Since SF1e has ran its course for awhile now, figured I would ask /tg/ what they thought of it on the whole The economy trying to reflect character growth reminded me of OSR gold as XP, but in-universe it made the economy absolutely retarded with a switchblade costing more than a hovercar with mounted turrets. Every single published adventure was absolutely terrible and the beginner box just straight up axed more than 50% of the core rules.That all said, if you wanted an RPG that could go with wacky Spaceballs tier adventures, serious cosmic horror, or plundering space stations taken over by gray AYYYLMAO zombies? It handled it all well given it takes place in a literal universe making a kitchen sink approach accurate. The Alien Archives were some of the best bestiaries in gaming as well.What did you think of it personally?
>>98342193I really enjoyed the weapon customization. Being able to kit out your gun with goodies like scopes, grips, or an underslung grenade launcher (or all three) was pretty great. This was undercut, however, by the gear system, which required that you buy new weaponry every couple of levels in order for your damage to scale. The scaling was so aggressive that in the one official AP my group played, we basically just used looted NPC weapons for the duration of the campaign, because that was the only way to get reliably on-level equipment. Buying (and re-buying, and re-buying) stuff every couple of levels was cost-prohibitive.Otherwise, the system was what you might expect of Paizo's first real attempt to break entirely out of the D&D 3.5 mold and create a system of their own: some good ideas, lots of jank, overall kind of unwieldy, and it had some 3.5isms that they seemed afraid to ditch (how they handled "full round attacks" was particularly wonky in my eyes). My biggest complaint was the starship combat, which was just atrocious. Far and away the most important role on the ship was the pilot; his rolls were by far the most impactful, and his importance combined with his actions basically decided everyone else's turn for them. Who does the gunner shoot? Whoever the pilot places in their cone of fire. Where does the science officer redistribute shields? To whichever end of the ship the pilot faces towards the opponent. Which system does the engineer boost? Pilot rolls, of course. Mechanically, every starship combat was an exercise in jacking your pilot off while he made every important decision and won the fight for you. Having fun was entirely reliant on the party doing their best to ignore that reality and roleplaying out Star Trek tropes; it was not mechanically supported at all. Side-note: tellingly, Paizo released SF2e without starship combat. This does not strike me as very encouraging. We'll be getting it later this year, but I do not have high hopes.
>>98342326>We just looted enemiesThat's what you are supposed to do, anon. It's why the overwhelming majority of enemies have usable weaponry and the majority of that stuff can accept the same attachments (maybe more, maybe less) so long as they were similar weapon types (rifles, launchers, etc). It's one of the reasons why I thought the loot treadmill people complained about was silly. You find all the shit you need easy enough and a new gun will last you a level or two fine. The early days, those levels come quick, but after level 5 you are going to be sticking with any new weapon for a long while.
>>98342326>Starship combatYeah, it was bad enough that ships could have fighters break off so that each player ran their own fighter craft and it was more like regular combat when the Starship Operations Manual dropped. Of course, you could use it to make a Voltron setup if you had something big to fight as well.
>>98342193is that christopher watts ?
>>98342811>It's one of the reasons why I thought the loot treadmill people complained about was silly.Using enemy drops is part of the loot treadmill. If you need to replace or upgrade all of your gear every so often to keep up you are on a loot treadmill. The source of the new gear doesn't matter even if it is bought, looted, a quest reward or even crafted by yourself.
Starfinder was the worst TTRPG I've ever played
>>98342326Paizo utterly fails to understand that starships are the fulcrum that enables their entire setting, instead treating them as traincars you get out of as soon as you can so you can play the game.
>>98342193Weapon leveling is utterly retarded, which is a shame because it's a fun system otherwise
>>98350203Yes, getting better gear to become stronger as you adventure is surely a problem.
>>98351318>Levelled gear is retardedNah, it's fine. In universe? Oh yeah, it's dumb as hell. In practice it's fine because it's just character advancement. >>98350615It's pretty damning because a pretty big emphasis was put on starships and FTL travel being THE big reason the setting exists in 1e.
>>98351809Loot treadmills don't make PCs stronger. They result in PCs needing to get better gear to stay in place which is why they are called treadmills. The Survival Knife, Tactical Knife, Ultrathin Dagger, Zero-edge Dagger and Molecular Rift Dagger are mechanically identical with the only difference being level requirement and damage dealt on a hit. They only exist so that roughly the same number rounds of Knife/Dagger hits will take down at level opponents.There is no power gain, only planned obsolescence.
>>98352184Remove the level requirement and Starfinder makes more sense as a hellish cyberpunk dystopia
>>98351809yes, it's a massive fucking problem. Not just for the reasons that >>98352184points out, but because it also makes the economy a complete joke>Big fight coming up, should I sell my house to buy a Frag Grenade 7? >Wow, the high-level thug dropped a Baton, Advanced? let's sell it and use the money to buy a fleet of fighter jets
>>98342326So out of curiosity what is considered a good starship combat system for something like D20/3.5/PF/SF? How was Star Wars D20, I never played.
>>98356288retvrn to spelljammer
I want to GM Horizons of the Vast for friends and I'm thinking I'll use "running a colony" as an excuse to ditch the economy entirely and work everything into a system where the players naturally upgrade their gear as the colony expands in scope.
>>98350238Thinking about it it makes sense if it was a Defiance of the Fall type setting where higher grade worlds and cultivators have stuff so far beyond that trinkets and toys to them are priceless artifacts to lower-grade planets.Like in DotF people in most systems don't bother with technology because its incompatible with the magic system and someone at the top of F-grade can take a hit from a sniper rifle without flinching.
