spell lvl

[oninowon]

Did the devs ever talk about why they capped spells at 6th lvl? If so what were their reason(s)? I apologize if this was asked before. Just picked up Starfinder in Humble Bundle deal.

[Kishmo]

If I remember correctly, this came up back in 2017/18 when Starfinder was still new. I don't have any links handy or anything, but I seem to recall the main point being that spellcasters in 3.5/PF1E are seen as mechanically 'too powerful,' at mid-to-high levels. Why have a fighter with a sword when you can just throw out fireballs all day - that old chestnut.
They accomplished this re-balancing by toning down spells (every spellcasting class has lower spell progression than PF1's 'dedicated' spellcasters, as well as squishing level 7, 8, and 9 spells down) as well as making 'martial' damage tied to weapons that scale to higher damage dice by level. In space, the fighter doesn't just keep using the same 1d8 dmg Longsword their whole career.

[Leon Aquilla]

All spellcasters in Starfinder are "hybrid", meaning they can wield firearms or even polearms and two-handers reasonably well with a few feats. Never as good as a fighter, but a Starfinder spellcaster isn't useless once they've expended their spells per day.

So I imagine that's why they capped spell casting to level 6.

[Garretmander]

Also, from what they could tell, all the hybrid casters (inquisition, magus, etc.) from PF1 were their most popular classes, so they figured they'd just make their spellcasters hybrid classes from the start.

["Dr." Cupi]

I think I remember having a conversation with one of the developers saying that they didn't want to have full casters in starfinder.