Jason recaps the events from Roll For Combat, Episode 059: Pick Six.
It’s leveling week on Roll For Combat. Always fun to get a new set of toys to play with. Tuttle kind of gets the narrative short straw in this episode because I missed the memo on both weapon fusions and mnemonic editors, which ended up consuming a lot of the bandwidth.
On the bright side? Guns. Guns galore.
Tuttle gets a weapon upgrade from the repair process, and an armor upgrade too. For those scoring at home: 6400 credits’ worth of upgrades for 100 credits’ worth of UPBs. I have to admit going in, I was concerned the repair process would be tougher (and/or more expensive) but a couple really good rolls was all it really took. The armor was a fairly minor upgrade, but I’ve been using that wimpy little azimuth pistol for WAAAAAAY too long. Only downside: deafen is a pretty situational critical effect compared to the simple joy of lighting stuff on fire, but that can be fixed with weapon fusions.
CHDRR’s weapon upgrades came from the part of CHDRR’s sheet Steve doesn’t let me see, so that was kind of a nice surprise. I was getting to the point where I was going to have to retire his starter weapons soon anyway, so having them upgrade semi-spontaneously is pretty nice. I was starting to feel a little useless in combat, so even if this doesn’t make me a Hirogi/Mo level damage-dealer, it at least makes me a little more viable.
You may note that this shopping session was heavily influenced by the release of the Starfinder Armory. For me personally, the teleportation puck and regenerative blood were two of the cooler items I found in that book. The teleportation puck seems like one of those things that will be completely useless until we find the perfect situation for it – maybe we’ll need to get across a chasm, or we’ll want to use it to flank an enemy or something (Reaper from Overwatch creeping into my thinking, clearly). Regenerative blood is a lot more straightforward and generally useful; it’s the equivalent of a free healing serum each time you rest. That certainly doesn’t suck.
The last change was the datajack. The initial reason the datajack appealed to me is that it moves the command node for CHDRR into my head, so I don’t have to use a hand to operate my datapad. Particularly now that I’m going to be riding CHDRR into combat, having a free hand seems like a good idea. The side benefit of an additional plus on Computer checks… I mean, I’m already something like +15 or +16, so it’s not THAT important, but at some point, I’m going to just squeak by a Computers check by 1 and then I suspect I’ll be singing its praises.
I wasn’t directly involved in the weapon fusion discussion because I wasn’t particularly interested in those (at least not this level), but I do have a more general observation: I found I started to understand the fusion system better after I read the Runes system in the Pathfinder Playtest. Spoiler: if they’re not EXACTLY the same system, they’re similar enough. I don’t know if it’s that the Pathfinder Playtest writers wrote it a little cleaner, or if somehow the fantasy concept and the tangible idea of engraving a rune onto a weapon made it stick in my brain a little better, but that really helped lock it in.
I do think I’ll be dipping my toes in the fusion market at some point fairly soon. Like I said above, my current gun has Deafen as a crit effect which is pretty underwhelming. I already worry that there will be situations where it won’t do anything (e.g., creatures without hearing), but the fact that Deafen only affects initiative and Perception checks is frankly, kind of lame. So I’ll do it at some point (MOAR DAMAGE!), but for this round of shopping, I had better choices available.
In a similar vein: mnemonic editors. I like the concept; I might use one eventually; I just wasn’t interested in it this time around. I think a large part of that comes from playing a skill-monkey build: it feels like the other guys were optimizing for combat and I’ve achieved one-ness with being a crappy fighter. I do like the idea of the mnemonic editor, though. You may have noticed a recurring theme of me wanting to see them lean into the sci-fi elements more – a device that can reprogram your brain to learn new skills absolutely qualifies. Though I am disappointed none of us threw in a Keanu-ized “I know kung-fu!” Golden opportunity lost.
We end the episode ready to find out what awaits on Eox. I’m definitely curious to see what that’s going to be like, but I also don’t want to hype it up in my brain too much. Part of me thinks “undead planet” and wants it to be something mind-blowing – fountains spraying blood instead of water, scary Eye of Sauron towers everywhere, and so on. But our other encounters with the undead so far in this game have emphasized just how normal they’re intended to be. So I suppose I have to be equally prepared for undead mundanity – undead janitors, undead banging away on Excel spreadsheets, possibly even undead Starbucks (VENTI O-NEG, EXTRA BILE). It’ll be interesting to see how Paizo threads that needle between exotic and commonplace.
Speaking of which, we have the person who had to thread that needle with us next week: Amanda Hamon Kunz, who wrote the next adventure, pays us a visit. I know part of the allure of special guests is that they work at Paizo and have all sorts of inside info, and yes, that’s cool. But for me as a player, it’s equally exciting just to have someone new to break up the dynamics of the table a little. A new voice, a new sense of humor… heck, maybe mix in some movie references that are a little less dated. (Johnny Mnemonic?) So that’ll be a treat.
That’s it for this week; we’ll see you next week from Eox, vacation hot spot of the Pact Worlds. Same Undead Time, New Undead Planet. In the meantime, thanks for listening and feel free to drop by our Discord channel and join the merriment that’s going strong over there.