Starfinder and MapTool, beautiful

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DreadKatak
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Starfinder and MapTool, beautiful

Post by DreadKatak »

Anyone else getting excited/been excited for Starfinder?

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JamzTheMan
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Re: Starfinder and MapTool, beautiful

Post by JamzTheMan »

I have a love/hate relationship with it. I currently love Pathfinder and play it weekly. SO, if I like Starfinder, it's seriously going to cut into my Pathfinder time...

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Full Bleed
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Re: Starfinder and MapTool, beautiful

Post by Full Bleed »

I'm interested.

It looks like some of the rule changes are kind of pressing the Pathfinder rules into a more simplified 5e-type space (like getting rid of iterative attacks)... I'm concerned that, as with 5e, I might not love the way the simplifications impact the game. Some of the "fixes" end up touching things I don't think were particularly broken. But as a snapshot of what the next edition of Pathfinder might look a lot like, it's going to be fun to see how it plays out.

But I do like the concept... maybe not quite as much as I liked Star Frontiers... but it might be nice to see a Science-Fantasy game get a real push in this space. SF hasn't, historically, had great legs in the RPG market. Paizo, however, might be able to pull it off.
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aliasmask
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Re: Starfinder and MapTool, beautiful

Post by aliasmask »

When I first read about losing iterative attacks a light clicked on for me. I believe it's one of the things that makes high level play unplayable. Now this is simply only for high BAB and doesn't affect multiple attacks like two-weapon fighting or a creature with 8 tentacles. It would also bring back the popularity of the cleave feat chain. I've played a Zen Archer Monk who would get 7+ attacks a round and it wouldn't be unusual to take out the main boss in the first round. Losing that ability would make those fights last at least 2 rounds.

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DreadKatak
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Re: Starfinder and MapTool, beautiful

Post by DreadKatak »

I have only dabbled into Pathfinder over the pbp medium, which I have come to despise (slow, high drop out rate and game abandonment by both players and GMs). Starfinder will revitalize my tabletop gaming and it gives me a great opportunity to get good with MapTool (which I've already fallen in love with).

I plan to have my sessions be 100% remote, using voice comms (probably Discord), no webcams, because who wants to see a bunch of neckbeards?
Most of the tactical stuff will use MapTool, Campaign knowledge and session tracking with Realm Works.

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Full Bleed
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Re: Starfinder and MapTool, beautiful

Post by Full Bleed »

aliasmask wrote:When I first read about losing iterative attacks a light clicked on for me. I believe it's one of the things that makes high level play unplayable. Now this is simply only for high BAB and doesn't affect multiple attacks like two-weapon fighting or a creature with 8 tentacles. It would also bring back the popularity of the cleave feat chain. I've played a Zen Archer Monk who would get 7+ attacks a round and it wouldn't be unusual to take out the main boss in the first round. Losing that ability would make those fights last at least 2 rounds.
Well, you've picked the one class with, by far, the most attacks to make your point... a 16th level fighter gets "only" 4 attacks: +16/+11/+6/+1

So probably a guaranteed two misses against a boss.

But even with the monk I'd have to say that you must have been playing against under-level bosses or GM's not giving them the prep, defenses, or offense they're supposed to have. The math just doesn't work out to 1 round boss splats on CR15-16 bosses against 16th level monks. Monks don't even hit that hard...

My experience is just the opposite. If it's one thing I've learned about 5e, combat tends to be *far* shorter than 3e-3.75e battles... *especially* boss battles. We took out our first dragon in two rounds in 5e. I think we were 6th level and only had one +2 weapon in the group. We even had a string of about 7 fights in a row where we never had more than 3 rounds of combat (the "long" ones took a round to get in position.)

That almost never happens in the Pathfinder games I run. Iterative attacks scale combat far more evenly than what I see in a "non-iterative" attack system in 5e. I don't know how it will play out in Starfinder though... but with a system that's supposed to be largely compatible with Pathfinder, I do have to wonder if they're not just going to embrace the "minion fights" and flash boss battles.
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aliasmask
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Re: Starfinder and MapTool, beautiful

Post by aliasmask »

My monk hit hard enough especially after all the party buffs. I would rarely miss a shot as well as ignoring most or all of the creature's DR. Anyone with 2 weapon fighting and the associated feats could also do several attacks and perhaps even more given feats that give extra attacks in certain situations like improved trip and vicious stomp. But I think trading off the iterative attacks for a little more damage and a better chance to hit may speed up table top play. We use MT so it's just a click of a button for us, so no time savings there.

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Re: Starfinder and MapTool, beautiful

Post by Xaelvaen »

I'm fairly eager to see where they go specifically with Starfinder. I started with AD&D second edition, and switched to 3.0/.5, and eventually to pathfinder as it all came out, but after so many years of playing, crunch has come to bore the heck out of me. Switched to 5E the day it came out, and I still keep a few lingering rules from Pathfinder (diagonals, more crunchy opportunity attack things), but I don't miss base attack bonus and constant character sheet fidgeting at all.

I know a lot of the core will be kept in the Starfinder changes, but if it does find that nice hybrid, I'll be pretty excited - there are those days where you just -need- the crunch. I've bastardized 5E so much to put the right amount of crunch into, I'd like to see someone else's approach to the same concept of crunch + simplified.

(On a similar note, I also switched my Shadowrun games over from 5E to Anarchy, and man that was a drastic improvement of crunch:simple ratio.)
"An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life - becoming a better person." - Leo Tolstoy

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