A bunch of quotes by Owen K. Stephens about the game. I'm sure some of this is in the original post.
"Heavy weapon have proficiency in longarms as a prerequisite, and longarms and proficiency in small arms as a prerequisite.
Sniper weapons are their own proficiency, with no prerequisite.
There was debate about whether longarms should have a prereq of small arms, and there's no point in rehashing it. This is where we came down on it, for various reasons. And all the existing classes have small arms proficiency, in any case."
"Cybernetics are more than just machine implants: they are complex meldings of technology and the living host’s own organs. This allows them to be hardened against assaults that affect other technologies in ways robots and other entirely technological creatures can’t. Cybernetics are not subject to any effect or attack that targets technology unless it specifies that it affects cybernetics."
"We don't have hard rules describing the design space -- much as there aren't hard rules for what is a simple weapon and what is a martial weapon in Pathfinder.
We DO have some internal design guidelines.
The simple answer is that, at least in core, if it is designed to be fired with one hand it is a small arm. If it is designed to be fired with two hands, it's a longer. If it's designed to be fired with two hands but is hefty enough to have a Strength minimum to use without penalties when holding it (as opposed to putting it on a tripod or something), it's a heavy weapon.
Most machine pistols would thus be small arms, though there aren't any in core (and I suspect a lot of them would have an "unstable" our similar special quality that said if you fired them on automatic without using both hands, you'd take a penalty, but that's an off-the-cuff thought, and come to think of it might well not apply to machine pistol lasers, which I presume have no recoil, though off-gassing or a shockwave from the air at the muzzle being superheated *might* cause some kick).
It turns out the future has a LOT of weapons, and our weapons section of the equipment chapter is already 28 pages long, as opposed to 9 for Pathfinder, so there are things I absolutely foresee entering he game that just aren't there yet."
"Starfinder (currently) has no preparation spell caster. Only spontaneous spellcasters."
"Short form -- no matter how much damage it does, a nonlethal attack can't kill you.
It is not tracked or healed separately. It just isn't, itself, lethal."
"It's not quite that simple, because HP now stop at 0 (there are no negative hit points), and death and dying have a set of rules for them.
But yes, if you are beaten into unconsciousness, or tasered until you collapse, or otherwise suffer so much nonlethal trauma that you pass out, adding a lethal attack to the top of that has a chance of killing you.
If a fighter is KO'd or nearly KO's in a boxing match, and THEN someone shoots him once, he isn't as fresh and able to handle trauma as if he'd never been attacked at all."
Quote:Gilfalas wrote:
Can I also assume that power attack is now gone with the changes to Weapons Specialization?
"Only kinda of. There's a feat, Deadly Aim, which applies to both ranged and melee weapons, but the trade off of accuracy to damage isn't as good as PA."
"If a weapon's base form (before fusions) deals bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage, it targets KAC.
If its base form deals only acid, cold, electricity, fire, or sonic (even if it deals two of those, as plasma weapons do), it targets EAC."
"Critical hits have been changed to a natural 20 is always a critical (no confirmation roll, and no threat ranges beyond 20), and on a critical all damage (yes ALL DAMAGE -- no exceptions) is doubled.
Many weapons also have critical hit effects, the most common being (in no particular oder) burn, corrode, knockdown, deafen, staggered, bleed, and wound. There are a few others.
Different categories of weapons have different % of weapons that have critical hit effects. They're rare for 1-handed simple weapons. They are much more common among energy small arms, longarms, and heavy weapons.
And some magic fusions let you add one."
"Nope. Other than operative weapons allowing you (anyone, without the need for special abilities) to use Dex instead of Strength for melee attack rolls (and only operative weapons, which are all basic melee weapons), I can't think of any ability in the entire game that allows you to change ability score modifiers that are part of any calculation.
Now some classes use different ability scores for specific calculations. For example, resolve is 1/2 your class level plus your key ability score modifier, and different classes have different key ability scores.
But there's nothing that let's you use Int in place of Cha, or Wis in place of Dex, and so on.
The new ability buy scheme and ability advancement system really makes dump stats much less of an issue, and eventually unsmart choices in most cases."
Confirmation of how Resolve is calculated. Some info that was mentioned but I didn't do quotes for: The pregens that were leaked were for the Con. The official ones will probably be different. And in the Core Rulebook every class will have 4 sample builds.
Quote:Torbyne wrote:
They have clarified that flat footed is a condition now with a static penalty. It is a -2 i think. Think of it in terms of nauseated or shaken instead of a complete formula for you to track.
"Correct. You don't have to track your flat-footed AC as it's own number, because being flat-footed is just a condition that applies a flat AC penalty that's the same for everyone, rather than removing a variable value (your Dex bonus) as in Pathfinder. "
"None of the iconics have taken an archetype, since we want them to be iconic examples of their classes. So since Navasi is the iconic envoy, she doesn't stray from the straight envoy choices, and so on. "
