Zero Prime

I'll admit it feels nicer to have a physical die in your hand, and if it fails, throw it across the room. Or put it in time out in an ice cube tray in the freezer.

Vitharyan Vanishka, Suskillon Defense Force, Cpl, 5th Battalion HIT POINTS: 12 | CURRENT: 12 | STAMINA: 7 | CURRENT: 7 | RESOLVE: 4 | CURRENT: 4 KAC: 15 | EAC: 14 | CMAC: 23 | FORTITUDE: +1 | REFLEX: +5 | WILL: +2 INITIATIVE: +4 | PASSIVE PERCEPTION: 18 | PASSIVE SENSE MOTIVE: 11 Sitting in the briefing room, Vitharyan couldn't help but think back to the Battle of the Stone Sea, six months seemed like a life time when you reflected on it. The 5th had fought like brush stalkers when the Swarm had first punched through their defenses, and he had thought that's what he wanted, a life of action, of service, something away from the plankton farms of Drachovya, and here he was almost missing them. Those were simpler times, shirking his chores, grabbing a rifle and riding out with Chisk'isk popping dart weasels from the back of their enercycles at 100 yards. He nodded his large head, a toothy grin as he remembered those times, but then reality came rushing back, the Stone Sea, pumice rock floating on it's surface as the Swarm vexxers, their components having landed in the lake itself, rising from the water, and demolishing the ground defenses, including his childhood friend. He snarled as he pushed the losses down beneath an iron will, he was a soldier, this was Suskillon, his home, and he'd fight like hell to make sure they pushed the Swarm back to whatever corner of the Vast they came from. His request for the status of outlying communities had been denied, there weren't casualty, or evacuation lists that they were willing to make public yet, thankfully he'd seen Gustav around camp, and knew he'd been assigned S-2. They'd trained at Gallant together, and he thought that he might be able to get him to lose a report for old times sake. He craned his neck, scanning the gathered soldiers, some experienced, some civilian barely through the accelerated basic training meant to replace the 5th's losses, some looked nervous, some seemed to think this pull back meant that the swarm were preparing for a full withdraw. To him, it felt like the tide pulling back before a tsunami leveled the coast, however, he knew that the Major had called the briefing for a reason, so he tried to dig through the intel he'd gathered on the 5th command structure, to see if he could recall Jaldamarrak's service record. Profession (Soldier) 1d20+5=16+5=21 (As a Career Trooper, the DC of the Check is reduced by 5, so my 21 should be enough to get a total of DC 26)

Ahhh, wasn't sure the if the board had a built in dice roller format. Gotcha, will have a post up later on tonight.

Quick question, as someone new to this forum how are dice rolls formatted and included in a post?

That's fair, I am just used to keep all the in character stuff, including vignettes in the IC thread, for ease of reference. Should I respond here as well? I can see Vith responding about his night with a blue scaled Vesk and showing Doc & Ra'astar a real Suskillon breakfast, rather than an SDF meal comprised of R2E's, paper thin algae based bacon, and over salted egg by-product.

Hey my dudes, opening vignettes are cool and all, but shouldn't they go in the IC channel *after* @haldir opens it for RP? I posted my characters thoughts and opinions on his squad mates in the hopes ya'll would do the same, so we could start to see those relationship form within the unit. But we swerved into straight RP that will get lost once we start in the proper thread. So I'm just confused as to where I should be posting.

Alright, PC relations in Vitharyan's own words ... Gustav Bach? Yeah, I know him, we came up together at Fort Gallant together, infiltration, surveillance, and counter intelligence. Other trainees pegged him for a transfer from a non-comm unit, Field Sanitation, but he made the transfer to S2 with the rest of us. Scored reasonably well, but ended up on a desk in Threat Analysis, shame, I thought he'd make a good field operative given a chance. Real disciplined though, that one, by the book, could quote regulations and subsections to you all day, me? I prefer to get things done. Either way, he's got SDF tags, so he's my brother, hope he got out before the Swarm overran his office. Ratticus Maus, isn't that the ysoki with the infosphere blog? Think my mother dealt with him just before I enlisted, something about an antennae on the emitter array for Drachovya's planetary relay. He fixed it, efficient enough, but he insisted on streaming the whole thing, I think she called him arrogant and self entitled, something that I tend to agree with. However, he does good work, the relay was still running up until the incursion. So if he's volunteered with the SDF and been assigned to our unit, I have to trust the brass have something specific in mind. I just hope he can keep his head down and doesn't get anyone killed for his own ego. Ra'astar Komas Ta-Naton, a kashathan pilgram who ended up on Suskillon. I've never been one for religion, or mysticism, but what I have seen him do with his solar connection is pretty impressive. He's respectful to the people around him and people listen to him, it's useful to have someone that other's look to, it prevents them from looking at, or for, me. Regardless of his introspective, philosophic leanings, he volunteered with the SDF, aiding Suskillon in her time of need, and that, in, and of itself, is worthy of respect. Doc Oward? The Telia are hard to read, having lived for centuries, with all the life knowledge and experience that would go with that. I do know he came to Suskillon with a medical relief program, helping some Shirren pilgrams with some sort of parasitic fungus that affected their chitin. Now he was stationed in the north on the shores of the Stone Sea, so six months ago when the Swarm pushed through the SDF's orbital defenses, the medical staff needed to be evacuated. So they sent me and my Squad in, the vexxers hit them hard though, and we could only get Oward out, more than half my squad, and about 90% of his staff went down to the Vexxers. However, despite the loss of his colleagues, he patched me and my boys up, and we were able to get out of there when so many others weren't able to. I owe him for that, and it's a debt I don't intend to take lightly. I took some liberties in establishing ties, trying to make it feel organic, peruse the entries, let me know if I missed anything, or ended up mis-characterizing your character, and I can change modify or edit as required. I am just excited to be able to play soon!

Hey, do question while the IC thread gets sorted. Do folks want to start off knowing one another?

Yeah, depending on my character I usually have three to six kits on me at any given time. I believe Vith carries an Engineering Kit, Hacking Kit, Thieves Tool, and Navigator's Tools. Once I get more funds, I'll likely add some kits from the Armory.

@ferret Yes, you're right 8(Class)+1(Int)+1(Racial)=10 SR's with a bonus rank in Culture & Sense Motive due to Operative (Detective) @Dilvish the Deliverer Looks great! Personally, I'd go 12 Con for the additional Stamina point, and Fort save. That's preference though, nothing major. What you should keep in mind is leveraging your four arms. Riot Shield (for AC), Solar Weapon and Singing Disk, still with a free hand. Don't forget a Called Fusion for the disk when funds permit, might even go Tactical Pike for reach with your upper two arms as situation requires. Looks like the unit is coming together though. Love it.

Should do a Mythweavers sheet to keep it all sorted for you, your skills are a little ambiguous to read through, not knowing how many ranks, stat mod, operative edge value, etc, but as far as I can tell, you've shorted yourself a skill rank. You get 8 SR's per level, plus a free SR in Culture & Sense Motive from your Detective Specialization, AND, an additional SR per level from Human, since you can't have more SR's in a given skill than your current level, you should have 11 skills listed. Your Tactical Baton should be +3 to hit, it is an Operative Weapon, so you can use Dex to attack with it. Now, a final thing to remember in Starfinder there is no dominant hand, nor any dual weilding rules, as such given the opportunity *always* have your pistol & baton drawn, that way you threaten squares around you and can take AoO's with the Baton, even though you have a ranged Weapon equipped. Also means we can potentially provide flanking for our Solarian, and further up their accuracy, especially when we get Debilitating Trick at 4th and can impose Flat Footed on a target for everyone. Also, love the picture. Bad broccoli.

First off, I love the image that's coming to my head, Detective with Toughness brings me to the classic TV detective, Columbo. Now, as far as Trooper is concerned, it gives you a +1 to Con, and a +1 to Piloting, neither of which you're really leveraging. Now, I started to take a look at other themes, and Law Officer adds to Wisdom and an untyped bonus to Sense Motive, which you use for Trick Attack. Otherwise theme looks fine. I love Toughness and Mobility, you could pick up Weapon Focus at 3rd. As for stats, remember at 5th you increase FOUR stats. If the stat is 16 or lower it increases by 2. So if you pumped to 18 at 1st level, at 5th it'd go to 19, and no appreciable benefit. Starting at 16, it bumps to 18, and you get those two extra points in Con or something that would up your survivability. If you went with Law Officer, you could call it Military Police, or it could have been your civilian job before enlisting at the start of the invasion. You could start with 16 Dex, 12 Con, and 14 Wisdom, your Sense Motive would be +10, and +14 for Trick Attack, so on a 7 or better you'll catch any CR1 target flat footed, so your Weapon Focus could wait until 3rd. Check 5th level feats for any that require a 13 stat. Technomatic Dabbler requires 13 Int, so you could start at 11, at 5th up it to 13 and grab the feat for a 1 a day +4d6 supercharged trick attack. Heh. Ultimately I'm just spit balling, looks like you have the basics down. Let me know if you want to talk gear, you could message me on Discord if you like. Zero Prime#5907.

If you want I would be glad to help you figure out an Operative, is there any specific specialization you were interested in? Essentially, as in many other games, Dexterity is your go to stat, I would pump it to 16, assuming +2 from Human, and 4 of 10 points, that leaves you 6 points to spread around your other stats, plus you will get 1 to your Consistitution from Career Trooper. Assuming you go ranged & operative weapons, you could logically keep Strength at 10, and only suffer a decreased load limit, that's tolerable. I'd probably drop a point into Con to round it out to 12, for the additional stamina, fort save, and such. Operatives are ridiculously skilled, getting 8 SR's per level, PLUS, their two speciality skills (Acrobatics & Stealth for Ghost, as an example) get ranks equal to your Operative level. So there's no real reason to buff Intelligence for SR's, unless it fits your specilization (Gadgeteer & Hacker off the top of my head). Specialization Spy would mean you want to concentrate on Charisma, for Bluff, otherwise I'd look at Wisdom for Sense Motive & Perception. Remember each specialization has two associated skills, they *each* get Skill Focus, Ghost gets (Acro & Stealth), Spy gets (Bluff & Disguise) etc, so assuming a stat of 14 to 16, at 1st level you are around +9 or +10 before you add gear, racial skill mods, or theme skill mods. However, to land trick attack you need to roll d20+Skill Mod+4 vs a DC equal to 20+target's CR, to actually make that creature a) flat footed to your attack and b) to get the addt'l damage. As a Human you'll get two feats at 1st level. Doing a Trick Attack is a full round action, it allows you to move & attack (plus roll your associated skill to perform the trick attack), ut you can't take swift actions in that turn, so even Quick Draw prevents you from using Trick Attack. Accuracy bonuses are hard to come buy in Starfinder, so I typically go with Weapon Focus (Small Arms), pick up a Laser Pistol, lower damage but it targets EAC which is usally a point or two lower, so more accurate in the long run. Second one is personal choice, but with all an Operative's skills, you won't need to expand on your list, so you could go right to something like Mobility, or even Improved Initiative (yes, it stacks with Operative's Edge, something I wasn't aware of until yesterday!) All of the above is just *my* opinion, and take it with a grain of salt, but I do know the system and am glad to help.

I agree, let's play it out with the classes we have, and if someone dies, well, it's a war themed campaign anyways. Heh. We have a Mystic, so I can't even say "First one to die rolls the Cleric!"

Thing is the classes in SF are pretty fluid, even 'casters' are 3/4 BaB, so my original Technomancer sniper concept swerved into an old concept, the Vesk Ghost Operative, I never got the chance to play, so I apologize if that threw you for a loop. At the point I posted, I still saw a gap as nobody had spoken about Operative yet. However, given the choice between welcoming a new player, or dusting off a concept I have't played yet, I'll take the new player everytime. So if you want to play an Operative, I can come up with a new concept quick as that.

Solarians are my jam! My suggestion, go Str>Cha, drop your Dex to 10 and accept that ranged isn't your thing, pick up Heavy Armor. Grab a lvl 1 apocalypse shard (150 credits), slap a soulfire fusion on it (120 credits), so now you, assuming 16 strength, are +4 to hit KAC, and do 1d6 (solarweapon) +1 (apocalypse shard) +3 (strength) + 2 (soulfire fusion for + Cha-mod) + 1 (Photon attunement). 1d6+7 at 1st level is pretty significant. Or go human and grab Hvy Armor & Wpn Focus, heh. Also, don't forget, as of COM, Solarians are trained in shields, so that can help alleviate AC issues until 5th, when you can bump it to 12.

That is great! Because, more and more, I can hear Vith's voice in my head responding to some social situations: "This is an SDF operation, if you don't like it, take it up with the Swarm!" Also, I can see me aiding your Intimidation check. @Dilvish the Deliverer: "See that Vesk over there?" Pause. "Oh you wouldn't, until he had his knife at your throat." @Zero Prime Decloaks behind Intimidation target. Getting stoked for this game.

Sorry, I think I am confusing things, let's take a look at the unit so far; @Kangaroorex Ysoki Mechanic @Dilvish the Deliverer Drow Soldier @Corsair Telia Mystic Medic @ferret Human Operative So, Mechanic has our engineering down, for sure, giving us the ability to fix and repair our gear, vehicles and starships, as well as bypass mechanical locks. Includes the ability to disarm explosive traps. Drow Soldier (I play a drow in another game, buy Light Vision Shades asap, Light Blindness is no joke!), given a drow's stats, I am going to assume that he's going to be a dex soldier, so that gives us decent ranged attacks, heavy weapons, but could go with armor storm for some power armor, iron man style switch hitting at 5th. Mystic Medic has our Mysticism (fusions!) down, likely some sense motive, and hopefully perception to leverage some high wisdom. And finally two Operatives, with Vith being a switch hitter, melee & pistol, so a ton of other skills. Given the Operatives Dex, I am going to assume one, or both of us, will be good enough pilot/driver to carry that role in starship combat. Really, the only area we suffer is in the social skills, lack of Diplomacy, Bluff or Intimidate might bite us in the butt, however, being a military game we may not be the most social people. Leaving PR to those who have the inclination for it, we're just here to kick broccoli and chew bubble gum and we're all out of bubble gum. Or, I could make a Solarian, as a Charisma secondary class, it can easily work at Diplomacy, to give us a team face, plus it would give us a decent melee combatant at the same time.

Absolutely, I threw Vitharyan together in a couple hours. I can't promise that the character wouldn't change, personality, even race if I switched out his class, bit yeah I just want a cohesive unit. The shirren are community oriented, and non confrontational, but you need to remember they fought for that individuality for generations before they escaped the Swarm. They, more than anyone on Suskillon, would know the consequences of failure, reduced to mindless drones in service to an unknowable enemy. It's a cool hook, problem is I hate the shirren aesthetic, so that's a no go for me. Problem is, a proper session zero around a table we'd hanger out a squad over beer and pretzels. Online, we're all like, I'll play what the party needs. So if you want to go Operative, I don't see a solid tank, I'll make a big old Soldier.

Figured I'd mention it, a SF Operative doesn't play like a rogue, they aren't top damage dealers, their trick attack is only usable as a full round action which means, one attack per turn. So it's deceptive, because soldiers and solarians are rocking out two and three attacks at higher levels. So an Operative is a highly skilled, support class, throwing debuffs on targets, like Flat Footed, or Off Target, opening the opponent for a heavy hitter to lay out. That being said, it is a military game, some overlap will likely happen, and two Operatives could be effective if their builds complimented one another. But it wouldn't hurt to discuss unit composition to ensure we have specific bases covered, ranged, heavy weapons, demolitions, melee, that way we can plan for it in our builds and come up with squad tactics. Like Vitharyan will likely carry smoke grenades to cover a retreat, or set up ambushes. Stuff to think about, for sure. And as an FYI, Syskillon has a *large* population of Shirren, and that races lore with the Swarm might be interesting to see.

Vitharyan Vanishka, Suskillon Defense Force, Cpl, 5th Battalion HIT POINTS: 12 | CURRENT: 12 | STAMINA: 7 | CURRENT: 7 | RESOLVE: 4 | CURRENT: 4 KAC: 15 | EAC: 14 | CMAC: 23 | FORTITUDE: +1 | REFLEX: +5 | WILL: +2 INITIATIVE: +4 | PASSIVE PERCEPTION: 18 | PASSIVE SENSE MOTIVE: 11 BACKGROUND: Drachovya is a small Vesk community in Alappu Major, about a day south of Suskillon's capital, Brinnoa, the small farming community was founded 293 AG, by Veskarium soldiers. The founders wanted to escape the relentless imperialism of the Veskarium, but given the hostility the Pact showed towards the Vesk for actions taken during the war, decided to settle in Near Space seperate from both the Pact and their former imperium. Vitharyan was born the following year, his father, Vorenvad was a retired member of the Apothecarium, a skilled doctor, and trauma surgeon, while his mother, Ulyana, was a retired Imperium Guard, turned engineer. The young vesk grew to adulthood learning of his duties and responsibilities to the community, however, he yearned for something more, he often travelled into Brinnoa with his father, get supplies for the algae production systems. It was there that he met, Chisk'isk, a shirren youth, he discovered that the Shirren lived in a community about three hours from Drachovya, and so the two would often go on wilderness trips with one another, enercycling through the wooded trails, camping, and hunting together. Suskillon, an independent world, required it's citizens to enlist in the planetary defense force for a minimum of four years, to ensure the protection of the planet, and the security of it's inter-system trade routes. After graduating from their respective prepatory schools, the two enlisted in the SDF together, and during their four year term, they earned their academic credits so they could enter the private sector upon the termination of their mandatory service. However, six months ago, an unknown force moved into Suskillon's system space, the Swarm had arrived. Chisk'isk and Vitharyan were assigned to the 5th Battalion, however, the shirren was assigned to an armored division, while Vitharyan was Special Forces and Recon, so he managed to survive the 5th Battalion's first contact with the Swarm, unfortunately the armored division was wiped out in the Battle of the Stone Sea. Having lost his closest childhood friend, the large Vesk is angry, at himself for being unable to save Chisk'isk, or contriute, meaningfully, at that first engagement with the vexxers. He's vowed, to himself, that he will do everything he can possibly do to ensure that the Swarm are driven from Suskillon. He feels personally responsibly for his friends, large, extended community, as his friends family, and the Shirren, in general, accepted the Vesk with open arms sharing their language, their culture, and their history with him.

I'm not sure what the group composition is, but having played through about 1/4 of the 1st book, I would *highly* suggest we have some way of mitigating HP damage. Stamina is fairly easy to replenish if we have the time & resolve to do so, which won't always be the case. An Envoy or Mystic, even if of a more martial connection, would be useful. I noted a couple mentions of mechanic, and as a high Intelligence class with Medicine as a trained skill, they could conceivably keep us going with Treat Deadly Wounds, but I would suggest we stock up on Healing Serums where possible. I've reconsidered my initial proposal, as I typically jump into either the Soldier or Solarian class, which are, by far my favorites. However, I am thinking of playing a technomancer, to bring some damage to the crew and help the mechanic with computer & engineering skill checks. I'm thinking of going with the Prisoner theme, a guy who was offered a position in the SDF, or to be left in his cell while the Swarm attacked.

I saw this and registered just to apply, I would love to participate as Starfinder is a game I really enjoy, and Attack of the Swarm is my favorite AP, I love the Aliens, Starship Troopers, and Band of Brother's vibe it can throw off. I would likely be playing some sort of soldier or operative, just to be a grunt, and hopefully you would allow us to play as Suskillon natives, I find it adds so much to the character to actually care about the innocents on planet, or be looking for their family and friends among the refugees and evacuees. Are we open to the class options from the Character Operations manual? I'd be sticking to a core race, either android, human or vesk in any case. Let me know and I will get something statted up!