Starfinder Second Edition Playtest: Introducing "Encore"

Like many young vesk, he was trained in the ways of the warrior, but his family also insisted on lessons in a smattering of the arts to instill a bit of culture in him as well.  In one of his first real battles, he died  a painful but glorious death, chanting passages from epic poems until his very last breath. As his life ebbed away, he heard a exquisitely beautiful voice calling to him to return, because he was not yet done making art to please the gods. He awoke as a borai, alone on the battlefield, with a talisman of the sibling-gods Zon-Shelyn clutched in his hand. He made his way home, but like most borai, found that his loved ones had difficulty accepting his new living dead status. The resurrected vesk embraced that pain, vowing to prove himself worthy to be welcomed back into his family, just as his new patron gods had been eventually reunited after a long separation.

Until that time comes, he has set aside his past, refusing to speak his old name or those of his family.  Instead, he has adopted the name "Encore," because he sees this new life as a borai as exactly that--one last chance to be remembered and applauded before the curtain goes down on him for the final time. 

Encore has a pronounced fatalistic streak, but has no desire to die until his last song is finished. He embraces pain as a teacher who helps him appreciate the beauty of life all the more for its fragility. In combat, he is constantly moving and whirling like a dancer, creating macabre art with his painglaive as he fights. He rarely intends to be cruel. Instead, he simply treats battle as an artform--a fusion of pain and beauty, life and death--and one that the artists most beloved by the gods will survive to create anew time after time.

This borai's hide is a sickly gray, with the scars of his mortal wounds still visible in places. Some of these scars cross the lines of spikes along his jaw and skull, leaving broken gaps in his "beard." The only real effort Encore makes to soften his disturbing appearance is to wear sunshades to hide his dimly glowing red eyes--until he decides that he truly wants to terrify someone.

Encore is a player character created for the Starfinder Second Edition Playtest. He was originally created at 1st level in order to play Playtest Scenario #1. I have since created a 10th-level version which I used for Playtest Scenario #3, and also plan to play that version of him in Empires Devoured, a higher-level playtest module which starts at 10th level. I may post that advanced stat block once we begin that adventure.

ENCORE (Borai Vesk, Disciple, Soldier 1)

(Medium; borai, humanoid, undead, vesk)

Perception +2; darkvision, low-light vision

Skills Acrobatics +4, Athletics +5, Crafting +3, Intimidation +5, Lore (Zon-Shelyn) +3, Performance +5

Str +2, Dex +1, Con +4, Int +0, Wis -1, Cha +2

Items painglaive, stellar cannon (2 magazines of 8), freebooter armor, climbing kit, comm unit, commercial cable line (50 feet), commercial sunshades, data chip (Zon-Shelyn text), holy talisman (Zon-Shelyn), hygiene kit, ordinary container, credstick (6 credits)

AC 18; Fort +9, Ref +4, Will +4

HP 24

Speed 20 feet

Melee [1 action] painglaive +5 (powered, reach, tech), Damage 1d10+2 slashing

Melee [1 action] first +1 (agile, finesse, nonlethal, unarmed), Damage 1d4+2 bludgeoning

Ranged [Area Fire, 2 actions] stellar cannon +5 (analog, area [burst 10 feet, DC 17], unwieldy, range increment 50 feet), Damage 1d10 piercing

Baleful Glare [1 action] (borai, concentrate, emotion, fear, mental, visual) A target within 30 feet must make a Will save or be frightened 1 (or 2 on a critical failure). The target is then immune for 24 hours.

Punitive Strike [reaction] Trigger A creature within reach use a manipulate action, ranged Strike, or move action, or leaves a square during a move action; Effect Make a melee Strike against the triggering creature. On a hit, the creature is also suppressed. If the triggering action was a move, it is disrupted.

Whirling Swipe [2 actions] (soldier) A two-handed weapon gains the area (burst) trait with a radius of 5 feet (or the weapon's reach) and unwieldy until the end of Encore's turn. Encore is excluded from the burst, which is centered on one corner of his square. Damage is the same as a melee Strike with that weapon, with a basic Reflex save (DC 17).

Other Class Features close quarters fighting style, primary target, suppressing fire, walking armory

Skill Feats Holy Talisman

Scoured Stars AP: Part 5

 Spoiler Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Scoured Stars Adventure Path. 

See the Scoured Stars Adventure Path: Index page for links to all of my campaign journal blog posts for this AP.

Part 5: Reclaiming the Time-Lost Tear

We played Part 5 over two sessions due to time constraints.

Session 1

Last time, our heroes followed a lead in search of one of several relics originating from the Scoured Stars system. This relic matched the description of one that First Seeker Jadnura, leader of the ill-fated expedition to that system, had used to penetrate the energy shield around those stars. They discovered the izalguun, who had fled that system to be free of a tyrannical god. They had received the relic, but spurning all "godtouched" gifts, had sent it to a secret repository on the moon of another planet in the same system as their new home of Izalraan

The izalguun elder Naarma gave the Starfinder Society permission to attempt to retrieve the relic, and provided directions to the silo where it should be located. The PCs were chosen to go back to the Izal system to retrieve it.

Reaching the moon was routine, but while the Starfinders traveled from the nearest safe landing site to the silo, they were attacked by two faudius demons. These small, cyborg-like fiends had been sent by their mysterious masters to locate the site, but had chosen not to enter after detecting radiation within. They ambushed the PCs to try to prevent them from entering. This proved to be a challenging fight due to their demonic defenses and potent body lasers. 

[The demons had the PCs outgunned, literally, in both accuracy and damage, especially when they opened with a supercharge weapon ability. I ended up ignoring their DR 5/magical, to give the PCs a better chance of survival, because the demons' immunities and resistances made them difficult to damage with energy weapons, and their SR was a challenge for the technomancer.]

After defeating the demons, the PCs spent some time resting before continuing on to the silo. Inside the silo, the found a catwalk which had once been connected to an inner airlock by a bridge, now missing. Below was a long drop into thick smog. This was no obstacle to the PCs, who included two hanakans and an ikeshti with climb speeds, and a maraquoi with a jetpack (loot from their last mission). However, the door was trapped with turret guns, which the team quickly disabled, but not without some injuries.

When they opened the airlock, their radiation badges immediately pinged, as radiation inside the complex poured out into the silo. Gambit and Zzyssa resisted the initial exposure, but Sasha and Sssami were weakened by radiation poisoning. 

They explored the upper level of the repository. The first room of interest contained a sort of nest with shed feathers and skin that they determined contained izalguun DNA, but mutated somehow. Nearby their found the skeleton of a dead izalguun, wearing a strange visor that combined a motion detector with an x-ray scanner.

The next room was a research lab that had been deliberately wrecked. They managed to repair the mainframe, restoring power, but before they could hack into the files, they were interrupted by three defender robots entering the room. Thanks to a comprehend languages spell, they PCs were able to understand the machines' demands to present themselves for scanning. One of them recalled the DNA samples from the nest, which they had collected, and presented those. When that worked, the other three quickly did the same, after which the robots ignored them. [This avoided the fight entirely, and we broke for the night there.]

Session 2

The PCs hacked the mainframe, unlocking the complex's interior doors and turning on the lights. They also found the logs of a mated pair of izalguun who had been caretakers of this place. They found entries about the arrival of the relic, which gave off radiation that caused the caretakers' bodies to mutate and their minds to become more animalistic. The male managed to produce a cure, but before he could use it, his now-paranoid mate killed him and retreated to the lower level to prepare for the birth of their children. (All four PCs made their periodic saves vs. radiation poisoning during this time, so none suffered any worse effects.)

The most obvious passage to the lower level had collapsed since then, so the PCs had to make their way through a chamber with conveyor belts going down to a factory floor obscured by smoke. Their ability to climb or fly made this descent trivial, bypassing one trap without even knowing it and easily deactivating another hazard (pistons on the factory floor) without risk. 

[The first trap was a chute to a trash compactor, which afterwards would have deposited its victims at the bottom of the silo they had entered through--where a scavenger slime would have attacked them before any survivors of the trap could have treated their wounds. Because they did not search the conveyor belt, they did not find the discarded mutation cure, which eliminated the possibility of saving the mutants in the lower level. But I was just as happy not having to run two nasty encounters back-to-back, which could have easily brought the adventure to an abrupt, bloody end.]

The remainder of the lower level was flooded, and mostly consisted of a large chamber that had become a swamp-like pool, still dark due to smashed light fixtures. At the far end, a dim glow could be seen coming from a tear-shaped metal device--the relic the PCs sought! The made their way along the walls to avoid the water and the slimy catwalks that lined part of the room. Their presence was promptly detected by  three mutant, batrachian izalguun hiding in the pool, who attacked when the intruders approached the Tear. 

This was also a tough fight, because the mutants had an easy time hitting them with their tongue lash attack, and hit hard. Sasha was hit by adhesive spittle, and spent the rest of the combat entangled. The party soon worked out that their foes' spitting range was very limited, so mostly stayed out of range. However, Zzyssa (the vanguard) is much more effective in melee combat, so descended to engage one. She was soon grabbed by a tongue and knocked unconscious by two of the izalguun ganging up on the only target they could reach. One of the other PCs managed to deliver some healing to get her back in the fight (with more than the 1 HP she would have had if she had needed to spend a Resolve Point to do the same thing). As the second izalguun was being taken out, Sasha decided to fly down to the Tear to try to stuff it into a null-space chamber the team had found on the upper level. She was foiled momentarily by the relic being adhered to the floor with spittle, but she did get the last mutant's attention! Fortunately, Gambit and Zzyssa intercepted it, keeping it off Sasha while she cut the Tear loose with her laser, and the pair soon ended the fight. 

[I forgot to compare this adventure's stat blocks to the original scenario before running it. Fortunately, there were none of the "wrong subtier" issues from earlier parts of this AP. In the original scenario, the four-player adjustments would have removed one defense robot and one mutant izalguun.]

As the fight ended and the PCs began to search the room for other loot, a strange cloud with a glowing gold triangle at its center appeared for just a moment. [This is a mystery that will be explained later in the AP.] 

While the team collected anything of value from both levels, I asked them to make one last radiation save. Gambit and Zzyssa began to succumb to the radiation, and Sasha's condition deteriorated, as she began to sprout feathers and act more like a bird.  

The Starfinders returned to their ship, reported to Naarma on her species' new homeworld, then returned to Absalom Station with the Tear to report to First Seeker Luwazi Elsebo. They received treatment for their emerging mutations. 

[Sasha had reached the spliced condition stage of the magic radiation. Mental checks become harder at this point, but fortunately no more skill checks were required to finish the adventure. Sasha's player was given the choice of mammalian, avian, or batrachian traits, and chose avian because her hanakan allies' native language, Akan, uses moments of their arm and tail feathers. The team uses Akan as their "secret" language to communicate amongst themselves, despite two of them having atrocious "accents." After the adventure, Sasha wanted to keep the feathers so she would be more fluent. I've decided to allow it as a touch of cosmetic color with an interesting story behind it.]

The PCs were all interested in being part of the efforts to research the Tear. The Starfinder Society learned a few of the Tear's uses:

• A person could use the Tear to learn one language of any of the eight peoples to whom a Tear was sent. But they can only do this once each. (So far, they have only met the izalguun. Because the made friendly contact with that species, I am letting the PCs to also have access to the language through the Culture skill, if they choose.)
• A person could put an imprint of themselves into the device. Once per year, the Tear can be petitioned to return one creature with a stored imprint to life (as raise dead). 

Next time: Our heroes will join Luwazi Elsebo's expedition to the Scoured Stars system, where she will attempt to use the Tear to pierce the Godshield to rescue the Starfinders trapped within. [This will be the first of two multi-table special adapted to a single-party adventure, which makes them double-length scenarios. I anticipate it taking at least 3 sessions, but probably more likely to be four.]