Starfinder Unchained – Skills Piloting
Ok so we’re looking at Piloting, for obvious reasons if you’ve seen my posts about Fighter Planes for the last week or so. I want you to look at the existing Starfinder language for Piloting failure to navigate. They really were thinking about Degree of Success systems here, just nothing for Critical Successes.
Piloting (Dex)
Key Ability Dexterity
Use Untrained Yes
Armor Check Penalty No
Class Skill For Envoy, Mechanic, Operative, Soldier, Technomancer
Captain Actions Orders (gunner, pilot)
Pilot Actions Audacious gambit, fly, full power, maneuver, stunt
You know how to drive vehicles, pilot starships, and navigate.
Fire Starship Guns
When attempting a gunnery check during starship combat, you can use either your ranks in Piloting or your base attack bonus to calculate the attack roll.
Critical Success — well in starship combat you get a random critical effect, this doesn’t need to change, but by adding succeed by 10 or more to critical success you will get more critical hits and the enemy ship will get damaged more frequently. As with anything that affects the action economy attacks on the PC ship will also score criticals more frequently. You might go with a named character rule that faceless minions will only crit on natural 20s.
Success — You hit hooray!
Failure — You miss boo!
Critical Failure — You miss AND
the gun jams, needs an engineering check, gunnery check, profession soldier check to clear the jam
the gun overheats, needs a round to cooldown?
the gun gains the glitching condition
targeting computer offline, requires a computers check to get back online or X turns to reboot.
Navigate
You can use Piloting to navigate or astrogate. This lets you direct your vehicle or ship in your desired heading and to plot longer courses. Plotting a course to a star system you have visited frequently usually requires a successful DC 10 Piloting check and takes 10 minutes. Plotting a course to a less familiar star system is more difficult and requires information about the destination system; navigation is also more difficult if you are currently lost.
Critical Success — You arrive in your intended destination star system:
ahead of time? reroll any 6s on travel time?
without any surprises? reroll or ignore any random encounters in the drift?
Success — You get to your destination is the normal amount of randomly determined time with the normal chances for random encounters in the drift.
Failure —If you fail the check to chart a course between star systems by 9 or less, you realize that you have plotted a faulty course and must attempt the check again before you can make the journey.
Critical Failure — If you fail the check by 10 or more, you aren’t aware that your calculations are erroneous, and it takes longer than normal for you to reach your destination (usually 1d6 additional days for Drift travel). At the GM’s discretion, you might instead arrive in an unfamiliar star system (plotting a course from there to your actual destination usually requires a successful DC 25 Piloting check), or when you arrive at your intended destination, your starship’s engines may have gained the glitching critical damage condition.
Your familiarity with a region of space or a planet determines the DC of Piloting checks to navigate or astrogate. The GM can modify these DCs (usually by 5 to 10) based on the amount of information available about your starting location and destination, and whether the location is particularly difficult to navigate (such as a trackless desert or a strange nebula).
Familiarity | DC |
---|---|
Frequently visited or home base | 10 |
Seldom visited | 15 |
Unfamiliar | 25 |
Pilot a Starship
If you take the pilot role in starship combat, you use your Piloting skill to maneuver, attempt stunts, and otherwise fly the starship.
Critical success
Success
Failure
Critical Failure
Pilot a Vehicle
When piloting a vehicle (see Vehicle Tactical Rules), you attempt Piloting checks to safely race at full speed, pull off maneuvers, engage in vehicular combat, and maneuver in a chase. More advanced vehicles are harder to pilot, so the DCs of most checks for piloting a vehicle increase with the vehicle’s item level.
So if anyone read my earlier post about making very tight turns in fighter planes, they might remember me talking about looking at the heavy gravity rules for clues.
High Gravity (2x+)
On high-gravity worlds, characters are burdened by their increased weight, and their physical abilities are affected accordingly. On a high-gravity world, where the gravity is at least twice as strong as standard gravity, a character (and her gear) weighs twice as much as on a standard-gravity world, but she has the same amount of strength. (Snipped character combat changes) Characters who remain in a high-gravity environment for long periods (more than a day) often become fatigued and remain so until they leave the planet or become accustomed to the gravity.
Extreme Gravity (5x+)
A planet where the gravity is at least five times as strong as standard gravity is extremely dangerous to most creatures. In addition to the limitations of high gravity (see below), a creature in this environment takes an amount of nonlethal bludgeoning damage per round (at least 1d6, but potentially more, depending on the intensity of the gravity). Once a character takes sufficient nonlethal damage to be reduced to 0 Hit Points, any further damage from extreme gravity is lethal bludgeoning damage.
1d6 nonlethal every round you are in a 5g+ turn sounds interesting. G-suits and other devices might shift this beyond 5gs before you start taking damage, or provide some DR against this specific type of damage.
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