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Speaking from experience, playing DnD 3E or Pathfinder (or their descendants) without any sort of grid fundamentally changes the realities of combat in ways the game balance is not prepared for - for example, attacks of opportunity become nearly impossible to police appropriately. Your example of determining exactly who's caught in an AOE also applies, for sure. You can do it - I spent an entire campaign of DnD 3.5E doing it - but it will impact various characters differently, especially melee characters in my experience (due to the sudden lack of precise tracking of reach and position having such a huge impact on them - anyone with ranged abilities is much more compatible with loosey goosey tracking of those).
Starfinder has the same skill system as DnD 3.5E and Pathfinder, so it can be awkward building firmly around non-combat stuff; for example, there's no way to sacrifice BAB progression for other things. I'm not sure what you have in mind there, but bear in mind, Shadowrun has neither classes nor levels - Starfinder has both, and that implies a fundamentally different approach to character design.
My favorite house rule for abstracting out this style of system to work with abstract/complex rules situations is to treat the rulebook's declarations of which stats apply to which skills as a guideline, not a rule, and have the GM mandate other stats depending on situation - for example, running a race might be Athletics (Str) to sprint but Athletics (Con) for a marathon. This lets you tailor situations to better fit what a character ought to be competent at, in my experience.
I just finished throwing this sheet together last night, which by default auto-fills and calculates a fair bit, but it's laid out as a single page and it's a spreadsheet, so hard coding in any numbers you'd rather track yourself is as easy as just typing them in.
As for Starfinder itself, it's still very much all designed with a grid in mind, but relative to Pathfinder, spellcasting is pretty de-emphasized, guns are pretty much the default, and a 5' step takes a move action, so going abstract should be a little easier. Less likely to be dealing with flanking, or allies being in the blast zone for spells, at least.
Optimization is pretty much a non-issue. There's only 7 classes, size has much less of an effect on things, starting attributes have a hard cap of 18 even after racial bonuses, and point buy is 1 to 1, and stat boosts down the road are spread more evenly, and almost completely decoupled from gear.
And as far as skills and low combat go, it's still built on the d20 skeleton, so combat is still hugely emphasized and the skill system is basically the same as Pathfinder. You have more skills to work with generally, both from every class getting at least 4, and the list being quite a bit shorter. DCs scale better. And the less combat focused classes are a hell of a lot more viable than their rough Pathfinder equivalents. But, these are all tweaks to what's still the same basic system, so if you just don't like it, that won't likely change.
1. Does anyone play SF with no grid nor graph paper?
Our group plays with Chessex mats and miniatures. It is part of the fun for our group who have several craft oriented people in it who like to make trees, buildings, paint figures, cast ceramics, etc.
2. Fillable sheet.
Click on my profile name and I have several Starfinder sheets linked in my profile. 2 are character sheets based on Paizo's sheet, one just fillable and one fillable that does calculations, and one fillable Starship sheet with dropdowns for systems and that does some basic calculations.
3.What we care is having a system good to play some Mass Effect like game, with exploration, intrigue and some skill-based (both in game and mechanics-wise) adventuring, like sneaky covert-ops shadowrun missions in space. Is it good for something like that or does it have a huge focus on actual combat?
The rules for skills are very similar to Pathfinder. The game is as combat focused as the GM and group playing it make it IMO, like any RPG.
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The rules for skills are very similar to Pathfinder. The game is as combat focused as the GM and group playing it make it IMO, like any RPG.
This echoes something I have never understood when I hear it. I have heard a lot of people say that 3.5e and by extension Pathfinder is too combat orientated or to skill check based and that there should be more "Role Playing" but I've never gotten n understanding of that.
IMO, there are pen and paper RPGs that either have good combat rules or poor combat rules. There are pen and paper RPGs that have comprehensive skill rules or vague skill rules (or somewhere in between). And there are rules that allow for ease of Theater of the Mind style play and rules that make it challenging....But how anything is used is up to the GM and players.
I have never been a fan of rule systems that punish a players inability to be an actor or do impromptu interactions from the perspective of someone they are not. Skill checks allow people who aren't good at talking to people be socialites and silver-tongued. Structured combat rules let someone who wants to be combat focused utilize their character to the fullest. I like to give players bonuses for attempting to role play out their character or situation and encourage it at my tables but I'm glad that the actual rules for Pathfinder and Starfinder don't punish a player for not being good at pretending to be something they are not in a world they may or may not know a lot about. I think that theater of the mind games tend to lend themselves to combat light interactions anyways because things can get tricky with too many individuals involved in a combat if everyone has to keep track of what is going on as things change through out combat.
With that said, statements that insinuate that rules systems are somehow responsible for the amount of role play present in a game always remind me of an argument one of my home game groups got in about World of Darkness. One player argued that the rules were not set up for combat and that in the game combat was only used as a last resort because of how vague and unfinished the combat rules were. There argument was that everything about the game was set up for social interaction and political maneuvering. A large chunk of other players disagreed citing a game in which we were basically drug dealing vampires that pulled off drive-bys, started (and finished) gang wars, and ran a bunch of fronts for various rackets (including the shady nightclub with a mix reputation and a lot of rumors surrounding it). We had plenty of social role playing situations but things got bloody often enough that the combat rules (which are fine by the way) were tested thoroughly.