I like to sometimes have a check so hard that a Nat20 isn't enough. They've got to get help from others. I like that it adds a bit of realism and it encourages the party to work together. Otherwise you just always ask the Operative to blast through the skill check.
SF encounter building. Exactly what I'm doing today actually. Great timing. I wouldn't make impossible checks, but if they want to do something impossible, they are welcome to roll to find that out the hard way. Yes that's a 20, and no, you can't punch out Torag.
I haven't become a GM yet, but I am of two minds about this. On the one end, some moments can just be incredibly enjoyable if you allow a natural d20 to win the day for the players. But for another, I can see the scenarios where if an action is above the usual difficulty range and key to the objective, then I would have to clarify that it's an unusual difficulty, and that assisting skill checks would be needed.
In my opinion to keep games fun i allow assisted checks with difficult actions. I personally do not feel that there should be unwinnable checks as this removes player agency. I can make it so hard that the only way to pass is with a nat 20 but that's usually for something so hard and against the story. If the dice decide to let it happen then I will roll with it.
I see my favorite, and actually my FIRST bought, Starfinder product: The Deck of Many Worlds!!! It has been SO MUCH fun using it, though I have beat it up pretty good using it a bit too much I think lol
House rule I used when I ran Starfinder was that you couldn't buy any equipment that was above your player level. it worked really well, didn't have any good lore reason for it, but it made balancing the game nice and easy.
I give them level+1 but the reason was the area they were in didn't have better stuff and/or the NPCs didn't know them enough to offer them better. E.g. you're not powerful enough to use that, get lost, or an NPC in this area couldn't have afforded the higher level gear, so go to a "higher level" / richer area.
Thank you for this, I've only GMd two campaigns so far and never felt my encounters were much of a challenge for my players. Starting a new campaign in January and am ready to throw some curve balls at some of my returning players
I just ordered a couple Starfinder books off of Ebay a day ago. The group I play with usually does DnD 5e, but I'm really looking forward to introducing them to Starfinder. I like DnD, but I LOVE the sci-fi genre, so Starfinder is right up my valley. I have been watching a lot of your videos for tips and guides, and I just want to say thanks for getting a 1st time GMer some advice :D
I like how Spycraft 2.0 does Xp reward. You basically add up all enemies killed, as well as any other bonuses the players did at the end of the mission. So players literally do not level up until after a mission is complete, which is what I may end up doing for my Starfinder Campaign to make it THAT much more difficult. As for the auto pass/fail on skill checks it honestly depends on setting and what its for. Sometimes I do other times I dont, its all a matter of "How much do I wish to screw with my players". I had one player get the absolute max roll he could on a perception check and told him he failed. Everyone then got real quiet and remember they where basically in the belly of the beast and hoped someone rolled higher. Made them panic, it was lovely.......never meta-gamed after that
This pretty much confirms what I already knew, but it's layed out in a really good way, I would of maybe shown an example of encounter shopping, such as okay it's a CR 5, so I can get two CR 3 creatures and a trap, or something like that. Still good video. What kind of GM am I. I don't make the 1 or the 20 auto-fail or auto-success but I do tend to lace them with something. So if you roll a 1 and it's an success, you did it in the messiest way possible, so picking that lock, you definately missed and set of the alarm, or scuffed it up bad that it's obvious you do something. If you roll a 20 and it's still a fail, you managed to get something. So back to the lock, you fail to open it, but you didn't set off the alarm at least, or you examine in and managed to work out it's beyond your skill without marking it. It's very circumstantial, but I do try to give something for a 1 or 20 that helps/hinders without being directly related to the check itself.
Dealing with underleveled enemies can be a lot of fun on occasion. Dealing with tons of minions can make the players feal like utter bosses. My group dealt with 40+ drow in multiple waves, and it was a blast. Then the real fights began.
In those cases i would use minion rules and just let them go to town. If you throw to many weak enemies though they cant actually hurt the party and any sense of danger disappears
It is a fine balancing act, but if done right it is so much fun. But only on occasion. If it happened too often, it would get as annoying as unbeatable enemies.
6:32 Just don't make stuff higher than their level available, it's not hard! I guess some people might say that's a cheap and stupid thing to do but it's the easiest and in my opinion PERFECTLY viable reason!
I've been a GM for about 5 years now, and I am a part of the NAT 20/1 camp. The sheer excitement or despair of a group when seeing a natural 20 or 1 is way too much to pass up on, and I personally consider those two important rolls to be part of the soul of tabletop games. My campaigns tend to crunch numbers less, and be interpretive more. Having such extreme probability in a laid-back setting is just fun.
To answer the question of Auto Fail/Success on a 1 or 20 respectively; Generally speaking, I do use this rule, however if someone says that they want to do something that would be nigh impossible (ie. Punch a solid metal door that is 10 feet thick and extremely well anchored to just knock it down, or to try and 1 hit kill a Tarrasque), then no, a 20 is not an automatic success. It has to be somewhat viable.
I'm a GM that prefer not to use rolls mostly persuasion checks, if they're convincing and if it's something that hits the npcs heart. Yes they pass. If they give a stupid reason, Hard DC and they have to roll. Like asking an NPC to write his name on their Will since they don't have any living family. And Nat 20 is a success and. Nat 1, auto fails. For stealth, they need to hide behind something, in an open field, it will just auto fail, a nat 20 would be dumming every one, like Putting a rock on his head and he becomes the rock.
I did talk about abilities in a encounter building video but yes. Creatures need to also be tactical and use their abilities to make combat fun, engaging and dangerous
I mean, those things are the same but yeah, 1.5 is easier to read and understand at a glance! OH! Nevermind! I got to the part and COMPLETELY agree now!!!
I am the type of GM that does both. I like the affect a critical success or critical fail can have on story development, especially in social encounters. I will also make some checks impossible to pass if the party has tunneled onto an element that doesn't pertain to the story
@@TheMapleTable That is very a very good point. I am new to the side of the table behind the screen and am running pre-written campaigns from Paizo. The book kind of rail roads the party into following a specific plan
Been running the game for 4 years, I've got a party of 12-13th level charas and a lower level party under my wing presently. Between conditions/afflictions/divine bonuses etc etc some DC's can go from passable to impossible over the course of a session of play. Additionally, generally speaking if my players will fail from taking the action(taking into account assists and all), via not being able to meet the check dc even with a nat 20, I resolve it as a failure. I am not a fan of the whole let em roll even tho it'll fail, tbh I generally telegraph that a task is nearly impossible if it's only achievable on a flat roll of 19-20. I generally run a bit of a grounded/epic style game, high level parties got a lot of assets to throw around so I think DC's that are slightly out of the players reach at any given part of the game is fair play between class abilitys/assisting on skill checks/toggles/etc available to them. The tension of failure adds to the narrative IMO.
Hey Nathaniel, thanks for the Starfinder content. I have run the Beginner Box with my group and am excited to dive in more as a GM. What process do you have when planning a session in terms of how many encounters you have in a session/adventure and what difficulty they are. For example, the beginner box dungeon had about 10 rooms/encounters. If I am creating my own follow up to Steel Talon, how many easy, average. challenging, hard, and epic encounters should I have?
@@TheMapleTable Thanks for the response. Would be cool to watch a stream of one of your sessions. I come from playing video games growing up, and DMing a 5e prewritten adventure, so my sessions are definitely combat heavy and I would like to learn how not make it the main focus of a session.
Skill checks don't have auto-successes or auto-failures at my table. I also don't use critical fumbles. A 5% chance to auto-succeed feels like fishing for a success in 5E.
I learned it as PEMDAS but I have recently heard BEDMAS recently! I wonder which way Paizo intended us to actually do that math though! it might not be a HUGE difference but it WILL make a difference!
I usually reward Players on a scale. 1 means you get nothing while 40 means you get just about everything. If a natural 20 is rolled, I usually give a bit more than what the total would have been. It's not really an explicit thing. More like in my head I just want to reward the fun of rolling a natural 20 and give more without thinking about it.
I do have a question. In D&D5e there are some rules that let's you know how much combat (Cr and Experience) your party can take before having to take a long rest (daily adjusted experience). Is there something similar in Starfinder? I suppose there has to be a limit, it's not like a party can take 100 easy combat encounters. Question is, how much combat/experience can a party battle against before having to take a long rest.
thats a bit trickier to answer. There is a system that detemins how difficult a combat should be for the players so if you do more easy combats you may not need to rest as often. having said that when you rest in starfinder its possible to gain back your Stamina points pretty easily.
Hahahah challenge level. I see CR, is it around or at least only 1 above my PCs… then they’ll have fun. I learned the hard way about action economy when it came to pumpkins in D&D. They were all level 1 and I had put 2 into critical health while on is bleeding on the ground, but not dead because I pulled god powers on that one. But tonight I have my first StarFinder game and man, I’m both looking forward to it and worrying. I do better with story when it comes to making it up on the fly. But I’m trying to do notes for once… I’ve rewriten them 5 times now. So I guess we’ll see how tonight goes
You will get a feel for it. As long as you focus story other than rules, and your table knows that, you should be fine. Dpmt be afraid to just make a call on a rule you don't know and look it up later
@@TheMapleTable question since I’m still going through the books. Is there a rule set for non-grid play? I always see people mention the grid and nothing more. The grid is nice but man it makes doing small maneuvers actually a pain. It makes sense for combat but I like actually having a circle around my players. Since grids get messy with angle measuring and since for some reason hexagon and octagon grids are never used
@@wolfmirebacta8710 hex are used for ship combat but i dont think there is anything specific for grid in non combat. I have always run it in theatre of the mind or if i need maps although a grid is there i dont limit players for their movements untill it becomes needed.
Even with this explanation, I still can't get my head around the CR 'buying' system. From 4:25 onward - APL 5 upped to 6 for Challenging - OK so far at 4:30 How do we get from a CR target of 6 to the CR Equivalencies table? You skim over that and go straight to buying by Xp value. Buying by Xp value - If a CR 6 creature is 2400 Xp how can we buy 3x CR3 (at 800 each, for a total of 2400) AND still have Xp left over in our budget to buy traps? Surely the 3x 800 used up all the value of a CR6 (2400) ?🤔
In most cases though starfinder always rounds down. Its one of the few examples inhave found where the average party level is 4.5 and could go either way
being a GM 1 is always a fail, 20 should always be success, as this in not totally true as the final DC of say hacking a T10 computer with Security IV is a DC of 57 if the roll and the total for that skill do not add to 57 or more then that PC fails. with that said failure could happen and will happen, I have only been playing Star finder for just over 1 year, and DM'ing for about 5 months. I am always looking to learn from others so please comment with what you do as per norm. great video thank you and have a great day/night.
Love your input thanks! IMO there shouldn't be unwinnable checks in your game, I get it when talking about it from a video game perspective because it should prompt the players to come back to an area when they are stronger. Most table top games don't do this. Table top games are more sandbox and open by nature unless you're running a written adventure path (probably the only exception to this as it was literally by design) Giving players something they cant do by default removes player agency, they will become so focused on doing or trying to do the thing they cant, until they give up and then they wont try to be creative later in your game. Now failing a hard check is different but I'm not a fan of unwinnable DCs. if you insist on using something like this i would instead on a crit (nat 20) show the players they still failed but, i would give them something else in return. A new clue, some useful bit of info. crit fails (Nat 1s) can either be done as an auto fail or have something else fun happen thats bad, while still succeeding the check.
We find that the pre-gens are too *stingy* with wealth. Too much is in the gear the enemy was using - which is so worthless it isn't worth picking up. When I build a character, I immediately begin saving every credit, to upgrade my weapon and armor when i reach the level for each. As in, i can't spare the credits to have nice food, or party to celebrate a victory. Because that 5 credits is needed. We are thinking that either doing the upgrades should be cheaper (though not 1/3 or 1/2 like in PF, but less than the difference between the current and new level). Or that pawning enemy gear should be worth enough to make it worthwhile to bother carrying (20 or 25% maybe, instead of 10%).
Well, have to keep in mind. By the end of the day. The GM must remember: The players are the Heroes/Villains of the story. They are by all means the Main Characters of the story. Even if there is an important NPC tagging along or had recruited them. The NPC is secondary. So yes, you should manage a balance of easy rights and tough ones. All to get that balance. So do not be a dick GM and be known for making challenges that seem to either have easy fights and traps that are impossible to find or impossible fights and traps easy to find. By the end of the day. You are killing off PCs and I have heard all the horror stories from my own father, who is a long time RPGer and GMs a lot of games. He knows a few people like that. And they weren't that much fun. And I am trying to learn Starfinder lore to run my own campaign and GM for my family and friends. As I've started with Star Wars RPG, Fantasy Flight version. Had a lot of fun with that but a vastly different system. So trying to get into doing D20 stuff....even though I really wanted to do Star Trek Adventures but no one has any interest in that. Starfinders is a better idea! Will get that Star Trek fix one way or another. Even if I have to put up with some...uh...well...Space Magic.
Even with a 20 I make them roll again. 20+ their new roll. Even if the roll they need to make is 35, they can roll 20 and roll again and get 15 which equals 35. Players like to roll and giving them more chances to roll is always a win for both parties. Plus I think it gives them that hope that anything is truly possible, especially when luck is involved.
That reduces luck a bit but I do like the idea of crits exploding. Do you let it keep going? like is it possible to get 55 if they rolled two crits in a row and a 15?
@@TheMapleTable yes. I believe that sometimes you just do a task so great, that you may never be able repeat it. Kind of like when you achieve an unreal high score in a video game, you just never seem to able to beat that perfect game you played.
Not gona lie, I feel completely lost from 3:00 to 4:50. The tables are throwing me off...... i think it's that two of the charts both have CR Equivalency as a category but different ways to calculate them? idk. i need more help understanding the 3 different tables.
I understand it can be a little confusing, so once you have your APL decide on the difficulty of the encounter you want easy challenging so on. Once you know that you match the CR with monsters using that as a guide. The CR equivalency chart gives you an idea of how difficult a fight will be given how many monsters you use. More monsters equals harder. You want to match your set difficulty level with your monsters equivalency.
@@TheMapleTable Ok so lets say a party of 4, all level 4. This makes the APL 4, and if i want a challenging encounter this turns my CR Equivalency to 5 (APL+1 for challenging) according to Table 11-1. Now with that information how do I use that with Table 11-2? Where does that number 5 I got from Table 11-1 fit into Table 11-2? This is where i'm getting lost the most.
@@wolfpawn right so now you know from 11-1 how hard your encounter is 5. So if you put 3 monster against your party that had a CR of 2 (3 monsters adds +3 to your encounter) now you have a CR 5 encounter.
I really hate scaling DCs by party or player level. Easy is easy. Difficult is difficult. Highly skilled characters make difficult look easy, and make impossible look possible. That's treadmilling at its worst... especially when a character who is not specialized in a particular area feels like they are getting weaker each level as they fall behind the power curve. Now, as a guide for GMs to know, "Oh, if your party is 10th level, then a DC 25 challenge isn't a big deal for *someone* in the party, even though it looks like an impressive number," that's fine, and maybe that's the intention. But it feels even worse in PF2 IMO.
And then the players find out about the joys of darkwater grenades and certain seeds and the envoy with them tactically controls the battlefield. Can't wait for paizocon.
Just have them fight you one on one for real to resolve every combat. If anything you'll become the nerds that kick sand in people's face at the beach. I have three stats for monsters for my game. The black stats are normal. The blue stats make the encounter easier and their AI is dumbed down. The red stats are harder and I play for keeps like I was the monster fighting for my life.
Just started playing Starfinder w/ my regular group - thanks for being one of maybe 2-3 sources for this info in a video format 😁👍
Its a fantastic game system and wonderful setting. I'm glad I can help you with your game. Hope you and your players enjoy it!
I like to sometimes have a check so hard that a Nat20 isn't enough. They've got to get help from others. I like that it adds a bit of realism and it encourages the party to work together. Otherwise you just always ask the Operative to blast through the skill check.
SF encounter building. Exactly what I'm doing today actually. Great timing.
I wouldn't make impossible checks, but if they want to do something impossible, they are welcome to roll to find that out the hard way. Yes that's a 20, and no, you can't punch out Torag.
I also feel the same way. I would at have an odd check only passable by natural 20 but those usually go against the flow of the story i try to tell
I haven't become a GM yet, but I am of two minds about this. On the one end, some moments can just be incredibly enjoyable if you allow a natural d20 to win the day for the players. But for another, I can see the scenarios where if an action is above the usual difficulty range and key to the objective, then I would have to clarify that it's an unusual difficulty, and that assisting skill checks would be needed.
In my opinion to keep games fun i allow assisted checks with difficult actions. I personally do not feel that there should be unwinnable checks as this removes player agency. I can make it so hard that the only way to pass is with a nat 20 but that's usually for something so hard and against the story.
If the dice decide to let it happen then I will roll with it.
Thanks for producing all of this. I just started GMing starfinder and these videos have been a ton of help.
No troubles! Im glad this is helpful
I see my favorite, and actually my FIRST bought, Starfinder product: The Deck of Many Worlds!!! It has been SO MUCH fun using it, though I have beat it up pretty good using it a bit too much I think lol
House rule I used when I ran Starfinder was that you couldn't buy any equipment that was above your player level. it worked really well, didn't have any good lore reason for it, but it made balancing the game nice and easy.
Good tip!
I give them level+1 but the reason was the area they were in didn't have better stuff and/or the NPCs didn't know them enough to offer them better.
E.g. you're not powerful enough to use that, get lost, or an NPC in this area couldn't have afforded the higher level gear, so go to a "higher level" / richer area.
well Rules as written are that characters can buy items of their own level +1 while in civilisation and level +2 in major trade hubs.
Thank you for this, I've only GMd two campaigns so far and never felt my encounters were much of a challenge for my players. Starting a new campaign in January and am ready to throw some curve balls at some of my returning players
Im always a fan of taking monsters people are familiar with and turning them on their head in terms of stats.
I just ordered a couple Starfinder books off of Ebay a day ago. The group I play with usually does DnD 5e, but I'm really looking forward to introducing them to Starfinder. I like DnD, but I LOVE the sci-fi genre, so Starfinder is right up my valley. I have been watching a lot of your videos for tips and guides, and I just want to say thanks for getting a 1st time GMer some advice :D
No worries, I'm glad to hear you are going to give the system a shot. I personally love it
I like how Spycraft 2.0 does Xp reward. You basically add up all enemies killed, as well as any other bonuses the players did at the end of the mission.
So players literally do not level up until after a mission is complete, which is what I may end up doing for my Starfinder Campaign to make it THAT much more difficult.
As for the auto pass/fail on skill checks it honestly depends on setting and what its for. Sometimes I do other times I dont, its all a matter of "How much do I wish to screw with my players". I had one player get the absolute max roll he could on a perception check and told him he failed. Everyone then got real quiet and remember they where basically in the belly of the beast and hoped someone rolled higher.
Made them panic, it was lovely.......never meta-gamed after that
This pretty much confirms what I already knew, but it's layed out in a really good way, I would of maybe shown an example of encounter shopping, such as okay it's a CR 5, so I can get two CR 3 creatures and a trap, or something like that. Still good video.
What kind of GM am I. I don't make the 1 or the 20 auto-fail or auto-success but I do tend to lace them with something. So if you roll a 1 and it's an success, you did it in the messiest way possible, so picking that lock, you definately missed and set of the alarm, or scuffed it up bad that it's obvious you do something. If you roll a 20 and it's still a fail, you managed to get something. So back to the lock, you fail to open it, but you didn't set off the alarm at least, or you examine in and managed to work out it's beyond your skill without marking it. It's very circumstantial, but I do try to give something for a 1 or 20 that helps/hinders without being directly related to the check itself.
Dealing with underleveled enemies can be a lot of fun on occasion. Dealing with tons of minions can make the players feal like utter bosses. My group dealt with 40+ drow in multiple waves, and it was a blast. Then the real fights began.
In those cases i would use minion rules and just let them go to town. If you throw to many weak enemies though they cant actually hurt the party and any sense of danger disappears
It is a fine balancing act, but if done right it is so much fun.
But only on occasion. If it happened too often, it would get as annoying as unbeatable enemies.
Me= Maybe I am making it too easy for them
Also me= hehe throw 4 arm, giant, dual wielding dual spears Gorilla at em.
MASTER OF BALANCE
6:32 Just don't make stuff higher than their level available, it's not hard! I guess some people might say that's a cheap and stupid thing to do but it's the easiest and in my opinion PERFECTLY viable reason!
I've been a GM for about 5 years now, and I am a part of the NAT 20/1 camp.
The sheer excitement or despair of a group when seeing a natural 20 or 1 is way too much to pass up on, and I personally consider those two important rolls to be part of the soul of tabletop games.
My campaigns tend to crunch numbers less, and be interpretive more. Having such extreme probability in a laid-back setting is just fun.
I also enjoy leaning into those moments when its high stakes.
To answer the question of Auto Fail/Success on a 1 or 20 respectively; Generally speaking, I do use this rule, however if someone says that they want to do something that would be nigh impossible (ie. Punch a solid metal door that is 10 feet thick and extremely well anchored to just knock it down, or to try and 1 hit kill a Tarrasque), then no, a 20 is not an automatic success. It has to be somewhat viable.
I'm a GM that prefer not to use rolls mostly persuasion checks, if they're convincing and if it's something that hits the npcs heart. Yes they pass. If they give a stupid reason, Hard DC and they have to roll.
Like asking an NPC to write his name on their Will since they don't have any living family. And Nat 20 is a success and. Nat 1, auto fails.
For stealth, they need to hide behind something, in an open field, it will just auto fail, a nat 20 would be dumming every one, like Putting a rock on his head and he becomes the rock.
I feel like there’s also a massive consideration for utilizing creature/enemy abilities effectively. Many don’t, unfortunately.
I did talk about abilities in a encounter building video but yes. Creatures need to also be tactical and use their abilities to make combat fun, engaging and dangerous
It'd be cool if someone did a Starfinder version of "The Monsters Know What They Are Doing." I love that blog for my DnD combats.
That particular DC check formula should have read as 1.5 not 1-1/2
Yes, i agree
I mean, those things are the same but yeah, 1.5 is easier to read and understand at a glance!
OH! Nevermind! I got to the part and COMPLETELY agree now!!!
Have you ever reviewed any of the adventure paths or the adventure books? I really enjoy your starfinder content and I can't wait to see more.
I have not reviewed any adventure paths. I have not even run or played in one... For any system.
I am the type of GM that does both. I like the affect a critical success or critical fail can have on story development, especially in social encounters. I will also make some checks impossible to pass if the party has tunneled onto an element that doesn't pertain to the story
I feel like part of good encounter building doesn't have important story points or hooks to progress the story, are not behind failable skill checks
@@TheMapleTable That is very a very good point. I am new to the side of the table behind the screen and am running pre-written campaigns from Paizo. The book kind of rail roads the party into following a specific plan
I would expect that from a pre written but its not a bad thing. When you do your own though open ended is pretty much the standard
Been running the game for 4 years, I've got a party of 12-13th level charas and a lower level party under my wing presently. Between conditions/afflictions/divine bonuses etc etc some DC's can go from passable to impossible over the course of a session of play. Additionally, generally speaking if my players will fail from taking the action(taking into account assists and all), via not being able to meet the check dc even with a nat 20, I resolve it as a failure. I am not a fan of the whole let em roll even tho it'll fail, tbh I generally telegraph that a task is nearly impossible if it's only achievable on a flat roll of 19-20. I generally run a bit of a grounded/epic style game, high level parties got a lot of assets to throw around so I think DC's that are slightly out of the players reach at any given part of the game is fair play between class abilitys/assisting on skill checks/toggles/etc available to them. The tension of failure adds to the narrative IMO.
thanks for sharing. Tension from failure can be used to great effect.
Hey Nathaniel, thanks for the Starfinder content. I have run the Beginner Box with my group and am excited to dive in more as a GM. What process do you have when planning a session in terms of how many encounters you have in a session/adventure and what difficulty they are. For example, the beginner box dungeon had about 10 rooms/encounters. If I am creating my own follow up to Steel Talon, how many easy, average. challenging, hard, and epic encounters should I have?
I usually plan 1 combat encounter per session. I usually run 3 hour sessions. Combat takes about an hour when you know what you are doing
@@TheMapleTable Thanks for the response. Would be cool to watch a stream of one of your sessions. I come from playing video games growing up, and DMing a 5e prewritten adventure, so my sessions are definitely combat heavy and I would like to learn how not make it the main focus of a session.
Skill checks don't have auto-successes or auto-failures at my table. I also don't use critical fumbles. A 5% chance to auto-succeed feels like fishing for a success in 5E.
Totally fair
I learned it as PEMDAS but I have recently heard BEDMAS recently! I wonder which way Paizo intended us to actually do that math though! it might not be a HUGE difference but it WILL make a difference!
Good content but music was very distracting. Thanks for the good explanation
Thanks i have been working on a better music level
for story reasons i will sometimes hide the dc for an impossible check
I'm curious as to what house rules you might use for space combat (or any part of star finder)
As a new player this is good to know
yea dont make the mistakes i was making for as long as i was making them lol
I usually reward Players on a scale. 1 means you get nothing while 40 means you get just about everything. If a natural 20 is rolled, I usually give a bit more than what the total would have been.
It's not really an explicit thing. More like in my head I just want to reward the fun of rolling a natural 20 and give more without thinking about it.
The skill thing needs to be clarified a little further. It SHOULD be written as 10+(1.5xAPL), 15+(1.5xAPL), or 20+(1.5xAPL)
Math wizard over here :p
CyberTarrasque will solve all power related issues
genuinely would love to see one brought into whatever future Starfinder is.
I do have a question. In D&D5e there are some rules that let's you know how much combat (Cr and Experience) your party can take before having to take a long rest (daily adjusted experience).
Is there something similar in Starfinder? I suppose there has to be a limit, it's not like a party can take 100 easy combat encounters. Question is, how much combat/experience can a party battle against before having to take a long rest.
thats a bit trickier to answer. There is a system that detemins how difficult a combat should be for the players so if you do more easy combats you may not need to rest as often. having said that when you rest in starfinder its possible to gain back your Stamina points pretty easily.
Hahahah challenge level. I see CR, is it around or at least only 1 above my PCs… then they’ll have fun. I learned the hard way about action economy when it came to pumpkins in D&D. They were all level 1 and I had put 2 into critical health while on is bleeding on the ground, but not dead because I pulled god powers on that one.
But tonight I have my first StarFinder game and man, I’m both looking forward to it and worrying. I do better with story when it comes to making it up on the fly. But I’m trying to do notes for once… I’ve rewriten them 5 times now. So I guess we’ll see how tonight goes
You will get a feel for it. As long as you focus story other than rules, and your table knows that, you should be fine. Dpmt be afraid to just make a call on a rule you don't know and look it up later
@@TheMapleTable question since I’m still going through the books. Is there a rule set for non-grid play? I always see people mention the grid and nothing more. The grid is nice but man it makes doing small maneuvers actually a pain. It makes sense for combat but I like actually having a circle around my players. Since grids get messy with angle measuring and since for some reason hexagon and octagon grids are never used
@@wolfmirebacta8710 hex are used for ship combat but i dont think there is anything specific for grid in non combat. I have always run it in theatre of the mind or if i need maps although a grid is there i dont limit players for their movements untill it becomes needed.
Even with this explanation, I still can't get my head around the CR 'buying' system.
From 4:25 onward -
APL 5 upped to 6 for Challenging - OK so far
at 4:30 How do we get from a CR target of 6 to the CR Equivalencies table? You skim over that and go straight to buying by Xp value.
Buying by Xp value - If a CR 6 creature is 2400 Xp how can we buy 3x CR3 (at 800 each, for a total of 2400) AND still have Xp left over in our budget to buy traps? Surely the 3x 800 used up all the value of a CR6 (2400) ?🤔
Technically "nearest whole number" and "average (arithmetic mean) round down" are different mathematically distinct things 5 vs 4 in this case
In most cases though starfinder always rounds down. Its one of the few examples inhave found where the average party level is 4.5 and could go either way
being a GM 1 is always a fail, 20 should always be success, as this in not totally true as the final DC of say hacking a T10 computer with Security IV is a DC of 57 if the roll and the total for that skill do not add to 57 or more then that PC fails. with that said failure could happen and will happen, I have only been playing Star finder for just over 1 year, and DM'ing for about 5 months. I am always looking to learn from others so please comment with what you do as per norm. great video thank you and have a great day/night.
Love your input thanks! IMO there shouldn't be unwinnable checks in your game, I get it when talking about it from a video game perspective because it should prompt the players to come back to an area when they are stronger. Most table top games don't do this. Table top games are more sandbox and open by nature unless you're running a written adventure path (probably the only exception to this as it was literally by design)
Giving players something they cant do by default removes player agency, they will become so focused on doing or trying to do the thing they cant, until they give up and then they wont try to be creative later in your game.
Now failing a hard check is different but I'm not a fan of unwinnable DCs.
if you insist on using something like this i would instead on a crit (nat 20) show the players they still failed but, i would give them something else in return. A new clue, some useful bit of info. crit fails (Nat 1s) can either be done as an auto fail or have something else fun happen thats bad, while still succeeding the check.
We find that the pre-gens are too *stingy* with wealth. Too much is in the gear the enemy was using - which is so worthless it isn't worth picking up.
When I build a character, I immediately begin saving every credit, to upgrade my weapon and armor when i reach the level for each. As in, i can't spare the credits to have nice food, or party to celebrate a victory. Because that 5 credits is needed.
We are thinking that either doing the upgrades should be cheaper (though not 1/3 or 1/2 like in PF, but less than the difference between the current and new level). Or that pawning enemy gear should be worth enough to make it worthwhile to bother carrying (20 or 25% maybe, instead of 10%).
the 1-1/2 thing is so weird.
I know right?
Well, have to keep in mind. By the end of the day. The GM must remember: The players are the Heroes/Villains of the story. They are by all means the Main Characters of the story. Even if there is an important NPC tagging along or had recruited them. The NPC is secondary.
So yes, you should manage a balance of easy rights and tough ones. All to get that balance.
So do not be a dick GM and be known for making challenges that seem to either have easy fights and traps that are impossible to find or impossible fights and traps easy to find.
By the end of the day. You are killing off PCs and I have heard all the horror stories from my own father, who is a long time RPGer and GMs a lot of games. He knows a few people like that. And they weren't that much fun.
And I am trying to learn Starfinder lore to run my own campaign and GM for my family and friends. As I've started with Star Wars RPG, Fantasy Flight version. Had a lot of fun with that but a vastly different system. So trying to get into doing D20 stuff....even though I really wanted to do Star Trek Adventures but no one has any interest in that. Starfinders is a better idea! Will get that Star Trek fix one way or another. Even if I have to put up with some...uh...well...Space Magic.
The neat thing is you can lean more to hard science with starfinder if you want, just have to be careful with the caster classes is all
Even with a 20 I make them roll again. 20+ their new roll. Even if the roll they need to make is 35, they can roll 20 and roll again and get 15 which equals 35. Players like to roll and giving them more chances to roll is always a win for both parties. Plus I think it gives them that hope that anything is truly possible, especially when luck is involved.
That reduces luck a bit but I do like the idea of crits exploding. Do you let it keep going? like is it possible to get 55 if they rolled two crits in a row and a 15?
@@TheMapleTable yes. I believe that sometimes you just do a task so great, that you may never be able repeat it. Kind of like when you achieve an unreal high score in a video game, you just never seem to able to beat that perfect game you played.
I really hope that they fix this in 2e.
Not gona lie, I feel completely lost from 3:00 to 4:50. The tables are throwing me off...... i think it's that two of the charts both have CR Equivalency as a category but different ways to calculate them? idk. i need more help understanding the 3 different tables.
I understand it can be a little confusing, so once you have your APL decide on the difficulty of the encounter you want easy challenging so on.
Once you know that you match the CR with monsters using that as a guide. The CR equivalency chart gives you an idea of how difficult a fight will be given how many monsters you use. More monsters equals harder. You want to match your set difficulty level with your monsters equivalency.
@@TheMapleTable Ok so lets say a party of 4, all level 4. This makes the APL 4, and if i want a challenging encounter this turns my CR Equivalency to 5 (APL+1 for challenging) according to Table 11-1. Now with that information how do I use that with Table 11-2? Where does that number 5 I got from Table 11-1 fit into Table 11-2? This is where i'm getting lost the most.
@@wolfpawn right so now you know from 11-1 how hard your encounter is 5.
So if you put 3 monster against your party that had a CR of 2 (3 monsters adds +3 to your encounter) now you have a CR 5 encounter.
@@TheMapleTable OMG! I get it now! Thank you very much. :D
1.5(APL)+10
is the better format for the equation
wouldn't 1 - 1/2 just be 1/2?
I really hate scaling DCs by party or player level. Easy is easy. Difficult is difficult. Highly skilled characters make difficult look easy, and make impossible look possible. That's treadmilling at its worst... especially when a character who is not specialized in a particular area feels like they are getting weaker each level as they fall behind the power curve. Now, as a guide for GMs to know, "Oh, if your party is 10th level, then a DC 25 challenge isn't a big deal for *someone* in the party, even though it looks like an impressive number," that's fine, and maybe that's the intention. But it feels even worse in PF2 IMO.
And then the players find out about the joys of darkwater grenades and certain seeds and the envoy with them tactically controls the battlefield. Can't wait for paizocon.
I have to look into these grenades.
@@TheMapleTable another fun tip, 1v1 starship combat? break out boarding open crew action and watch the gm cry.
Just have them fight you one on one for real to resolve every combat. If anything you'll become the nerds that kick sand in people's face at the beach. I have three stats for monsters for my game. The black stats are normal. The blue stats make the encounter easier and their AI is dumbed down. The red stats are harder and I play for keeps like I was the monster fighting for my life.
The game is designed for exactly 4 PC's
If you have more characters just kill them off until you are left with 4 😜