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I've liked most of the things I've played with.

Thaumaturge would probably have been my favorite if it weren't for the occasional "GM doesn't know how Esoteric Lore/Diverse Lore works so he won't allow what my class is supposed to do."

So instead, I'd say probably Battledancer Swashbuckler has been the overall most positive experience. Leading Dance to keep forcing the enemies into flanking positions, and then the big finisher when you've got the best possible chance of hitting.

Premaster, Superstition Barbarian. Playing that was a giant middle finger to anyone in the party playing magical support/healer, like a Bard. It was annoying to have one in the group and to have to work around them. The new version is much, much less annoying since now it's "saving your life with Heal makes you Frightened 1 instead of making you either refuse it or leave the group or just let you die."

Anything like that where it's sabotaging someone else in the group to have you along is something I really dislke.

My 2001 is a premaster Superstition Barbarian and I've found that he works great in virtually every group, including alongside casters.

The Superstition Barbarian needs to be self-sufficient. It's that simple. Take Medicine and Battle Medicine (yes, your int suffers so you're a couple levels behind the curve, but it's fine). Take Robust Health. Make sure you take the potions as your Provisions instead of the way everyone wants to grab the scroll and hand it to the caster. Pick up some healing items, like Grub Gloves.

The Superstition Barbarian in no way hinders the rest of the party. If anything, having one is freeing to the rest of the party. Bard wants to cast Courageous Anthem... then do it. I just don't benefit from it. The rest of the party does, and it doesn't hurt you in the slightest.

You're a healing Cleric, and you're mad that I don't want your healing. Well... why? Do you literally feel so useless that healing me is the only thing you can do on your turn? You have nothing else productive to contribute? I'm not sabotaging you; I'm freeing up your turn to do literally any other thing that you might want. I mean, seriously, would you accuse me of "sabotaging" you if the enemies missed me and I didn't take damage? In what world does not needing you to heal me equate to me screwing you over?

The premaster Superstition Barbarian has a great function that too frequently the players ignore. When they rage, they recover Hit Points equal to the Temporary Hit Points gained. Frequently, I do not rage on Round 1. Instead, I charge into position and start wading through with damage, and then, after I take my first significant hit, I rage. I enjoy the higher AC at the start of combat for damage avoidance, and then I take advantage of the heal when I rage (instead of it happening when we're already full right at initiative).

But none of this hurts your action at all.

What would you be doing if the Barbarian wasn't on your team? Do that.

A properly built Superstitious Barbarian should either be self-sufficient, or should have another player they regularly team with whom can be taking care of them via Medicine. As a random Organized Play party, treat a Superstition Barbarian like a pet. Ignore them, let them do their own thing, and don't waste your resources on trying to babysit them.

I have been really, really struggling with the Witch. To the degree that it is incredibly discouraging and makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong, but there seem to be no practical guides that explain how to PLAY, just some general ranking of abilities to vaguely guide how to build.

From the beginning, there is the fundamental issue with low level casters: limited spell slots meaning that you have to be 90% cantrips, and only one focus point. Maybe the all-in approach of having just one or two major spells and then falling back to the weak options would balance out with the Martial classes that are more consistent across the entire combat, if the big spell would actually work. But it feels like because the enemies are built with a design scale that places their stats far above that of players, they always Save and often Critically Save, so my rare chance to contribute meaningfully is most likely negated.

Then there are my Hex's, which trigger abilities off of my familiar, but my familiar is required to be within 15 feet of the enemy, so it just constantly dies. For something that is required to be right there inside of the danger zone, they certainly don't have the ability to survive like the beast pets or the eidolon. In my brain I rationalize it like the beast pets are martial classes, and the witch familiar is more like a wizard: squishy but capable of casting awesome spells. But tactically, a spellcaster isn't required to be within 15 feet of their enemies for their core ability to work. The familiar is perpetually always dead, often killed on a MAP-10 casual swing that wipes them out in a single hit.

I straight up have no clue how this class is supposed to operate to be as competitive as a Martial Class, and I can't even make it work on the level of the basic casters. It just feels all-around inferior in every possible way and impossible to level up except as a tagalong that is begging their comrades to do all of the work and babysit them to keep them alive.

In any other circumstances, I would have written off this class entirely by my 10th adventure of never seeing these things improve. Unfortunately, my wife who does not play often, but does do three conventions per year where she joins me for the weekend and plays games (and actually has fun most of the time), she is adamant about wanting to play a Witch as her next 1-4 character because she loves all those classic Witch movies like Hocus Pocus and Practical Magic. So I must figure out how to play this awful class well enough that I can then teach it to a player whom only tentatively plays and is only truly one frustrating weekend away from quitting PF2 altogether with a "Well, I guess I'm not good at this game. I'll stop coming."

Every other class I've played, there was a clear choice for a "basic" mode that was easy to learn, easy to play, and performed at an acceptable level. Then, by going into deeper and more complicated builds and tactics, players could break that glass ceiling and start to excel. With the Witch, there doesn't seem to be a good learner option, and even with extensive experimenting across other patrons and spells and such, nothing has really performed adequatedly enough for the character to not feel like a burden on the party. "I'm just here to increase your challenge rating; don't expect me to contribute anything meaningful."

Is this a class that doesn't actually come online until level 6+, with a heavy amount of suffering as the cost of entry, or is there something huge that I am missing out on?

"I do not think it means what you think it means." Indigo Montoya

I have absolutely observed the same thing that the Paizo developers have observed; high level tables seem to play less often.

I do not believe this means what Paizo has claimed it means: Starfinder players are less interested in high level content.

Rather, although there is a correlation, I do not believe it is a result of a direct causation.

Evidence that I would look to:

- As a regular GM at several live conventions, overwhelmingly I am asked by coordinators to run high level scenarios. These scenarios have always fired. They are often the fastest things to fill up.

- Looking at PaizoCon as an example, the Starfinder content being offered trends substantially more towards the higher end. The 11-14 Final Assessment scenarios offered filled up faster than any other scenario for Starfinder.

It definitely appears as though the interest in high end content is there.

So why then is low level content running more frequently than high level content?

I politely suggest that it has nothing to do with player interest. In fact, I'm positive that if Paizo did an internal metrics analysis, they would find that an overwhelming majority of Replays are being spent on high level scenarios, supporting the idea that players want to play this content more than any other content, even when they have already played it.

Instead, I would suggest these as the reasons why low level content fires more frequently than high level content.

- Lack of high level repeatables. When dozens of low level scenarios are able to be replayed, but none of the high level scenarios are able to be replayed, Society Players do not have the choice to play high level content as much as they can play low level content. We exhaust the high level content available and are forcibly funneled into low level scenarios with no other options.

- Lack of society legal characters. Level 1-4 content always has the option to make a new character, or had the option to play a Level 1 or Level 4 Pregen. Level 3-6 could play the Level 4 pregen. 5-8 had the level 8 pregen. Level 9-12 and 11-14 required a character that had been fully leveled to that point by legal society play. That means a bare minimum of 24 tables of level 1-8 content before a player qualifies for a level 9 game. Sometimes players simply do not have a character that high. Sometimes, our characters reach level 13 and we do not have an additional character that high. Lack of a legal character does not equate into lack of desire to play.

- Simple math. In a game with linear progression, the results will exclusively taper. What is the most frequently played character level? Level 1. Because not every level 1 character will be continued at level 2, but every level 2 character had to first play level 1. And so on. If we try to interpret this as meaning the most frequently played level is the favorite level for the players to play, the results would suggest that players love to be Level 1. Talk to basically any player and you're going to overwhelmingly hear the contrary, that most do not truly enjoy a character until at least level 3 when customization and basic game abilities like Weapon Specialization come online. The further the player goes, the more customization is available, and the more fun the player seems to have. But because those lower levels are mandatory, they will always be more frequently played because they are REQUIRED.

It seems as though Paizo saw the problem and proposed a solution for which I've heard an overwhelming amount of positivity from the community: the ability to start characters at higher levels. That option to just make a higher level character is a great solution to problems like players not having a character in the proper level range, or even for players who do not want to play at the lower levels and prefer the higher levels, improving player experience.

Additionally, the stance that all content would be repeatable, a second solution is made available to the high end content. If it's repeatable, then we can actually play it more often. I'm sure it's no secret behind the scenes that repeatable scenarios are the most popular scenarios, because GMs are more apt to purchase a scenario they can run more than once, and players are more apt to play a scenario more than once if they are allowed to get credit for it more than once.

You have all the tools in place to make high end content available to all, to solve the problems and let the players enjoy themselves. Freely repeatable high end scenarios, along with the ability to create characters starting in those higher level ranges (there is no reason why you couldn't extend the Start At levels to include 9 when 9-12 scenarios become available, or 11 when 11-14 scenarios become available).

But instead, a because of what I am certain is a misinterpretation of data, you have become convinced that the players do not want the thing that they have been starved for. Just because we weren't always allowed to play high level doesn't mean that we didn't want it. And so cutting it off forever is a very sad, very disappointing stance to take.

Adventure Paths are not a substitute for this. In fact, in my experience, Adventure Paths frequently showcase character stories that are not connected to the Pathfinder/Starfinder Society. Transferring a character OUT of Society Play and into an AP would largely not make sense for most characters.

Being truthful, there were a number of things about the SF2 playtest that I do not like, changes from SF1 where I felt that the original Starfinder simply did it better. My local players at the shop were similarly disappointed... until we got to Empires Devoured. It wasn't until we were playing the level 10 characters that I finally started to be able to get some of them on board with the idea of the change. To convince them that maybe part of the reason why they weren't enjoying the new game was simply because it was a reset to zero, and they liked their high level characters and didn't enjoy shunting back to level one, independent of the game's rules. I was starting to get them excited to give it a shot.

And then you announced that you had forbidden the one thing that they actually seemed to like. That half of the playtesting we had done did not represent what Organized Play would be like, because we weren't going to be allowed to play at those levels.

And with that one fell swoop, you killed all interest in the game again. "Yay. Instead of working through the low levels like a chore so that we can later enjoy the high levels, we get to be stuck in the low levels forever doing chores and NEVER get to enjoy the high levels."

I really do hope this is a decision that you're willing to table discussion on, because it absolutely is hedged up as a barrier for player interest. One of the biggest appeals I've heard that has differentiated Paizo from D&D is that Paizo was not afraid of high level games. So it is very sad that you are now afraid of high level games.

My two favorite characters from 1E were a Nanocyte and an Evolutionist. They were fun classes. It'd be great to see them.

That being said, I'm not looking to re-create the same characters I made before, and easily half of what made them so fun was that they were crazy alien species that I spent a bunch of ACP to unlock and basically never saw anybody else playing.

To give real perspective, I played six playtest games since January. I have seen more Human characters in those six games than I have seen in the past four YEARS of playing Starfinder 1E.

I need more Ancestries, and I need for some of them to not just be vague reskins of existing ones. I don't just want "Star Trek diversity", where everybody looks like a human with one cosmetic difference that is barely noteworthy.

I want "Futurama diversity"! I want aliens that are so un-human that they create an immediate distinction.

And an SRO or Anacite Ancestry for people who want to play robots that are like REAL robots, instead of the almost-human Androids. Nothing wrong with Androids, but they do not scratch the same itch.

Seriously, just two weeks ago I cancelled my Starfinder Subscription and Preordered the Special Edition of the Galaxy Guide for exactly this reason. I wanted the classier looking covers where everything thematically matches.

Great to see that I can re-sub and just get what I wanted in the first place.

Honestly, what I want is a generic "Alien" ancestry.

Kind of a do-it-yourself species with access to several generic Ancestry feats. This frees up the chance for players to roughly recreate their favorite species for 2E right at launch, instead of this strange lack of new alien recruits that occurs with us suddenly getting this incredibly less diverse Society as though hundreds of races just got kicked out of the Starfinder Society and no longer get recruited.

Unless there is a Lore reason why hundreds of species are no longer working as Field Agents, it feels highly inappropriate for hundreds of species to become non-playable. A generic package Alien as a placeholder, accompanied with a "You can retrain out of this ancestry once, to accommodate changes should your Ancestry get a more in-depth release", could fix the problem in the meanwhile.

Choose extra limb and climb speed from a list of options, and here is the budget Maraquoi. Choose Large size and natural weapons, and here is your Uplifted Bear. Choose Large size with extra limb, and you've got an Izalguun.

The lack of diversity is the number one off-putting thing of SF2. I have never seen this many humans before in Starfinder games. The world just got a whole lot more generic, and that definitely needs addressed sooner rather than later.

Just cancelled my Starfinder Subscription so that I can manually buy the Collector's Editions.

It feels strange that the best way to support the game is apparently to NOT use the subscription service.

I too was very confused if this was a new map or a re-release of the previous Space Station.

Honestly, it's one of the changes that is most obnoxious. At least in the eyes of myself and my group of players here.

The previous multi-hand race treatment didn't feel particularly unbalanced to me. A Kasatha lawman walking around with a lethal smallarm, a nonlethal smallarm, and a melee weapon (while also keeping a free hand) still felt fine. Because they still only got one attack as a Standard Action, or two-with-penalty as a Full Round Action.

I directly compared it to Weapon Mounts for Armor Upgrades. Two-handed species could effectively wield more than one weapon at a time, and freely swap between them without it requiring some extra action.

Like most racial abilities, it was something that was easily matched by everyone else through simple equipment upgrades. If you want to have your melee weapon and your ranged weapon out at the same time, you mount one (or do the bayonette mounting on the ranged weapon).

Similar to how Jetpacks allow non-fliers to fly. Hydrojets allow non-swimmers to swim. Various eye upgrades allow people to overcome a lack of low light and darkvision. etc.

There was a simple equipment manner to accomplish the exact same mechanical advantage as multi-arms: carry multiple equipments and have them all be useable at once.

Multi-arms was not granting extra attacks.

This new change of an action to swap arms makes multi-arms feel pointless. Your non-dominant arm is basically just a sheathe, and you still effectively have to waste the action readying the weapon before usage.

It wasn't broken. It didn't need fixing.

I actually quite like it. The importance is distinction.

Dubious Knowledge is not designed for the GM to try and present 2 ideas and for the Player to figure out which is truth and which is false.

Dubious Knowledge reflects two pieces of information and that character believes in BOTH.

It doesn't have to be a good lie; the point isn't to trick the player. The point is that this is misinformation that the Character DOES believe. So you can toss out something stupid, and the player roleplays that their character believes.

"Aha! A Skeleton! Skeletons have brittle bones and are vulnerable to bludgeoning damage. The brittle bones are caused by a calcium deficiency during their mortal lives, so if you throw Milk or Cheese on them... they will be destroyed!"

I feel stupid for asking, but WHERE are the pregen characters found?

I'll be running Playtest #1 at my local comic shop tonight, and looking through the store, the books, and the scenarios, I still cannot find the characters.

I also felt the ending fell flat. I haven't been changing the way it's written, because I want the playtest to actually test as intended.

I honestly think if you were taking the "run to the ship" option, I'd just flip the encounters. Robots first, and then the collapsing shell hazard as a pressure while you're on your way to the ship.

If they're doing the "fix the tower" option, I'd probably have the first tower deliver a data drive or something that just needs installed into an unmodified tower. Collapsing shell on the way to the tower. Then I'd do the robot encounter AT the tower, but with the robots attempting to sunder the data drive to prevent "server corruption". Have the party do the hot potato routine, like the opener in Liberation of Locus-1, or somebody needs to install the drive in the middle of combat (easy Computers check, but requiring 3 action activity).

Does this Adventure use only the maps from the Playtest Pack, or are there other maps I need to pick up in anticipation?

(Or worse still, are there a bunch of custom maps in the book that are never printed in map form, so I'm stuck drawing them all by hand.)

For the life of me, I cannot find where I am supposed to go to purchase the tickets.

I was looking at PF2 races that overlapped already with SF1, and ended up with my initial dabbling being with a Ghoran Envoy. I went with the Lead From The Front mentality where he was actually going to be more in the thick of things, and ended up with Deputy Sumac "Mac" Cornwall, a giant stalk of corn that is a cowboy old west lawman.

I will be running this scenario at Gamehole Con.

I won't get my copy until closer to the Con, but if somebody doesn't mind either posting it here in spoiler tags or shooting me a PM, I'd like to know what I need for miniatures so that I can get them ordered and painted in preparation for the Con.

When people are paying money for the Convention experience and table spots, I feel like it's my duty to make sure that maps and miniatures are on point for the best possible experience.

Do these lengths and patterns also represent your intentions for Starfinder?

A 1-4 multi-table really boxes a lot of characters out.

And given the content, it seems very odd that a multi-table would mobilize a large number of society members but bring none of the veterans for leadership.

"We have an important mission. We're going to need dozens, maybe even hundreds of Starfinders. I need a list of our newest, least experienced, least capable agents for this important work."

Honestly, I would have loved to bring my old Attack of the Swarm character out of retirement and have him throw down with the bugs for one last hurray.

If Ghibrani are being made Always Available, Wayfinders need a new Capstone Boon.

I have no idea where or how to go about this stuff, but the past 5 years I have attended Gamehole Con in Madison, WI. I always play (and often GM) multiple tables, and the event has an attendance in the thousands. It's pretty big.

Yet we never have the Charity Boon Auctions or the Organized Play GM rewards or anything.

How do we go about connecting with Paizo to get that sort of stuff lined up?

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."

Support heavy Envoys have been many of my favorite characters.

I get it that some people want to play a more combat-centric role. I just want to make sure there remain options for people who want to be more Support and less Combat-y.

At a certain point, when other classes say "I wish we were more like the Soldier or Operative", we have to consider the option of "Then just play a Soldier or Operative."

I've said it before. I'll say it again.

We need closure on Ziggy's friends who were lost in the Scoured Stars. That was too much of a Chekov's Gun to just get ignored when we actually went there.

Whether we save them or whether they died, we need to discover their fate.

I don't suppose it would be possible to put some sort of additional snippet into 1-99 in order to reveal the final fate of Ziggy's friends. After Star Sugar Heartlove made a big deal of the friends he lost there and his survivor's guilt for having not gone with them, I feel like we should either get a chance to save them, or at least confirm they are dead so that Ziggy can get some closure.

Honestly, I am not a fan of the Pathfinder Ancestry system. I prefer the frontloaded effect of species, with a lessening curve down the road.

By having it be frontloaded, the game feels more exotic and "cantina" right out of the gate.

By NOT having those ancestry additions down the road, as we reach high level play, the importance of species matters less and less, which makes us able to choose that initial species able to be made just based on what looks fun instead of having to play out additional ability unlocks that are going to happen 10 levels later.

I've been telling new players for years "Pick whatever looks like fun. Be what you want to be. Do what sounds cool. Even if it's not perfectly optimized, within a few levels, everybody sort of levels out anyways."

With ancestry, that's less the case. It's a decision that seems pinned down as a more major choice throughout the entire life of the character, and right out of the gate at level 1 when we have very few abilities and such, we get less from the race. At the point when we need them most, when the extra options would have the greatest positive impact to gameplay, we get the least.

For me, I prefer the opposite. Give me species abilities frontloaded, and then as characters level, gear gets introduced that can even any of that out. "You could fly at level 1, but I've got a jetpack now, so it all works out before we hit high levels."

While I dislike the Ancestry system as designed, if we're going to talk about specific species that I want to see what they can do...

Spathinae
Entu Colony

I'd like to see the Spathinae eventually pick up some swarm straights, maybe the option of larger size with morphable space occupation like swarms. The idea of those ancestry feats being chooseable means that things like Size could be introduced as an option without being locked in as a mandatory. Who knows, maybe even eventually the ability to separate the swarm into smaller swarms so that they can occupy different spots on a map for acting purposes.

As for the Entu, the once per day action of the merge is something that could definitely be expanded upon until they have an option to build almost like the Venom symbiote. The ability to do a little more with that, or do it more often than once per day, would be a very unique approach to a race that is unlike anything else.

As a mostly Star Finder player with only a little bit of Pathfinder dabbling here and there when my friends insist on playing it, this entire announcement basically constitutes a declaration of " if you didn't like and switch to Pathfinder 2 three years ago, we no longer want your business."

I do understand that as a development company they can take their product in any direction they want and they have every right to chase where the money is going to be most prevalent. I'm sure it'll be really successful.

But judging based on the way that Pathfinder one was treated after Pathfinder 2 was released, I anticipate I am probably in store for a transition closer to the change from 3.5 D&D to 4th edition D&D. Basically when Infinity or somebody else continues to make open gaming content for the game that I enjoy and we no longer support the game that I enjoy here my business probably moves elsewhere.

Considering that a company abandoning support for a product and trying to insist that customers move to something they didn't want is basically what made Paizo into the successful game developers they are today, it feels really odd to find myself in the other camp now. Being told we made a game that you love and now we're going to require you to move to one that you consciously decided you didn't want years ago and if you don't move then we don't want your business anymore.

I don't like losing hundreds of playable species and that unique Cantina feel and everything that makes starfinder special, to convert it to a campaign setting for Pathfinder players, because the current position is that Pathfinder players find it to confusing to flip between two sets of rules. I preferred starfinder as its own game and it didn't need to be pathfinder. If I wanted to play Pathfinder I probably would be playing pathfinder.

When I reach level 5, I proceed with the following process.

- "Oh! I need a new 1-4 character so I can continue with Society Play!"

- "What's the craziest/coolest/silliest/most fun species I can find for this one? I want to be something awesome. I love how alien this game is, and how every character seems to really feel unique because of all of these options. I pick... this one."

- "Alright. Now what's my -2 in? I'm bad at this ability? Great. I'm going to pick a class that really needs that ability score, and build something that is whacky and unconventional, even for a rare alien type."

- "This is great. I've got another really cool, really different, incredibly alien character. This game is so awesome. I really love it."

In PF2, the character creation approach is:

- "Meh. Pick a species, and they mostly just feel like a mildly reskinned version of human.."

I shall be sorely disappointed is that is the direction Starfinder is taking. I don't want "Pathfinder in Space". I love that cantina feel of thousands of alien species. A big part of what drives me to play every new scenario and Adventure Path is unlocking rare species. Those are the grand prize chronicles.

Do we ever learn anything ever about Zigvigix's missing "friends"?

Some of my players asked about them, since supposedly they were quite meaningful in the way Ziggy references them, but the adventure includes nothing about names/races/classes etc. I wasn't sure if they were ever mentioned elsewhere so that I could have the adequate info to set up the information, or if they're just gone forever and we can make up whatever.

I am watching like a hawk for any chance to catch an Author's Table on this one.

I have some really, really fun ideas.

As a part of the Scoured Stars metaplot, this is 7-10, while the next two scenarios in the metaplot are 3-6.

Is the Chronology actually referenced in the scenario where it would matter if we play them out of sequence, or do we have to level a second set of characters just to complete this narrative journey in a way that makes sense?

Making a character who is going to run an ongoing narrative of being a local guy (like a Cubs/Bears/Bulls fan living in Chicago), and having him be afraid of travel (like someone in our world might be afraid of flying).

I know of a few Scenarios that take place entirely on Absalom Station.
Commencement
Half-Alive Streets
Hard Reset

I'm hoping that there are some more that people could point me towards so that I could do all his progression without ever leaving home.

While the Metaplot-tagged scenarios do work best narratively if played in order of release, by no means do you have to play every scenario in order. #6-04, for example, isn't tagged as being part of the Fortune's Fall storyline, but is a sequel to #4-09.

I'm close to wrapping my Scoured Stars home campaign, based entirely on SFS scenarios, and have all six seasons mapped out in a workable "narrative" order. I could post that "grand outline" later if there's interest.

I can certainly respect that. I'm running a local SFS Season 1 Scoured Stars arc and taking them from 1-9 while following the key plot mostly worked. It's still dumb that Honorbound Emmissaries 1-29 was part 6 of Scoured Stars and was level 7-10, but parts 7&8 are level 3-6. Even the very first Metaplot could not be played in order.

I'm kind of hoping that later seasons get the Scoured Stars treatment and assembled into a viable Adventure Path to let the meta-plots be played in order by a single team.

What playable species would I like to see (IE: a species being made SFS legal in some way)? The Entu. I really like them and see fun potential, but they are not SFS legal.

What playable species would I like to see (IE: species exists in lore, but isn't yet stat-blocked)? The "snake headed girl" race. In Starsugarheartlove there were those Snake Head girls that you carry on your shoulders. One of my players absolutely adored them. He wants to play one, but so far as we can tell, there is no breakdown for them in any Starfinder resource.

What playable species would I like to see (IE: a concept that doesn't exist yet, but would be great)? Pig people. As a Star Wars fan, the Gamorrean was my favorite space-race. I love the idea of an obese pig people getting to be known for being tough. It's super inclusive for body type diversity, in a world where fat people are normally very marginalized and ignored (or mocked and made to be comic relief and bumbling idiots).

Years ago, I had abandoned rigid XP in favor of milestone leveling.

The current SFS system is 90% ideal, in my opinion.

The only frustration that I seem to find with it is the difficulty of playing a single character through any Metaplot story after Season 1 that doesn't end up a hodgepodge of nonsense.

Looking at Season 6's announcements as an example:

SFS 6-01: 1-4
SFS 6-02: 3-6
SFS 6-03: 3-6
SFS 6-04: 9-12
SFS 6-05: 5-8

So if you walked into Season 6's new content with a character that already had 11 XP under their belt, you could play #1 and hit level 5. Then play 2-3, still being level 5. Then... need to time travel backwards and pick up 10 extra Scenarios outside of the Season 6 story in order to earn enough XP that you qualify for minimum entry for Episode 4. And then you are too high to do Episode 5.

By the 4th adventure, you have interrupted your character with more random adventures than what you have done with the actual story, and by the 5th adventure, you just can't play anymore.

It makes it really hard to play through an ongoing narrative when the level ranges make it impossible to play through the narrative in order, let alone play through it without the majority of it being from an entirely different season's arc. I don't know if this bothers other people or not, but for me, it is something I have no clue how to work around.

Forgive my ignorance; this is my first time attending.

Badges were said to go on sale "mid to late March".

Where do I buy one, or watch for the chance to be able to buy one?

And how will sign-ups be handled? Is this a Warhorn style thing, or is there going to be something here on the Paizo forums, or some third party website?

I put in vacation time from work to make sure that I could play, but I don't want to miss the opening and end up with all the stuff I want to play being Full, and just a flood of random Season 5 SFS scenarios that I've already played being all that's left.

I would love to play Starfinder: Threefold Conspiracy.

I have a high amount of flexibility in what I will play. First impression is a Human Precog, to present him in the fashion that in the beginning he is a bit of a paranoid conspiracy nutter, then over time he might actually clue into something of a conspiracy, but still he keeps imagining everything is far more nefarious then reality.

However, I can and would readily fill any group role.

Soldier being played as a Pro-Athlete, as a more charismatic version of the traditional melee soldier build, sort of being a minor celebrity and initially very oblivious to what is going on because he is accustomed to people treating him special.

Operative as the Criminal that has gone straight, sort of with the Witness Protection Agency mentality. Not some murder-hobo difficult character; like a con artist who is trying to go straight and keep himself under the radar.

Envoy or Mystic as a Religious Priest, the sort of person who can be made to believe in the supernatural, and always credits things towards faith or miracles, rather than seeing the conspiracies.

I can have a fun time playing any character class, which allows me to be whatever the team needs. I just really want to give a shot at this Adventure Path, and it's one that I rarely see people offering.

A difference like from D&D 3E to 3.5E, that is great. Just publishing the errata in a formal place, and including some of the later options into the core book.

But a fully new edition is a hard pass for me. I came to Starfinder from D&D because so many of the changes made the game feel like it was being simplified to make it more new player friendly, which if you're not a new player, just makes me feel like they're treating me like I'm dumb.

If you're talking about finding a local group to play live, the best advice I can give you is to locate the nearest game/hobby/comic store and pitch them the idea of organized play. Locally, I did tell my comic shop owner about it. He was mostly indifferent. Then I explained to him that, by hosting a weekly game in his store, I'd put it up through the websites to advertise and there was an increased chance of foot traffic business from people who pop in for these games, even from neighboring towns. He told me he'd let me give it a shot. I did have to GM the first several sessions, but I just advertised them on Warhorn and people started showing up. Started with a couple of Bounties, and then as the group built, we started into a few one shot adventures. By the time we were having 6+ players showing up every week and it seemed that there would reliably always be a full table, we started a stable Adventure Path, with a second table picking up basically "new player training zone" for hit and miss players, running SFS scenarios.

Essentially, it only was going to be possible if somebody takes point and agrees to GM in the beginning. I do have other players who now are willing to take turns though, and by the time we finish Fly Free or Die, I should be able to rotate out as GM and become a player for a while.

<-=O=->

If you're talking about online play specifically, that is the far easier way to find a group, especially if you don't want to GM.

Go to Warhorn. Sign up for game. Be online at the designated time to play the game.

Basically every week I get at least one session in through Warhorn.

It is important to note though that this is not going to be any sort of a regular "group". I do have a couple of GMs that I regularly sign up for, because they do great and have similar attitudes and personalities to what I enjoy. I do bump into the same player or character from time to time, but this is definitely not a regular group and your character will be taking part of. You'll need to accept your place in a rotating roster of Starfinder Agents.

First off, I hope that we do not have to deal with a Starfinder 2E.

I don't think any major mechanical changes are needed, and with certain other games, I've watched as later editions actually significantly decrease enjoyment. I'm happy with Starfinder mechanics where they are, and I want to see them continue building, instead of restarting or streamlining.

I would like to see Season 6 be longer. Calendar-wise, I do not care if it takes multiple years. It doesn't have to be more content coming faster. Current pace is fine. I just feel like rolling Season 6 longer will allow us to have a larger, more meaningful Metaplot, like Scoured Stars. It also allows the Season to be more self-contained, so that players don't have to bounce between multiple seasons in a time-travel routine in order to earn appropriate XP. A 20 episode season is capable of running a character from 1-7, which allows the players to play 1-4, 3-6, 5-8, and 7-10 content without having to dip into other outside sources. For me, that would be more ideal.

I would like to see more of a return to the Chronicles of old. More recent Chronicles just recapping the story and not including Boons listed feels like a step backwards. I do enjoy the multi-scenario boons that require play of an entire arc, but I also think that I greatly enjoyed some of the small, silly boons that came earlier on, where earlier actions came up in later scenarios. Failing to include the small boons makes the stories feel less connected when we run several with the same character.

Beyond that, maybe some sort of increased reward for GMs running APs clear through. It is very disappointing the number of APs that I've started where the GM leaves around book 2-3. It really is disappointing as a player to have dozens of half-finished APs on characters that get abandoned forever. At times, it feels as though I'll just never get to finish ones like Threefold Conspiracy, because it will always fizzle halfway through.

MAYBE the solution is to swap more to the 3 book APs, but honestly I do love the longer ones where we can get truly into a character longterm. It's just so hard to play them all the way through without a group falling apart.

I wish there was an option to subscribe starting at the beginning, instead of starting at the present.

One of my players took the Sister background for his character, creating a Companion Android he named "Brother" with the concept of being used by the wealthy parents to care for her as though he were an older sibling.

Based on Sinjin's original introduction to her, I was hoping that she turned out to be the inventor and was leaking it to Sinjin as a way to get it out to the greater world, stopping EJCorp from keeping it secret.

Instead, it looks like she is going to be a key antagonist.

I'm going to need a really good reason for him to betray the person that he has built his entire character around assisting.

Sounds like good news for anyone that hasn't played it.

I found it a little disappointing when I ran it for our group that Treading History's Folly and Heart of the Foe were in the 3-6 range AFTER Honorbound Emissary was in the 7-10 range. It literally made it impossible for a single group to play through it in order (without being stuck running in a leveled down, less credit manner).

We took our saved Scoured Stars Veterans we saved and sent them on part 7 and 8 so that we could follow the level range. Still, making it designed for a single party will improve the experience.

Sharkbite wrote:

Is there an option to buy it while also bundling it with the PDF?

it will have its own PDF.

Forgive my ignorance, but does that mean that the PDF is automatically included when I preorder the book, or that it will be offered later but only as a standalone with no option of bundling the two together (might as well order now), or that there will be a bundle but not at this time (post-poning now will provide the opportunity to buy both later as the bundle, rather than puchasing them both individually at full price)?

I'm going to get it no matter what. I just want to make sure that I get it both as a print copy (because I'm an old man who needs books in print to be able to read them without eye strain) and as a PDF (because I'm an old man who can't carry a duffle bag of 30 books into Gamehole Con and likes to just be able to flash the watermarked PDFs for the GM to prove ownership).

Is there an option to buy it while also bundling it with the PDF?

I'm old and computer-stupid. Assume that common sense stuff for everyone else is critically challenging for me.

I've been playing D&D since 2E, and just finished a 12 year 3.5E campaign. We wanted to do something different, and we all collectively hate the 5E stuff. At Gamehole Con last year, we played 2 adventures of Starfinder and collectively we liked it. Now that we're free, we've decided to go this direction.

Already bought all resource books, but we wanted to actually do Organized Play, basically just so that we can bring our own personal characters to Gamehole instead of using pregens.

I bought the Swarm series. We've started to run it, but I'm afraid that I'm totally ignorant to the way this works. Not actually playing the game, but, you know, making it count.

When we finish an adventure and go to fill out the campaign sheet, where do I get the numbers from that I'm supposed to put on there?

XP is simple enough (seems like it's just 1 point per adventure). Credits are self-explanatory. How much Reputation do the players get though? And now that it's these Achievement Points instead of Fame, how much do they get of those?

How do we actually go about entering the information so that the code thinger for the session goes into the internets and makes the character be more good?

I know this is probably all common sense, but assume I'm an idiot and I need it explained like you would to either an 80 year old man or a 4 year old child.