This is the second section of Part 22 of a series of articles looking at creating a set of Starfinder feats under specific constraints.  You can read along as we convert every feat in the PF core rulebook to Starfinder (and  share my thoughts on that process, as a developer and writer)— or you can just look at the finished feats (as they are written, and I have time over the holidays to update the list) here.

We’re into the T feats now, near the end, with Trample.

In PF Trample applies to the overrun combat option which anyone can access. Starfinder doesn’t have a generic version of overrun, but we did create some overrun options for Improved Overrun and Greater Overrun. While the game mechanics need total revision, conceptually there’s nothing wrong with running down foes in Starfinder. There is a trample rule in the Universal Creature Rules of the Alien Archive books, but it’s a bit too powerful to put into player’s hands. However, it can serve as the basis for a powerful feat we put at the end of the a relatively rare Starfidner feat chain.

TRAMPLE (Combat)
When riding or driving into combat, you are skilled at knocking foes over.
Prerequisites: Greater Overrun, Improved Overrun, Pilot 8 ranks or Survival 8 ranks.
Benefit: When mounted (if you have at least one rank of Survival) or controlling a vehicle (if you have at least one rank of Pilot), as a full action you can move up to your mount/vehicle’s speed and through the space of any creatures that are at least one size smaller than your mount or vehicle. You not need to make an attack roll; each creature whose space it moves through takes half your mount’s unarmed or natural melee damage or half your vehicle’s ram damage. A target of a trample can attempt a Reflex save (DC 10 +1/2 your ranks in the relevant skill + your Dexterity score) to take no damage, or choose to fall prone to automatically take no damage. If it takes either actions, it can’t make an attack of opportunity against you that is provoked by your movement. A creature can deal trample damage to a given target only once per round.

That brings us to Turn Undead. Like all the other PF things based on clerical channel energy, we’ll base this on the mystic’s healing channel and the Turn Undead feat. Of course at this point, you could build a whole new mystic connection just on gaining healing channel feats…

I have seen more players be annoyed by making undead run away (so you have to hunt them down later, and they aren’t tight;y grouped for area attacks) than cheer that affect, so because I can I am going to make the “turn” part of turn undead more conceptual.

TURN UNDEAD
You can use your healing channel to force undead to turn their attention away from you and all their foes, spending much of their effort guarding their eyes from a light only they can see.
Prerequisites: Harm Undead, healing channel connection power, mystic level 1st.
Benefit: When you use your healing channel to Harm Undead, those undead that fail their saving throw are also flat-footed, off-target, and staggered for a number of rounds equal to the level of the spell you expended to use Harm Undead.

That’s still a huge tactical benefit–indeed, smart undead might CHOOSE to run when they are successfully turned–but given that it requires a use of healing channel, and the highest-level spell lost the character has available, and two feats to perform, I think it’s reasonable.

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This is the third section of Part 21 of a series of articles looking at creating a set of Starfinder feats under specific constraints.  You can read along as we convert every feat in the PF core rulebook to Starfinder (and  share my thoughts on that process, as a developer and writer)— or you can just look at the finished feats (as they are written, and I have time over the holidays to update the list) here.

We’re up to Spell Mastery, which once again references a rules element in PF (preparing spells) that does not exist in Starfinder (where all spellcasters are spontaneous). But it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with something spells related that matches the feel of the feat’s name and is useful for spellcasters.

SPELL MASTERY
Some spells you have learned to use in place of your normal repertoire.
Prerequisites: Spells class feature.
Benefit: For each spell level you can cast as a result of the spells class feature, select one spell from your class spell list that you do not have as a spell known. When you regain your spells per day, you may swap out one of your spells known at each level for a Spell Mastery spell of the same spell level. This lasts until you next regain your spells per day.
Special: You may select this feat more than once. Each time it is selected, you choose another spell for each level of spells you can cast which you can temporarily gain in place of a spell known when you regain your spells per day.

On to Spellbreaker… which is designed to work with the PF rule that if you cast a spell it provokes an attack of opportunity unless you cast it defensively, which is not a thing in Starfinder. But the core idea that your melee attacks make it harder for a creature to cast spells is something we can work with.

SPELLBREAKER (Combat)
You know how to hit spellcasters where it hurts.
Prerequisites: Base attack bonus +5.
Benefit: When you make a melee attack against a creature you may choose to take a -4 penalty to the attack roll to make it a spellbreaker attack. If you attack hits and damages the target, it must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 10 + your key ability modifier +1/2 your base attack bonus) or be unable to cast spells or use spell-like abilities for 1 round.

That attack penalty is enough to ensure characters are unlike to combine this with other difficult attack options (such as a full attack action), and in fact will likely want to use this as part of a team effort to give them enough bonuses to be able to hit (with flanking, Get ‘Em, and similar options taken by other characters in an effort to help), but since no extra resource is used the players are free to try that any time.

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Like all my blog posts, this is brought to you by the wonderful patrons of my Patreon! Want more of this content? Want to suggest specific game systems, topics, of kinds of articles? All of that is only possible if people join my Patreon, help me have the free time to write these things, and let me know what you want to see!

This is section one of Part 21 of a series of articles looking at creating a set of Starfinder feats under specific constraints. The point of these is to offer practical examples of how I approach developing and writing supplemental rules for tabletop RPGs. Rather than just blather on about things as I think of them, I go over issues as I encounter them in a real-world example.

This also represents the Beginning of the End. We should have just two more weeks to go before we’ll have gone through and converted every PF Core Rulebook feat that doesn’t already have a Starfinder version. At which point I’ll have to start doing something else for my Tu-Fri posts. So if you have ideas of what you’d like to see, let me know!

We’ve hit two more shield-related feats — Shield Mastery and Shield Slam. These are more entries in a long line of PF feats designed to make attacks with your shield easier and more effective. In Starfinder, since shield attacks in melee use your unarmed attack rules, they are already as effective as any unarmed attack you have (potentially more so, since they are not archaic and may have fusions added to them).

So we need to make the Starfinder versions of both to appeal to characters who want to have more useful shield options in combat, but we can’t increase the actual effectiveness of shield attacks in terms of accuracy or damage (or we risk breaking the game’s combat math). Luckily, there is more to combat than just how well or hard you hit. We can break these up so you take take either on its own, depending on what aspect of shields you wish to improve. We probably *could* get away with not having Shield Focus as a prerequisite to Shield Mastery, but it just feels weird to me for a character to mastery something without having focused on it, and beyond proficiency with shields its the only prerequisite we;re suing, so I’m fine with adding it.

SHIELD MASTERY (Combat)
You and your shield are as one.
Prerequisites: Proficiency with shields, Shield Focus.
Benefit: You reduce the armor check penalty of a shield by 2 (though this can never turn into a bonus). You reduce the bulk of one shield you are carrying or wielding by 2, to a minimum of light bulk.

SHIELD SLAM (Combat)
You are skilled at hitting things with your shield when the opportunity arises.
Prerequisites: Proficiency with shields.
Benefit: When wielding a shield that allows you to make unarmed attacks with it, you can take one attack of opportunity each round to attack with your shield, without expending your reaction. You cannot do this if for any reason you could not have made an attack of opportunity even if you had had a reaction available to do so.

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Like all my blog posts, this is brought to you by the wonderful patrons of my Patreon! Want more of this content? Want to suggest specific game systems, topics, of kinds of articles? All of that is only possible if people join my Patreon, help me have the free time to write these things, and let me know what you want to see!

This is the fourth section of Part Twenty of a series of articles looking at creating a set of Starfinder feats under specific constraints.  You can read along as we convert every feat in the PF core rulebook to Starfinder (and  share my thoughts on that process, as a developer and writer)— or you can just look at the finished feats (as they are written) here.

We’re well into the S feats, with Selective Channel, which requires us to examine one of the consistent differences between PF and Starfinder.

So in PF, when a cleric channels energy, they affect all creatures within range. This can set you up to heal your enemies, which is both both bad tactics and awkward to explain later at Thanksgiving dinner. The Selective Channel feat allows you to choose who you affect, so you can channel to heal allies and skip affecting foes, which is extremely useful.

However our closest analogue to channel energy in Starfinder is the healing channel ability of the mystic’s healer connection… and it already just affects your allies. Man, sometimes it’s like the designers of Starfinder decided to specifically simplify the game and make some of the most popular and common options baked-in to class design. ([MorganFreeman]”They did.”[/MorganFreeman]).

So that use of Selective Channel is out.

Luckily “selective” is a pretty broad term, so all we need is to create a new option for healing channel that involves someone making a choice of some kind.

SELECTIVE CHANNEL
Your allies can help fuel your healing powers.
Prerequisites: Healing channel class feature.
Benefit: When you use your healing channel ability, every ally you heal can choose to donate a Resolve Point to the effort. This decision is made in secret by each ally, then all revealed at once. For every ally that expends a Resolve Point, each healed all may choose to gain an additional 3 Hit Points per mystic level you possess, or 2 Stamina Points per healer level you possess.

That brings us to Self-Sufficient and, yeah, it’s another +2 to two skills feat we need to totally redesign. We can still apply the benefits to Medicine and Survival, but we need to take some liberties to make it a feat a player would consider taking.

SELF-SUFFICIENT
You are an expert at looking out for yourself.
Benefit: When you make a Medicine check with yourself as the only target, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus to your result. Additionally, anytime you spent Resolve Points to stay in the fight, you may make a Medicine check on yourself for first aid, treat deadly wounds, treat disease, or treat poison without taking an additional action to do so. Additionally, if you make a Survival check with yourself as the only target to endure severe weather or live off the land, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus to your result.

PATREON
This series of posts about my specific game writing and development process (along with concrete examples and Starfinder feats) is — like all my blog posts — is only possible if people join my Patreon, help me have the free time to write these things, and let me know what you want to see!

This is the third section of Part Twenty of a series of articles looking at creating a set of Starfinder feats under specific constraints.  You can read along as we convert every feat in the PF core rulebook to Starfinder (and  share my thoughts on that process, as a developer and writer)— or you can just look at the finished feats (as they are written) here.

We are now at Ride-By Attack and Run. Ride-by Attack as written mostly isn’t needed in Starfinder (assuming you are using the creature companion rules in AA3), because when you ride a mount you gain its movement, which means Spring Attack works with your mounted speed. However, since there are companion riding rules, we can work with them to give some kind of mounted combat bonus.

This begins to push past the number of prerequisites I prefer to have on Starfiner feats given how rarer long prerequisite chains are, but since this is designed to directly work with Spring Attack, we have to list that feat and all its prerequisites.

RIDE-BY ATTACK (Combat)
You and your mount have mastered hit-and-run tactics.
Prerequisites: Dex 15, creature companion, Mobility, Spring Attack, base attack bonus +4.
Benefit: Any round you are riding your companion and make a melee attack, if your companion has only taken one action, it may additionally make a move action.

Run doesn’t do much by Starfinder standards, but we can read the Starfinder rules on running to see if we can punch it up a bit.

RUN
You are able to run quickly and under adverse conditions.
Benefit: When you run as a full action, you can move up to five times your speed in a straight line. You do not gain the flat-footed condition as a result of running, and you can run even if you must cross difficult terrain or can’t see where you’re going. You can run for a number of rounds equal to double your Constitution score.

PATREON
This series of posts about my specific game writing and development process (along with concrete examples and Starfinder feats) is — like all my blog posts — is only possible if people join my Patreon, help me have the free time to write these things, and let me know what you want to see!