Owen K.C. Stephens's Blog, page 53

For Starfinder: Jet Jutsu

The idea of developing a fighting style specifically designed to benefit a jetpack or other movement-boosting device is certainly not a new one, but it’s not something I have seem apply to the Starfinder Roleplaying Game. While this might grow to be a whole series of fighting techniques for soldiers to operative specializations, for the moment I’m just starting with a couple of combat feats.

(Art by matiasdelcarmine)

For the following options, “jetpack” applies to any armor upgrade or technological, hybrid, or magic item that gives you a flight speed, or gives you a bonus to Athletics checks made to jump (including items that increase your land speed enough that the increased speed gives you a bonus to Athletics checks to jump). “Using” the jetpack means being able to activate it and expending any battery power, use duration, fuel, or similar consumable required to gain the flight or bonus to Athletics checks to jump. You don’t actually need to take an action to do this, it is part of whatever action is required in the Jet Justsu option.

Jet Back (Combat)
Benefit: When you are attacked by a foe you observing (see States of Awareness), as a purely defensive reaction you can use your jetpack to dodge out of the way. You can move up to half your land or fly speed, and gain a +4 circumstance bonus to your AC against that one attack, and to any Reflex save required by the attack. On your next turn, you must take a Move action to recover as your first action. If you are prevented from doing this (such as if you are stunned), you fall prone. You are also off-target until the end of your next round.

Jet Punch (Combat)
Benefit: You can use your jetpack as part of a charge. You do not take a -2 penalty to your attack roll as with a normal charge, but your penalty to AC increases by -2 (normally to -4 AC). You add half the item level of your jetpack, to a maximum of half your ranks in Piloting, to your damage on a a successful attack.

You may also want to take Jet Charge, Mobility, Sky Jockey, and Spring Attack as part of your Jet Justsu techniques.

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Benefits (and Drawbacks) of Compatible Math Between RPG Subsystems, Pt. 1

Most ttRPGs have subsystems to handle different tasks a character might attempt, or threats they might need to overcome. For example, a game might have a rule for seeing if an attack hits a foe, a different rule for seeing how much damage it does, and a different rule for efforts to heal the wound over time. Often these rules have some sort of mathematical underpinning tied to a random number generator (dice cards, and so on) that determines success. Sometimes the systems have compatible math… and sometimes they don’t. In this series of essays we’re going to look at the pros and cons of having subsystems be mathematically compatible, and what kind of design pressure may lead to each system.

Now, to be sure, these trends of mathematical subsystems that interact with some randomizer to generate values of success and failure are not universal. Some games have only a single system and it applies to the success or failure of everything. Others manage to model success without randomizers, or even math in general. As a result the observations in this essay don’t apply directly to all ttRPGs, but only to a (broad) subset of them. For example, Lords of Gossamer and Shadow is a diceless system that uses math differently than, say Fantasy AGE. Similarly, Dread does away with random success chances in favor of a tension-building minor physical challenge, and while it’s not quite accurate to say it’s math-free (as having to do something once, vs having to do it twice, is a mathematical concept) it certainly isn’t using math the way most ttRPGs do.

However, even if these game systems don’t interact with math and randomizers in the same way as the items I’ll be discussing in more depth, that doesn’t mean some of the same pros and cons may not apply. Especially for people interested in modifying existing systems (or wanting to try their hands at designing a system from scratch), thinking about how different kinds of tasks are resolved, and whether those resolution mechanisms should be based on the same underlying rules, is useful regardless of what the game mechanics in question are.

I’ll also note that I find examining lots of different game systems useful to gain a greater toolkit of ideas and mechanics I can use for my own designs. While some mix-and-matching might feel weird (I wouldn’t recommend adding a Jenga Tower resolution mechanic to a card-based ttRPG game… at least not in MOST cases…), often being aware of a wider range of designs can help inspire new solutions to old problems (or, at least, help see potential problems and unintended consequences in advance).

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$200 of Game Publisher Advice in 60 Seconds

Game publishers sometimes pay me to consult on ideas, issues, problems, or plans they have. Unsurprisingly, often the people most interested in advice are ones who aren’t sure what their questions really are. Often the trick is to get to the core issue someone really needs help with, and once they know what they don’t know, the client can make great strides on their own.

On more than one occasion, it’s taken $200 worth of time to sift out that what the client really needs is to ask themselves these questions. The people who have paid me to get here all seem happy, and have come back to pay me for more consultation, so despite how simple this seems once it is laid out they appear to have gotten value for the time and money spent getting to this point.

But, while I don’t want to talk myself out of future gigs, I DO want anyone struggling with game publishing, who ALSO falls into the category of folks who can benefit from asking themselves these questions, to have a chance to do so much more easily and cheaply than paying me to consult and not having any idea what their core problem is.

So, here’s among my most common end result on consulting:

For your company, and each game line, and each game product, ask yourself:

What is your target market?
What market do you think you are currently reaching?
Where do you think is a better place to reach the market you want?
Are there other markets that might be interest you haven’t thought about?
What else could you afford to do, in terms of time and resources, to reach those markets?
When you do get the attention of customers in a market, can they quickly and easily find out why they might be interested in your product? Can they then quickly and easily be at a point where they can give you money for the product?

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The Battle Between Success, Improvement, and Options in ttRPGs

I could make a MUCH longer post about this… but it wouldn’t actually be much more informative. So here is the short version.

(Illustration by Наталья Новикова)

When playing ttRPGs, in general (and always within the context of preferred complexity, crunchiness, and theme):

*Players like being able to have meaningful choices in character design.
*Players like having meaningful choices in character actions.
*Players dislike a single tactic or build being sufficiently superior that other choices are perceived as sufficiently sub-optimal that it is dumb to use them.
*Players want to have a good idea of what their chances of success are.
*Players get bored if there is frequently no chance of failure.
*Players want their characters to be better at their core task than other player’s characters.
*Players want to be able to improve how good their characters are at core and non-core tasks.

When trying to design games that meet all of these goals, game designers run into issues. If a player has meaningful choices in character design, and has a good understanding of what their chances of success are, and has ways to specialize to be good at a core task AND has ways to improve, odds are there will be a single character build and/or tactic that is clearly superior to other choices. And, worse, it doesn’t matter if there isn’t REALLY an optimal choice, just if a group of players conclude there is one.

If you fix that by having elements of success be divided among enough variables that there are multiple ways to try to be good at something (for example, if in combat you can increase you chance to hit a foe but it reduces damage, or you can increase your attacks per round but it decreases your accuracy), many players end up not knowing what will actually increase their total effectiveness, and be dissatisfied if something they felt would be a big improvement doesn’t pan out in play. (And some players will apply excellent math skills to determine a given build or tactic is actually optimal, and that reduces fun even if they aren’t right).

If you fix that by reducing the number of ways you can improve a character’s success, OR by making multiple options be closely hard-coded to very similar levels of success, players often feel like they do not have meaningful choices in either design (since they can’t make choices to improve their chance of success) or tactics (since it doesn’t matter which tactic you use, as they are all equally successful).

If you fix THAT by allowing a character to constantly find ways to improve their odds of success in multiple tactic or builds, it can be possible for a player to have little to no chance of failure, and they grow bored. This is especially bad if those options are easier for some players to find than others, so one player almost never fails, and other players feel they are penalized for taking different choices.

Obviously this is a much more complex issue but the core set of opposed desires and solutions are extremely common, the battle between Success, Improvement, and Options in ttRPGs.

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Koufrawraiths – A simple d20 monster template

This is designed as a simple template for monsters in a wide range of d20 games. It has a horror/mystery theme, and the GM should consider its use carefully. Certainly it’s going to be as dangerous as a creature 1 level or CR higher, and if PCs do not yet know how to deal with it, it may be much more dangerous. On the other hand, a group could walk right past one and never know it, so it needs to be used in an intentional way with forethought, rather than as a random encounter.

Koufrawraith

(Sleepless art by likozor)

A koufrawraith is a creature that exists in the dim fog between the waking world and the Plane of Dreams. They cannot be encountered by anyone fully in either realm, but do cross into any other reality where creatures able to sleep exist. Despite the name koufrawraiths are not necessarily undead, though undead koufrawraiths do exist. Many are hags, fey, monstrous beasts,and rarer examples exist as constructs, dragons, and oozes.

A koufrawraith’s existence can only be experienced by those who are fatigued or exhausted, but conscious. For any other creature, they cannot be perceived or effected, and the koufrawraith similarly cannot directly effect those who are ineligible to perceive it. It does perceive waking and sleeping creatures, but no action it takes (including things like casting spells that leave lasting effects, such as a wall of stone) can be perceived by, effect, or be effected by such creatures. Secondary effects can be–if a koufrawraith damages an exhausted person, the damage is visible and can be healed, but there is no evidence of how it was caused. Any effort to identify a koufrawriath from secondary observation or description suffers a -10 penalty.

Also known as sleepgaunts, koufrawraiths often prey upon lone insomniacs and those suffering great loss or toil. If feeds on the suffering of the tired, and prefers to hurt and frighten its food source, rather than kill them.

The ancient order of the Wearied Guard once drove koufrawraiths to near extinction, but once they were no longer a common threat, societies stopped supporting, or even believing, those who claimed their crucial work had to be done in the still of night, while bleary-eyed and staggering from fatigue.

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Online Contacts and Real Friends

This is quite the ramble. I wrote it more for myself than anyone else. It doesn’t touch on game content, or freelancing (really), and everyone who follows me for those kinds of things should feel free to skip it.

If someone wants to build a true emotional connection to me, I make it difficult. Doubly so online.

That’s okay. I have lots of friends. None of this is a complaint. Really, it’s just an examination of my mind and experiences, brought on in part by how much more of my socialization has been online for the past 9+ months. And that, in turn, has be thinking about the nature of online “friendship.”

Yes, a surprising number of my “Facebook friends” are actually my real friends. Some I have known for more than 35 years. Others I met online, but correspond with weekly or more.

But we all know that’s not the majority.

The majority of the Facebook users I have friend-demarcated are “People who have mutually decided a weak online connection might prove entertaining or beneficial.” Or “Mutubenes” for short.
Some of THOSE people have a business plan that includes being friendly, so they look and sound more like a friend to those who are their Mutubenes.

Sadly, some people who are Mutubenes can’t tell the difference between that causal connection and true friendship. Normally in such a causal online relationship, the more popular and/or beautiful person is aware of the true nature of the online connection, while one or more less-popular cybercommoners gets too sucked into the illusion of friendship to differentiate it from reality.

This isn’t a binary friend/notfriend status, of course. There are casual friends, work friends, friendly acquaintances, Mutubenies you like slightly more than others, Mutubenies you’d happily share a drink with which might allow you to become casual friends, pure business partners, people you dislike but tolerate… a long line of degrees and types of relationships that can grow, wilt, morph, and change over time, with the right context and circumstance.

Many Beaupops are attractive women. That’s not shocking–they have careers to build along with everyone else, and are taking a thing that often causes them to be dismissed to mistreated, and trying to turn it into an advantage. Whatever each Beaupop is comfortable with is perfectly appropriate, be that just knowing that looking professional and stylish can’t hurt get attention all the way to actually being a sex worker–these approaches are in no way comparable to each other, but they often share the same online space. Sadly, too often when male cybercommoners realize they aren’t truefriends with attractive Beaupop women the cybercommoner becomes aggressive and abusive.

I think about these things fairly often, for a number of reasons. First, I work in this online social space. I want to be aware and realistic of what’s actually going on in such connections.

But, second, I have social anxiety, in part tied to my civilian PTSD. It manifests in many ways, one of which is that when I don’t understand what is expected of me in a social interaction, I can panic. Sometimes full-on panic attacks that can be hard to distinguish from heart attacks. Other times, just a rising of bile in my throat and sense of impending doom. I’ve struggled with that in therapy, for years.

At least some of that seems to tie back to one of the worst beatings I ever took in my life. It’s a story I have told before, but not often. I was at camp as a young teen. The daughter of one of the camp masters invited me to take a walk in the woods. She was older than me, though not adult. I was confused as to why—we hadn’t talked at all, I didn’t really know her, and I had never had a girl ask me to walk with them before. Indeed, positive attention of any kind from girls was foreign to me. But she seemed friendly and genuine, so I agreed.
But I was confused, and unsure of the social expectations of such a walk.

She walked me out to a clearing, where a large number of boys had dug a pit. They beat me up, threw me into the pit, and sat and stood on me. They laughed. I remember smelling the dirt, tasting it, and being totally unable to get up. She laughed with them. I remember crying, and yelling, and that only making the laughter louder.

I don’t remember how that ended. I do remember being 100% sure that there was no point telling anyone. That doing so would just make things worse. So I didn’t. I didn’t tell anyone, for years.
But that sense of dread is still tied to not knowing what is expected of me in a social setting, either in physical meetings or virtual ones.

I’ve worked on that a lot over the years. I have had to. But it also means that if I am not sure what a relationship is? If I can’t be certain if someone is my friend, or just a popular or talented or beautiful person who finds an online connection to me to be more likely to be useful than annoying?

I assume it’s an entirely transactional connection. Unless I am flat told by someone that they consider me their friend, or wants a closer connection, I assume they do not. I have to. To survive. Even people I have known for years are generally kept in that circle of polite acquaintance until there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I assume praise is based on the interests of the praiser, interaction based on the value of the interaction, expressions of liking or wanting to spend time with me are weighed by the value the person expressing such interest believes they can get from it.

Which doesn’t mean that is how you should do it. Nor does it mean I think these people are disingenuous. Being friendly is not a promise of anything but polite interaction. People who want to spend time with me to benefit themselves are acting in a perfectly rational and reasonable manner. Even when genuinely like and want to be with or help someone, I assume that feeling is not reciprocated to an emotional degree, and that’s fine. Being nice to someone is not a currency that buys me any obligation from them, nor should it be.
The upside of this is that I can continue to interact with people online without panicking. If there’s a downside, it’s mostly in potentially missed connections when people would like to form real friendship or emotional bonds to me, and I don’t give them the signals they would take as a go-ahead to try increasing that bond.

Basically, if someone is not already my friend I treat their online interactions the same way I treat those of a waitress as a favored restaurant at which I am a regular. They may know my name, be friendly, say they are happy to see me. And that can all be true, within the context of my coming to their place of work and having a professional interaction with them. Especially in the US, the fact that my being happy impacts their job security and payment (especially in the case of tips) means that friendliness is contextualized differently than if they acted the same way after asking me to go out to lunch somewhere else. I certainly HAVE made friends with the staff at places I was a regular, but it involved a lot of evidence that the relationship was not purely professional, including things like being invited to the restaurant when it was closed, and having staff choose to spend time with me and play games and go drinking when they were off-the-clock.

I would much rather err on the side of polite professionalism, than even overstep socially appropriate bounds and make someone else uncomfortable. Even at the cost of coming off as distant now and then.
I enjoy having Mutubenies. I just think of them as different from what I think of as “friends.”

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Strategy Boosts for the Starfinder Soldier (Pt. 3)

We continue looking at strategy boosts, an alternate class feature for the soldier. You can take a strategy boost in place of a bonus combat feat, as long as you meet the strategy boost’s minimum soldier level.

Soldier 6
A soldier must be at least 6th level to select these strategy boosts.

(Art by Camile)

Hold the Line! (Ex): You expend 1 Resolve Point as part of any other standard, move, or full action to inspire your allies to hold their ground against enemy advanced. Allies within 60 feet gain a +4 AC bonus against combat maneuvers that change their position (such as bull rush and reposition) and special attacks that move them (including swallow whole). If a special attack has an effect other than to move a target, the non-movement portion occurs if the attack hits the ally’s normal AC, but the movement portion only occurs if the attack hits the AC with the +4 bonus. These bonuses last until an ally is moved by an attack, or 10 minutes pass. This is a sense-dependent, language-dependent ability.

MEDIC! (Ex): When you allies are wounded, you can inspire those able to patch them up to move faster and do better. As a reaction when an ally takes damage, or as a swift action, you can expend 1 Resolve Point to select one damaged ally and call for a medic. For 2 rounds, any creature within 60 feet can make a Medicine check on the selected ally more quickly. Checks that normally take 10 minutes can be performed as a full action. Those that take 1 minute can be performed as a standard action, those that are normally a standard action can be performed as a move action, and those that are normally a move action can be performed as a swift action. Additionally, creatures can cast a spell with the healing description on the ally as a move action (as long as it’s normal casting time is 1 standard action or less).
This is a sense-dependent, language-dependent ability.

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Strategy Boosts for the Starfinder Soldier (Pt. 2)

We continue looking at strategy boosts, an alternate class feature for the soldier. You can take a strategy boost in place of a bonus combat feat, as long as you meet the strategy boost’s minimum soldier level.

(Art by Mike)

Soldier 4
A soldier must be at least 4th level to select these strategy boosts.

Gear Up! (Ex): As a standard action, you can direct your allies to prepare for hazardous situations. Each ally within 60 feet able to see and hear you can draw one weapon or piece of equipment, or activate a piece of equipment already ready for use (including activating environmental protection on worn armor, but not any kind of attack.) This is a sense-dependent, language-dependent ability.

Take Cover! (Ex): As a standard action, you can direct your allies to take cover. Each ally within 60 feet able to see and hear you can move up to their speed directly toward the nearest piece of cover. Allies that do this are staggered on their next turn (even if they are normally immune to being staggered, and this condition cannot be removed prematurely). This is a sense-dependent, language-dependent ability.

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I have a Patreon. It supports the time I take to do all my blog posts, videos, and other bits of free content. If you’d like to see more game-bending rule options (or more fiction, game industry essays, game design articles, worldbuilding tips, whatever!), try joining for just a few bucks and month and letting me know!

Strategy Boosts for the Starfinder Soldier (Pt. 1)

Strategy boosts are an alternate class feature for the soldier. You can take a strategy boost in place of a bonus combat feat, as long as you meet the strategy boost’s minimum soldier level.

Honestly, while they are themed more around tactical concerns strategy boosts are exactly the same as Soldier Combat Feats, but with a different name and framing device for people who don’t like class-locked feats. (I tend to be fine with class-locked feats, since they have existed as long asd20 feats have existed, but I get why some people find them awkward.)

[image error] (Art by grandfailure)

Soldier 2
A soldier must be at least 2nd level to select these strategy boosts.

Fighting Withdrawal (Ex): When you affect an ally with covering fire, or hit a foe with harrying fire, the ally cannot be the target of an attack of opportunity, or the foe cannot make an attack of opportunity. This lasts until the beginning of your next turn.

Fire For Effect (Ex): When you hit and damage a foe, as a reaction you can call out targeting information to your allies to help them effectively attack that target. Allies within 60 feet able to see and hear you and see the target you selected can reroll any damage die from their own attacks against that target that show a 1 on the die. A given die is only rerolled once per attack.

Once you use this ability, you cannot do so again until you score a critical hit against a target (in which case you can use fire for effect as a reaction against that target), or you recuperate*.

*Recuperate is my proposed game term to represent when a character spends 1 Resolve Point to regain Stamina Points following a 10-minute rest.

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I have a Patreon. It supports the time I take to do all my blog posts, videos, and other bits of free content. If you’d like to see more game-bending rule options (or more fiction, game industry essays, game design articles, worldbuilding tips, whatever!), try joining for just a few bucks and month and letting me know!

Soldier Feats for Starfinder

Unlike the fantasy RPG it evolved from, which has feats only members of the fighter class can take, Starfinder does not have feats that only Soldiers can take. It does have fighting styles and gear boosts as exclusive class features, but those serve somewhat different roles. As a class that is supposed to be the master of standard combat, it still makes sense that soldiers be able to use their bonus combat feats to pick up specific feats that allow them to perform actions in combat other classes cannot master. Here are some possible examples of soldier combat feats.

[image error] (Illustration by grandfailure)

Soldier Bonus Feats: These feats can only be taken using the soldier’s bonus combat feat class feature. A soldier must meet the feat’s prerequisites, but also cannot take them with feats gained from other sources–only their bonus feats gained from the soldier class.

BRACE (Combat, Soldier Bonus)
You have learned how to set yourself before an attack, trading defense for accuracy.
Prerequisites: Soldier Level 2.
Benefit: At the beginning of your turn, before you take any other actions, you can choose to brace as a move action. You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls, and take a -4 penalty to your EAC and KAC. This penalty does not apply to your AC values against combat maneuvers, and it lasts as long as you are braced and until the beginning of your next turn even if your brace ends. You remain braced until you move, or choose to end your brace as part of any other action (which ends the brace after the action you combine it with).

IMPROVED FIRE SUPPORT (Combat, Soldier Bonus)
You know how to fire for effect.
Prerequisites: Soldier Level 2.
Benefit: You you provide covering fire or harrying fire (including when you do so while using other abilities, such as Suppressive Fire), until the beginning of your next turn the bonuses apply to all attacks against the ally you protect with covering fire or attacks allies make against the foe you penalize with covering fire.
Additionally if you take a full attack, you can use one or both of those attacks to perform covering fire or harrying fire (taking the normal attack penalty for your full attack to the attack roll needed for the covering or harrying fire to be successful).

OVERWATCH (Combat, Soldier Bonus)
You are skilled at attacking when specific circumstances arrive.
Prerequisites: Soldier level 6.
Benefit: You can ready an action to enter overwatch. While in overwatch, until the beginning of your next turn you can make an attack as a reaction to any action by others that you perceive. Your attack always occurs after the triggering action, you you do not need to declare what that circumstance is in advance. If you are knocked down or moved, your overwatch ends.

OVERWATCH MASTERY (Combat, Soldier Bonus)
You are expert at attacking when specific circumstances arrive.
Prerequisites: Overwatch, soldier level 8.
Benefit: When you are in overwatch, you can choose to take a -4 penalty to the first attack you make as part of overwatch. If you do so, you can make a second overwatch attack (also at -4) before the beginning of your next turn.

SKIRMISH (Combat, Soldier Bonus)
You can move up quickly to engage foes in melee and move swiftly from target to target.
Prerequisites: Soldier level 4.
Benefit: When you make a full attack with melee attacks, you can move up to your speed. You can move before or after both attacks, but all your movement must be taken at once, and you cannot move between the attacks. Once you make a melee attack roll against a foe while using Skirmish, until the beginning of your next turn your movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity from that foe.
Special: If you also have Spring Attack, when you use Skirmish you can break up your movement to move before, between, and after the attacks as long as your total movement does not exceed your speed.

WALKING FIRE (Combat, Soldier Bonus)
You can move while laying down heavy fire.
Prerequisites: Soldier level 4.
Benefit: When you make a full attack with ranged attacks, you can move up to your speed. You can move before or after both attacks, but all your movement must be taken at once, and you cannot move between the attacks.
Special: If you also have Shot on the Run, when you use Walking Fire you can break up your movement to move before, between, and after the attacks as long as your total movement does not exceed your speed.

Patreon
I have a Patreon. It supports the time I take to do all my blog posts, but especially longer and more experimental ones like this. If you’d like to see more game-bending rule options (or more fiction, game industry essays, game design articles, worldbuilding tips, whatever!), try joining for just a few bucks and month and letting me know!