VampByDay |
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More uplifted animals - no more anthropomorphized space animals.
You realize that uplifted animals in a Sci-Fi setting ARE anthropomorphic space animals, right?
Anthropo=Human
morphic=Shape,
space=These creatures work in space.
The uplifted bear is bipedal and has human-like brachiation, anthropomorphic.
Pedantic man, AWAYYYYYYY!
FormerFiend |
I do think it's kind of weird that we've got one race - uplifted bears - that is explicitly a race that began with legitimately normal bears that were scientifically/magically uplifted to sapience, and a whole mess of races that look like anthropomorphic versions of real world animals just by coincidence of convergent evolution and intelligent design.
But, while I'm not against them including more uplifted animals, I'd want them to wait to do it in a dedicated race book where they can take some time to explore the nuanced different between the uplifted animal race and races that just happen to look like animals. Like, say you had uplifted bovines. What's the dynamic between them and nuars, and them, nuars, and minotaurs, for that matter? Say you had uplifted lions or tigers; what are the differences between them and pahtra?
If you just have an entry for the race in an Alien Archive then I think it's kind of arbitrary whether the animal people race is uplifted normal animal or a naturally evolved race. But I think that's the kind of thing that could be interesting if given the room to explore it more fully.
Having said all that I'd honestly prefer more races that fall more into the rubber forehead category; humans but slightly different features. We've got lashunta, damai, and triaxians, but that's basically it. I understand that people can find that kind of alien boring, and I can agree when that's all there is, but given the wealth of weird and wacky that we've got, I could go for a dose of a bit more normal.
Corsair17 |
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Here's an idea: more sci-fantasy type races like a "Draenei" or a "Vorlon" type "Magic race". Or even better? A new type of elf or gnome that's "spacey". A "Void Elf" could be terrifying.
Ooh, a Void Dark Elf working for the IRS...brings a whole new meaning to the term wanting "a pound of flesh".
EltonJ |
thecursor wrote:Here's an idea: more sci-fantasy type races like a "Draenei" or a "Vorlon" type "Magic race". Or even better? A new type of elf or gnome that's "spacey". A "Void Elf" could be terrifying.Ooh, a Void Dark Elf working for the IRS...brings a whole new meaning to the term wanting "a pound of flesh".
Wouldn't be great if Wizards would release Spelljammer into the public domain? Void elves crossing the stars in those terrifying spider ships.
Micheal Smith |
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With the release of the COM and alternate racial abilities for the core and legacy races I had an idea. What if every Alien Archive they added in a section for 3-5 playable races and add more player options. Then this could even get better. For a month they could have a simple survey to ask what 3-5 races people want to see. Tally all of this up and go with the most popular choices. Then in the next archive have a page per playable race with new option, feats, spells, class options equipment, etc.
That is on my wishlist.
FormerFiend |
Here's an idea: more sci-fantasy type races like a "Draenei" or a "Vorlon" type "Magic race". Or even better? A new type of elf or gnome that's "spacey". A "Void Elf" could be terrifying.
Deja vu all over again.
Honestly if Paizo could work out some license deal with ActiBlizz & get a starfinder compatible book with some Warcraft & Diablo magic & monsters, some Overwatch & Starcraft tech, and playable races (and alternate race traits) from all four...
Well, that would be nice, is all I'm saying.
Azelator Ereus |
3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Wei Ji the Learner wrote:I deeply bums me out that the Hykli never got any racial variance.
Variant transhuman races who've adapted/evolved to life in various environments!
There is also plenty of ink that could be spilled on the humans living on Aballon.
Several million of them (?), making them the largest human population post-Gap.Very curious about their story.
Metaphysician |
thecursor wrote:Wei Ji the Learner wrote:I deeply bums me out that the Hykli never got any racial variance.
Variant transhuman races who've adapted/evolved to life in various environments!There is also plenty of ink that could be spilled on the humans living on Aballon.
Several million of them (?), making them the largest human population post-Gap.
Very curious about their story.
Why, exactly, would you think that "several million" humans on Aballon would be a larger population than the entire human population of Akiton? Or, for that matter, the human minority on the extremely-developed Verces?
Ascalaphus |
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Azelator Ereus wrote:Why, exactly, would you think that "several million" humans on Aballon would be a larger population than the entire human population of Akiton? Or, for that matter, the human minority on the extremely-developed Verces?thecursor wrote:Wei Ji the Learner wrote:I deeply bums me out that the Hykli never got any racial variance.
Variant transhuman races who've adapted/evolved to life in various environments!There is also plenty of ink that could be spilled on the humans living on Aballon.
Several million of them (?), making them the largest human population post-Gap.
Very curious about their story.
I think the complaint is more that all attention seems to be focused on Absalom Station humans.
Azelator Ereus |
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Looks to me like theres approx 20 million humans in Striving and about 10 in Arl, the respective megaplexes of Aballon and Akiton. That number struck me when I first read it and made me realize that, like with the Hykli*, there is a pretty big untold story here with those folks.
*Although you could, say, read 'Princess of Mars' which is pretty much where the story of Akiton begins.
FormerFiend |
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Well I'm generally of the opinion that the numbers for population(as well as the numbers for weight/mass, but that's another rant) should always be taken with a grain of salt in Starfinder because working out the how and why of population sizes & densities isn't the primary focus of anyone working at Paizo.
Having said that, I don't think it's unreasonable to extrapolate that when a 20% minority in Striving is greater than the entire population of Arl, which itself only has a 38% human population, and the settlement they decided to give us numbers for on Verces has less than a million people on it, I don't think it's unreasonable speculation to extrapolate that if other cities on Aballon have similar population density and rates that while the human population of Striving alone likely isn't bigger than the human populations of Akiton or Verces, the total human population of Aballon may be.
But, it is just speculation without total planet numbers, and any and all of these numbers are just gonna be whatever the writer thought sounded good at the time, anyway.
It's also all kind of moot. While I'd love for more cultural info on non-Golarion-descended human populations, the devs have explicitly said that they're trying to shy away from actual mechanical differences between humans of different ethnicities, even when those ethnicities are entirely fictitious with no real-world analogue, ala hylki, outside of the vague & nonspecific alternate race traits they've done so far.
Might not be a terrible idea to bring back pathfinder's traits system and use regional & social traits to do the job of having mechanical distinctions for distinct cultures as that has a certain level of separation that alternate race traits lack.
Jason Tondro Starfinder Developer |
RiverMesa |
RiverMesa wrote:On an adjacent note, The Four Pilots of the Apocalypse?Good idea!
Maybe a little reworked, for example:- Death -> Decay (in the sense of matter dosgregation, for the universe expansion)
- Pestilence -> Radiation
- Famine -> Exhaustion (of energy)
- War -> War?
Death could be Entropy, perhaps.
(Could have cool tie-ins with the vanguard class, too.)The Artificer |
Over the holidays I re-watched A Bug's Life with my family and I thought that creating a race of stick-bug people would be really cool, perhaps maybe they are a plant race that pretends to be plants instead of being a plant person. I would give them a climb speed and a stealth or disguise bonus. It also got my nieces and nephews excited because they adore those bugs.
Let me know if anyone else finds this interesting.
Third Strongest Mole |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |
RiverMesa wrote:On an adjacent note, The Four Pilots of the Apocalypse?Good idea!
Maybe a little reworked, for example:- Death -> Decay (in the sense of matter dosgregation, for the universe expansion)
- Pestilence -> Radiation
- Famine -> Exhaustion (of energy)
- War -> War?
War. War never changes.
Xenocrat |
Charon had this "grow old and die" thing to him, but androids are a major race. Maybe he's the one up for redefinition?
They’re a major race in the Pact Worlds right now. The Pact Worlds are a speck of dust in the cosmos and the last thousand years aren’t even an eye blink to Charon.
FormerFiend |
Man just shy of a year on from when I posted the list of SF races in this thread and the list has only gone up by six. Paizo's demonstrated serious restraint in 2020.
Anyway, was reading through my PF bestiaries the other day & thought about a couple of monsters that, on a conceptual basis, I just love.
The Immortal Ichor & the Charnel God, are two monsters that I think you can build an entire campaign around. Certainly in PF and I would be very interested in seeing what could be done with them in a setting like Starfinder.
JiCi |
That might be a stretch, but... how about a "0-HD Swarm alien subrace"?
Yes, I am literally asking for a bipedal spy-like or commander-like humanoid version of a Swarm creature. Call them E.S.A.I., for Enlightened Swarm Advanced Infiltrators. Make make roughly similar to Shirren, but with interchangeable Swarm mutations based on the other Swarm aliens.
Hey, it's not like we can't have evil playable races in SF... right ^^; ?
JiCi |
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On another note, I feel like we need more "ancient" aliens, or basically more converted monsters from Pathfinder.
Castrovel, Eox, Verces and Triaxus were there pre-Gap, so... I'm pretty sure that are still ancient monsters guarding tombs and old sites. I don't know how "Starfinder-y" that would be but... I'm pretty sure that Starfinder isn't all about starship combats, urban hunts and such. A field trip through a jungle and a stone temple could part of the mission, right ;) ?
Dominus Ex Machina |
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Might be a bit late to the party (as AA4 is, at present, set for release this December), but here are some things I'd ABSOLUTELY like to see (if not in AA4, then at least in a possible AA5):
- More of the uncommon & rare "legacy" races from Pathfinder First Edition (i.e., changelings (including one of void hag ancestry), fetchlings, gathlains, gillmen, grippli, kitsune, kobolds, merfolk, nagaji, samsarans, skinwalkers, tengus, vishkanyas, wayangs, wyrwoods, etc.).
- Mutants (especially given the fact that you have weapons that can irradiate targets & a fey that can mutate other creatures, albeit temporarily, with a single touch), with a veritable bonanza of deformity & beneficial mutation options (including fleshwarp mutations from Pathfinder Horror Adventures & those possessed by the spawn of drakainias from Pathfinder Bestiary 4).
- More Lovecraft-inspired creatures for PCs to face (i.e., aboleths, chuuls, gibbering mouthers, shoggoths, neh-thalggus, moon-beasts, elder things, Deep Ones (including elder & hybrid versions), omnipaths, veiled masters, the Great Old Ones (Bokrug, Cthulhu, Hastur, Rhan-Tegoth, Tawil at’Umr, Yig), spawn of Yog-Sothoth, star-spawn of Cthulhu, etc.).
- More classic "tauric" Pathfinder First Edition creatures (i.e., centaurs, driders, lamias, girtablilus, ichthyocentaurs, etc.), but as fully-playable races.
- Some kind of fey that makes its home aboard space stations & starships (not unlike the urban fairy from Kenzer & Company's Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign setting for D&D Third Edition).
FormerFiend |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Might be a bit late to the party (as AA4 is, at present, set for release this December), but here are some things I'd ABSOLUTELY like to see (if not in AA4, then at least in a possible AA5):
- More of the uncommon & rare "legacy" races from Pathfinder First Edition (i.e., changelings (including one of void hag ancestry), fetchlings, gathlains, gillmen, grippli, kitsune, kobolds, merfolk, nagaji, samsarans, skinwalkers, tengus, vishkanyas, wayangs, wyrwoods, etc.).
Well I have one piece of good news for you; we got fetchlings. They're in SF AP #12(Heart of Night, Signal of Screams book 3). Rebranded as kayals.
Anyway, gonna list some high level monsters that I think would be fun to include in the game; one from each bestiary except the first one; mu spores, hekatonkheires, bholes, hunduns, & conqueror worms.
I think the scale of mu spores & bholes could potentially make for interesting star ship encounters, a hekatonkheire with fifty laser rifles storming through a city would be a hell of a thing, and hunduns & conqueror worms are monsters that could make for excellent big bads in a high level campaign.
Garretmander |
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I think the scale of mu spores & bholes could potentially make for interesting star ship encounters, a hekatonkheire with fifty laser rifles storming through a city would be a hell of a thing, and hunduns & conqueror worms are monsters that could make for excellent big bads in a high level campaign.
I really like these ideas.
FormerFiend |
FormerFiend wrote:I think the scale of mu spores & bholes could potentially make for interesting star ship encounters, a hekatonkheire with fifty laser rifles storming through a city would be a hell of a thing, and hunduns & conqueror worms are monsters that could make for excellent big bads in a high level campaign.I really like these ideas.
Thank you.
Decided to do the same thing for low level monsters(cr 5 & below) & found it was honestly more difficult for a few reasons. For a start, low level monsters tend to be more local threats that're harder to transfer from planet to planet. Or they're things one would prefer to be playable. Or they don't transfer particularly well from medieval fantasy to sci fi without turning into something almost unrecognizable. Or they just aren't that interesting. Or they've already been converted.
List I came up with is a follows;
Urdefhans, who could be made into a great always evil race of space pirates/reavers to be feared & killed without remorse.
Globsters, which make sense as a "yeah that thing could just naturally spawn on any world with an ocean", and they're one of those monsters that leaves people wondering how they haven't overtaken the world yet which is always fun.
Pickled punks, which could fit with mad science, undead horror which is definitely part of the setting.
Celedons, to put more emphasis on the divine elements of the setting. Personally think I could use these as early foreshadowing in a campaign centered around the immortal ichor or charnal god I mentioned earlier.
And I kinda cheated with Bestiary 6 & went with the exoskeleton template because I think there's fun to be had in the idea of a world where the swarm was fought off or has moved on only for the exoskeletons of their dead to rise as a bug zombie army.