Infinity Matrix: Relationships

A while ago the party made a vote to determine the direction of the campaign. Originally it was going to be a magic macguffin quest to stop a planet sized robot bent on destroying the galaxy, something simple and familiar. But they were so enamored with Hypercorporations that I gave out the option to instead have more social conflicts involving them and they voted in that direction's favor. To make this work out I decided to put a little structure into the campaign. They will go on a long-winded delivery quest before getting the opportunity to gain their own ship and dealing directly with hypercorporations. The bigger reason for the delivery quest is for them to meet NPCs. When they get an opportunity to actually run a ship they will also have an opportunity to recruit these NPCs as their crew or take action against them as enemies. To that end I needed a system of friendship to determine who they recruit and who they make enemies of. The system I landed on is an amalgam of the Relationship system in Ultimate Campaign, the Influence system from Ultimate Intrigue and the group Leadership system from Everyman Games' 'Ultimate Charisma'.

As a group and as an individual the PCs have a list of groups and individuals that they have relationships with. The relationship is defined by starting attitudes and move according to different actions taken towards them. For an individual you can declare that you want to start a relationship with that NPC followed by a social skill check that influences their starting attitude and also grants a relationship score equal to your Charisma Modifier (minimum 0) With favors (positive actions like gifts, quests, dates, ect) or slights(Negative actions such as attacks, theft and so on) you can increase your influence on that character. Unlike normal Relationship rules, this does not go into the negatives but favors and slights also affect starting attitudes, so if you have a high relationship score with a character that moves from Friendly to Unfriendly the numbers are just as high but the reaction is negative rather than positive. Basically betrayal and redemption is pretty powerful. To develop a relationship you can interact with favors or slights to increase the relationship score to a limit of your level plus your Charisma Modifier. Favors and slights will also change starting attitudes but keep in mind that ignoring them, doing a favor for someone they do not like or making a slight against something that they do like can affect starting attitude as well. 

Relationship scores come in tiers that have numerical bonuses.

0 is an acquaintance that doesn't really know or have a greater reason to trust/abhore you.
1-5 represents an Association. 
6-11 is a Friendship if their starting attitude is on the positive side of Indifference and Competition on the negative side.
12-30 represents Fellowship/Rivalry.
31 and up represents Devotion/Enmity.

These tiers are grant bonuses or penalties on various rolls equal to their tiers, so 0=0,1-5=2, 6-11=2, 12-30=3, and 31 and up = 4. For example a diplomacy roll against a character with a friendship that is Helpful would have a +2 bonus but this would be a -2 bonus if that same character was Hostile instead of Helpful. So the relationship score is levels of familiarity whereas attitude is the degree of cooperation.

This does not mean that relationship scores don't go down. Anything that causes distance will lower relationship scores like ignoring the NPC or doing something out of character. As such there is an added mechanic 'bond' which represents the principle the relationship is based on and the nature of it. There's no real list for what kind of bonds there can be and they are less mechanically relevant than alignment, but an example can be a bond is Family. You have a familial relationship and hurting other family members or not supporting family can lower relationship scores as they try to distance themselves from you. However the score doesn't lower and rather their attitude changes if you affect them directly with slights like attacking them.

Similar things happen towards groups and organizations only on a much bigger scale and has functions similar to reputation within the organization. Also, while starting relationships is voluntary with individuals any slight or favor towards an organization automatically starts one. To this end most organization relationships will be tracked by the GM.

Additionally collectively or individually PCs can form a special group called a 'crew'. Individually a player can lead a crew of NPCs who's HD is equal to the player's level plus his or her charisma modifier(Max individual HD is level-4). In order to recruit an NPC their relationship with the leader must be higher than their Psych DC (HD+Wis or Sense Motive Bonus). The crew member must also have an attitude of Indifferent, Friendly or Helpful at recruitment. The party can form a crew pooling the HD limit. This forms any sort of ship crew, guild, company and so on. Since this somewhat makes relationships similar to Leadership a lot of the same numbers apply. Things that affect Leadership scores can change attitudes and relationship scores, usually forming slights and favors. Also cohort feats were banned at the beginning of the game so that this system could replace it.

I've already given players a rundown of getting relationship points with NPCs with them keeping track through a friends and foes sheet from Dyslexic Studeo's character sheets but it is next week that I'll be revealing the full scope of it and why it will be important to make friends now so that they will have a better crew for later when they have their own ship.

And there you have it. Quick and dirty relationship rules for building a crew. I'll be using the same system in future campaigns where the campaign goal is to build kingdoms, gain allegiances or build a pirate crew. As i tinker around with it more I'll slowly introduce modifications using Everyman Game's Ultimate Charisma. For examle, the relationship tier will serve as a bonus rounds of the Antagonized condition and I'll connect it more to reputation.

Starfinder is Coming!

So over at Paizocon the past weekend it was announced that Paizo would release a new RPG for GenCon 2017. This is big news since Pathfinder is basically Paizo's only RPG, but where I lost it was when it turned out that it was basically Pathfinder in space, and is called Starfinder.

If you've been with the blog from the beginning you'll know that I have an unhealthy obsession with using Pathfinder to play sci-fantasy in space. I've collected a ton of third party material to facilitate playing a space campaign, I've been running a scifi campaign using Pathfinder for a few months now, I've made articles on what classes and races and house rules to use. So obviously the news is a big deal for me. And by big deal I mean that I jumped and shouted a bit about it.

Here's the rundown of what's happening.

• Starfinder will be billed as its own RPG. It will come out as a core rulebook and have new rules that will be playable without Pathfinder. 
• The release date is GenCon 2017 with no Pathfinder release for that GenCon.
• At the same time it will be OGL and thus have some kind of compatibility with Pathfinder, at least in regards to monster stat blocks. What this will actually mean is currently unknown but I've been seeing the words 'backwards compatibility' and 'new AC system' so the range on how much converting you'll have to do to say, bring in a catfolk Bard using Pathfinder rules is pretty wide. 
• The Starfinder Core Rulebook will contain the core rules and setting information. The setting is basically Golarion, or rather Golarion's solar system only without Golarion. There's a gap in time where Golarion was taken away by the gods with no information as to where it is or what happened during the time gap. Where Golarion once stood is now Absolam Station, a Babylon 5-like central point of the setting and instead of Pathfinders we have Starfinders investigating the nature of the time skip and Golarion vanishing. 
• The predicted page count is at 540 right now. 
• The Distant Worlds book will be the baseline for the setting as it already details Golarion's solar system. This means that we'll see some of those space Ratfolk and Androids are a core race. The core races from Pathfinder will be around but it looks shaky as to whether or not they will be a large part of the core races because there will be at least one non-humanoid core race and there will be an emphasis on aliens. I speculate People of the Stars will give us some clues.
• Several upcoming, and possibly delayed, 3pp products are on board. Aethera is doing something. d20pfsrd.com Publishing changed the name of their project from Starfinder to Starjammer and will have something by the launch of Starfinder. LPJ will be working on something. Until more information comes out it looks like a lot of upcoming projects may or may not have monkey wrenches thrown into their work, especially with the large influx of scifi Pathfinder material. Either way third party publishers will be heavily involved, and in some cases directly talking with Paizo in making launch pretty pretty content heavy.
• There's one subscription line that will include the Core Rulebook and an adventure path. The adventure path will include new rules, monsters, and equipment along with adventures. 
• There will be new classes, equipment and races. The setting and ruleset is distinctly science-fantasy so we get things like magic laser cannons and magical computer hacking. This also means that the assumed laws of physics will be rule of cool or action movie logic rather than be completely simulationist. 
• James L. Sutter will be the creative director of Starfinder. Other names on the project include Rob McCreary, Owen KC Stephens(!!!), and Sarah Robinson. 
• There will be no public playtest. There will be a playtest though. They're reaching out to community members for it soon.  

I am totally excited but also a bit worried. Despite backwards compatibility I really wonder what the fate of the products i already have is. Will Psionics fit in or will I have to get new psionic books? What about Anachronistic Adventures or The Machinesmith?  Some Pathfinder stuff I got specifically to play scifi Pathfinder so I'd like to be able to use them. But if the whole backwards compatibility thing means that Pathfinder classes still work then I'll be all good.

Otherwise I have quite a bit of faith in this project, particularly because I obviously already believe Pathfinder can do space science fantasy. Having a new Pathfinder that is focused on the genre has got to be good. and if not at least I have some compatible material for Pathfinder that I can use to continue to play scifi campaigns. Really, I'm practically playing it already so why not? When it comes out I'll probably be covering Pathfinder and Starfinder equally, especially with all the third party gear that will probably bankrupt me at launch. I'm pretty sure that once it comes out it will be my new favorite thing ever and eventually become my primary RPG to play. I'm still working on my overview of D&D 5th edition and really I feel sorry for it. I like it, but prefer Pathfinder, but once Starfinder is out I won't have time for a second fantasy game. Maybe I can squeeze it in between Pathfinder games but I don't see that happening too often. Owen K Stephens is also a big chunk of hope for me as well. I've gotten plenty of products, both Paizo and third party, that have his name on it and more often than not it's something amazing.

But the worst part of this is the wait. It comes out in over a year and potentially drags projects that were going to be released soon towards that date. I'm playing Space Pathfinder now. I don't want to wait a year to see how this affects me. And I definitely don't want to wait longer for the things I backed on Kickstarter, or even the things I've been casually watching on Kickstarter. Heck even Dreamscarred Press has been playtesting psionic tech rules that I needed published months ago, is that going to be pushed back a year too? And this is all probably going to come out all at once at GenCon. Well I know where my birthday money is going. And probably my Christmas money too. Better start saving up now.

Heroes of the Advent Imperiax

A big thanks to Purple Duck Games for the review copy.

Heroes of the Advent Imperiax caught my eye because I'm an admitted nut for scifi material for Pathfinder, particularly since I'm using the system to play a space campaign, and the cover has an alien woman with a space gun. I am a little bit sad that aliens aren't immediately apparent when starting to read it. This is the fault of not being very familiar with Porphyra and not being bothered to look at the linked wiki. Which is moot point, with products like these I really have to judge them based on how the elements fit into homebrew campaign settings because that is where they will likely be used for me.

After some prose to set the mood we have new races. One note of criticism is that images of individual races are not next to the racial descriptions (with one exception), although they do appear throughout the pdf. This irks me a bit as this means that printing out the races separate from the rest of the product is less useful. This isn't helped by the lack of physical description sections. You have to hunt down direct descriptions or images in the product to get a good idea of the flavor of the race. In addition to new racial traits for humans and half-orcs in the setting there are four stranger races. Two of them are pretty much your bumpy forehead alien types with some interesting abilities but nothing extreme. Two of them are much weirder giving something a bit more unique. There's a race of people with four arms but use two of them as legs. They have some rules to work with their weird anatomy that are partially awkward but useable. Then there are a race of psionic sneaky people and a race of hot green chicks and a race of half ooze people.

After this is flavor text detailing the state of the hot green chick race, that they are the remnants of a crashed spaceship that settled on Porphyra and got aggressive with protecting their technology. This includes some city stat blocks and brief history of the three main cities of the Imperiax civilization. This comes with new settlement qualities. There are important-to-the-setting NPCs but not exactly NPC stat blocks. Just their names, common locations, important equipment and a brief description. I actually really like this method. There are some NPC stat blocks later in the book but really for these I don't need too much information and this saves some space while getting to important information.

The next section is on class options. There is a prestige class that I can honestly live without. Its not bad, just that at this point I feel like there's enough material out there to have the concept without having to resort to a prestige class. Plus I'm biased against prestige classes so there's that. There are also new options and archetypes that fill in concepts for the setting. Though they are mostly for the flavor of the setting they look pretty functional, albeit nothing spectacularly new except for the otyugh mount.  The Prestige class and the archetypes have a bit of psionic support with a new Terror and archetype for Dreads and the Prestige class requiring a power point pool.

This is followed by new feats. There are some psionic ones and many of them are racial but there are some general goodies in there. None of them feel superfluous or like trap options although Alien Weapon Proficiency brings up a system explained later about alien weapons that aren't exactly necessary given exotic weapon rules and the Technologist feat is sufficient for creating that kind of barrier for using certain weapons. We also get new psionic powers including powers adapted from spells from the Technology Guide which is way more relevant and interesting than the three new powers. 

Here things start to get a bit rapid fire. There are two new race options using the race builder from the Advanced Race Guide, two new alchemical items, three herbs which function on an interesting basis that I'd like to see more of, and six new drugs/poisons. We also get new weapons and armor including technological items. The highlights are a nerfed powered suit, a stun gun, and a number of non-firearm weapons. Sadly there are two instances where I feel the rules are unclear about how something works but on the bright side they are easy to spot and only number in two. There are also some general technological items. The technological items are all priced lower than I expected which is a common theme among third party books with tech. Overall I really like the tech items here as I find them very necessary to flesh out the flavor of technology but also gives us a bit more new things with psionic-tech items. Among our general psionic items. We also have new vehicle stat blocks as well as a new type of propulsion type before getting to a list of common technological items in the setting.

Finally we get a gallery of NPC stat blocks using options from the book.

Lets get the bad out of the way first. A lot of the book kind of runs into each other without breaks after the class options section starts, so its a bit hard to find what you want. The lack of a table of contents for a 64 page pdf doesn't help matters at all. There are also a few points where the rules can be clearer or handled differently, particularly where the Femax environmental suit and the Dhosari race are concerned. The fluff, while there and interesting, makes me feel a bit lost on the product.  I feel like I need more context outside of the Advent Imperiax to get a real feel for the setting and how this subsection of the setting interacts with the rest of it. I'm also a bit hampered by a somewhat lack of description. I generally assumed what this was and the product has a hard time conveying what it is and how it can fit into your game. And lastly the concept and execution of Alien weapon proficiency is beyond useless given how the rules for exotic weapons are sufficient for this kind of weapon barrier and simply doesn't play nice outside of it's own context.

For the good things; The actual content is really handy and things that I'll immediately put in my scifi campaign. I really like most of the races, The fluff regarding the races is fascinating, the NPC mini descriptions give me a lot to work with outside the setting, the psionic support to technology is very useful, the technological items are instant includes to a scifi campaign. The book as a whole is amazingly handy whether it's the fluff or the crunch and I would recommend at least getting it for the player options if you are running a tech focused game and moreso if your tech focused game involves interacting with crashlanded aliens in a normal medieval stasis world or a Iron Gods-like situation. I think I would give this a 4 out of 5 stars. Its a bit awkward to sort through but its full of things that I'll definitely use.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here or at DrivethruRPG.com here.

Infinity Matrix: Character Creation.

The Infinity Matrix campaign is well under way. I'll be making updates every two weeks as we continue the campaign with some GM information in between to give an idea of how to pull it off. We just completed our session zero.

Not many of the house rules had to be clarified. I had most everything I intended written down on handouts so it was just a matter of pointing out clauses that explain what's going on. The only issues I had with rulings were with people that weren't all that familiar with the game to begin with.

Some of the players took great advantage of the house rules, particularly the technology discount and weapon sizing revision. This produced a lot of cheese such as one player taking a class that grew him two extra arms with the intent of wielding four firearms with Multiweapon Fighting. Same player is wielding small sized firearms to make them light weapons to knock 2 off the off-hand penalty, which I allowed. A number of the players have taken to cybernetic implants as well boosting some numbers.  Despite all such things, one thing that was surprising is that all the incredible numbers is in their damage capabilities. AC, saves, attack bonuses and HP is actually kind of piddly which worries me a little bit as creatures with similar advantages could easily kill them just as quickly as they can be killed, effectively making a game of rocket launcher tag at level 3.

On session 1, which is in two weeks, I'll start off with a moderately high amount of CR1 and CR2 creatures to test the waters and see how much punishment they can actually take. My guess is that they'll plow through monsters like butter but have a hard time getting hit so high amounts of appropriately powerful monsters would work out best. Luckily I have some time to sort out humanoid creatures that have the same advantages that they do because that could easily kill them.With monsters I can just modify them up to adjust to whatever's going on. I start off with a base of what's appropriate for their levels and then templates versions in case they start dying before they can do anything. The templates from the Advanced Bestiary help out a lot in this.

From my last post I eventually decided to add a weapon training feat to the game. This was popular for anyone that wanted to use a firearm but it did reveal one issue with firearms in general which was that it was a very feat intensive fighting style. This makes me less worried about too much  damage coming from firearms because anyone that gets out a cheezy amount of damage out of it has to pay the feat price but no one is so hard hit by it that anyone is avoiding firearms.

As anticipated Fantastic Technology from Fat Goblin Games was a BIG hit at character creation. I wanted to use more dynamic monsters and equip the players with actual technology at level 3 despite technology being super expensive so I implemented this house rule:

For the purposes of character creation technological equipment is 10% of it’s normal cost and psionic and alchemical items are 50% their normal cost. This cost reduction is applied after changes such as masterwork, enchantment and material. Items technologically modified or made of skymetals, nanoweve, or plastic are considered technological. After buying equipment each character has 100 gp remaining regardless of how much of the 5000 gp was spent. 

Plastic was from Fantastic Technology and effectively is mithril that doesn't adjust the armor category and actually makes the armor cheaper, so rather than make adjustments from Anachronistic Adventures this just made armor better and cheaper by material conversion. It also made melee combat actually possible with a higher variety of weapons which was big for everyone. The technological modifications allowed players to dip deeper into the technological while still having a foot in comfortable and familiar territory. Basically, big shout out to Fat Goblin Games. 

As for other things that were popular; I'll have the full build breakdowns in two weeks as the finalized characters trickle in but I have one class from It Came from the Stars (Starseed), two psionic classes (Soulknife and Psychic Warrior), two from Anachronistic Adventures, (Enforcer and Cogiator), and one from Classes of NeoExodus (The Host).  

Starting two weeks from now I'll try to make a report on each session to give details about how I'm running the campaign, but in the meantime I'll post some more about the world and the campaign including maps and plot lines. 

Infinity Matrix: The Gunslinger

As the session zero date for the Infinity Matrix campaign comes up there's one more gun related thing I have to tackle, and for this I'm going to ask the players what they want before they make their characters.

The Gunslinger is a very controversial class, usually just for bringing guns into the equation but also it can deal a lot of damage in a short amount of time if cheesed out. Usually the limitations of firearms knock it down a pet as using Rapid Shot with two guns can easily equal a -8 penalty to each shot and a boatload of gold lost. The limitations are lessened in a futuristic setting naturally but there's one problematic ability, which is Gun Training, a means to add dexterity to damage rolls with firearms.

This is a problem for a few reasons. Dex to damage makes firearms way more dangerous but that's easy to compensate for so the biggest problem is that the gunslinger is the only one that can do it. With guns being martial weapons in this campaign it's easy enough to use them but that dex to damage is way too valuable to pass up forcing anyone that would want to do this to dip into gunslinger since everyone would want to use a firearm and I don't want Gunslinger to be the only class that does this if everyone is using firearms.

Luckily this can be easy to house rule away but there are a few ways to go about it that are pretty good so I'm giving my players a choice.

1. Ban Gunslinger. This eliminates the problem altogether and I don't have to change anything. Although despite the advantages of firearms using rapid shot with them and using automatic mode is still -4 to each shot so they may actually come out relatively weak considering that technology makes melee combat pretty dangerous and the ability to avoid touch attacks is greatly increased. Also this option makes energy resistance extra annoying and thus eventually Clustered Shot a feat tax just to deal damage to anyone in a HEV suit.

2. Change how firearms work. One thing that I do for steampunky games is to make firearms lose the touch attacks and misfire and instead naturally deal dex to damage. Gunslinger gets Gun Training but its a +1 competence bonus at first level and every four levels after. This still results in me not needing to do anything to compensate for touch attacks being a major thing. However this makes some abilities and items useless like bulletproofing, scatterlight armor and the Avoidance feat chain.

3. Make Gun Training a combat feat, prerequisite +1 BAB and 13 Dex. This is the most extreme in terms of compensating but it's not impossible. In situations like this I add creatures' Natural Armor to their touch AC against firearms or as DR through the use of third party templates. Or in some cases just adding more monsters. It also can prove to be pretty lethal to players as They have to account for NPCs with firearms dealing a lot of damage to them without bonus HP to compensate. This makes touch AC very vital and although there is enough defenses to go around this will eat up equipment, feats or class features.

Infinity Matrix: He's got a gun! Extra!

A while ago I made a post talking about my decision to leave everything alone when it comes to firearm rules in a scifi setting and realized I had a few extra things to say. Realistically in a world with high tech guns it makes sense that the game becomes a gunfest, and by extension a game of 'Go Dex or go home.', but where's the romance and the flavor in that? I wanted to make sure that Strength had something that at least looked viable which means melee options had to exist. Luckily after doing the math, I still don't have to change much.

Currently Treasury of the Machine from Legendary Games has the best ballistic firearms which have a really convenient option of having a strength rating, much like composite longbows in the form of recoil. So if you want a big gun that deals more damage you need more strength and it keeps ballistic firearms unique and still on the table, and like the energy damage futuristic firearms there are plenty of defenses for it even if you aren't focusing on dexterity for touch AC.

But what about being hard hitting with melee damage? Damage kinds of catches up. The addition of third party material there are a lot more options to increase damage with powered weapons but it's the Technology guide that gives the real doozy. The Gravity Chip have weapons deal damage as if it were one size category larger and is surprisingly cheap. Imagine that with the vital strike chain. A normal earthbreaker ends up 8d6, but with a Gravity Clip it ends up  12d6. Add to that third party feats that allow you to wield oversized weapons anyways so if you try to replicate Cloud Strife from Final fantasy with a Gravity Clip your vital strikes can end at 16d6.  Past that there's the existence of a few technological weapons that do an absurd amount of damage and sometimes hit on touch attacks. If a large earthbreaker with a gravity clip is scary a chainsaw using the same strategy ends at 24d6. A monowhip has reach and hits touch AC while being possible to go with Two Weapon Fighting. Late game easily becomes a nightmare of numbers when it comes to melee combat so I'm less concerned about melee combat surviving, but whether or not HP can keep up.

There is a bit of rock-paper-scissors going on. If you focus on touch AC and resist energy weapons you'll get hit harder with ballistic firearms and hard melee weapons. If you focus on resisting ballistic firearms, energy weapons will get you and bulletproofing doesn't defend well from hard melee weapons. If you focus on resisting melee weapons then you'll get hit by touch attacks. About the only way to deal with everything at once without dying too fast is force fields or taking advantage of the environment. Anticipating force fields as a hot commodity I'm giving away a few for free in the first dungeon of Infinity Matrix to see how things go.

All that said some aspects of dealing with technological weapons is somewhat of an experiment. I can theorycraft and test play all I want but really  having players means tat the ability to deal with the power creep can lean towards one way or the other so I'll have to see what gets built. I am warning them a bit. I let them know that standing in the middle of a room with a lot of enemies with guns is generally bad. So is going through corridors in their usual konga line is pretty bad too. Also that they should use cover against firearms and where to find defenses for everything.

Review: Cyborgs

This product from Legendary games was an odd treat for me. I've seen a lot of tech classes but not all that many variations come at once. Usually a tech class tries to be a catch all for the subject, much like an alchemist so there aren't many base classes that explore the subject. The opposite of this is definitely Psionics with a whopping 10 classes that deal with the subject of psionics. This product also tickles my fancy in another way. I am a big fan of Thunderscape: World of Aden and particularly the Golemoid class which the Cyborg reminds me of. It takes the technology of it's genre and becomes it making an exciting parallel.

The class is a medium BAB class with a d8 hit dice. It gets 6+Int ranks per level and starts off with the Technologist feat at first level. (There needs to be a line here to tell what happens when you get the feat when you already have the feat.) It gets an internal nanite matrix which is basically fancy talk for having a giant pool of points to support it's class features.

At first level, 4th level and every four levels after they get a modification. These modifications eat up magic items slots which is tragic but workable, but one bit that gets ugly is that I'm having a hard time figuring if they eat each other's slots, particularly when they only go for one limb in the description. This is very important information so it's a big minus unless my reading comprehension isn't too good today. Since I intend to use this for a scifi campaign where there are three races with more than two arms this gets extra weird. Some of the modifications impose a -2 Charisma penalty (Yikes!) instead of eating an item slot. Given that a good amount of the modification abilities cost one nanite charge and you get five more points per level you do quite a bit with your modifications and they are pretty powerful. One or two have some fugly wording though. One of the dermal implants requires energy to use despite needing nanite charges anyways and I'm not sure if the energy needs to be damage. Given that some damage types are small and only a cantrip away I'm not sure why bother with this energy mumbo jumbo and just have healing nanites for the price of charges.  Some modifications need some clarification as to what kind of action is needed for them to be used. Some like the ones that affect ability scores, I can assume just kind of happen as a free action but some of them like Force Pulse Hand really need an activation time yet I can't find any mention of what kind of action activates these things. Unless someone can point out something I'm missing then this is a huge oversight. Past that the save DCs are frustratingly inconsistent. They all have a +10 but some add half the cyborg's level while some add the entire cyborg's level. Some add to the DC ability score modifiers, and some add tot he DC based on nanite charges spent.

Another thing I find problematic is the Humanity Loss class feature, which imposes a scaling Charisma penalty to get a bonus to up to four other ability scores. Given that you can't have -4 Cha and +4 Str this is a huge downside. Especially since you already have other sources in the class that lower your Charisma. This may be because I have a pet peeve against class features that start hitting your ability scores but I think this product relies on it too much as a limiter when the class isn't all that powerful to begin with. Besides that, the class doesn't even have a reason to use Charisma so it'll be a dump stat anyway. To me it's just arbitrary. 

Tweaks are introduced after the class which is something I don't like. Tweaks are basically spells that are limited by what slots you have modifications in. These are handled a bit awkwardly. There are no spell slots, instead you use your nanite charges and you have a tweaks known list. But you have to prepare tweaks. There's a line that says that they only effect the cyborg even if it would affect others, I guess like alchemists, but with most of the spells that doesn't work right. Add to this my rant about new spell lists and you'll find that I don't like tweaks very much.

The rest of the book is pretty neat but overall the class has way too much wrong with it. Despite all this I love this class and it's just a few house rules and clarifications away from being a 5 star product but there's so much wrong with it as it's written that I'm pushing it by giving it 2 stars. And that hurts me just as much because at first glance I was in love but when I started looking at it deeper I felt like it was too awkward to use as is. Its easy to get what is supposed to happen or what should happen and it's a great addition to a scifi game but requires too much GM oversight just to function and balance.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.

Infinity Matrix: He's got a gun!

I've had to think long and hard about how guns are going to work in a space based campaign.

In Pathfinder firearms are notoriously problematic. On their own they aren't very remarkable. In close range they hit touch AC but the ammunition is expensive, they have a built in critical fumble mechanic, and they have a reload time. With a gunslinger and/or the right feats something good can come out of it but it's much simpler to just use a longbow. With advanced firearms the gunslinger's ability to deal dexterity to damage becomes more relevant as you can more easily continuously shoot and if you make firearms more prevalent in the world the price goes down dramatically. The issue with touch attacks becomes more pronounced as players can easily wipe out creatures in one round as the price goes down and guns become more useable. Technological firearms are potentially worse as they have effectively 10 round clips, ammunition price that becomes negligible in a scifi setting, no misfire, free stacking Rapid Shot, and all attack touch AC. So what do I do?

I experimented with a lot of scenarios taking rules from various scifi Pathfinder books. At some point the best option looked like changing a few Gunslinger class features in order to remove touch attacks from all firearms and instead allow them to add dexterity to damage rolls. But in the end I decided to do nothing for the most part, and here is why;

Firstly, with third party products involved there are a lot of defenses against firearms. In Paizo's Technology Guide Scatterlight armor has AC that counts as touch AC against beam weapons and armor that grants resistance from energy damage. In Fat Goblin Game's Fantastic Technology there are armor modifications that counts AC against firearms. In Rogue Genius Games' Anachronistic Adventures there are a series of feats that grant more and more dodge bonuses. Within the base game there are plenty of additional ways to get more touch AC including taking cover. Through feats, items or tactics the campaign has enough material to avoid dying from gun fights at the drop of a hat so from their end the issue of firearms hitting touch AC is diminished.

Secondly, monsters are still easier to kill and I'm okay with that. While NPCs can enjoy the benefits of armor and feats that keep them from dying too fast to firearms, (especially technological ones that have way fewer drawbacks.) what about monsters or pre-printed NPCs? Well from a flavor standpoint I don't care if monsters and NPCs die easily. The PCs are heroes, the main characters of the story, but mechanically they have to go through a lot of enemies that have full HP. In this campaign I decided that it's okay because I can more easily make PCs feel threatened but also feel like invincible heroes from movies like Rambo or Total Recall by mowing down monsters by the dozens. This also appeals to when I want to be lazy by using premade stat blocks over building a monster or NPC while making PCs feel like action heroes.


Eventually it is a combination of third party fixing problems themselves and not wanting to shake up the game more than I already have.

Infinity Matrix: Races

I slowed down a bit on the posts due to a lot of things going on right now. My wife and I were sick during Christmas time and my sister's Christmas plans fell through so I had a lot of catching up to do including last night's trip to finally see Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Long story short: I loved it and it has reignited my anticipation for the Infinity Matrix campaign as well as the upcoming release of Aethera. For those not in the know, Aethera was a kickstarter from late last year for a space opera campaign setting for Pathfinder. The goal was $50,000 which I thought was impossible, especially since halfway through there were nowhere near their goal but it pulled it off with two grand more than the goal proving that I'm not the only fan of throwing Pathfinder into outer space. As far as I can tell it's looking at having an April release, which is pretty quick considering that other Pathfinder kickstarters I've backed or followed.

I'm also keeping an eye on Alterkine, a project that is probably the space based race book I've been needing. I haven't fully decided whether or not to back it as I don't know the company and I probably have enough races for Infinity Matrix. If you have any info that will entice me before the kickstarter is over give me a post but here is what I've been doing so far with races:

Paizo Races: Humans, Androids, Kasathas, Lashuntas, Triaxians

Humans are a given but People of the Stars puts most of  what I need into a neat book that I can hand to players so they're in and Trox and the new 'blank face' race from Bestiary 5 are out. As Paizo races they have a bit of support from People of the Stars  and Book of Heroic Races handles a bit more for Androids, which is good because while the other races are interesting Androids are the most important because they cover a very basic trope. Kasathas are mechanically the msot interesting because of the whole four arms dynamic. It opens up new questions and is a weird quirk that distinguishes it as a race worth playing.

It Came from the Stars: Amoebians, Enlightened, Star Touched, Tachiods

One of the more interesting groupings, You have something quirky and alien with the Amoebians, being giant amoebas-like creatures, something that I really needed to throw in there because otherwise I may as well pallet swap elves and dwarves and stuff for aliens. Then I'd just be swarming the game with bumpy forehead aliens. Lame.  The Star Touched aren't that strange but they are close to my heart because they remind me of the comic character Starfire and have the mechanics to back it up. The rest kind of amp tropes that I already have to a more interesting degree. It Came from the Stars is already an important toolbox for playing in space but the races are incredible. I decided not to touch Coalecents though, mostly because they are more past the norm than I'd like for this game.

Legendary Planet Races: Auttaine, Chlorvian, Tretharri, Zvarr

Legendary Planet's Player's Guide is a nice book for space based games that don't involve the Legendary Planet adventure. The four new races are pretty nice. Given what I already have the Chlorvian, plant people, are the only ones that satisfy my trope grid filling instincts although the Zvarr, a more monstrous lizardy race, gives a bit more pizzaz. Mechanically the Auttaine are the most interesting with a racial trait that's basically floating race points that can be spent in a limited way.

Veil of Truth: Celonian, En, Karizar, Nabora, Niterian, Thoy'ykoth, Yahidar

I didn't like Veil of Truth. My reasons why will come up when I review it this month, But the book is well worth the price just for the set of races. To some extent a lot of them aren't terribly interesting beyond their looks but the looks are great and cover a lot of ground. Plus a few of the mechanics are very interesting. They are somewhat filler races but they are great filler races that evoked a lot of imagination from me. Plus the Celonians are my pick for Grey Alien racial stats, although I had to modify their Naturally Psychic racial trait to Naturally Psionic.

Age of Electrotech: Mutamorphs, Nashi

So these aren't exactly aliens but I felt the need for a 'variable' race and it covers transhuman grounds in a neat way. Plus I'm a big fan of Batman Beyond an I was able to confirm that the Mutamorphs were inspired by the Splicers of that show. Basically Mutamorphs are animal DNA splicing transhumans. The Nashi, raccoon race, will immediately be the 'Rocket Racoon race' but they're mostly there because the Mutamorphs are there.

Ultimate Psionics Races: Dromite, Elan, Maenad, Noral, Ophiduan, Xeph

I decided to stray from the psionic races that I felt too steeped in fantasy tropes so races like Duergar and Half-Giants were out, leaving what's still a pretty interesting and well supported set of races that are alien enough to be aliens.


So there you have it. 27 races for a Galaxy. Some things didn't make the cut. The Race creator from the Santiago Player Guide I may use but with 27 races things are pretty crowded. I don't have Aethera races yet. The race creator from Infinite Futures 2.0 would be useful but I threw the baby out with the bathwater but not wanting any other player information from Infinite Futures. From the previous edition of Infinite Futures there is a series of racial books that I have, that I don't like for missing crucial information for them to function and has a bunch of added information that I really don't want to deal with. The Reptoids from Bestiary 5 are in the setting but are way too malevolent for me to hand off to players in this campaign and instead I list Ophiduans as appropriate offshoots of the race that's less about covertly conquering planets.

If you have or know of any other good alien races give me a comment.

The Infinity Matrix: Classes

 

Classes can color the flavor of a campaign as they bring in a lot of assumptions about how the world works and what the rest of the setting looks like. For The Infinity Matrix I wanted to definitely preserve the sense of science fiction  which means that magic exists but it isn't exactly shared or widespread and deities with an impact on the material plane are few and far between. However a level of mysticism and otherworldly power is a huge part of Pathfinder and more importantly pulp science fiction so I want to fill in the blanks somehow with otherworldly power even if it's not high magic. Normally I would allow all of the Paizo class options and note what third party material can be used but here I find it more useful to just build a class base using nothing but third party classes.

Mundane Classes: Enforcer, Cogitator, Sensitive, Luminary, Tough, and Daredevil from Anachronistic Adventures.

As I mentioned before these classes are basically successors of the d20 modern classes and unsurprisingly they tend to stand up to whatever scifi material I throw at them. Even better, they're more capable of having class features relevant to the basic concepts than say, a Fighter or Rogue. For example; Creating a mecha pilot could go to a lot of classes, even classes that get their own giant robot as a class feature, but just being a pilot is something that can fall onto a Fighter or a Rogue but they have few if any class features to actually make them good at it. Meanwhile having a Devil Dog of just about any class will fill the role nicely. In addition they'll have other class features that stay relevant outside of a cockpit without being loaded with other class features that are too archaic or far outside of their concept. At the same time, simple things like a military grunt gets more versatility  than a fighter by being more capable of dealing with things in ways other than slicing away with a sword.

Bottom line is that the anachronistic classes are an easy fit for characters and concepts that are not wielders of esoteric power or mad scientists. I wanted to say 'unextraordinary' but in Pathfinder that is never true, but there are a lot of concepts for heroes of science fiction that are basically 'normal' compared to the high magic that Pathfinder gets to. The anachronistic classes are the celebrities, the military grunts, the Starfleet officers and any other flavor of  "Badass Normal" that the mundane classes in Pathfinder normally can't do adequately enough.

Psionic Classes:  Aegis, Cryptic, Dread, Marksman, Psion, Psychic Warrior, Soulknife, Tactician, Vitalist, and Wilder from Ultimate Psionics.

If you haven't heard, over on the Paizo forums Dreamscarred Press is testing out a psionic leaning expansion of the Technology Guide. A lot of this testing is focused on getting psionc powered hardsuits and giant robots on the table but there's some other stuff too. I cannot wait for it, but even without that Psionics feel at home in a science fiction or science fantasy setting. Ever since the new psychic classes from Paizo's Occult Adventures was announced there was chatter about the fate of psionics and whether or not the psychic classes were Paizo's take on the concept of psionics, asking what the real difference between the flavor of psionics and psychics. For me, sci-fantasy and science fiction games are kind of the proof that the two are very different (besides the sentiment before Occult Adventures that some held where psionics was too sci-fi in flavor for Pathfinder). Its where psionics feel very much at home, especially with tropes like psionic aliens, comic book space heroes and Star Wars.

On the most basic level this is added in as my 'magic in space but just sci-fi enough that the players will buy it' for this setting but it also serves some balance purposes. With normal Pathfinder magic spells are numerous and have very pervasive effects that draws up questions in a space-faring setting. Psionic effects are way less pervasive and far reaching making the setting much more manageable in terms of making things work the way they do with it's presence. For example; With full blown 9 levels of casting its a bit harder to believe that spaceships being a meaningful mode of interplanetary transportation when interplanetary teleporting is a thing even if it just comes at late levels.

Technomancy Classes:  Cyborg from Rite Publishing,  Machinesmith and Fleshwraith from LPJ Games, Technician from Radiance House, Tinker and Gadgeteer from Interjection Games.

Oh boy, did I go overboard in my search for technomancers and collected quite a few. In some ways I wanted to include technological classes because they don't fit anywhere else thematically but for the most part there are a lot of sci-fi tropes that are hard to balance or impossible to realize when they aren't class features. I have enough to cause some redundancy but each one on the list feels somewhat indispensable.

Out of the bunch the Fleshwraith and Cyborg are the most unique. The Fleshwraith is the only one that leans towards biological technology and the Cyborg is less about being an inventor and more about self modification. Both classes kind of stay in their own niche and expand it the way that the other tech classes don't so they feel very needed to accomplish certain tropes that I anticipate people wanting.

The Technician and Machinesmith step on each other's toes the most. The Technician is more varied at it's base but the Machinesmith catches up with relevant supplements that expands it. The Technician squeaks by a few more concepts, even covering some of the Cyborg's territory, but the Machinesmith is a lot flashier. However if I were forced to choose I would ditch the Technician first simply because it has class features I have to tweak. You see it has class features revolving around 'Gadgets' which are not a part of it's actual class features but thew equivalent of magic items that only can be really used by the Technician's class features or a feat that grants a similar class feature in a diminished capacity. So basically there is a class of items that only the Technician interacts with which makes it not make much sense in a setting where other technomancers exist so I have to house rule that entire chunk of the book out of existence. Its not a difficult tweak but its a tweak nonetheless.

The Tinker and Gadgeteer seem fairly unique in concept but they actually had to compete with rejects and stood their ground due to superior design or more support. The Tinker is a bit less nessesary than the Gadgeteer, as most of it's tropes can be done with the other tech classes while the Gadgeteer tends to fit in it's own niche of being a bridge between mundane and 'science might as well be magic' territory. But the Tinker goes so far and is very varied, especially with all of it's supplements. Although its mostly a pet class at it's base it extends it's reach within the same tropes as the Machinesmith and Technician but can take it further by narrowing itself. For example; with the Machinesmith you can definitely make yourself a large robot suit but the Technician can go full Zordon and hook a party up with a bunch of mecha.

Others: The Host from LJP Games, Moonchild, Starseed, and Untouchable from Zombie Sky Press, Time Warden and Time Thief from Rogue Genius Games.

Some of these came along for the ride due to other content. In the case of the Host it came with the Machinesmith and Fleshwraith but I'm not sore about it because I really like the class and it handles a niche that the others don't. It's a class with an alien symbiote that doubles as a mutant powers class making it incredibly unique. However it does achieve this via eidolon evolutions so the hope to never needing to dig through books to use it is a bit nil, although many of the technological classes have 'gadgets' that function as spells so that was going to happen anyway.

The Moonchild and Starseed do present a problem. They outright have spells, which is something I would have rather avoided, especially for the Moonchild which casts off of the wizard spell list which is the most pervasive list of all. Also one thing I noticed is that most of my listed classes survive long adventuring days fairly easily, something slot casters don't do too well so I didn't want them to drag the whole party down by running out of juice. In comes Spheres of Power once again as an easy patch to keep magic in the game and be able to use these classes without much of a hassle. Although I'm still looking into whether or not to allow the Spheres of Power classes. On one hand I did want magic to still be in the game, even if at a diminished rate but I do need to look for archaic concepts. But there's the fact that through the use of Traditions the magic doesn't even need to be magic all the time. They could be mutant abilities or psionics or something like that. Why I'm going through that work to begin with is that I just wanted to include It Came from the Stars content, including the classes.

The Time Thief  and Time Warden are ones that I gave a lot of thought to. Although time isn't a theme exclusive to science fiction it's a very frequent subject to the point where I really wanted to include them. The Time Warden presents the spell problem again but again Spheres of Power saves the day, although I feel the need to limit it to the Time, Warp, Divination, and Fate spheres with a special tradition just for it.

So those are my picks for this campaign. There are some that didn't make the cut which may seem strange but I have my reasons. The Netjacker and Veloces would have been in there but I wanted to wait until Hypercorp 2099 was fully out before throwing them around, especially since the Tinker does not get that much love at my table so I wanted to give it a chance to shine before introducing a competing tech pet class.

The Classes from Amethyst: Renaissance didn't make it because the Anachronistic classes cover their concepts better than those classes do  and I have an irrational hatred for how the full BAB guys end up with 19 BAB. Its easy enough to tweak but those classes are full of small non standard stuff that rubs me the wrong way. Its a testament for how good Anachronistic Adventures because the classes in Amethyst feel redundant in their own context so including them would just bloat the number of classes without really adding anything.

Unfortunately, another casualty of Anachronistic Adventures is something better built than the Amethyst classes, Necropunk from Little Red Goblin Games. Everything that isn't handled by a more exciting technomancer is pretty handled by Anachronistic classes and since I'm not compelled to use a great chunk of the Necropunk (I'll get to that in a future post) I feel like it would be just adding bloat and redundancy.

I already expressed my opinion about Infinite Futures and while their classes are mostly fine, with a few tweakable problems, they are generally narrow compared to the other stuff I'm allowing. Besides that they bring the baggage of the rest of Infinite Futures which I really don't like.

Review: Book of Heroic Races: Advanced Androids

After some fluff we get to a reiteration of the Android racial traits along with some extra alternate racial traits and regular ole traits. The 5 alternate racial traits are pretty good to me. There's a bit of difficulty with the wording on the divine racial trait but they do diversify the Android in terms of flavor. The same can be said for the fluff both before and after the racial traits. Between their entry in Pathfinder Player Companion: People of the Stars and their first appearance androids don't have that much flavor text so this was sorely needed. Beyond that the alternate racial traits opens up doors for classes that are generally hard to use with an android.

As I moved on to the archetypes and class features I noticed that this is the second BoHR I've looked at so far to support Psionics with a Cryptic and Psion archetype. The archetypes themselves are somewhat the highlight of the book for me as they take some classes and really make them a part of the race, more so than a lot of other archetypes that could be tacked on to any race without consequence. Same goes for the racial class features.

From there it's mostly the same as previous Book of Heroic Races. There are new racial feats, a new philosophy (as opposed to deity), spells and psionic powers, another archetype (weirdly in the religion section rather than the racial archetype section.) and android NPCs.

Like the previous BoHR this expands quite a bit but I think a lot of fun was had on the crunch on this one in a way that goes a bit beyond the previous entries I've reviewed so far. That doesn't mean the fluff is lacking either. A lot of space is put into describing how androids work in a world. Overall I think that it's a bit more far reaching and flavorful that the android options in People of the Stars, a book that I was very happy to get so I think this one deserves a full 5 out of 5 stars and I'm putting it on my list of potential favorites for this year.

You can find this product over on Paizo.com here.

In the Infinity Matrix campaign I plan to downplay Paizo classes so I'm a bit unlucky that there is so much to support those classes. But it also supports Psionic classes which I plan to push for the campaign and there is enough that is class agnostic to give it to my players for use. I had my own plans for the fluff of Androids since they were basically summed up as 'of mysterious origins' because they were mostly just lost machine-people found on Golarion, but here there's a lot about how they think and interact with others and each other so I'm definitely making this the baseline for how androids work in addition to adding an actual origin.

Ready for the Future: The Infinity Matrix

I've been planning and delaying this campaign for a while but I'm finally doing it now that I feel that I have enough material to do it justice. What I'm talking about is a long term Sci-Fi campaign using Pathfinder that I've titled "The Infinity Matrix" (It makes sense in the context of the campaign). Beforehand I've been running skirmishes and one shots using Sci-Fi material but I never had enough consistent players that were interested but now, starting February 21st, I'm running it.

What this means for this blog is that my reviews will be heavily biased towards Sci-Fi and Space-based third party products for Pathfinder. Of course I'll be continuing with requests and new things that I pick up, but in between those I'll be reviewing things with a science fiction slant starting tomorrow with Book of Heroic Races: Advanced Androids from Jon Brazer Enterprises until February 21st. In these reviews I'll make side notes as to whether or not I'll use the material for my campaign and why. Hopefully by the time I'm done I'll be able to also cover some of the material that I've been anticipating, like Aethera and Conquest of the Universe. 

 Not only that but I'll share adventure details, setting details, house rules, stat blocks and third party considerations that I'll be using for the campaign.

If you have or know of any third party material I should cover for my month+ of Sci-Fi madness shoot me an email with "Pathfinder in Space" in the title at disreal@gmail.com or simply post a comment below. Also hit me up for your personal preference for third party spaceship rules as that has been a big obstacle. Eventually I'll be writing comparisons of spaceship rules to sort out what I want to use.

Side-note on Science Fiction

A while ago I made a huge rant about science fiction in Pathfinder over on Paizo's forums as kind of a summary of the state of space and scifi when it came to third party products I had glanced at or bought and how I use them. Here is the post, edited to make it less thread specific. There is definitely some  reiteration of information from my last post

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Amethyst & Neurospasta: Amethyst presents a setting where both magic and technology exists giving several classes and a slew of new technology rules. Neurospasta is in the same boat with very similar rules but has more of a cyberpunk slant. They are both from the same company so handle a lot of aspects the same way but I generally find Neurospasta more useful for my purposes as being a little less fluff and a bit more item crunch. Outside of the fluff they give a lot to work with and is nearly complete in giving you what you need to deal with the setting, however I found a few glaring holes that are largely subjective.

I never really got into the classes because of one glaring and unfair thing, some of the full BAB classes have 1 less BAB per level than usual. This has been so weird that I never gave the classes more than a cursory glance. Even then I'm not too keen on classes that 'could' be a fighter with different weapon proficiencies and fulfill the same roles, plus some of the classes do things that I’m not ready to allow like Strength or Wisdom to firearm attack and damage.

As a whole I find a lot of the crunch to be intuitive in a few places, even superior to how they work in Pathfinder’s core line but for the most part it feels more complicated and hard to remember.

Infinite Futures: Infinite Futures is kind of hard to judge because it has a lot of little supplements after it that I don’t have but in the context of single book space support it is relatively complete. It is pretty setting neutral. It has a Random Alien Generator for you to fill your setting with assorted Star-Wars esque alien diversity. There are classes that are reasonable for the most part but some classes have what are mechanically spells but aren’t for some reason which really doesn’t appeal to me because the tech-based classes I have from other products do the concept of spell-like technology so much better.

The items are not compatible with the technology guide and firearms function differently from mainstream Pathfinder but on it’s own it covers a lot of bases.  There are vehicles including mechs, vehicle mods, Speeders, cycles, cars, hoverbikes, spaceships. There are no premade mech stat blocks. There are space travel rules like warping, hyperspace and wormholes. There are also environmental rules.  At times all these rules are over complicated but not as bad as I’ve seen elsewhere and when it comes to space travel and vehicle modification its my go to. It also has the most interesting use of modern projectile weapon rules.

Between Chains and Starlight: Between Chains and Starlight was handy by being free but in the end it’s real contribution is spaceships both in the product itself and related supplements. Having pregenerated space ship stat blocks is more restrictive than having fully customizable spacecrafts but boy is it handy and in some way I prefer to add modifications to an existing stat block than generate one from scratch for simplicity sake. Especially since vehicles the size of star ships usually wind up being played ‘from the inside’ with players dealing with suppressing damage, interacting with intruders or otherwise dealing with things personally rather than driving the ship and leading it through combat. Shooting monsters that get on the ship is way more fun than one player making drive checks to make a ship fight another ship because you actually get to do things. I found that if players decide to actually attack a ship they’ll likely board it or ride in fighter ships before playing it like a naval combat simulator. Later I talk about

It Came from the Stars: This one has the least complete experience. You get some races, two new ‘space magic’ classes, and some symbiote feats as far as the notable player oriented stuff goes. For a GM it’s actually pretty nice for plot hooks and environmental cues.

As a whole I think that a lot of these products try to set up a setting or general mode of operating making them have to make new rules or modify rules which generates a lot of reading material which in some ways is a downside. The Technology Guide definitely dates these because of the added complexity because it does a good job of introducing all these new technological wonders without the need to have to read too many extra rules. You can feel this the most when it comes to new skills. I frequently see completely new skills while the Technology Guide simple gave new uses to skills which is huge for simplifying character sheets that don’t have those extra skills and is especially disastrous for classes that need those skills but don’t have the ranks to spare. For example if a Fighter can drive a mech using Knowledge Engineering for his drive check things are relatively fine and you don’t need to make an entirely new class for mech piloting because a Fighter of the future fits in and his weapon training can translate to the siege weapons that would be on a mech. If the skill is new there are new considerations, like whether or not the fighter is even appropriate for being a mech pilot and the fact that he does not have the ranks to throw around at things like the new piloting skill assuming its even a class skill. New skills also kind of choke on third party classes. In a nutshell the Technology Guide is accessible, doesn’t choke on third party, and allows a Fighter or Rogue to be a tech based class with a feat or give the feat away for free universally.  With it’s ease of use and general scope the Technology Guide renders a lot of crunch in a lot of the above books useless or cumbersome so they are only around now to poach pieces of crunch that I like or don’t have and fluff. I also have poached items from Skorched Urf’s technological products which is a very mixed bag and sometimes I have to attach battery packs after the Technology Guide.

The Technology Guide does lack in the arena of mechs, vehicles and hardsuits, and while vehicles can get a lot of love in other products mechs, spaceships and hardsuits either come off as too complicated or completely handwaved so I do rely on the above products to kind of fill those roles but I do long for something more compatible with the vehicle rules in Ultimate Combat. A short time ago Fat Goblin Games put out Fantastic Technology, and really the most useful thing in the book is the smallest thing, the concept of power source conversion, a concept that I ran with because like the concept of templates for monsters a single one multiplies the amount of creatures at your disposal being able to converting propulsion multiplies every existing vehicle stat block. I have Jon Brazer’s Vehicles of War and I wanted to give players flying surf boards in a deiselpunk floating continent setting, so I took the magic flying boards, replaced the magic propulsion with the combustion propulsion and suddenly I had gas powered flying surf boards. Since this is all compliant with the Ultimate Combat vehicle rules I don’t have to go through the trouble of conversion or translating to use all this stuff.

When it comes to Mechs and hardsuits in general I converted over material from the d20 Mecha compendium I linked above. Despite having to convert it the mecha rules are very intuitive and easier to deal with than most things I’ve seen before. Skorched Urf also made some gems in the form of some powered armor rules that are easy to deal with. Necromancers of the Northwest has a free supplement that has ‘golem armor’ that if you just say it’s not magical and attach a battery pack to it is very usable as powered armor. These all have essentially the same rules. It functions as armor but gives you a hardness rating, has to be targeted instead of you until it’s broken, gives you strength and speed boost and you can mount weapons or mods on it. I always have to manually attach a battery pack to the rules after the Technology Guide came out so that it can more easily interact with that stuff.

I also kind of piecemeal classes into whatever I’m playing because honestly most classes I find in general space campaign settings are kind of useless after the Technology Guide came out and especially pale in light of classes like the Machinesmith from Neoexodus. My general state of classes when I’m playing in space includes, The Machinesmith (plus the Host and Fleshwraith), The Tinker from Interjection Games, The Technician (with a modification) from Radiance House’s Age of Electrotech, and the recent Cyborg from Legendary Games. I feel like the Machinesmith handles most concepts is my measuring stick for the rest. Tinker and Cyborg feel a bit more limited but still function well and made for good classes for a future game. The Technician is probably more diverse than the Machinesmith but I had to modify it to be more compatible with the Technology Guide. As a whole all those classes have a similar formula in that they are generally ¾ BAB classes with 6 levels of ‘not casting’ with some kind of gadget generation as secondary class features. The Tinker dares to be different by being more robot minion focused with the smaller of the minions being capable of functioning as general devices and spells in a way.  I’m refraining from discussing the more steampunk or arcane technomancers/artificers. If you have a sole technological class I think the Machinesmith or Technician covers the most bases and concepts that you could imagine.

Beyond technology focused classes I had been using Rogue Genius Games Anachronistic Adventurers; Enforcer, Investigator and Sensitive but recently took a look at the compiled Anachronistic Adventures and really they remind me of how classes worked in D20 Modern/Future making them great for generic classes that can fit in any era despite advertizing as a more pulp-era focused book. For future/space campaigns it has the added benefit of being able to make a technology class that treats technology in a mundane way rather than being spellcasting by a different name.  I believe that Tripod Machine’s Conquest of the Universe (not yet finished) is using the classes from Anachronistic Adventures to fill in the non-tech based gap for it’s own space opera rules. Which is a good fit, as I mentioned above a pilot class that function out of a vehicle would be a ‘daredevil’ and Anachronistic Adventures has a Daredevil class that, with the right ranks in the right skills easily becomes a daring pilot with class features that can work with a vehicle.  In terms of magic, I have yet to disclude spellcasting classes from my space games but if I did Psionics is a natural fit by being able to represent more sci-fi feeling magic. Otherwise, It Came from the Stars fills a few needs on that front.

Races are pretty easy. Just say that a race came from outer space and you’re done. If you need more ‘scifi’ races than calling elves vulcans and calling it a day, Paizo has a whole splatbook of alien races and I’ll even allow Trox. Eridanus Books has a supplement that I find generally useless (being a conversion guide which makes me have to do work) but I keep around because it has 7 alien races. It Came From the Stars has 4 usable races that are quite interesting as well. But aliens are alien. There is no way to cover enough races unless you include some kind of Alien Builder but then you can’t really expand them the way you want because DMs really don’t want to put any kind of race builder in the hands of their players because there’s no way to make that perfectly balanced.

Topic of the Day: Scifi in Pathfinder at a glance

Science fiction in Pathfinder is a vast and perilous landscape. If d20 has taught us one thing during the 2000s it’s that the system is pretty flexible for a rules-heavy game when it comes to genre. Being a child of d20 Pathfinder shares the same guts that can be pretty  flexible itself. Most of the time when we want to go out of genre we move on to a different system, sometimes even another d20-spawn, but luckily we don’t necessarily need to  with Pathfinder so you can enjoy your status quo and turn it up on its head too.

Equipment

Superficially, science fiction is distinguished by advanced technology, so when you run Scifi Pathfinder you want some laser guns,  some robots, maybe even a spaceship. The best and worst thing Paizo has done for this arena is their Technology Guide that came out right before the Iron Gods adventure path. It had a ton of items, introduced the concept of power charges and reactors that produce charges, and even gave a means of using your old skills for scifi junk with the  barrier of the Technologist feat. The book was great. The bad thing was that this was so concisely done that every third party scifi product that came before it instantly became dated. At this point in time, unless you don’t like tracking charges on your technological items and thus avoid Paizo’s technology guide, rules made before that are in an awkward position by not being completely compatible. You see, for the most part most technological items worked without energy or charges and can be crafted anywhere. So they were magic items that had a different name. In some cases there were just instructions to file off the serial numbers off of magic items to make them technological. That was all well and good back then but having technological items need power makes too much sense, plus on top of being really good and encompassing a lot of item types the Technology Guide is a part of the main game to the point of now being on the online reference document despite being printed in the Campaign Setting line. Additionally it didn’t change that much leaving you with new rules but little to have to memorize to get a technological game going.

Luckily there are some third party products out there that come out after the technology guide that fill in a few gaps, chief among them is Call to Arms: Fantastic Technology from Fat Goblin Games. If you run a technological game, Paizo’s Technology Guide should be your first purchase and Fantastic Technology should be your second. It introduces an item enhancement system in the form of Magnitude (which everyone should follow from now on), gives you some material for kingdom building, and keeps melee weapons in the game. There’s so many small gaps that this book fills in that I’m just sad that it’s so small. It could have easily been the size of a hardcover with as much subject matter technology brings.

Legendary Games didn’t slack either with Treasury of the Machine, a book of new technological items building on the rules from the Technology Guide, but sadly that’s about it. There’s some things that look pretty promising. As of this post d20pfsrd.com publishing is developing something involving space ships. Dreamscarred Press is playtesting some sort of technopsionic expansion with psionic mechs. But that’s about all that I’ve seen on the Technology Guide expansion front. Of course there are older titles but really your bases are pretty well covered with the Technology Guide, and its free online so they end up being put in a big pile of things I don’t use. And outside of old d20 modern material there is a huge hole in the giant robot department. Well for now there is. The closest adequate thing I could find is Infinite Future’s Mecha Guide and Charles Smith Games’ Mecha Construction Guide. Spaceships are tackled sporadically but for me at least the king of that category is Space Potato Productions with their stupidly free books of preconstructed starships.

Classes

There is, however, stiff competition when it comes to technological classes with some of the pre-Technology Guide classes aging pretty well. So well that I can’t really recommend one as the top of them all, they’re all so good. about the only bad thing I can really say is that I generally hate for technology and technology use to be class-locked but with the Technology Guide out the tech classes actually improve, because instead of being classes that are a barrier to science fiction that you have to have to hit your scifi tropes they become specialists that pull it forward better.

Barring the tech classes that come more from a steampunk or magical artifice direction a lot of classes that deal with technology seem to follow a pattern similar to the Alchemist. They get a list of gadgets that are for most purposes spells, and have some sort of talents they they choose every other level. Additionally they tend to have some kind of major choice that functions like a mini-archetype or Sorcerer bloodline. Legendary Games has the Cyborg, LPJ has the Machinesmith, Radiance House has the Technician. And like the Alchemist they are all very diverse classes with a lot of solid design. Running a game with high technology I’d be hard pressed to not include them. The class that stands out that goes out of the mold is the Tinker from Interjection Games. It’s more of a build your own pet robot class but makes it very surprising how diverse a pet robot can be when you loosen your view on what robots are supposed to be.

But what about classes that aren’t mad scientists and cyborgs and engineers? When I got my print copy of The Machinesmith I was surprised to find that it came with two extra classes. The Fleshwraith, a sort of bio-machinesmith, and The Host, a class that gets eidolon evolutions from its symbiotic mutant creature. (I just stick with it being a mutate class and leave out the symbiote.) Zombi Sky Press put out It Came from the Stars, which included, for lack of a better short description, a space wizard in the form of the Moon Child, and the space-gish Starseed. Of course if magic isn’t your flavor psionic classes from Dreamscarred Press’ Ultimate Psionics feel way more at home in a scifi campaign than they do in medieval stasis-land.

There are plenty of classes in plenty of books that handle mundane space faring folk but a good amount of time I have a hard time justifying them. One of the reasons why the Technologist feat from the Technology Guide works is that if you’re in a setting where high technology isn’t alien then you can give everyone the Technologist feat and that fixes the problem. Meanwhile specialized classes tend to just be another class with some different class skills. I’ve seen a few military grunt classes that are pretty much just fighters with laser beams or are completely outclassed by playing a fighter if the fighter gets free laser beam proficiency. They just come out too narrow for what they could be and too weak to be what they need to be. Rogue Genius Games on the other hand released a godsend for this dilemma with Anachronistic Adventures. Following a similar pattern to d20 modern you have six classes that loosely revolve around the six ability scores. Between them are a ton of archetypes that any of them can have allowing you to mix and match your tropes to a surprisingly huge degree. They also come with progress levels defined so you can set their proficiencies (and the proficiencies of other classes) based on whatever age they hail from. Since they don’t deviate much in terms of rules language and their abilities are pretty setting neutral they work surprisingly well with other rules.

Worlds

Paizo already as a few alien races and worlds under it’s belt and 3pp isn’t really behind. Titles like Veil of Truth, It Came from the Stars, and Age of Electrotech comes with a few races. Infinite Futures comes with it’s own alien race builder. There are a number of races from Skortched Urf. Then there are the numerous races that you can just file the serial numbers off to get the alien you want. But in terms of full-fledge campaign settings I have seen few that tickle my fancy. Part of this is biased because a bunch of crunch I don’t like are mixed in so I wind up not using them and I tend to make my own campaign settings when it comes to space but I haven’t seen too much that I can get attached to either. When it comes to my own setting It Came from the Stars gives me a ton of tools to work with while being setting neutral enough for them to be actual building blocks instead of random elements that I’ve stolen. In terms of campaign settings I could point out Amethyst and Neurospasta from Dias Ex Machina which are dense settings that are more or less intelligent and agreeable but they don’t really spark the creative flair like settings such as Starjammers. I missed the planetary kickstarter that Legendary Games did but I hear good things.

The Future

Since I first stumbled upon it after the kickstarter I have been keeping an eye on Tripod Machine’s space opera book, Conquest of the Universe.

Dreamscarred Press started playtesting an extension of the Technology Guide.

d20pfsrd.com Publishing announced their Starfinder project a while ago.

I jumped aboard the Hypercorps 2099 kickstarter and am very excited.

Savage Mojo promised some sort of techno egyptian setting, and as a Stargate fan I’ll be all over that when it eventually shows up.

So as you can see science fiction has been and is increasingly a hot topic for Pathfinder. As we move on I see more products I have getting pushed out in favor of more streamlined material with Paizo’s Technology Guide as the turning point.

Next time I’m doing a review that is long overdue, I’ll revisit some older reviews and I’ll talk about Kickstarters that I’ve backed and why.