weapon ignoring concealment). Spells don't generally grant direct bonuses to attacks but definitely can grant penalties. That's most of it. So mostly you're looking at your class bonus, ability bonus, conditional class or race bonuses, penalties for range / cover / concealment, penalties from conditions and spells, and bonuses from specific actions. I think I got that right? Hm. 
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Nov 19, 2017 20:20
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Correct - the Pak are pretty much the worst at bring Protectors of all Protectors shown in the books.
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Nov 19, 2017 20:22
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I always had a godawful time keeping track of those nickel and dime bonuses, it felt like there was always some new type of bonus cropping up whenever I paged through the books, or vanishingly rare ones popping up out of nowhere.
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Nov 19, 2017 20:29
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Starfinger seems to have worked to reduce the ones that directly impact attack rolls and defense scores, but they're still all over the place in general in regards to skill checks and the like. They're not as numerous as the ones in Pathfinder, at least, though as mentioned, cover and range will come up a lot more often... unless you do like a lot of people do and just play in "theatre of mind" mode and often forget those rules exist.
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Nov 19, 2017 20:39
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If I remember correctly, Nickel and Dime bonuses are often masked as "Granularity" and "Decision Complexes". But is it correct, or are they more of a perversion of those ideas? As in can "Granularity" playable, be achieved without these tiny bonuses?
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Nov 19, 2017 21:20
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FMguru posted:Yeah, by Niven's writing, Protectors are so smart and so logical and so problem-focused they effectively have no free will. To them, the entire universe is just a list of problems, sorted by genetically hard-coded importance, to be solved in the most direct, ruthless, and efficient way possible. Rand Brittain posted:And it sounds like at the same time they're kind of dumb, because they're so hard-coded to avoid risk to their families that they won't take even minor risks like "cooperating with other groups", thus severely limiting their potential for growth.
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Nov 19, 2017 21:32
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Yeah, I guess you could say they're going for granularity. Like, you want to have more granularity between BS3 regular human and BS4 Space Marine. Probably better ways to do it than Strafinger.
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Nov 19, 2017 21:35
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Nessus posted:This is true for Pak protectors, much less true for humans. The hominids of the Ringworld, it varies. Ah, Niven hated logicbros even before they were a thing.
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Nov 19, 2017 21:36
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JcDent posted:Ah, Niven hated logicbros even before they were a thing.
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Nov 19, 2017 21:47
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Computer, show me the timeline where Larry Niven ended up writing Eclipse Phase.
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Nov 19, 2017 22:26
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Starfinger Alien Archive Part 15: "Those who do not survive spend their last few moments in terrible pain and mind-numbing terror, and sometimes such suffering prevents souls from passing on to the afterlife." N we have some more creatures.
 Necrovite (CR 13) So, I was really looking forward to having playable natives of Eox - you know, the undead guys from the core rules - but it turns out you can't, because they're largely these CR 13 monstrosities or vampires or whatever. Disappointing. So, they're basically just techno-liches who imprison their soul in an "electroencephalon" which has to be destroyed to kill them. Supposedly each is created through a unique, undetailed ritual, but they all seem to create a electroencephalon, which definitely feels like the kind of term you come up with you need to write 1000+ words about a monster. I'm not saying that's the case, but I am saying it occurs twelve times in two pages. Of course, usually they keep their electroencephalons in secret bomb-proof bunkers, like you do. In any case, they have an aura that causes fatigue within 30' and no apparent way to turn it off, which makes diplomacy a little tricky. I guess they skype and discord all their interplanetary summits. They also heal quickly, regenerate within about a half-week from death, are immune to cold and electricity, can fly around, carry a "wrackstaff" (like in Exalted?) and a laser gun, and are spellcasters with a variety of offensive spells and magic hacks (like technomancers do). They also tend to have spell gems, including one with teleport to just whisk themselves away from defeat. Also, they can control undead, particularly unintelligent ones that can't break free. Pretty much just liches with a new coat of paint. Their staves (level 13) are magic items that do passable blunt damage and inflict extra pain on a crit hit. There's also a template graft to cook your own necrovite right for marmite salad night. Have a bite! I may be wearing out just a bit.  Nihili (CR 5) and Nihili Captain (CR 13) Unlike marooned ones, which are caused by being stranded in space, nihili are undead created specifically by dying in a vacuum. Totally different! As undead, they can create artificial gravity to walk on any surface regardless of its orientation, and their gaze can cause people's lungs to collapse. They use their gravity powers to cling to ships and try to get in side to murder people. They're horror-movie sneaky and just want to kill, kill, kill. You can make your own with animate dead, if you like, and apparently necrovites like to do that because they can march around as ship crews in vacuum with no problems. (Hence the "captain" statblock.) There are rumors there's a cult of these undead who use a tear from this world to the negative energy place (a " As noted above, they're undead with the ability to do a gaze attack to do damage and who can go walkin' on the moon. The captain version has bigger numbers, but, ironically, no ship-based skills, so he's literally the worst captain. Mind, there's no indication that they talk at all, particularly with their collapsed undead lungs, so that would seem to make crew work difficult... along with their endless hunger for murder, but I guess a necrovite's undead control could overcome that... for a time. Doesn't really seem like a great idea, though, given they try and keep peace with others. The captain gets excepted from my pass. There's a graft template to make your own if you gotta.   Novaspawn (Tier 8) These are mysterious silicon lifeforms that - at the end of their lifecycle - become stars... though nobody living has seen it to confirm this, supposedly there are historical records that imply it. Sure, okay. They're peaceful, and don't generally attack unless antagonized, in which case they shoot crystal-borne lightning bolts at people. Also it has force shields, maybe through magic? Some get even bigger than the statblock here, but we don't get numbers for those. They're statted up as starships rather than regular monsters, with "laser cannons", and "particle beams". They have their own critical damage table to simulate them being living beings as opposed to people with a crew. It can take actions for a gunner, pilot, and engineer, but not the others, putting it at a slight drawback for its tier, but that's not accounted for. It also has tentacles that can psuedo-grapple other ships. Lastly, we get details on trying to stop a novaspawn from... going nova, implying that some baddie may somehow force the process. This involves going through a hostile environment within (mainly heat) and then making a number of skill checks to "deactivate" the heart. (That's a nice way of saying you murdered it, murderer.)  Nuar Enforcer (CR 4) and Nuar Specialist (CR 8) So, these are "minotaur-like" creatures, though we have no statblocks or details for "real" minotaurs in this game. So we have to take their word that these are basically just smaller and smarter versions of the former. Of course, they still love mazes and the like. But they're not minotaurs! They also love orc and half-orc traditions, and borrow parts of their culture from them. This isn't great info, given we don't have that much information on orcs at all in this, but gently caress, you play Pathfinder, right? Right? It can't have changed at all in centuries of mystery history.  As 7' hunks of bipedal angus beef, they like cryo weapons and get some soldier abilities. In addition, they can charge without any of the penalties for doing so, can knockdown with any weapon on a crit (as long as that weapon doesn't have another critical efffect), and can naturally navigate with their "maze mind" even if unskilled. But they're not minotaurs! The specialist has a number of mechanic abilities instead, and bigger numbers. Finally, there's the PC rendition, which has darkvision, that charging ability, a dinky natural unarmed attack, and improved speed. It's always kind of weird to have multiple versions of the same creature for different purposes, because I suppose changing the original version too much is forbidden. Lastly, we have maze-cores, which are apparently their unique invention. But they're not minotaurs! These are devices that can shift between two functions, like a transformer. This basically reduces the component weight of two different items in change for increased cost, and switching between the two is a swift action. It's actually a pretty useful function given the hard limits on encumbrance in this game, and the cost isn't actually that bad depending on what you're combining. You did alright, you loving cows. Next: O is for Spacewhales.
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Nov 19, 2017 23:00
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