Field Test #3: That Cantina Feel

but I find it hard to believe you would not find hobbyist companies that make and sell modern greatswords for 20 credits. They might not always be used by most adventurers, but if we followed that logic, we would not have craftsman making functional swords and armor today.

We already have swords in Starfinder you can get a new 1st level long sword for 375 credits.

When comparing systems I think it's best to look at what you can buy at character creation. After that, there's always the option to find things or buy them if you can find a shop with rare equipment and can afford it, but is largely up to the GM at that point. What's available at character creation is not likely ever to be the same in both timelines, unless time travel is commonplace in the adventure, or you are playing an android from Numeria.

We already have swords in Starfinder you can get a new 1st level long sword for 375 credits.

That tracks. Thank you for the price drop.

That would actually help support the credit crunch.

Confirmed:
A Laser Pistol is 350 Credits, reduced to 30 Credits (8.57%)
A Scattergun is 235 Credits, reduced to 40 Credits (17.02%)

On my speculation:
Starting Credits in PF1 is 1000 Credits, where I am predicting a reduction to 150 credits (15%)
A Longsword is 375 Credits, I'm predicting to 10 credits (2.66%)
A Starknife is 110 Credits, I'm predicting to 20 Credits (18%)

Looks like the crunch will generally decrease stuff to about 10-20% their former price, with some outliers likely going over and under.

When comparing systems I think it's best to look at what you can buy at character creation. After that, there's always the option to find things or buy them if you can find a shop with rare equipment and can afford it, but is largely up to the GM at that point. What's available at character creation is not likely ever to be the same in both timelines, unless time travel is commonplace in the adventure, or you are playing an android from Numeria.

That's a given. I know for my games at least, unless an entry is included in both games, it will be considered Rare in the other game, context sensitive to the feasibility of the specific item.

And while money value is not the same, both opening budgets should probably paint a power level that is comparible on some level, even if there are differences on a meta side.

I was just looking over the list of what's in the playtest, and I'm excited to see what the prismeni versatile heritage will have. "Drift-born planar heritage!" is such a cool premise, and there's so little space for that to be expressed in SF1.

A Drift-born planar heritage, I wonder who might be interested in that?

I think seeing the prismeni versatile heritage will tell us a lot. Will teleporting 30 ft stay at first level or become a higher level ancestry feat? Being able to teleport could be a great way to get to the front of the crowd at a Strawberry Machine Cake concert. If I try hard enough I might even find other uses for teleporting 30 ft.

A Drift-born planar heritage, I wonder who might be interested in that?

I think seeing the prismeni versatile heritage will tell us a lot. Will teleporting 30 ft stay at first level or become a higher level ancestry feat? Being able to teleport could be a great way to get to the front of the crowd at a Strawberry Machine Cake concert. If I try hard enough I might even find other uses for teleporting 30 ft.

I can see it being nerfed, but potentially expanded with feats.

One of the Thaumaturge options lets you be able to occupy two spaces from level 1, even switch between them kind of like a teleport. So it can probably be implemented at level 1, I'd imagine it'd probably start at 15 feet.

Drift Hop seems like a 5th or 9th level feat for the Prismeni ancestry, if it's a versatile heritage you probably want to leave the level 1 slot for lineage feats. But it's probably "up to your move speed" rather than 30 feet now, since 30 feet is no longer the standard move speed (since you can spent three actions moving, 25 is now normal), but the "you're faster than normal" speed. You could totally build a feat chain based on "your innate ability to teleport short distances" like how the halfling luck feats work.

I don't think prismeni would have lineage feats though because its not like drift based outsiders is as large category as celestials/monitors/fiends, but who knows.

Anyway, main worry that would likely seal "up to your feet" teleport's fate is that Automatons can get similar ability (with heavy limits) at level 17 if I remember(astral blink plus greater augmentation). Unless its like flight and starfinder dev team agrees it should be easier access in starfinder meta than in pathfinder meta.

The idea that we need to remove species like Kalo from the game because "gas needs to matter" is ridiculous. Tfw space suits existing is considered too broken for a space opera rpg.

Are gas dangers really that crucial to people's plotlines?

The idea that we need to remove species like Kalo from the game because "gas needs to matter" is ridiculous. Tfw space suits existing is considered too broken for a space opera rpg.

Which is why nobody said any of that. There are worlds of difference between not having blanket immunity and removing species.

Are gas dangers really that crucial to people's plotlines?

Given how Thurston (I think it was him at least) spoke about this point and diseases, as well as the plethora of tropes you see in fiction, it is at least important enough to not just brush aside like being able to walk around in space/ a vacuum.

Which is why nobody said any of that. There are worlds of difference between not having blanket immunity and removing species.

Looks like my post lost the things I was quoting in the shuffle. The post didn't go through first time and I had to rewrite it, must have forgotten to readd the quotes. Was originally saying that to:

CorvusMask wrote:

The whole toxic gas conversation also has this issue with it:

Isn't it also fun to have species which breath different gases than air and thus find air toxic and other gasses not toxic?

Like... Going for the "we can't have blanket immunity to gas!" basically says "everything in the galaxy is weak to same chemistry"

Considering the fact I know people who've worked on Starfinder no. No it is apparently not.

Not that they didn't enjoy the game but they definitely found the games imbalance hard to adjudicate fights for and this issue I remember being a thing.

Since Kalo would be one of the species that breathes different stuff to air. And they're saying "no, it's not fun to have those because of the following reasons".

Given how Thurston (I think it was him at least) spoke about this point and diseases, as well as the plethora of tropes you see in fiction, it is at least important enough to not just brush aside like being able to walk around in space/ a vacuum.

Diseases sound they have a lot more vectors to be applied then just standard atmospheric stuff tbh. It is a fantasy-filled space opera, I feel like it'd be pretty easy to just slap advancements on some of the diseases to make it so it works on more things. Just like how biohackers could use their chemicals on machines fine. More people should probably be open to constructs and undead dealing with diseases and poisons in sf.

Value/lack of value judgements about the merits of atmospheric threats in gameplay notwithstanding: going from "androids do not breathe" in 1e to "you can take a feat, to hold your breath for an hour, at level 9" in 2e feels bad. People in the "PF2 Only" camp don't seem to mind, since that fits nicely into the existing PF2 ecology; but people who've played Starfinder are used to the former, and find the latter jarring.
(Plus, it's cool as heck to see art of that loser, Raia, wearing a fishbowl helmet, while chad Iseph is YOLOing at the Swarm in space, locks fluttering in the wind low-gs! XD)

Put another way: compared to PF2, this feels fine. Compared to SF1, this feels like a strict nerf to something that wasn't game breaking. Not to be too dramatic, but this feels like more "flattening" of species to all be at the same power level in all areas, which is one of the big worries SF1 people are apprehensive about.

So, I guess this is yet another one of those areas where the devs get to thread that fine needle between keeping the 'feel' of 1e, and acquiescing to what is normal in PF2.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

During the stream, Thursty even admitted that this particular feat was included specifically to gauge acceptance or as he put it "to see if people have strong opinions":D.

From the reaction, I'm pretty sure that this won't be an issue going forward XD

A level of flattening is not entirely a bad thing. Of course, some ancestries should be better at certain tasks than others, but no one ancestry should just be an objectively mechanically superior choice.

Hopping in now that I'm back from a weekend of writing/video games (I beat Control, awesome game and am enjoying the DLC).

Alrighty, some good discussion here about the state of androids. It's something that the team is very much eager to see further feedback on, and it's something that we expected to get feedback on :)

A bit of clarification: just because androids have a holdover feat from PF2E that deals with breathing in a location without atmosphere, doesn't mean that Starfinder is suddenly going to "stop having you adventure in a vacuum". (cue the "AH! I'm trapped in a Dyson jokes). We're committed to having adventurers able to go into space at the earliest levels, and to provide different paths of reaching that through equipment.

One approach the team have been very excited about with the design of SF2 is the ability for us to re-evaluate the atmospheric protections that existed in SF1. Specifically, we've been looking at how most tables ended up using atmospheric protections as inherent bypasses to major plot points, or (as I'm sure we've all experienced) being the "oh I have my protections on at all times, why wouldn't I?" type of adventuring tool. Reviewing this led us down some interesting paths of how we want to scale adventures, and allow PCs to adventure in threatening alien environments early on, but also introduce some manner of progression to allow for PCs to feel like their relative power level is increasing as they level and get access to new equipment and abilities.

This is something that is going to propagate through to different ancestries in the game. It won't make sense for us to have a species that naturally survives in a vacuum and NOT allow it to survive in a vacuum. That being said, we might review game balance to check if those creatures still need to breathe and what effects gasses or other airborne effects could have on them—something that can still be further mitigated with equipment as PCs progress.

As a few folks have said, there's some plate spinning here between realism/verisimilitude and overall game balance. We want to make sure we're creating narratively fun choices for players, but we also don't want to include ancestries that are just going to shut off large swathes of the game's mechanics. We're ESPECIALLY keen on not doing this kind of stuff with core ancestries.

Give us some time; we have some pretty out-there plans :)

Ancient Android brings up a lot of questions on how they fit into the lore. With the ancient android heritage mirroring those in the Pathfinder timeline I can see making Ancient androids in Starfinder that originated from the Pathfinder timeline without having to have first play them in Pathfinder. The idea of having a technological-based character that is experiencing future shock sounds fun.

The question is what would they remember of their past? Obviously, the Gap would erase their memory of the gap years. If you combined Ancient Android with Renewed Android then you could explain why an ancient android forgot their past. Something that might be a fun option is to have some ancient androids retain their past memories but they are fragmented and hard to access requiring a past memory lore check. This could lead to a character that slowly over time remembers their background story.

One of the Pathfinder android heritages I find really interesting for Starfinder that did not make it into the field test is the Impersonator Android. I love the idea of playing an android from the past trying to pretend they are someone from the past they are not. This also could make for some great NPCs or villains for an adventure.

Regardless though, I just hope when we get SROs they don't have PF2e Automaton issue of "make it really hard to be immersed in idea of playing as mechanical creature by saying that since you count as living creature, you are like living creature in almost all respects".

(at least with automatons I can make argument that while they need air to live, they don't breath because flavor text itself says they don't eat or breath :'D its small distinction but I take what I can get...)

I just think that the expectations for "blanket immunities" should be set by things like the PF2 Skeleton Ancestry, which is not immune (merely resistant) to a lot of things you would expect an animated skeleton to be immune to (such as bleeding.)

I think it's a good balance between opposing goals to make it so you can play stuff that is truly unlike a human, but you're still mostly bothered by all the things that humans can be bothered by and also interact with stuff like "the healing options that are regularly available." You can express "you're something unusual" through affirmative choices, like ancestry feats, rather than having them operate in the background.

Regardless though, I just hope when we get SROs they don't have PF2e Automaton issue of "make it really hard to be immersed in idea of playing as mechanical creature by saying that since you count as living creature, you are like living creature in almost all respects".

(at least with automatons I can make argument that while they need air to live, they don't breath because flavor text itself says they don't eat or breath :'D its small distinction but I take what I can get...)

It’s interesting that Thursty made this distinction:

We want to make sure we're creating narratively fun choices for players, but we also don't want to include ancestries that are just going to shut off large swathes of the game's mechanics. We're ESPECIALLY keen on not doing this kind of stuff with core ancestries.

So maybe SRO will be less ‘balanced’ with PF2 races. Since it won’t be core. ?

I read the automation, and I think if the SRO ends up being as close to a living creature as the automation, with all of the ‘it acts like a living creature’ rules, I think people will be disappointed.

Starfinder 1 has a lot of fantastical species that don’t act like normal humanoids. I can’t wait to see how this is all dealt with in SF2.

The feats may help by adding more choices, but as we are seeing with the android, people are going to want to be able to have their peculiar abilities at level 1. ‘Cause it would be weird not to have it.

The PF2 Skeleton Ancestry might be another one besides ancient android that could survive between timelines. They would certainly be welcome on Eox. But differently not one for the core rule book.

I can see androids being biomechanical and being designed to resemble living species not having full construct immunities, but SROs beg to be played as far removed from biological constraints as possible.

Androids from Eox would be an interesting android heritage being undead-biomechanical. But again not one for the core rule book.

Some random thoughts:

1. I'm not bothered by Androids or robots needing air. Very few things are designed to work properly without an atmosphere, and it's easy to take that for granted. Even a sleek modern cell phone needs an atmosphere to shed heat into. That being said, I don't think I would really care that much if some ancestries just got a pass on vacuum-based challenges.

2. Some degree of space-walking without suit-based protections could be handled by having atmospheric bubbles projected from points of interest like space ships and stations. Then, after the players get access to higher level equipment, they can go longer and farther outside those protections, eventually trivializing them.

3. Gas-based challenges can be held separate from vacuum-based challenges. A sleek and comfortable vacuum-survival-suit might just create a personal bubble that gas permeates into without issue, or doesn't work at all inside an atmosphere, or any number of other conceits. A big, bulky, expensive, not-for-dinner-wear space suit might provide the gas protection as well but have some other tradeoffs until the highest levels of cutting edge technology.

4. Aliens needing specific mixtures of atmosphere to survive should definitely be handwaved. The Cantina everyone is picturing doesn't have everyone inside their own personal bubbles. This could be as simple as saying you have a necklace that treats the air you breathe to make it comfortable. No need to bring that can of worms into the discussion about whether or not an ancestry needs an atmosphere at all.

5. Creatures that don't need to breathe can be affected by contact-based gas challenges, like acid mist or skin-penetrating oils, so even if you gave Androids and SROs immunitiy to vacuum, you could still merely give them a bonus against gasses/disease/etc.

The whole toxic gas conversation also has this issue with it:

Isn't it also fun to have species which breath different gases than air and thus find air toxic and other gasses not toxic?

Like... Going for the "we can't have blanket immunity to gas!" basically says "everything in the galaxy is weak to same chemistry"

Now do poisons and diseases.

No, it's not fun to publish a chart for every ancestry listing which they're immune to, resistant to, and vulnerable to due to their individual biochemistries.

Well, not fun for most of us. I don’t think a lot of AD&D players are playing Starfinder for that kind of feel though.

Like "the party has 4 completely different biochemistries" so the GM is forced to rule out all the hazards that one or more members of the party is immune to is simply not a good use of the GM's time.

Many are still suffering PTSD from the Against the Aeon Throne 2 species-specific vending machine snack illnesses.

Give us some time; we have some pretty out-there plans :)

What Phreaker does?

Many are still suffering PTSD from the Against the Aeon Throne 2 species-specific vending machine snack illnesses.

Don't say that too loud or everyone might start taking the Irongut Goblin heritage. But if you do welcome to the family. Have some Morerats stew, our family pot of stew hasn't been empty or cleaned in 7 generations, we just keep adding more rats!

Looking at the Vesk,

I can find anything that I specifically don’t like, but I’m worried that there might be too many combat related feats.

It may end up being the only, obvious choice for a combat focused PC.
And I don’t see anything similar in PF2e.

Vesk is a good choice for a combat-focused PC but it is far from the only one in Starfinder.

Shobhad +4 str, four arms, 10 ft reach.

Trox +2 str +2 con, +2 racial bonus to melee attack rolls once per day, +2 racial bonus to grapple combat maneuvers, 10 ft reach.

4. Aliens needing specific mixtures of atmosphere to survive should definitely be handwaved. The Cantina everyone is picturing doesn't have everyone inside their own personal bubbles. This could be as simple as saying you have a necklace that treats the air you breathe to make it comfortable. No need to bring that can of worms into the discussion about whether or not an ancestry needs an atmosphere at all.

Honestly, something like a necklace that makes standard air breathable for you can probably work as a support item (probably 50 credits if it's considered on par with magical prosthesis), which can probably have it's price waived for beginner characters. Like, not good enough to keep poison air at bay, just enough to keep you from suffocating in typical station air. (I know it's not in vanilla, but I treat 5 gp prosthesis as a free bonus to the initial inventory as it just 'normalizes' a character mechanically as a home rule. Plus, I have no real reason to deny a player who just wants their character to have prosthetic magical eyes when they have no advantage over normal eyes.)

Additionally, like a clan dagger, such a support item could just come complementary with picking the ancestry as an ancestry feature.

Vesk is a good choice for a combat-focused PC but it is far from the only one in Starfinder.

Shobhad +4 str, four arms, 10 ft reach.

Trox +2 str +2 con, +2 racial bonus to melee attack rolls once per day, +2 racial bonus to grapple combat maneuvers, 10 ft reach.

In Starfinder 1e, I wouldn’t like my players play a Shobhad.

Ancient Android brings up a lot of questions on how they fit into the lore. With the ancient android heritage mirroring those in the Pathfinder timeline I can see making Ancient androids in Starfinder that originated from the Pathfinder timeline without having to have first play them in Pathfinder.

Aha, but, remember that android bodies are just the empty shells that float down through the eons, and not the same entity. The lore seems to posit that most androids eventually feel some call for Renewing. Chances are, the android bodies surviving from the Pathfinder era are relatively few, and inhabited by a soul that plopped in within the past few hundred years.

Of course there must surely be some paranoid androids who've made it the whole time (especially if they're PCs, lol) and are, like everything else, scrambled by The Gap.

Driftbourne wrote:

Vesk is a good choice for a combat-focused PC but it is far from the only one in Starfinder.

Shobhad +4 str, four arms, 10 ft reach.

Trox +2 str +2 con, +2 racial bonus to melee attack rolls once per day, +2 racial bonus to grapple combat maneuvers, 10 ft reach.

In Starfinder 1e, I wouldn’t like my players play a Shobhad.

I guess I really don’t like species/ ancestries that are set up for power gamers.
Worried about the 2e Vesk.

+4 str in Starfinder 1e isn't as powerful as it would be in PF2e with +10 + crit rules. There's a good chance Shobhad may lose that +4 in 2e but I could be wrong, currently a shobhad's full Ability Modifiers are +4 Str, -2 Int. So just as balanced overall as most PF2e ancestries, you still max out with an 18 str at first level. And four or more arms are not that uncommon in Starfinder same with large playable species with reach. Frequently large PCs are at a disadvantage in narrow spaces.

Honestly I feel that Ancient Androids are a poor choice of words.

Artisan Androids, Laborer Androids, Polyglot Androids, and Warrior Androids each have their uses even in modern to scifi days. I find it hard to believe such androids would no longer be in production. I think these should just be named as normal heritages instead of ancient heritage. We don't call the carry over feats from PF2E ancient feats, they are just normal feats, after all.

Why WOULDN'T you make your C3PO android to accompany you that can speak 6 million languages (or more appropriately to the 2E system, 4-8 languages)

Driftbourne wrote:

Ancient Android brings up a lot of questions on how they fit into the lore. With the ancient android heritage mirroring those in the Pathfinder timeline I can see making Ancient androids in Starfinder that originated from the Pathfinder timeline without having to have first play them in Pathfinder.

Aha, but, remember that android bodies are just the empty shells that float down through the eons, and not the same entity. The lore seems to posit that most androids eventually feel some call for Renewing. Chances are, the android bodies surviving from the Pathfinder era are relatively few, and inhabited by a soul that plopped in within the past few hundred years.

Of course there must surely be some paranoid androids who've made it the whole time (especially if they're PCs, lol) and are, like everything else, scrambled by The Gap.

Some ways an android might survive that long could be that for most of the time between the 2 timelines they were powered down, in sleep/hibernation mode, or something similar, and then recently revived.

PF2 is getting its first Large ancestry in a sourcebook coming out soon, so it will be interesting to see how Paizo chooses to balance "free reach from your ancestry." Since the ancestry in question is "Centaurs" it's possible they won't get free reach since their torsos are human.

But it's possible the sort of thing where "10' melee reach for filling out the ancestry field of the character sheet" is a thing that's fine for Starfinder (where melee combat is not the default) but is something your PF2 GMs will absolutely want to be careful with. But compatibility isn't about balance, a PF2 GM is also probably going to want to ban some "flying at level 1" ancestries that exist in Starfinder.

Side note to any devs who might read this, but I do hope SF2 has some armors that are more on the modern end from the perspective of using the S/PF2E system to do homebrew campaigns, lacking environmental protections but keeping that modern to futuristic feel. SF2 classes would lead themselves well to modern and similar homebrew campaigns, and having more terrestrial-aligned armors as an option, if not in the core book, than at least in an expansion book, would be greatly appreciated. Even in space scifi, it'd be thematic if you are planning on spending all of your campaign on a planet with an accomodating atmosphere, or in a city adventure.

For example, being equipped like a Warhammer soldier like a krieger or a guardsman, from an equipment look, or a modern earth mercenary/soldier in the 2010's to 2030's.

As a goblin merchant, I don't see 1st level characters flying as a balance problem at all, it is a market opportunity! Today I might be able to sell 10 arrows for 1 silver coin, but as soon as a party of first-level flyers defeats an opponent and words get out arrows will be in such a high demand the price will skyrocket!

Now would anyone like to buy some arrows before the price goes up? I also have wands of magic missiles for sale, or whatever it is you call them these days.

PF2 is getting its first Large ancestry in a sourcebook coming out soon, so it will be interesting to see how Paizo chooses to balance "free reach from your ancestry." Since the ancestry in question is "Centaurs" it's possible they won't get free reach since their torsos are human.

But it's possible the sort of thing where "10' melee reach for filling out the ancestry field of the character sheet" is a thing that's fine for Starfinder (where melee combat is not the default) but is something your PF2 GMs will absolutely want to be careful with. But compatibility isn't about balance, a PF2 GM is also probably going to want to ban some "flying at level 1" ancestries that exist in Starfinder.

The centaurs in the bestiary book doesn't have reach, so yeah, the playable ones definitely won't have it. Reach are not baked in the sizes now.

I did a deeper read-over of the Android feats. I really like them. One random thought on androids, SROs, and any other species or ancestry that is designed and created. The design space for them is really just limited by page count and imagination. Maybe whenever an android or SRO NPC is made for an adventure giving them a new heritage would both create an interesting NPC and add new player options at the same time. This could work really well in an AP that features lots of Androids and SROs.

Some people have had some comments on the Vesk feats being too combat-oriented. I don't have a problem with that, that is what vesk society is built around. But it got me thinking about how would vesk society function if everyone was involved in the military, to at least part of a militaristic culture.

Besides being militaristic we know vesk culture strictly dictates everything from interpersonal behavior to mode of dress, and many vesk take pride in upholding these traditions and take pride in service. Maybe vesk could have an option for a secondary job skill, a service they do to help society run when not at war, or serving in the military, this could be in the form of a free profession skill, which would also help vesk characters have more out-of-combat options. This could be from a background, heritage, or something all vesk have.

There certainly can be vesk that doesn't follow or outright reject vesk culture but that seems like the perfect case for using Adopted Ancestry or something to explore more outside of the core rule book.

Hey, I never suggested having large biochemistry table ;P Don't put words in my mouth. I'm into xenofiction and having that experience reflect playable options, not into Excel. As someone else said, atmospheric differences are easy to handwave with suits or magic necklaces. That said, unlike most people it seems, I don't actually mind blanket immunity to diseases or poisons.

Though tbf, couldn't there actually be technological diseases and poisons? Like I'm sure some sort of nanite disease could affect both organic and mechanical life. Heck you could make argument that in advanced scifi future where most diseases can be dealt with medicine, the actually threatening diseases have to be something special.

But I digress, like I don't think I'm being that unreasonable when I point out that having every ancestry affected by same conditions means that the player options will be less diverse than monsters and that feels off in cantina feel :p Like you wouldn't like it if every playable species HAD to be a humanoid, we wouldn't have bantrids for example if that was the case.

Sidenote on ancient androids: I think they could legit be called "Classic" or "Classical" androids instead, since as yeah idea that nobody would create warrior or labor androids in modern age feels off. Azlanti definitely do it at least

I did a deeper read-over of the Android feats. I really like them. One random thought on androids, SROs, and any other species or ancestry that is designed and created. The design space for them is really just limited by page count and imagination. Maybe whenever an android or SRO NPC is made for an adventure giving them a new heritage would both create an interesting NPC and add new player options at the same time. This could work really well in an AP that features lots of Androids and SROs.

Fortunately this is pretty much guaranteed. The PF2E system already incorporates this principle with their Ancestries, with new books periodically adding additional Heritage and Ancestry Feat options to existing ancestries as is thematic to the new book.

You can rest assured, that while not every ancestry might get expansions, ancestries in general will get expansions, especially popular and interesting ones. The only worry is whether a given ancestry will be blessed with expansion content.

But I digress, like I don't think I'm being that unreasonable when I point out that having every ancestry affected by same conditions means that the player options will be less diverse than monsters and that feels off in cantina feel :p Like you wouldn't like it if every playable species HAD to be a humanoid, we wouldn't have bantrids for example if that was the case.

From what I've seen in Pathfinder, Pathfinder took the path of resistances over immunities. But some ancestries definitely got resistances that are decent, like having an elemental resistance equal to 1/2 your level or another given amount, or treating environmental temperature effects as a number of degrees less severe.

An option could be gaining resistance to suffocation damage or other damage caused by certain hazards that a given ancestry is acclimated to (Even too much oxygen can hurt humans). So if a planet has poisonous air that an alien race is acclimated to, most areas might be at a low-enough level they survive easy, while some pockets are so dense it it risky even to them.

Sidenote on ancient androids: I think they could legit be called "Classic" or "Classical" androids instead, since as yeah idea that nobody would create warrior or labor androids in modern age feels off. Azlanti definitely do it at least

While I think letting the heritage just be the heritage is optimal, classical as a grouping category is definitely a better name, and would be greatly preferable to ancient, if they MUST be grouped into a single heritage. But I still fail to see why they must be grouped for any other reason besides saving page space by using less headers

Like how we call certain instruments classical instruments, classical does do well to emphasize a long-used design, but can be applied to a brand new product. While ancient only gives the impression of a single product that has survived a very long time (I bought a new classical guitar from a guitar shop, versus I saw an ancient guitar in the museum).

Honestly I feel that Ancient Androids are a poor choice of words.

Artisan Androids, Laborer Androids, Polyglot Androids, and Warrior Androids each have their uses even in modern to scifi days. I find it hard to believe such androids would no longer be in production. I think these should just be named as normal heritages instead of ancient heritage. We don't call the carry over feats from PF2E ancient feats, they are just normal feats, after all.

Why WOULDN'T you make your C3PO android to accompany you that can speak 6 million languages (or more appropriately to the 2E system, 4-8 languages)

I hadn't thought about it before, but this is a very fair complaint. As tidy as bundling them into one heritage is, it's not super necessary to do so and it *is* problematic to start a trend of calling things Ancient without a lot of thought.

Mechanically, it all looks sound enough. It'll work like it does in PF2, as I suspected.

Thematically though, at least from this first impression, the Cantina is closed for business. The emphasis appears to be on making a smaller number of species that have more robust variety of options.

And while mechanically that is great for player customization, when it comes to the FEEL of the world, it is decidedly less diverse.

20 Androids that are slightly different is not the same thing as 10 different alien species.

Ideally, seeing how this undermines so much of what makes Starfinder unique, I would really like to see some sort of Legacy compatibility.

You know that Optional Stamina rule? Can we do that with Legacy species? A very simple base translation that allows most, if not all, Legacy races to be ported forward to 2E in their previous state until the point when 2E can catch up and accommodate them with proper revisions.

I would hate to feel like 95% of all species just got booted out of the Starfinder Society for some reason that rigidly follows the lines of race. "Look at all our diversity! We no longer allow most races to join us, but that Android is slightly different than this one."

moosher12 wrote:

Honestly I feel that Ancient Androids are a poor choice of words.

Artisan Androids, Laborer Androids, Polyglot Androids, and Warrior Androids each have their uses even in modern to scifi days. I find it hard to believe such androids would no longer be in production. I think these should just be named as normal heritages instead of ancient heritage. We don't call the carry over feats from PF2E ancient feats, they are just normal feats, after all.

Why WOULDN'T you make your C3PO android to accompany you that can speak 6 million languages (or more appropriately to the 2E system, 4-8 languages)

I hadn't thought about it before, but this is a very fair complaint. As tidy as bundling them into one heritage is, it's not super necessary to do so and it *is* problematic to start a trend of calling things Ancient without a lot of thought.

The use of Ancient Androids appears to be a direct tie-in to the Pathfinder android heritages. This would allow you to play an android character in Starfinder that could have in their background story have actually lived in Pathfinder times.

Classical times usually refer to past societies at their peak. Since androids in Pathfinder 2e are described as having no understanding of their surroundings, origin, or purpose, and are from a distant galaxy that crash-landed on Golarion, androids in Pathfinder are likely not at a Classical time in Android history.

Not sure why calling pre-gap times ancient would be problematic in the Starfinder timeline. Ancient definition: Belonging to the very distant past and no longer in existence. In Starfinder the entire planet of Golarion is missing and the Gap erases any continuous connection to the past. Is there something I'm missing that is problematic about the word ancient?

The emphasis appears to be on making a smaller number of species that have more robust variety of options.

As well as more lore meat and roleplay hooks. The vast majority of SF1 ancestries felt like hollow, throwaways because there was so little supporting info. Roleplaying them differently from standard ancestries was basically impossible without making up vast swathes of info from whole cloth. Boiled down to the Cantina feeling like a bunch of humans in halloween costumes.

You may have also missed that they're going to be publishing a lot more ancestries for Starfinder 2 than Pathfinder 2 saw, and PF2 saw a lot.

Add on to this that Versatile Heritages can add a whole lot of nuance, and PF2 ancestries are compatible, you're going to be seeing quite a lot of Cantina patrons very shortly, and with a whole lot more to back them up.

Not sure why calling pre-gap times ancient would be problematic in the Starfinder timeline. Ancient definition: Belonging to the very distant past and no longer in existence. In Starfinder the entire planet of Golarion is missing and the Gap erases any continuous connection to the past. Is there something I'm missing that is problematic about the word ancient?

As the previous post pointed out, there's nothing inherently ancient about those heritage options. You could have modern androids with the same abilities, and very likely *should*. Why couldn't you make those Ancient sub-heritages full heritages, and have the same ability to roleplay as an ancient android?

Since there's no mechanical tie-in to it being dubbed Ancient, it shouldn't be called that.

Mechanically, it all looks sound enough. It'll work like it does in PF2, as I suspected.

Thematically though, at least from this first impression, the Cantina is closed for business. The emphasis appears to be on making a smaller number of species that have more robust variety of options.

And while mechanically that is great for player customization, when it comes to the FEEL of the world, it is decidedly less diverse.

20 Androids that are slightly different is not the same thing as 10 different alien species.

Ideally, seeing how this undermines so much of what makes Starfinder unique, I would really like to see some sort of Legacy compatibility.

You know that Optional Stamina rule? Can we do that with Legacy species? A very simple base translation that allows most, if not all, Legacy races to be ported forward to 2E in their previous state until the point when 2E can catch up and accommodate them with proper revisions.

I would hate to feel like 95% of all species just got booted out of the Starfinder Society for some reason that rigidly follows the lines of race. "Look at all our diversity! We no longer allow most races to join us, but that Android is slightly different than this one."

No product you could ever release could manage what you are apparently expecting here. You are comparing a product with over six years of post-development support to a newly released edition. Of course there will be less content for quite a while, that's no fault of the new product. That's a problem of completely unreasonable expectations.

A much better comparison would be SF1 at release. SF2 matches that and adds skittermanders, barathu, and pathra, as well as two versatile heritages (borai and prismeni). Reasonably, one should also add all the (additional) PF2 content to that, because more likely than not you will have access to those at your home table. That makes an additional 35-ish ancestries (soon more like 40) and something like 10 versatile heritages. So SF2 at release absolutely dwarfs SF1 at the same stage. Almost every product released afterwards is also planned to include one or more ancestries, so we will get much more fairly quickly.

Yes, SF2 will likely equal SF1 today any time soon, if ever. But calling this "the cantina is closed" or "undermining what makes Starfinder unique" is ludicrous. The sheer number of options at the start already blows probably all but a handful of products (at most) on the market out of the water.

Not to mention that, as with all RPGs, the core options likely see significantly more play than the newer or more obscure ones by a very significant margin. As evidenced by the survey - the top 3 would have been shirren, vesk and androids. The top 4 would add the skittermanders. We get all of those in the core.

It's not great but it is at least fine for the vast majority of players.

The use of Ancient Androids appears to be a direct tie-in to the Pathfinder android heritages. This would allow you to play an android character in Starfinder that could have in their background story have actually lived in Pathfinder times.

Yes, but by the same factor. The following ancestry feats should also be labeled as ancient feats: Android Lore, Cleansing Subroutine, Emotionless, Internal Compartment, Nanite Surge, Nightvision Adaptation, Radiant Circuitry, Advanced Targeting System, Nanite Shroud, Protective Subroutine, Internal Respirator, Offensive Subroutine, Repair Module, Consistent Surge, and Revivification Protocol.

Each and every one of these ancestry feats is an "Ancient Ancestry Feat," because they are a "direct tie-in" to the Pathfinder Android ancestry feats. Why are they not being called Ancient Ancestry Feats?

Do you see where the consistency breaks down?

I would hate to feel like 95% of all species just got booted out of the Starfinder Society for some reason that rigidly follows the lines of race. "Look at all our diversity! We no longer allow most races to join us, but that Android is slightly different than this one."

How many species we have in Starfinder is one of my favorite parts of Starfinder, but it took Starfinder 17 books to get there. I feel like the developers know how important the overall number of species is to us. Even if the overall total ends up less, my prediction is we will get more playable species in SF2e sooner than we did in SF1e. The cantina feeling certainly has a critical mass to work, but I started saying I love how many species we have in Starfinder long before we hit 130 species. We can't expect everything at once and we might not hit 130 but I think we will still get a good-sized party going at the Cantina.