I don't see much in the way of reasons as to why you couldn't just port class mechanics over directly. Level I casters Maybe not but the rest? Sure.
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Well, for one thing you do have access to the setting, it's in the corebook. As are the class conversion guidelines, actually.
But more importantly, what do you want to convert? I'd bet good money that, if not now then with books available in the next 6 months you can create almost any fantasy archetype you'd care to name with existing Starfinder mechanics and relatively little effort in most cases.
9 level casters are close to the only exception, and one that the game is probably better off without.
As others have mentioned, the setting is in the Rulebook as are the notes for converting things from pathfinder.
Having gone through the book and put together some adventures, it's actually fairly straight forward as a GM to port things over from Pathfinder to Starfinder. Getting a workable stat block from bestiary monsters or other existing npcs is fairly straightforward and I found it similar to converting 3.0 adventures to Pathfinder in terms of effort required.
Where it gets more complex is the player side of the equation. I found converting a Pathfinder class from level 1 to 20, with comparable spell lists and options so it can be played by a player a lot more difficult as you need to rebuild quite a lot.
It sounds like you thought this was going to be PF in space while it was always sold as PF.5 in space.
Neal,
Here is the PF Conversion book you need.
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I'd recommend highly against the Starfarer's Companion. It breaks a lot of Starfinder design rules hard (9th level casters, large attack bonuses from the bard etc) and seems to have a very, very poor sense of balance (Hey, you know what Clerics needed on top of being 9th level casters? Getting a reduction on the cost of all items that stacks with being an Icon!)
I'd love to see some well-written reviews of the Starfarer's Companion since as of this post there are no reviews. Right now as far as I know it's the only substantive PF to SF conversion book available. The guidelines in the SF CRB are ... thin.
No. You generally cannot convert Pathfinder classes to Starfinder because Starfinder classes are designed very differently.
Races and monsters, on the other hand, are very easy to convert.
Well... if you want to use Pathfinder rules and classes in a sci-fi setting, you might want to look at the Aethera Campaign Setting.
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its doable but you will have to goblin it. rip most of it out and path it with what the other classes have and can use. like the barbarian with a small dr buff or EC buff, a temp sp shield instead of health gain and a +1 to hit while raging that upgrades later to a +2. (i picked the easier one) and a +5 speed buff every 5 or 10 lvls maybe?
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They've been saying for quite a while that conversion would be necessary.
No. You generally cannot convert Pathfinder classes to Starfinder because Starfinder classes are designed very differently.
Races and monsters, on the other hand, are very easy to convert.
Pretty much this.
The selling point for me was that there would be no conversion necessary. You would, essentially, just have new classes and races to choose from, with a lot of stuff from the technology guide suddenly being a lot more prominent. Use some of the modern firearms rules, where they're common enough to be considered simple weapons, and bam, you're off and running.
However, just from what I've seen, Starfinder is essentially a metric bolt. PF is a standard wrench. Sure you can MAKE it work with some effort and ingenuity, but I don't buy a brand new game just to crack and reverse engineer it back at home. I want it complete, functional, and doing what I want straight from the get-go. That's why I pay money for it.
Starfinder doesn't seem to be doing what I want. It's perfectly good on its own merits, but what I wanted were space-faring summoners, demon possessed barbarians fighting with laser axes, interstellar evokers, and swashbucklers with vibro-blades. This game is not really giving me what I wanted, there, and converting PF to SF is not something I'd recommend anymore than converting 3.5 to PF. It's a door best left not opened, from what I'm looking at.
Please consider Haladir's post above yours, I expect that's exactly what you want. :-)
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The selling point for me was that there would be no conversion necessary. You would, essentially, just have new classes and races to choose from, with a lot of stuff from the technology guide suddenly being a lot more prominent. Use some of the modern firearms rules, where they're common enough to be considered simple weapons, and bam, you're off and running.
I'm not really sure where you got this idea, I've read/watched/listened to pretty much every pre-release source and they've never said to me that you would just be able to use anything from Pathfinder without any conversion.
However, just from what I've seen, Starfinder is essentially a metric bolt. PF is a standard wrench. Sure you can MAKE it work with some effort and ingenuity, but I don't buy a brand new game just to crack and reverse engineer it back at home. I want it complete, functional, and doing what I want straight from the get-go. That's why I pay money for it.
I highlighted the relevant part, I'm not sure why you would expect a brand new game to be exactly the same as an old game, if it was the brand new game would just be a sourcebook.
Starfinder doesn't seem to be doing what I want. It's perfectly good on its own merits, but what I wanted were space-faring summoners, demon possessed barbarians fighting with laser axes, interstellar evokers, and swashbucklers with vibro-blades. This game is not really giving me what I wanted, there, and converting PF to SF is not something I'd recommend anymore than converting 3.5 to PF. It's a door best left not opened, from what I'm looking at.
That's fine, there are games out there that offer that (to a point), but that's never what Starfinder was sold as.
In fairness, in their initial GenCon pitch last year, they DID say you'd be able to use the Pathfinder Bestiaries with minimal effort. :-)
In fairness, in their initial GenCon pitch last year, they DID say you'd be able to use the Pathfinder Bestiaries with minimal effort. :-)
Sure, and that's true. There were some mathematical acrobatics done to make the monster math line up pretty well. The flip side of that is that the PC math is rather different, making PC conversion much more involved than Bestiary conversion.s
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Minimal effort != no effort.