Neongelion's page

I find it mildly amusing to see all these people who want to play Starfinder but don't want to play Starfinder.

...What does this mean, exactly? Mind being more specific? Is wanting to adjust some of the rules or not use the default Starfinder setting "not playing Starfinder"?

7) Too much content bloat happened, where most adventurers were playing as extremely bizarre combinations of classes, archetypes and so on from fifty different sources of "power".

I hope so, for his sake really. It was a gutsy move that deserves to pay off. His setting is great.

Another great background setting is the one from Infinity, the table top game. If you haven't done so, try to get a hold of the fluff behind that one. A great read.

As for your races, why don't you just rename the ones in Starfinder and use those stat adjustments. Should be pretty close for most of them. Just reskin what already exists.

I'm always open to just reflavoring things, I'm just not sure what to reflavor. The Vesk and Legion and similar, but the latter requires environmental suits outside of arctic environments to survive, and are thus immune to cold effects caused by the enviornment.

I'd need to figure out what races to give humanity's bonus feats/bonus skill point per level abilities, since the elimination of humans as a playable race has mechanical as well as setting consequences.

I honestly envision the Vex when I think about the legion. Bred for war.

They're definitely similar. The difference being that the Legion does not actively seek military conquest, and are struggling to form a civilian society in a post-war world.

Have you actually played Fragged? We gave it a go but found a few issues with rules as written. I loved the concept but I think he could really use a greater development budget to employ a team to help out.

Yeah, I've played it a few times. There were parts of the system that I liked, but the setting held far more appeal to me.

Sadly, I suspect Starfinder may destroy his market.

I'm not so sure. SF is specifically marketed as "Pathfinder in space", which not everyone is a fan of. I'm barely holding onto Starfinder myself because I did not like Pathfinder's clunkiness and pedantic rulesets at all, and I think SF fixed quite a bit of the issues I had with the former. I'm gonna play a few sessions with the races/setting as written, see how things work out. So this FE conversion is built upon a "what if I like Starfinder" scenario.

Unfortunately most other systems that are currently available doesn't seem to be able to support FE very well, because they all assume human-centric universes, whereas in Fragged, humans are extinct.

For the Corporation, those look fine.

For the Legion, if going with -Cha on the Nephilim maybe skip it on these. -2 Int instead, maybe?

Maybe. The thing with the Legion is that they're not supposed to be inherently less intelligent. I wanted to have a "bruiser" race that doesn't fall down the conventional "strong but dumb" archetype. I know the Nephilim Purebloods already fall down that path, but the Legion were created specifically to at least be as smart as them.

For the Kaltoran, if they have Darkvision you should definitely skip the bonus Feat and probably give them some ability actually involving the racial memory thing.

I was actually thinking of statting Kaltorans as very similar to Half-Elves: +2 floating to any attribute, Skill Focus as a bonus feat, +2 to Perception checks and low light vision. Not sure about what to do with a Half-Elf's "Elven Immunities" deal, maybe that can be where the ancestral memory thing can come in?

Pureblood: +2 Str, +2 Int, -2 Cha
Hybrid: +2 Dex, +2 Int, -2 Cha
Emissary: +2 Dex, +2 Int, -2 Str

Or something like that. You could give Emissaries a Cha bonus, but then they look too similar to the Corporate.

Hmm...this might be a good start. Maybe give Emissaries am inherent +2 bonus specifically to Diplomacy checks?

I think a problem I'm gonna run into is that, when I introduce the other four races, it's probably just going to be inevitable that two races are gonna have similar bonuses in the same attributes, if not the same bonuses. I guess that comes with the territory of only having a certain amount of attributes.

I've been wanting to use the Fragged Empire setting for Starfinder. For those not in the know, it's basically a setting where you play as artificially created races in the aftermath of a massive, genocidal war that happened 100 years ago. It's a post-post apocalyptic setting, set in the age where people have stopped just trying to survive in the aftermath of the Great War and are trying to rebuild civilization in the ruins of their creators.

One of the key things to know is that there are no humans in the setting; they all went extinct thousands of years ago. All of the playable races are the creation of the species that humanity created to inherit their empire before they died off, the "Archons". That means that most of the playable races aren't too alien and use human mannerisms, and most are humanoid. "Most" being the key word.

There are eight playable races, the first four being here, from left to right. For now I'm just looking for advice to stat out the first four "main" races here:

The Corporation: These guys are the most "human" looking, both appearance wise and culturally speaking. They have yellow patterned skin on parts of their body They are the archetypical "merchant" race, and their society operates as a vast megacorporation, hence their name. They possess no unique genetic gifts, which is why their Archon creators found them lacking and thus deemed them inferior, something the Corporates have not forgotten.

Stat wise, I was thinking a +2 to Intelligence and Charisma, but a -2 to Con: Corporates are savvy, but tend to have a low constitution of body. Other abilities, I'm not sure of yet.

The Legion: Appearance wise, these guys can best be described as "reptilian-looking apes". These guys were created by the Archons to fight, and only to fight, hence them being the "warrior race" archetype. With the twist that they its in their genes to operate under military hierarchy, and are struggling to build a society that doesn't need war to function. Because they were created so fast, they have a major flaw: unless they have environmental suits on, they become extremely uncomfortable outside of cold environments.
Stat wise, they're essentially dwarves: a +2 to Wisdom and Constitution, but a -2 to Charisma. They have immunity to negative effects in cold environments.

Kaltoran: Kaltorans have four pointy ears, and all have "genetic" dreadlocks, although Kaltorans can certainly style their hair however they want. The favored race of the Archons, Kaltorans have the genetic ability to recall memories of their ancestors, which is both a boon and a great curse, in the aftermath of the Great War, where they had to rely on extreme measures to survive. They're supposed to be the "space rogues" of the setting.
Stat wise, I was strongly considering giving the Kaltorans the human's floating +2 to any ability score and an extra skill point every level, but I'm not sure I want to also give them a bonus feat too. I was considering giving that to the Nephilim (see below). They're also supposed to have darkvision.

Nephilim: These were the "bad guys" of the setting, created by the renegade X'ion, itself a creation of the Archons, to wipe them out along with the Archons' creations, sparking off an apocalyptic war that didn't stop until every last Archon was dead. X'ion abandoned its Nephilim army after this, reducing most of them to a feral state of mind. However, one brood has united under a strong leader, the "Dev-Lich", who wishes to cooperate with the other surviving races to rebuild civilization.

Stat wise, Nephilim are a little tricky. You can see in the image that there's three types of Nephilim:

-Purebloods are perfect speciments of their original, X'ion-designed form. Most are large-powerful, monstrous-looking creatures with admirable physical and mental ability.

-Hybrids are from a mixed Pureblood or Hybdird pairing. They're adaptive, cunning and flexible creatures, and are extremely varied in appearance; many have mammal and/or insect features. There are more Hybrids than Purebloods these days, and the former can be as every bit as tough and cunning as the latter.

-Emissaries were created only a few years ago in the setting. They were created specifically to interact with the other races and thus are more humanoid in appearance. Most appear female, although male Emissaries exist as well.

So I'm not really sure how to stat out or give abilities to the Nephilim. I know that Purebloods and Hybrids are going to take Charisma penalties, but Emissaries shouldn't, since they were created specifically with empathy in mind. How do I deal with three broad "sub species" within a single one?

Any advice/feedback to give? I can also give more information on any of the races if needed. None of this is final or finished; I want to try adding more stuff to the four races but I'm not sure what.

I'm doing it and it took almost nothing. I dropped 2 classes and added 2 classes. Everything is Psychic. There are no Mystics. Hell, I'm even dropping Aliens because I don't like them. I'm just going to create new races based off of other criteria using the Advanced Race Guide. Everything (except Monk it seems) is convertible from Pathfinder, so it really shouldn't be that hard. I mean, you could just reword some fluff and you wouldn't need to change anything. lol, one of the things they recommend you when you "convert" spells is a name change. It's literally that easy.

Also, I say go for it. I don't like Space Opera and that's kind of what the setting is going for (Solerians Jedi much? :) ). I like my SciFi Scientifically grounded, which is to say, I like Hard SciFi...I like my SciFi like I like my...um...there's a joke in there...somewhere...I'm just not going to go looking for it...:P

If I may ask, then. Psionics by their very nature, are not hard sci-fi at all. Also, even discounting Starfinder's more fantasy aspects, it seems very difficult to make its existing technology more scientifically grounded or accurate. How do you plan on addressing this? Why not switch to a system like Traveller or Stars Without Number, which has options for more hard sci-fi stuff?

Don't take my questions as accusatory, I'm genuinely curious. I plan on lessening the fantasy aspects of SF considerably in my own game, and reflavoring "magic" to psionics as well. But it's still going to be a "mythic science fiction" setting, a la Bungie's Destiny games.

I want to figure out a way to use abstract ammunition, and not force players to keep track of every single charge or bullet they use.

I'm also not sure if there's a way to implement the automatic bonus progression thing from Unchained, since I don't want to shower the players in magic items to be required to be APL appropriate.

I want to do something more meaningful with abilities that only give someone a +1 or a +2 to some skill, because I'm pretty sure at a certain point, those kind of bonuses mean nothing.

One of the ways I like to take a quick glance at RPGs and how "good" they are is how their character sheets are designed. Good to see that this one doesn't have as much clutter as Pathfinder's, and actually looks kinda cool!

I've played a lot of sci-fi RPGs lately and I can safely say that I've had much better experiences with them. Eclipse Phase, Fragged Empire, Battletech, Uncharted Worlds, Ashen Stars. Stars Without Number, in particular, is a really good system, and has excellent GM tools for sci-fi sandbox adventures, and you don't even have to use the native system or setting to use it.

I'm not really going to be messing with the rules all that much, if at all. But as I said in the other thread I plan on ditching Starfinder's setting and reflavoring or removing races that are simply fantasy races in space.

I was planning on completely scrapping Starfinder's setting not because certain facets of it bother me, but because I want to have a setting more like Destiny or Starcraft, not just fantasy races transplanted into space like Dragonstar.

Not that I'd try to make a more "hard sci-fi" setting, but the window dressings in the setting would be less fantastical. There wouldn't be elves or dwarves or goblins, dragons, etc. Magic becomes psionics. The cosmology of the setting wouldn't revolve around the astral plane, heaven/hell, etc. Other dimensions would exist but they simply wouldn't resemble traditional D&D/Pathfinder dimensions at all. Gods are very much like they are in Eberron: people worship them, people might even receive some otherworldly power from them (or from SOMETHING, at least) but whether they truly exist or not is up in the air.

Since people seemed to misread my motivations for this: I'm not trying to run a more "realistic" sci-fi game, but again the aesthetic would be different. Destiny doesn't have actual magic or elves or dragons or undead, but they sure as hell have analogues for all of those that just look or are named differently.

I'm not interested in throwing goblins into space and try to make anything interesting from that. Or dealing with stuff like "ELVEN SPACE EMPIRE! It's elves but SPACE! IN SPACE! PLANETS! LASERS! BUT ELVES THOUGH".

It would be interesting if goblins actually hated illiterate people, and literacy among them was pretty much 100%. It would be a very specific pathological hatred, and goblins can't quite explain where it came from, but if you can't read, your soul basically doesn't exist.

Keeping in mind that literacy doesn't necessarily mean someone's intelligent or more wise, so crazy goblin shenanigans can still happen. It's just now, trying to force a goblin to read won't really torture it.

Often the question of how far you can vary from an RPG's intended default is a matter of what you are willing to work on, what you are willing to overlook, and what you are willing to accept.

I ran a pul--adventure campaign set in an alternative timeline 1930s using Star Wars Saga. Blasters because pistols, the Force became rare ESP talents, the Jedi class was restricted to people playing someone with strange backgrounds and powers (if you wanted to use a Jedi to be a masked hero with Mystic Powers, like the Shadow, that was fine), and starships became fighters and airships.

We had to decide how to handle medpacs and their advanced healing potential, and everything else worked fine as a reskin.

That's pretty much what I see myself using Starfinder for, if I end up liking its ruleset. "Reskin" is going to be a key phrase.

I don't think anyone here is expecting Starfinder to be able to emulate Traveller or more straight sci-fi settings well, and certainly not me. If I did, I wouldn't even allow the technomancer, solarian or mystic as classes, and at that point it wouldn't even be worth it. I like those classes as concepts a lot and I'd use them in my own setting. Maybe finally I'd get a decent system to run the Destiny setting with. They use the term "mythic science fiction" to describe their setting, but that's just a fancy way to say science fantasy, even if I prefer how "mythic sci-fi" sounds more :P

I might want to point out here is that it's sometimes healthy to cross-genres in writing speculative fiction. What Paizo is doing is healthy. They are hoping to do to Space Opera what Shadowrun did to Cyberpunk. And I say that they should have a good crack at it.

I can't wait until August when joe blow gamer is confronted with Starfinder. Will they accept it? Will it be welcomed with open arms? It's yet to be seen. But all the advance signs I've been reading on Facebook and here tells me that there is hope that Starfinder will be successful. People have playtested the game at GAMA this year and they say they can't wait to see it published.

Agreed, it can't come out soon enough. I'm hoping my cautious optimism pays off. Even if it doesn't, I reckon I can at least mine the books, particularly the adventure paths, for ideas.

We have been over it before. But you don't seem to understand that there is a greater difference between science fantasy and space opera than there is between generic fantasy A and generic fantasy B, or are unwilling to accept that Starfinder isn't going to be better* than the space opera rpg systems that are already available (or you have unlimited funds, which I guess is also a possiblity).

*I've been playng PnP rpgs for 35 years. They don't get better, they don't get worse. Fashions come and go. Gamma World was something very similar to Starfinder back in the 80s, a conversion of (1st edition) D&D to a post-apocalyptic SF setting. It was D&D with mutants and ray guns.

Please don't presume to tell me what I understand and don't understand. For me, the difference between science fantasy and space opera is entirely dependent on the dressing you put on it, and little more. If it's different for you that's fine, but not for me. And, don't presume that I'm not already aware of the existence of other sci-fi systems out there.

There are things about Pathfinder's rules I like, and things about it that I don't like. I'm hoping Starfinder embraces more of the former while having more of a sci-fi bent while still maintaining a fantasy core. If it doesn't, oh well, but if it does, then it's worth it. Is that not a sufficient answer?

No more of a waste of money than it is to use a Pathfinder's system for a non Golarion setting. We've been over this already.

And as for dwarves: because I don't like jamming in Tolkenien races into settings just because I feel obligated to. And a holy swarmbane psitech flamethrower is easy: I used Unchaned's variant on removing alignment entirely, so holy would only be effective against certain creatures, who most certainly wouldn't be "evil demons".

Depending on whether I can use Pathfinder Unchained's Automatic Bonus Progression for SF or not will depend on the rarity of "magic" item shops. If it's doable, they'd still be super rare; to me, magic items (or their sci fi equivalent) should be rare and wondrous, I don't like the idea of just giving out rings of protection or +1 swords, I.e. magic items that players NEED to face level appropriate challenges.

Mechanically, the PCs will be on par with their foes. Flavor wise, if they have "magic" items (I.e. Psitech or super advanced "pretech" artifacts), they should be special items and highly prized. Finding an NPC who bargains for these wondrous items should be an adventure unto itself.

That's just all me, YMMV, of course.

Voss wrote:

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Superhero universes are their own weird even more cross genre thing.

Marvel and DC superhero universes explicitly have magic and spellcasters as parts of their settings. Even in space. Swashbuckling crews of adventurers of different species and ability types are prevalent and wander around the fringes of big empires getting up to shenanigans.

They do have both, but they also have superpowers - often neither magical or technological. In terms of mechanics, that's what defines the genre. Beyond that, the tropes and conventions used are very different.

Look, we're pretty much just repeating ourselves here. The game's being sold as high fantasy with spaceships and lasers or conversely, science fiction with orcs and dragons and magic. If people think everything less hard science than Star Trek falls into that, more power to you. Seems weird to me and I don't expect the game to work well for anything close to that end, but if you want to take it and play a straight up space opera Traveller style game with it, have fun with it.

How hard would it be? If I wanted to use my own setting only using the core Starfinder races, all I'd need to do:

-Remove any races that directly come from a fantasy setting. Dwarves, elves, gnomes, haflings, orcs, goblins, kobolds, dragons, etc. Most likely, just use their stats for original nonhuman races that aren't just "Dwarves IN SPAACE". Leave all the core races in Starfinder there.

-Gods as presented in Golarionverse simply don't exist. This affects none of the classes, even the Mystic. And if it does, simply add more reflavoring.

-There are other dimensions, but they're not going to be fantasy-flavored at all. No Heaven/Hell/Abyss/etc.

-Magic is reflavored as psionics. "Psitech shops" are super rare; even in major settlements you're not guaranteed to find one, and they're usually not in the open.

The rules for the game haven't even come out yet. What makes you think doing any of that is weird or somehow not going to fit for the game? Most of it is just reflavoring stuff, removing races, and other tweaks that don't really sound particularly destabilizing.

This is all subjective, but to me "fantasy" largely lies in what type of stories are told, and certain aesthetic qualities too. I would never call Star Trek fantasy, or The Expanse, or any sci-fi setting that uses paranormal tropes in their settings. Mass Effect, which is a setting that presents itself as space opera, actually has a surprising amount of adherence to real world science, and even the "magic" in the setting is a quantifiable, scientifically understood phenomenon (well, mostly).

Long story short, it boils down to how you present the setting. I'm sure there will be some rules to adjust or remove (in my case, removing spells that allow interdimensional travel), but I still fail to see how that's game breaking or "weird", when we don't even know how the rules for Starfinder work yet.

It's still a "wait and see" basis for me. Maybe I'll like it, maybe I won't. I hope it gives enough incentive to do my own thing, and not rely on using a universe that I have zero interest in, except as a source of plot ideas.

Warhammer 40k and Starcraft are both, like Starfinder, directly based on fantasy games (and WH40K shares a universe with it's fantasy parent) so they should give a good idea of how Starfinder will play.

Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, the Humanx Commonwealth (A D Foster), and the Lensman series (Doc Smith) are more that work fine with Starfinder.

But when it comes to telling "hard" SF stories you hit problems.

Worth pointing out that "magic" is NOT common everyday things for most of the Starcraft universe. Terrans almost ubiquitously use technology; psionics is rare and usually tightly controlled. The Zerg use their own form of biotechnology, but it's not supernatural or mystical in any way. Only the Protoss have more common "magic" in their society than anyone else.

I think Starfinder would be a great fit for Starcraft, in fact.

Also, it's worth pointing out to EVERYONE in this thread: hard and soft science fiction are not mutually exclusive. Most sci fi stories nowadays use a healthy dosage of both, with a slight bias towards one or the other.

...

I think there's some sort of miscommunication here, because I never claimed I'm expecting SF to be a be all end all system or perfect. I'm simply hoping its not just, as you claim, "Pathfinder in space", because that would be a very uninteresting way of selling your game. Plus, I recall them saying that they DON'T want to market it as "same rules but some minor tweaks and it's sci-fi now but only half of it". It's supposed to be its own ruleset that happens to be compatible with PF.

I never said I wanted to run a hard sci-fi game. I simply want to do a setting where the fantasy elements are more muted, but still very much exists. Sort of like the Clone Wars-era of Star Wars. Sure there's Jedi around, quite a few in fact, but the vast majority of people don't use the Force in any capacity, and technology is by and far the dominant force. I don't want there to just be elves, dwarves, dragons and goblins IN SPACE, I want non-human races and creatures to be their own thing.

I'm not asking for Golarionverse in SF to be more like that, I'm simply hoping that the system is rules agnostic enough to support other kinds of settings. Is that really too much?

Neongelion wrote:

Fardragon wrote:

1) fewer spell levels does not mean the spells are less powerful. It may just mean they have sorted out scaling so you don't need higher level...

We'll just have to see. This is kind of semantics at this point since we simply know very little. I'd like to hope that 6th level means 6th level, i.e. if you want to use more powerful stuff, you gotta work for it, not simply level up. But again, it's all up in the air at this point.

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2, 3, 4) If you aren't going to use the setting, why are you so keen to give Paizo your money?

The same reason why people buy Pathfinder products but never use Golarion as a setting. I won't claim to speak for them but I never got the impression that most of Paizo's stuff mandate you using their setting, otherwise it's a waste of your money. The only things I can think of are the Technology Guide, and even then it's not impossible to tweak that for your own stuff.

But the only USPs for Starfinder are it's setting and it's connection to the Pathfinder universe. Otherwise you could use any of a large quantity of D20 Space stuff already available (much free) plus some home-brew rules.

There are a couple of reasons people use Pathfinder without the setting, but the main ones are: a) 4th edition D&D was awful, and b) there is a huge quantity of free resources available via the open source licence. Neither of these apply to Starfinder.

Or, they already have their own setting in mind, or have no interest in Golarion, or both. I fall into that third category.

D20 space stuff + home brew is simply not going to work, because that all relies on 3.5 stuff, which is even WORSE than Pathfinder. I'm hoping that SF is an even more refined version of PF, which by itself is a refined version of 3.5.

But I'd like to hope that Paizo doesn't assume that we're going to use their default setting, in the same fashion that they made no such assumption with Pathfinder too. If I make the supernatural and fantastical elements of SF less obvious or widespread I'd like to think that that won't somehow destroy the ENTIRE game, in the same fashion that playing Dark Sun doesn't destroy D&D or Pathfinder the second you try to use it.

If neither of those things end up being not true then congratulations, the efforts to unsell me on buying Starfinder in here was successful.

1) Or it may just mean that the top end of magic is scaled down, which doesn't mean the lower levels are any less common or integral to the system.

*shrug* August can't come soon enough, that much is for certain!

2-4)Obviously, you don't have to use the setting, but the system's going to work best in a setting with similar assumptions. Not all the details need be the same, of course, any more than they would in PF.

Going for a radically different approach will be harder to make work.

I disagree, I've seen all sorts of cool and interesting settings for Pathfinder campaigns, and not a whole lot of them bore much resemblance to Golarion, if at all.

I never wanted to do a radically different approach, actually. I would merely reflavor a whole bunch of stuff, and have a less fantastical cosmology. I don't think it would be too upsetting to simply assume technology is at least somewhat more prominent than magic, not that they're equally important. It's really a matter of setting, not rules or mechanics.

1) fewer spell levels does not mean the spells are less powerful. It may just mean they have sorted out scaling so you don't need higher level...

We'll just have to see. This is kind of semantics at this point since we simply know very little. I'd like to hope that 6th level means 6th level, i.e. if you want to use more powerful stuff, you gotta work for it, not simply level up. But again, it's all up in the air at this point.

2, 3, 4) If you aren't going to use the setting, why are you so keen to give Paizo your money?

The same reason why people buy Pathfinder products but never use Golarion as a setting. I won't claim to speak for them but I never got the impression that most of Paizo's stuff mandate you using their setting, otherwise it's a waste of your money. The only things I can think of are the Technology Guide, and even then it's not impossible to tweak that for your own stuff.

Neongelion wrote:

Jason Mosher wrote:

Gotcha. *snip*

I don't want to derail the thread so I'll just say that while I wholeheartedly agree that Pathfinder has a bloat problem, I wouldn't necessarily say that it's been sapped of creativity, since that's subjective. Some folks enjoy the mini-game of building their characters, and more often than not surfing through all the options available to them stokes their imagination in terms of character backstory/personality/etc.

As much as I enjoy 5e's (and Shadow of the Demon Lord RPG's) approach to things way more, I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy spending countless hours on Hero Labs building cool Pathfinder characters, then forming a backstory around whatever build I did. Still, I'm ultimately hoping that Starfinder's rules are less pedantic than Pathfinder's.

Doing my research, it looks like starship combat is going to be the biggest concern for me. I've never been a fan of relying on miniatures and a map to simulate combat, more so for spaceship stuff, and MORE so if things like positioning are entrenched into the rules.

Well I like to see the ships and their relative positions to each other, I'm not a fan of abstract rules and range bands. I like to know how many miles away the target it, how fast they are moving and in what direction, at what rate they are accelerating and so forth.

I'm aware that appeals to people. In fact it appeals to enough people that I'm pretty sure that spaceship combat is going to mandate having miniatures and a hex map with no room for anything else.

Which I hate. But, not much I can do about that I guess, except not play it.

1) Three out of seven classes are magic based.

2) it's based on the Pathfinder rules and set in the same universe.
3) a major faction is undead.
4) FTL travel may take you on a short cut though Hell.

It's pretty clear Starfinder is doing the same as Shadowrun, but with space opera instead of cyberpunk.

If you like straight SF there are better RPG systems available.
If you like straight fantasy there are better RPG systems available.
If you like a fairly even mix of both then consider Starfinder*

*but there are still other options. E.g. Shadowrun, 3 different Star Wars RPG systems, Spelljammer, etc

1) keeping in mind that these same spells only go up to level six.

2) as far as we understand, Starfinder is its own creature in ruleset. Of course, we'll see how true that is in practice. Also, there is no assumption that you MUST use Pathfinder's universe; i have no intention to use it.

3 and 4) again, this is assuming that you're using the core Golarionverse setting, which I am not.

Also, in Shadowrun, you can choose to have storylines or runs that focus more on its fantasy aspects, or its cyberpunk aspects. Its actually not terribly common that runs should include equal parts of both, at least in my experience.

I hate Shadowrun's system, regardless of which edition it is. I don't like any of the Star Wars systems because they assume you're using Star Wars' setting. And Spelljammer is not science fiction.

So that's why I'm still going to give Starfinder a chance. If it ends up being just as complex in rules as Pathfinder then I will ditch it. If they, say, give advice for new players on what feats to pick, builds, etc. and allows me to use a setting where magic is nowhere near as widespread as technology while still maintaining some kinda presence, then that would be rad.

Odraude wrote:

Boy, I hope not

It's a game built around magic as a basic assumption. Taking it out or drastically limiting it is going to be stressing the system pretty heavily. You're not doing what it's intended for.

How do we know it's "built around magic"? As far as I'm aware, magic isn't sidelined in Starfinder, but mundane technology exceeds it in prominence and usage.

Gotcha. *snip*

I don't want to derail the thread so I'll just say that while I wholeheartedly agree that Pathfinder has a bloat problem, I wouldn't necessarily say that it's been sapped of creativity, since that's subjective. Some folks enjoy the mini-game of building their characters, and more often than not surfing through all the options available to them stokes their imagination in terms of character backstory/personality/etc.

As much as I enjoy 5e's (and Shadow of the Demon Lord RPG's) approach to things way more, I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy spending countless hours on Hero Labs building cool Pathfinder characters, then forming a backstory around whatever build I did. Still, I'm ultimately hoping that Starfinder's rules are less pedantic than Pathfinder's.

Doing my research, it looks like starship combat is going to be the biggest concern for me. I've never been a fan of relying on miniatures and a map to simulate combat, more so for spaceship stuff, and MORE so if things like positioning are entrenched into the rules.

Yes, crunch is system materials and concrete rules, and I think Pathfinder has way too much of it. My hope is that at the very least, if Starfinder's rules are just as complex as PF's then it offers some kind of guidelines or advice for new players on what kinda feats they're recommended to take, or what exactly their class does, etc.

Apologies if this has already been asked. And I know it's still too early to spill any specific details, which I'm perfectly okay with.

But as someone who didn't really like Pathfinder's crunchiness---from the myriad bonuses and the rules for every little thing to hundreds of feats and spells---but really liked what 5e did (and the Pathfinder beginner box, actually) would Starfinder be up my alley? I know they said there's going to be less skills and no crafting feats, which is a nice start.

But I find myself unable to run Pathfinder for new players anymore. Even if I'm just using the core rule book, it was simply a monster to explain and run. The beginner box was really nice, but it's not indicative of the actual game.

I really want to like Starfinder, since I do like a general level of crunchiness that lies somewhere between 5e and Pathfinder (which is what Starfinder is sounding like it's doing), but I just don't know. How do you balance trying to make SF compatible with PF, but also making it its own beast?

I guess y'all have figured that out since the books going to printers now, luckily I don't gotta worry about that!

Actually, since they mentioned it'll be "Science Fantasy," it'll be both. Meaning, it has something for everyone and the developers mentioned there are "bajillons" of races and cultures, which means many more worlds than Golarion. So it makes sense for fantasy to coexist with science fiction elements.

I wasn't saying that there shouldn't be any fantasy elements at all, just that they're not as prevalent as the sci-fi ones. Keep in mind I'm still just talking about theoretical homebrew stuff, not Golarionverse, since I have zero interest in playing in that setting. For example, renaming "magic" to something else more pseudoscience sounding, maybe psionics. Said magic is rather rare, making PCs who can use it stand out. Not having generic fantasy races like dwarves, elves, dragons, goblins, angels, demons, etc. FTL travel wasn't granted by gods, and "other dimensions" are usually in the realm of bizarre at best, horrifying at worst. No elemental planes, astral sea, heaven/hell, etc.

I know that's all easily doable by just disallowing certain races, making a few new ones, and just reflavoring a bunch of stuff so I'm not too worried. I guess for me most of the fantasy elements would be more thematic and shaped in the narrative itself rather than the content, other than "magic" and such.

Which is why I hope the Golarionverse's setting aren't entrenched into the rules or something, for people that want to tip the scales more in the direction of either fantastical (Dragonstar) or more sci-fi (Destiny). But even here I'm not too worried since that wasn't really the case with Pathfinder, you could do a whole bunch of genres with that.

Honestly I'm hoping Starfinder can also support a more sci-fi oriented game than a fantasy one. Something among the lines of Bungie's Destiny game or something, where it's less science fantasy, more "mythic science fiction", though I guess those terms could be synonymous in some ways. Luckily it would be more of a flavor thing: reflavoring magic as something else, and so on. This is all talking about a homebrew setting mind you, I know Golarionverse in Starfinder is more or less "fantasy transplanted into space".

I'm the exact opposite. I'm sick of heroic fantasy but I'd absolutely love to do stuff like Event Horizon or Alien for Starfinder. Of course, horror is a bit tricky to do in RPGs if everyone in the group doesn't meet the GM halfway, but that's another problem I suppose.

For me anyway, I'd just up and say that Earth was completely taken over by the Dominion of the Black, with Cthulhu as a source of energy that they harvest. Humanity finally began to expand out to other planets somewhere in the 22nd century but for one reason or another was annihilated by the Dominion. Baba Yaga, in essence, becomes the last human to have originated from Earth in the entire multiverse.

Thousands of years later, it's just another planet-wide fleshfarm with its continents completely re-arranged and its oceans long drained, with the only indication that it's Earth being the fact that Cthulhu still lives on it.

Of all the Adventure Paths to play as a Pureblooded Azlanti, I'm thinking this might be the closest one.

Please include rules for starting corporations, income generation, trade routes etc...

I've been searching for years for a sci fi game that allows players to not only adventure but to also build a corp, a fleet and have full on space naval battles. A player normally can not get enough money to buy a multiple ships unless they have a system in place for income generation...

If this were added to Starfinder it would be a huge plus that I and many people I know would enjoy.

Additionally I know that Pathfinder has a very good relationship with Lone Wolf/Hero Labs. If Starfinder could be available on that platform it would be awesome!

Thank you!

Stars Without Number has rules for starting a faction, and even has supplements for starting your own mercantile empire. It's no economics simulator but it gets the job done.

My god, the sour grapes all over the comments on this (frankly, quite exciting) article make me understand why people decompress from the 'net...

I remain psyched, nonetheless.

I can't tell if the people that said "you lost me at Tabletop" or "tabletop? LMAO" were genuine or not. I really don't know what they were expecting.

Also it's good to see that Starfinder doesn't seem to have fallen into the utter fashion disaster that plagues way too many sci-fi settings. At least, that's what it's looking like right now.

Umbral Reaver wrote:

Stuff like this is why I prefer Spheres of Power.

Yes we know, you love Spheres of Power. But not particurlarly relevant.

Until we hear different, it's most likely going to be the exact same magic system as Pathfinder, probably with some changes in spells to reflect the setting.... Protection from Bullets/Lasers instead of Arrows, etc.

I think it's entirely relevant. There's some who really think the Vancian system is stale and thematically uninteresting.

Of all the things Paizo shouldn't copy and paste from PF/3.5, its magic stuff should be one of the biggest ones.

I know right off the bat I'm not using Starfinder's default setting. I'm curious if it will still be playable for a setting where there are no magic, but psionics is a thing. The setting would be less Star Wars, more Starcraft or Firefly but I still like the sound of classes like the Mystic and Solarian so I'd keep them.

So how would I flavor stuff like the technomancer in a setting with no magic? What would be a cool name for a psionic hacker/techie? I have some ideas but I wanted to hear what others thought (and I'm typing this on a cumbersome iPad).

Well, I'd personally like if different types of (non-magical) types of FTL was used. The most common to Golarion's solar system can be the hyperspace one, but I'd think it would be weird if every single being in the entire universe used the exact same method of FTL travel.

I mean, that's already canon anyway. The Divinity ship in Iron Gods used artificially created wormholes, allowing it to instantaneously travel from point A to point B.

Failure of the game design is failure of the game designer.

oh no i made the bad game

So if there's a multiverse-wide memory gap and there's no hints at all towards the origins of this memory gap, what's the point of trying to figure it out? Why try to find Golarion's fate when there's 0% clues or hints as to where it went? If something was able to prevent the entire multiverse, without exception, to forget everything about Golarion and have all possible records and hints of it completely eradicated, then that same something will be able to prevent any curious mortals from finding out as well.

Bear in mind I'm not expecting a canonical answer on Golarion's fate, no more than I'm expecting a canonical answer on Aroden's fate. I'm just curious on what motivates people in-setting, when every single possible thing they try to do to unravel the mystery of the Gap or whatever it's called to be all dead ends all the time.

As for the Dominion of the Black VS Cthulhu, my bets on Cthulhu. While it's nice to just say "He's now a slave somewhow", I think it would be much more interesting if they were trying to keep him asleep. Like a sizeable portion of humanity is put into a Matrix-machine (as it was intended, using brains as processing power, not how it was edited for the movies, using bodies as batteries) whose sole purpose is to generate a dreamlike 'fake world' to keep him distracted and sleeping while the rest of the place is turned into one of the Dominion's flesh farms.
Turning him into a...

Duly noted, although I really don't like the idea of just doing nothing with Cthulhu, i.e. he sleeps and nothing else. I'd say that the Dominion probably nabbed him mostly by a stroke of luck, and probably something that they can't replicate again unless under extraordinary circumstances.

But then, I much prefer Giger over Lovecraft in horror and themes, so this is a shameless biased decision of mine.

Neongelion wrote:

They flee.

These are PC's though, right? I'd want to try and release the poor enslaved deity.

They would, if they were high enough level.

Unfortunately, the game breaks up before they reach level 10 due to scheduling conflicts, and the game is never played again.

I know they're not separate, but I was mistakenly mixing up sublight travel vs. FTL travel. Yes, you're right.

Although I don't think FTL travel is typically used in fiction (intentionally) to witness events before they're even supposed to happen, even if that were to be the case.

That being said I am curious on what kinda FTL travel is gonna be in Starfinder. Jumpgates, where you open up a wormhole and shoot through it? Hyperdrives, where you go into an alternate space where dimensions, distance and time work differently? Or a method that just ignores special or general relativity (or assumes they're incorrect as we understand them) and you can just accelerate at constant gravity until you go faster than light.

Most likely it won't be mentioned at all. If you're familiar with the notion of 4-dimensional space-time, the setting of Starfinder, or for that even of "present-day" Golarion can be connected to any Earth time, past or future. Just because one adventure connects to a specific time in Earth history, does not prevent another adventure in Starfinder or Pathfinder, from being set in Earth's present, far future, or remote past... perhaps even to some prehuman Lovecraftian civilization more advanced than our own.

The way I see it, FTL tech in Starfinder should enable travel at the far reaches of the universe without risking considerable relativistic problems. Maybe in order to cross the universe, ships travel in time as well as space, or they negative this aspect of physical reality, or they do something even stranger. So for gameplay purposes, if you jump to Earth, barely escape the shattered remains of the Sol system with your lives, and jump back to Absalom Station hundreds of thousands of parsecs away, time shouldn't pass at significantly different rates for them in comparison to their friends and family back home.

Basically, a healthy dose of handwavium.

Hey, Neongelion, have you seen the trailer for the upcoming video game Scorn?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKTkCa5nB_8

Cause from what you've described, if think this is probably close to what a fleshfarm would look like.

I most definitely have, and I can't wait to dig into this. The Giger feels from this game makes me super excited.

I was actually referring to Bio Apocalypse, a story wherein Earth is (accidentally) converted into a flesh monstrosity.

Yeah, I know. I remember that comic very, very fondly back in the day! That's the general idea of what happened, except it wasn't an accident; it was a very deliberate attack by an alien hegemony (i.e. Dominion of the Black) that Earth and its nascent empire had very little chance of resisting.

That's basically what most of the Earth looks like, except more organized, and more biomechanical aspects rather than pure flesh fields everywhere.

Neongelion wrote:

Umbral Reaver wrote:

Bio Apocalypse?

Pretty much. While I'm not a fan of completely 100% grimdark settings where nothing you do matters, I also like cosmic horror, and this being Earth's fate in my Starfinder game hammers home the fact that, in the grand scheme of things, Earth never stood a chance against the Dominion of the Black. Oh and they can enslave what we consider to be Eldritch Abominations. Cthulhu with biomechanical augmentations is way more terrifying than just the big squid himself.

To be honest, that's like saying a nuke launcher with laser sight is more terrifying than a nuke launcher.

Once you are dead, extra damage is pointless, and Cthulhu is kind of deadly as is.

I don't think I'd ever throw Cthluhu towards the party as a thing to fight, whether he's converted by the Dominion or not. It's more the horrific idea that the iconic Great Old One was simply turned into a tool by something that weren't gods themselves. Plus it reinforces the fact that the Dominion and the forces of the Mythos are not friends, which is a mistake way too many people make in the setting.

That being said, I completely support the idea that adding dangerous things onto already dangerous beings is bloody awesome. A balor demon? Horrifying. A balor demon with cybernetics and a rocket launcher attached to it? Well now...

Bio Apocalypse?

Pretty much. While I'm not a fan of completely 100% grimdark settings where nothing you do matters, I also like cosmic horror, and this being Earth's fate in my Starfinder game hammers home the fact that, in the grand scheme of things, Earth never stood a chance against the Dominion of the Black. Oh and they can enslave what we consider to be Eldritch Abominations. Cthulhu with biomechanical augmentations is way more terrifying than just the big squid himself.

Long story about what I'm probably going to make happen to Earth in my Starfinder setting. This is making a lot of assumptions about Starfinder's canon, but since were any of us bound of "official" canon?

The party has found some rather interesting information, recovered in of Absalom Station's deepest data crypts. Long ago, on the legendary world of Golarion, the nation of Irrisen was ruled by Anastasia I, who was the nation's first truly benevolent and loved queen. She had made peace with Irrisen's neighbors, both by diplomacy and by war. Irrisen's eternal winter ended, and the realm was propelled forward into a golden age.

Curiously, Anastasia did not come from Golarion at all, but was a native of another, distant world. The legend says that this was the same homeworld of Baba Yaga, the Queen of All Witches, who had seemingly disappeared a long time ago.

The party decides to investigate this world. Surely the homeplanet of both Baba Yaga and one of Golarion's most legendary rulers would be an interesting discovery?

The Mystic communes with his mysterious patron, a cosmic entity he calls the Tachyon King. After some time and some mental negotiation, the mystic receives the coordinates to this planet. He also receives something else: a cryptic message from his patron:

beware. the grave does not contain the dead. nor undeath. something else.

The coordinates are punched into the ship's navcom. The ship spools up its FTL drive and disappears, hurtled halfway across the galaxy, farther than anyone has ever gone from Absalom Station.

Their ship exits warp, on the edge of the star system. The world they're looking for is the 2nd planet from the Sun. Mercury has vanished.

Immediately, the ship receives very strange readings from Earth. There are signs of life...on 97.4% of the surface. Very, very large signs of life. There is so much life the planet must be thriving

And it is thriving, as the party soon discovers.

---
There are no continents. No oceans. Why would you have those, when building magnificent, miles-wide cathedrals dedicated to flesh-science? Nation-facilities are required, to manufacture servitors and . Cordon arteries, for the thought-slaves to breed and die and breed and die and work and breed and die. Cyst fields, for the nurturing of ship parts and the gestation of the minds that pilot such ships.

Oh what a investment this harvest was! This planet was not only rich in biomass, but also contained a chained entity that was positively thrumming with purpose and life, even as it fitfully slept in its tomb-city under the ocean. It put up quite the fight when we designated it as a prime candidate for phenotype integration. Much more of a fight than the humans. But in the end, the Drowned God worships us. It is put to much better use now.

Much better use than the humans. Such a fragile and remarkably uninteresting organism. Most of them were given over to the [intellect devourers]. The more genetically interesting specimens were shipped off-world for gestalt re-assignment, converted into servitors, or became decorations here on their homeworld. I daresay that once humans shed their humanoid form, they have a lot more uses!
---

The party discovers that Earth has been converted into something terrible: a fleshfarm for some unknown power. They discover that Cthulhu has been enslaved by this planet's new masters. They discover that no living human exists anywhere in the solar system outside of their ship.

They flee. And try to forget what they saw, and pray that they were not detected or followed.

Unfortunately, their prayer was not enough. And as they'll soon discover, the entities that rule Earth remember everything. They know exactly what happened to Golarion. And they want their property back.