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So as it seems that Starfinder 2e is going to be fully compatible with Pathfinder 2e (our wishes for a 2e tech guide/distant worlds book seem to have been granted in a way), I wanted to discuss how the combination of classes will work.
For example, the Starfinder 1e Soldier and Operative classes were basically ""fighter and rogue in space"". How would you handle the differences, if any, in your home games?
To put up a somewhat more complex example, the Mechanic and Biohacker classes of Starfinder 1e greatly parallel the Inventor and Alchemist classes of Pathfinder 2e. Do you feel these overlap too much in terms of their niches?
Finally, on the spellcasting/magic classes, how would you handle PF2e Cleric and Wizard and other such caster classes in with Starfinder Mystic, Technomancer, etc.? Lorewise, how do you justify any differences in casting and spells?
All helpful and insightful discussion is encouraged.
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Just…no. I mean this in the least condescending way possible, but you have a bunch of assumptions about starfinder 2e where the developers have already said there might be changes.
My advice is for you to step back and assume the majority of starfinders mechanics are not hanging around, most especially the class designs. We simply don’t know enough about how even the playtest versions of the classes will look like to see if there’s going to significant overlap between PF2 and SF2 classes. And that “we” includes the developers, as they aren’t even finished writing those classes out yet.
Edit: and then also check out the starfinder forum where the playtest is being teased. That’ll help answer your questions, or at least give you better questions to ask.
https://paizo.com/community/forums/starfinder/secondEditionPlaytest
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Aside from what's already been said, I have yet to see separate game lines that are 100% compatible with zero changes whatsoever, drop in/drop out, fully swappable unless they are literally just campaign setting splats
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Just…no. I mean this in the least condescending way possible, but you have a bunch of assumptions about starfinder 2e where the developers have already said there might be changes.
My advice is for you to step back and assume the majority of starfinders mechanics are not hanging around, most especially the class designs. We simply don’t know enough about how even the playtest versions of the classes will look like to see if there’s going to significant overlap between PF2 and SF2 classes. And that “we” includes the developers, as they aren’t even finished writing those classes out yet.
Edit: and then also check out the starfinder forum where the playtest is being teased. That’ll help answer your questions, or at least give you better questions to ask.
https://paizo.com/community/forums/starfinder/secondEditionPlaytest
Well this was a product of reading another thread talking about this issue on this same forum. I’ve also read the play test stuff and all signs point to there being at the very least a common set of rules between the two.
Incidentally, saying that you aren’t being condescending, and then implying that a question intended to provoke discussion is a dumb question to ask at all honestly comes off as disingenuous.
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If you have been on the Starfinder2e Playtest forum, then certainly you have seen the extensive heated discussions about how all the mechanics that people know and love in Starfinder are not going to be guaranteed carried forward to SF2e.
Andd you have seen the class previews that they have - such as a Soldier class that is very much distinct from both the Fighter class and the Gunslinger class in PF2. Honestly, if Oracle and Divine Sorcerer are separate enough to be not stepping on each other's toes, I don't see how SF2e Soldier and Fighter are going to be a problem.
One of the stated goals of Starfinder2e is that the game will be fully playable without needing Pathfinder2e Core rulebooks. However, they are going to have compatible rule sets, so transferring content from one setting to the other will be possible.
That doesn't mean that the setting is the same. There are already some known differences in the setting expectations - such as flight being easy to have access to at early levels, and characters with more than 2 hands. The classes are going to be similar. While the rules are compatible, there will likely need to be conversions made when migrating in one direction or the other. Almost certainly the list of skills is going to be at least slightly different, for example. As will the list of spells on a particular tradition.
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As for justifying differences - that depends on how the migration is being handled in the lore of the campaign. Because there is a difference between a time-travelling character that gets imported from PF2 to SF2 with no conversion done at all, a character from a less developed world of the SF2 setting that has a more swords and sorcery theme to it but is from the same timeline, and a character whose class is fully converted to SF2 and simply is a bit eccentric in their choice of class, but is otherwise a standard character that fits into the setting perfectly.
Same with migrating the other way. Time traveler from SF2 getting dumped into a Pathfinder timeline with no conversion to their theme, an android stepping out from Numeria into Varisia, or a fully converted Pathfinder setting version of a Biohacker are all going to be handled a bit differently.
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In general, you should expect that PF2 and SF2 classes will not directly overlap. Now, in PF2 there is an idea that classes should have their own domain - that once a thing is claimed as the Special Thing for one class, then no other class gets to have it. You shoudl expect that SF2 will ahve that between its classes, but that the crossovers will not be so carefully kept separate. Still, they'll be meaningfully distinct. Like, the Operative, which you'd normally think of as "the rogue" is actually going to be the premiere single-target ranged damage-dealer, while the Soldier - a fairly strong thematic match for the Fighter - adjusts into more of a tank/suppression role (with lots of area effect damage) - an overall role rather more like what we see in the Champion, though implemented very differently. The skill-monkey of the group is actually the Envoy, who's also stolen the "primary party buffer" hat from the Bard... and so forth. There were some very direct overlaps between PF1 and SF1. That won't be happening between PF2 and SF2.
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You should read the SF2 Soldier, it's very little like a PF2 Fighter.
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In general, we have seen very little overlap from the classes so far, pretty much everything we have seen explores a completely new niche or at least a new corner of an existing one. And the underlying themes are very different as well, given that they draw from a much newer part of culture. This is rather unsurprising, given that is an explicit goal the dev team is pursuing. So I doubt that this will be an issue.
The Soldier is an aoe tank/dpr/debuff specialist.
The Mystic is a spot healer compared to Cleric's burst healing, plus has a bunch of team coordination abilities that we have seen very little of in PF2 so far. And it's a spellcaster ofc.
The Solarian is apparently a (mostly) melee bruiser with a strong emphasis on crowd control.
We have seen very little of the Operative, but it is intended to be for ranged weapons what the Fighter is for melee. It technically overlaps with the Fighter being the "weapons guy", but so does Rogue for agile/finesse weapons, Gunslinger for guns/crossbows, Ranger for (cross)bows and now Soldier for aoe weapons. And let's be honest, the Fighter's ranged options leave a lot to be desired and often aren't designed for more modern weapons, so the overlap will probably less than one would think.
As for the casting aspect, I don't think that will be an issue, given that they are changing to PF2 traditions and then it's just a different flavour of casting. Some spells or abilities might need a bit of lower-tech reflavouring or outright changes, but mostly I'm expecting business as usual. The other way around, they could just learn the spells and that's that.
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The more pressing issue will be that the new ranged options will most likely leave many existing ranged options feeling rather stale and unappealing. Which is fine by me - ranged combat could use a heavy dose of fun - but might now be for everyone.
If you have been on the Starfinder2e Playtest forum, then certainly you have seen the extensive heated discussions about how all the mechanics that people know and love in Starfinder are not going to be guaranteed carried forward to SF2e.
Andd you have seen the class previews that they have - such as a Soldier class that is very much distinct from both the Fighter class and the Gunslinger class in PF2. Honestly, if Oracle and Divine Sorcerer are separate enough to be not stepping on each other's toes, I don't see how SF2e Soldier and Fighter are going to be a problem.
One of the stated goals of Starfinder2e is that the game will be fully playable without needing Pathfinder2e Core rulebooks. However, they are going to have compatible rule sets, so transferring content from one setting to the other will be possible.
That doesn't mean that the setting is the same. There are already some known differences in the setting expectations - such as flight being easy to have access to at early levels, and characters with more than 2 hands. The classes are going to be similar. While the rules are compatible, there will likely need to be conversions made when migrating in one direction or the other. Almost certainly the list of skills is going to be at least slightly different, for example. As will the list of spells on a particular tradition.
Oh sure. I understand this. I just wanted to get some insight on the situation as it is.
On a related topic, besides classes, how do you think races and such will be handled in Starfinder? I remember there were complaints from Starfinder 1e that a majority of the races weren't very distinctive or detailed, and Pathfinder 2e has given them much more detail. One thing I think might happen, considering rnaged attacks and such, is that races with innate fly speeds (and other ""exotic"" movements) will be much more common at level 1 in starfinder.
If you have been on the Starfinder2e Playtest forum, then certainly you have seen the extensive heated discussions about how all the mechanics that people know and love in Starfinder are not going to be guaranteed carried forward to SF2e.
Andd you have seen the class previews that they have - such as a Soldier class that is very much distinct from both the Fighter class and the Gunslinger class in PF2. Honestly, if Oracle and Divine Sorcerer are separate enough to be not stepping on each other's toes, I don't see how SF2e Soldier and Fighter are going to be a problem.
One of the stated goals of Starfinder2e is that the game will be fully playable without needing Pathfinder2e Core rulebooks. However, they are going to have compatible rule sets, so transferring content from one setting to the other will be possible.
That doesn't mean that the setting is the same. There are already some known differences in the setting expectations - such as flight being easy to have access to at early levels, and characters with more than 2 hands. The classes are going to be similar. While the rules are compatible, there will likely need to be conversions made when migrating in one direction or the other. Almost certainly the list of skills is going to be at least slightly different, for example. As will the list of spells on a particular tradition.
Oh sure. I understand this. I just wanted to get some insight on the situation as it is.
On a related topic, besides classes, how do you think races and such will be handled in Starfinder? I remember there were complaints from Starfinder 1e that a majority of the races weren't very distinctive or detailed, and Pathfinder 2e has given them much more detail. One thing I think might happen, considering rnaged attacks and such, is that races with innate fly speeds (and other ""exotic"" movements) will be much more common at level 1 in starfinder.
Level 1 flying ancestries being a thing has already been confirmed. We don't know if that will have any limitations, but probably not. After all, you can get a jetpack early on in SF1 (level 4 or 5) and that is planned to make a return in SF2 as well.
Other abilities that will likely differ from PF2 are telepathy, other forms of movement, and having multiple arms.
I expect that many ancestries will be one of the most difficult things to convert between the two systems for that reason alone.
You should read the SF2 Soldier, it's very little like a PF2 Fighter.
Yeah, it feels like you're going to see more PF2 classes in SF2, because the Pathfinder classes don't really require specific equipment, while the Starfinder classes might. Like the SF2 Soldier (so far) is about heavy weapons that have AoE or Automatic Fire which might not be available in Golarion, whereas a fighter can just pick up a laser rifle and be fine.
This is probably the way it needs to work, since Paizo probably wants to print more Pathfinder books than Starfinder books (as they have done so far) so having Pathfinder fill gaps in SF2 is probably what they want. Still, I see no reason that we can't have Solarions in our PF2 games eventually.
Here's the Soldier Field Test if people want to read it.
Wait, I actually have found a post that even confirms level 1 flight will be completely unrestricted. Or at least was at that point in time, things are still in development after all.
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Wait, I actually have found a post that even confirms level 1 flight will be completely unrestricted. Or at least was at that point in time, things are still in development after all.
The two games are going to be compatible, but not necessarily balanced against each other's assumptions. If you are a PF2 GM and people want to bring in SF2 characters, you might have some work to do-such as disallowing all-day flight for level 1 characters. SF2 can handle this automatically because the game assumes most people's favorite combat options include "shoot them with your space guns".
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Very Tentatively based off the existing field tests and the PAX Unplugged 2023 Preview game we did at the con. So far it plays like a variant of PF2e with a firearm oriented meta, and remixed/new classes. The key is that the classes we've seen so far, lean away from replicating pf2e classes, the soldier would have been a fighter, but mechanically, its suppression oriented playstyle is nothing like a fighter, so sticking it right in alongside a fighter or vice versa in a starfinder game, is really just a straight expansion of the game, which personally is what I REALLY want them to stick to in so far as compatibility-- even the soldier's melee option is a tanking two handed thing, which I love, since its a different ethos from the fighter's shield stuff.
By the same token, the Envoy does things like a Bard would, but with martial capability instead of spells to go with those buffs-- again that leaves it a perfectly compatible option with the Bard. The Operative does cool damage, but unlike a rogue, it uses a mechanic that features aim actions, if I understood what my buddy was doing correctly, so it would feel different (and I imagine would stick ranged whereas ranged rogues are less common in pf2e, but hey even the soldier has a melee option.)
There isn't really a class in PF2e like the Mystic, it just works out really well as an alternative to anything in pf2e, and I played it myself to confirm that, having a player in a pf2e game popping vitality network will just slot right in.
We know the logic of flying being less restricted is indeed because Starfinder PCs and Monsters are radically more likely to have ranged elements be core to their fighting style. I am wondering how this will work out when mixing the game systems, we're planning to introduce starfinder weapons and options to our fantasy setting as magitech for a certain kind of magitech JRPG type vibe, so if I also use some SF monsters, there's a good shot I could reasonably just loosen the restrictions on flight in pf2e using sf2e as a guideline and just let everything work out, but we'll see.
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I will confidently say that the two "games" can be considered one game when all is said and done. You will be able to translate items and classes between the "systems" as it will be one universal system. The Starfinder classes and items will be for the space fantasy Guardians of the Galaxy-esque vibe of the setting. Because you can now literally play a fighter, rogue and wizard in Starfinder, play them in space, the classes which were their analogues will now carve out their own niche for the firearm oriented meta. This to me has seemed explicitly expressed design goals from everything I have followed to this point
I will confidently say that the two "games" can be considered one game when all is said and done. You will be able to translate items and classes between the "systems" as it will be one universal system. The Starfinder classes and items will be for the space fantasy Guardians of the Galaxy-esque vibe of the setting. Because you can now literally play a fighter, rogue and wizard in Starfinder, play them in space, the classes which were their analogues will now carve out their own niche for the firearm oriented meta. This to me has seemed explicitly expressed design goals from everything I have followed to this point
I wouldn't go quite as far. The design intent is still that both will be independent systems. Some options will require quite a bit of effort to convert, mostly SF2 -> PF2. Some things that are fine in SF2 are bound to be straight up overpowered in PF2, without any real possibility of fixing that. And some options that are strong in PF2 will be quite weak in SF2, such as the Champion most likely and PF2 classes probably won't have too many feats that actually take advantage of SF2 equipment.
And ofc the lore of both systems is mostly independent.
So it won't truly be a universal system, but it will be close enough to get most things working well and get that overlap if you desire it.
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Hrmm...I suppose that if you have to convert SF2 into PF2 then you can't really claim they're compatible. My expectation is that you won't really need to worry too much about this as many core rules (e.g., encounter design, stealth/concealment, etc.) will simply carry over. I imagine the primary differences are going to be in the item lists and specifics of various classes.
I took the OP's intention as wanting to discuss overlapping roles of classes. There are several aspects in which overlap could be discussed (e.g., all martial classes overlap, all spellcasting classes overlap, etc.). A more interesting question though is the implications, how would you run a mixed campaign?
One imagines a campaign that conjures the great turn of the 19th/20th century pulp stories like Burrow's John Carter/Mars but Krull and Yor, the Hunter from the Future (and even Cowboys vs. Aliens) provide us some other good examples of science fiction tropes and high-tech weapons mixing it up with swords and axes and barbarians.
My expectation is that Fighter and Rogue and perhaps Cleric and Wizard (this latter thing was the Shadowrun solution) may actually simply appear in the SF2 core rule book bearing appropriate weapons to the genre/time-period. It will all hinge on item design.
The rules will carry over just fine. You'll be able to pick up any chunks of the one side and drop them straight into the other side and it will work just fine mechanically without problems. The issue is going to be that in some cases that will utterly break game balance one way or the other, especially at lower levels.
Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard will most definitely not be appearing in the SF2 core rule book. They'll be rules-wise compatible, but if you want them, you'll have to pull them out of PF2 books (or, you know, PF2 Nethys).
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I mean, I don't know why those classes wouldn't at least receive treatment in a sidebar. Why reinvent the wheel? (The fighter is "perfect" after all...) Ultimately it will be like the 4 million ton elephant in the room if they aren't addressed in some way.
I'm pretty sure we'll be getting a small section on using SF2 stuff in PF2 and vice versa, but I don't think it will be particularly detailed. There is simply not the space for that.
Putting an automatic rifle into a Fighter's hands sounds fine (and realistic) to me. Ditto a handgun into the hands of any of the rest of them. We already have firearms in the game so the only thing really missing at this time is defining what automatic/burst fire means.
That's the idea and Sanityfaerie isn't disputing that. But this is the SF2 CRB, not a Starfinder setting book for PF2. It will focus on SF2 as its own system, content compatibility is secondary at most.
And OP's point of, what will a notional Mystic do that Cleric/Druid/Psychic/Wizard/Witch (or the spontaneous casting equivalents to these) don't already do. My conclusion is that Mystic probably won't make the cut for jumping from SF1 to SF2. If it does make the cut, it's going to get some very radical reworking to make sure it does something very distinct from the others.
The Mystic has been explicitly confirmed as a core class already. You can see what is effectively an alpha version here.
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I mean, I don't know why those classes wouldn't at least receive treatment in a sidebar. Why reinvent the wheel? (The fighter is "perfect" after all...) Ultimately it will be like the 4 million ton elephant in the room if they aren't addressed in some way.
Putting an automatic rifle into a Fighter's hands sounds fine (and realistic) to me. Ditto a handgun into the hands of any of the rest of them. We already have firearms in the game so the only thing really missing at this time is defining what automatic/burst fire means.
And OP's point of, what will a notional Mystic do that Cleric/Druid/Psychic/Wizard/Witch (or the spontaneous casting equivalents to these) don't already do. My conclusion is that Mystic probably won't make the cut for jumping from SF1 to SF2. If it does make the cut, it's going to get some very radical reworking to make sure it does something very distinct from the others.
Re: game balance...that's a matter of perspective anyway. In my opinion PF2 is already broken balance wise (because balance is so much more than mere numbers) so it matters little to me. But I also do weird things like mix players whose characters are different levels, occasionally drop in encounters and/or numbers of opponents where the obvious correct choice is not to initiate hostilities, etc.
As always YMMV.
These games are what people are willing to make of them. PF2 is good because for the most part its rules tend to flex instead of break. You always want your systems to act more like grass (or even a willow tree) in a storm than an oak.
You don't know what you're talking about. You are speculating about things that we already know, and your speculations are incorrect.
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There are some interactions I think people are forgetting here, connected assumptions that just won't carry over.
Just like PF2e characters are going to be excpected to get certain kinds of gear (runes, I'm mostly talking about runes) SF2e Characters are going to be expected have certain kinds of gear including things like upgrades (cyber&bio) and weapon upgrades, and armor upgrades and. While I think the "Rules are compatible" is being over blown to assume you can just dump a character from one system into another.
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I really don't understand the posters acting like we haven't been told the classes coming in SF2's core or shown several playtests.
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There are some interactions I think people are forgetting here, connected assumptions that just won't carry over.
Just like PF2e characters are going to be excpected to get certain kinds of gear (runes, I'm mostly talking about runes) SF2e Characters are going to be expected have certain kinds of gear including things like upgrades (cyber&bio) and weapon upgrades, and armor upgrades and. While I think the "Rules are compatible" is being over blown to assume you can just dump a character from one system into another.
Well... you can. It's just that they may not thrive.
Still, even that level is a lot closer than RPGs usually get.
It's basically the level of compatibility we saw between the various Palladium systems back in the day. It's actually rather better than we got between the different World of Darkness game.
...but yeah, running a mix-and-match game is going to require a bit of extra GM attention, curation, and possibly adjudication if you want things to run smoothly.
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SF2 is launching with Soldier, Operative, Solarian, Envoy, and Witchwarper. None of them are meant to be a Starfinder-ified version of PF2 classes, because they're all already compatible.
To summarize what Paizo's already shared:
We know the Soldier is a heavy, focused on two-handed weapons and area attacks. They've shown off the Mystic as a support caster who links the entire party with a magical 'network.' The Witchwarper absorbed the 1e Precog, making them a caster class concerned with time, space, and reality itself. Envoys still yell at people. Solarians, I believe, look a fair bit like 2e Kineticists. The Operative has been a little up in the air, but seems to revolve around selecting and destroying a single target at a time in a way that's distinct from a PF2 Gunslinger.
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The intent was explicit that this is a shared system, that is what "fully compatible" (their words) means. The design intent is that you can mix and match and this is why there are rules for putting hightech weapons in the past or archaic weapons in the future. Everything in Starfinder is even going to get either the uncommon or rare tag when brought into PF2, this consideration is only there because of the assumption that this is a shared system, in effect we have one game with two settings and items, classes etc to suit each, but we should definitely be able to mix and match. It is the only thing I think makes sense with everything we have heard from Paizo
The damage on weapons is even the same, with the archaic rules doing the heavy lifting for how weapons of the future would shred through archaic armor, and how archiv weapons would barely do anything to futuristic armor
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The Mystic has been explicitly confirmed as a core class already. You can see what is effectively an alpha version here.
I've little bandwidth for Paizo's blog posts, so it's just possible that I, like many others, simply missed this.
Since I'm an RPG gearhead though, I do like to conjecture, speculate, etc., etc. Also, while the blog post adequately communicates the intention of the design team, I would still want the playtesting to confirm that Mystic is different enough from existing PF2 classes to stand on its own. Not all design intentions survive the playtest process. Several of MCDM's design videos have illustrated this nicely. But that's just me.
Also, until the thing is actually published, I should think things are subject to change. I doubt that the manuscript is already heading to the printers (although it must be very close to that state).
YMMV
So if you want to actually know what's going on, you need to be hanging out on the Starfinder boards, where we're actually talking about this stuff. That'll give you some actual meat to do your speculating with.
It's not even close to heading off to the printers, though. We've still got well over a year before the beta. It's jsut that they got started on feedign us drips (and getting feedback) rather early.
Mystic is cool, and it's got some nifty little tricks, different from those of the PF2 classes. It's a full caster, sure, and it doesn't go quite as far off the norm as, say, the Animist or the Psychic, but it is very much its own beast, both thematically and in powers, with some interesting unique features.
You may have noticed that the PF2 classes have been getting more interesting as they go - as they're able to map out new space to work with that lets them get weirder without breaking balance. From everything we've seen, the SF2 classes are benefiting from that.
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Solarians, I believe, look a fair bit like 2e Kineticists.
My guess is that the Solarian is somewhat like the kineticist but is more default focused on melee combat and doesn't come in quite as many flavors to limit pagecount. Probably has a similar "gather power" routine though.
I wonder if anybody is getting their KAS changed, because in SF1 the Solarian, Envoy, and Witchwarper were all CHA classes.
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The intent was explicit that this is a shared system, that is what "fully compatible" (their words) means.
You aren't going to fully understand what the game developers mean by those two words alone. The English language isn't that precise.
What you are wanting with 'fully compatible' is that all content can be swapped from one system to the other without any thought put into it. And that isn't possible. At least, not without losing everything about Starfinder that makes it interesting and distinct from Pathfinder.
What SF2 is, is more that it is 'easily compatible'. It isn't like pulling a creature or item from PF1 and using it in PF2 - those two game systems are not compatible. While doing that import and conversion is possible using the creature creation rules or item creation rules from PF2 and the theme and purpose of the creature/item from PF1, it takes quite a bit of work.
Instead what we are going to get is two separate game systems that are compatible - the core math and rules are the same, and class design is equivalent. So you can move a creature or item from one system to the other without too much difficulty. There are some balance considerations to be aware of - such as that Pathfinder2e puts a lot of balance considerations into creatures only having two hands, and that the player characters don't fly below certain levels. So a creature imported from Starfinder2 would have the appropriate bonus, AC, saves, skills, HP, and damage numbers for its level. But it might do a lot better or worse against the Pathfinder2 player opponents who are primarily melee/spellcaster combatants rather than ranged/spellcaster combatants that the enemy is designed to battle against in Starfinder2.
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Like Kineticist, Solarian would arguably be fine with Constitution.
You're trying to decide on how SF2 should work based entirely on PF2, and that's not what's going on here. SF2 is, first and foremost, Starfinder. now, it's on a PF2 rules chassis, but they're a lot more interested in building something that's going to work for the Starfinder players, and feel like Starfinder, than they are in mapping things to PF2. Kineticist works with constitution because that actually makes sense for their lore. Solarian has different lore... and from what I've heard there are some pretty significant differences in mechanics as well.
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Like Kineticist, Solarian would arguably be fine with Constitution.
If you did that, you would probably want the Solarian to absorb the Vanguard, similar to how the summoner absorbed the Spiritualist (and also the Hunter to a degree). Those two classes are already thematically similar in that they are melee classes in a game that centers ranged combat who are empowered by their mystical philosophy centered around physics. You just have the offensive version that's about Relativity and the defensive version that's about Thermodynamics.
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The intent was explicit that this is a shared system, that is what "fully compatible" (their words) means.You aren't going to fully understand what the game developers mean by those two words alone. The English language isn't that precise.
What you are wanting with 'fully compatible' is that all content can be swapped from one system to the other without any thought put into it. And that isn't possible. At least, not without losing everything about Starfinder that makes it interesting and distinct from Pathfinder.
What SF2 is, is more that it is 'easily compatible'. It isn't like pulling a creature or item from PF1 and using it in PF2 - those two game systems are not compatible. While doing that import and conversion is possible using the creature creation rules or item creation rules from PF2 and the theme and purpose of the creature/item from PF1, it takes quite a bit of work.
Instead what we are going to get is two separate game systems that are compatible - the core math and rules are the same, and class design is equivalent. So you can move a creature or item from one system to the other without too much difficulty. There are some balance considerations to be aware of - such as that Pathfinder2e puts a lot of balance considerations into creatures only having two hands, and that the player characters don't fly below certain levels. So a creature imported from Starfinder2 would have the appropriate bonus, AC, saves, skills, HP, and damage numbers for its level. But it might do a lot better or worse against the Pathfinder2 player opponents who are primarily melee/spellcaster combatants rather than ranged/spellcaster combatants that the enemy is designed to battle against in Starfinder2.
They are playtesting with pathfinder classes alongside Starfinder ones in their dev notes. In this case the operative was being played alongside a gunslinger. You can take the soldier and the mystic and plop it into a pathfinder campaign with no conversion needed to make it function. It has been stated and reiterated that these are in a shared system. Operating on the same rules and mathematical expectations
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On a related topic, besides classes, how do you think races and such will be handled in Starfinder? I remember there were complaints from Starfinder 1e that a majority of the races weren't very distinctive or detailed, and Pathfinder 2e has given them much more detail. One thing I think might happen, considering rnaged attacks and such, is that races with innate fly speeds (and other ""exotic"" movements) will be much more common at level 1 in starfinder.
I have not commented in this discussion mostly because I have been sick with a virus but also because I have barely dappled in Starfinder, having played it for only three game sessions--and I cancelled today's game session after a holiday break due to me still recovering from the illness. But my players love the exotic species in Pathfinder and they selected even more exotic species in Starfinder.
The seven player characters are:
Anti, an entu colony solarian,
Dekoorc, a witchwyrd envoy,
F'yn, a stellifera mystic,
Kii Kii, a kiirinta precog,
Nikko Lightclaw, a vlaka solarian,
Slix, a strix technomage,
Tk'Pan "Panic", an alate formian nanocyte.
Pathfinder 2nd Edition has a small flaw with exotic player species. The rules were built around humanoid player characters and don't necessarily mesh with non-humanoid shapes or biologies.
Consider the Leshy. Leshies can be assumed to be close to humanoid because the magic that awakened them shaped them into humanoid form. Nevertheless, they lack the Humanoid trait. How close to humanoid are they? Does a leshy have a head on which to wear a magic hat? Yes, because we want the character to wear the hat, though the picture of a cactus leshy shows their face on top of a neckless cactus body. Does a leshy bleed? Sort of, we decided that they bleed sap. This led to a weird conversation between a Mandragora Swarm and the fey-blooded leshy sorcerer in the party. Mandrogoras love to drain the magically-charged blood of sorcerers and fey creatures, but a Mandragora finding that the doubly-delicious fey sorcerer had the wrong type of circulatory fluid was hilarious.
I finished a PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion adventure path in which one of the final villains was a dark naga arcane sorceress Zanathura. Nagas lack arms and hands. Some spells have somatic components, defined as a specific hand movement or gesture with the caster's hands. Material components are more extreme, requiring a free hand, but sorcerers can replace material components with somatic components. Technically, Zanathura could not cast her spells. Practically, I just wrote a line on her PF2 conversion that she did not need hands to cast spells.
So, we would have a ton of similar questions to ask about non-humanoid alien PCs. Can a fish-like Stellifera wear Magboots? Sort of, I would let its psychokinetic humanoid hydrobody wear them. How about magboots on moth-like Kiirinta? Yes, but only after the party engineer adjusts them for her foot shape.
As for my Starfinder mini-campaign, the first game session had an encounter in a mystically darkened room in which even darkvision could see only 20 feet. The Shadow Creeper monsters in that room normallly had 60-foot darkvision, but the room limited them to 20 feet, too. In contrast, Anit the entu colony solarion has blindsight (emotion) with a range of 60 feet. That was not shortened by the mystic darkness. Anti could shoot Shadow Creepers that could not yet see her.
Wait, I actually have found a post that even confirms level 1 flight will be completely unrestricted. Or at least was at that point in time, things are still in development after all.
Thank you for the link. Alas, Thurston Hillman's statement, "A good example of this would be that we're going to allow for 1st-level characters with certain ancestries to get unrestricted flight. In PF2's meta this would be an immense change and break all semblance of balance. In SF2, well... guns exist and it's not really a massive game-breaking option," misses the reason why flight is restricted in PF2. After all. in PF2 bows exist and are as useful as guns. The problem is that a lot of low-level monsters in Pathfinder lack both flight and ranged attacks, so if a party could take to the air and shoot the creature, it would have no counterattacks available. The developers want to avoid risk-free fights, such as Anti being able to shoot unsuspecting Shadow Creepers.
Starfinder offers more opportunities for alien monsters with ranged attacks or flight. But that is just a side point. The essential reason that low-level access to flight is no problem is that science fiction stories are different from fantasy stories.
In fantasy, a party trudging across a swamp and battling a giant lizard in a random encounter is expected. Flying over the swamp would be skipping the adventure.
In science fiction, the party traveling over the swamp in a hovercar, zipping past the giant lizard before it can even blink, is expected instead. Even if circumstances left them trudging on foot, half of the party avoiding the mud and the giant lizard thanks to their natural alien wings would be just fine.
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The semantics of "fully" and "easily" are subtly different.
So are the semantics of "compatible" and "identical".
They are playtesting with pathfinder classes alongside Starfinder ones in their dev notes. In this case the operative was being played alongside a gunslinger. You can take the soldier and the mystic and plop it into a pathfinder campaign with no conversion needed to make it function. It has been stated and reiterated that these are in a shared system. Operating on the same rules and mathematical expectations.
I would like to point out that the example you are talking about was explicitly intended for the benefit of the Operative, to ensure it feels sufficiently different from the Gunslinger. It was not a cross-compatibility test. Afaik that's true for these tests in general, though not all.
And critically, shared rules and math aren't all there is to it. Yes, you should be able to plop pretty much everything from one system into the other and it should work. Hence the "100% compatibility" thing. But they've also explicity stated that compatible doesn't mean balanced. That's what we are talking about. We're not just concerned with bare mechanical functionality, but actually making the options work together in a way that doesn't disrupt or outright break the game. Because that is 100% what would happen if that Soldier you just plopped into PF2 had unrestricted flight at level 1. Rules and math don't prevent that.
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They are playtesting with pathfinder classes alongside Starfinder ones in their dev notes. In this case the operative was being played alongside a gunslinger. You can take the soldier and the mystic and plop it into a pathfinder campaign with no conversion needed to make it function. It has been stated and reiterated that these are in a shared system. Operating on the same rules and mathematical expectations.I would like to point out that the example you are talking about was explicitly intended for the benefit of the Operative, to ensure it feels sufficiently different from the Gunslinger. It was not a cross-compatibility test. Afaik that's true for these tests in general, though not all.
And critically, shared rules and math aren't all there is to it. Yes, you should be able to plop pretty much everything from one system into the other and it should work. Hence the "100% compatibility" thing. But they've also explicity stated that compatible doesn't mean balanced. That's what we are talking about. We're not just concerned with bare mechanical functionality, but actually making the options work together in a way that doesn't disrupt or outright break the game. Because that is 100% what would happen if that Soldier you just plopped into PF2 had unrestricted flight at level 1. Rules and math don't prevent that.
I assume it is a given they wouldn't be balanced when one meta is guns and the other is swords
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The intent was explicit that this is a shared system, that is what "fully compatible" (their words) means.You aren't going to fully understand what the game developers mean by those two words alone. The English language isn't that precise.
What you are wanting with 'fully compatible' is that all content can be swapped from one system to the other without any thought put into it. And that isn't possible. At least, not without losing everything about Starfinder that makes it interesting and distinct from Pathfinder.
What SF2 is, is more that it is 'easily compatible'. It isn't like pulling a creature or item from PF1 and using it in PF2 - those two game systems are not compatible. While doing that import and conversion is possible using the creature creation rules or item creation rules from PF2 and the theme and purpose of the creature/item from PF1, it takes quite a bit of work.
Instead what we are going to get is two separate game systems that are compatible - the core math and rules are the same, and class design is equivalent. So you can move a creature or item from one system to the other without too much difficulty. There are some balance considerations to be aware of - such as that Pathfinder2e puts a lot of balance considerations into creatures only having two hands, and that the player characters don't fly below certain levels. So a creature imported from Starfinder2 would have the appropriate bonus, AC, saves, skills, HP, and damage numbers for its level. But it might do a lot better or worse against the Pathfinder2 player opponents who are primarily melee/spellcaster combatants rather than ranged/spellcaster combatants that the enemy is designed to battle against in Starfinder2.
Though, notably, the ways in which that's true currently appear to be so specific and mild that it will be extremely easy to band-aid, its not that hard to strap a jetpack to a barbarian who doesn't have a way to deal with enemies who can fly, or give the ogre a level scaled attack where it chucks a rock at someone so it can threaten flying players, and plenty of Pathfinder 2e parties and monsters won't even need that much, already having fine options on their statblock for it.
Though, notably, the ways in which that's true currently appear to be so specific and mild that it will be extremely easy to band-aid, its not that hard to strap a jetpack to a barbarian who doesn't have a way to deal with enemies who can fly, or give the ogre a level scaled attack where it chucks a rock at someone so it can threaten flying players, and plenty of Pathfinder 2e parties and monsters won't even need that much, already having fine options on their statblock for it.
And reflavor the Barbarian and being like Bane from Batman
Pathfinder 2nd Edition has a small flaw with exotic player species. The rules were built around humanoid player characters and don't necessarily mesh with non-humanoid shapes or biologies.I'm surprised at this comment. Not so much having to do with biology, but definitely with shape; my group has been enjoying the fact that, aside from needing to have two "hands," however those might work for your character, PF2E puts relatively little emphasis on how your body is shaped. The sacred nagaji, for example, hasn't got legs, but doesn't seem to have an issue with equipping magic items, at least not to the extent any special note needed to be inserted.
It is only a small flaw, easily resolved by GM decisions. I talked to three of my players, and the player of Anti pointed that the weirdness of leshies mostly comes up in roleplaying. She asked, "Can a leshy eat? I know they live off of sunlight, but eating is also a social occassion so being able to eat would help at social dinners." And at one point in the continuing adventures after A Fistful of Flowers and A Few Flowers More the party of leshies donned Hats of Disguise and pretended to be a party of halflings to avoid attention, so any halfling behavior they could not mimic would be a giveaway.
I suspect this is because investiture acts like a pool, rather than the slot system from the previous edition. ...
Not requiring specific body slots is convenient.
The biggest issues I see for creating an ancestry for SF2E are going to deal with handedness, and perhaps things like innate resistances or immunities. The latter issue we've already seen with options like playing as an undead--you just don't get all the resistances and immunities you'd normally see with a monster of that type, likely with a sidebar explaining the possible pitfalls of empowering a PC with them, should the party want to.
I would like Starfinder 2nd Edition to embrace the differences more than PF2 does. Call out the differences and make recommendations. For example, Kiirinta have six legs and can use three fingers on each of their front legs as hands. They can stand on their back legs alone. Do their middle pair of legs offer any advantage?
I want to see crystalline aliens, snake aliens, dolphin aliens--Starfinder might have them already for all I know. The ooze Entu Colony and fishlike Stellifera are great! And Starfinder 2nd Edition should not talk about free hands without clarifying how creatures that have tentacles or telekinesis or pseudopods or prehensile tails instead of hands handle the hand-based rules.
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All we know is the core rules will he compatible (3 action economy, proficiency bonus TEML etc) and that the classes will be designed not to be cl9nes of pf2e classes but in space.
Everything else from the relative power of spells, additional class mechanics, the way focus/resilve work is up for grabs. Even skills m8gjt be c9mpatible but differently named (culture vs society, nature vs life sciences).
I hope balance isn't the grind it is in PF2e. I want my sci fi to feel scifi. Something about the way magic, especially magic items in pf2e seems to have lost the fantasy/special of them and replaced with something that just feels like utility or items I just purchase from a store.
I sincerely hope Starfinder feels compatible but a different game (not just different setting/gear) to Pathfinder else they should have just given us a high tech splat book for pf2e.
SF2e seems like a good place to break or test things outside of the constraints of pf2e in a way the remaster couldn't. They can take what they have learned from 5 years of pf2 and improve it without worrying about whether it is balanced against the pf2e crb like all pf2e stuff has to be.
The damage on weapons is even the same, with the archaic rules doing the heavy lifting for how weapons of the future would shred through archaic armor, and how archiv weapons would barely do anything to futuristic armor
Iirc they're ditching the archaic rule.
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Iirc they're ditching the archaic rule.
The damage on weapons is even the same, with the archaic rules doing the heavy lifting for how weapons of the future would shred through archaic armor, and how archiv weapons would barely do anything to futuristic armor
It's still not finalized, but the currently the archaic trait is an optional rule, not baseline.
And the damage on weapons won't be the exact same, outside of using the same d4-d12 die sizes. SF2 ranged weapons are very likely to be considerably stronger than PF2 ones. Just as an example, in the first field test, the laser pistol's only downside compared to the repeating handcrossbow was 40ft range increments instead of 60ft. But it has a 1-action reload instead of a 3-action one and otherwise the same stats. And the laser pistol is a simple weapon, while the other is advanced.
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I believe the assumption should be that with guns as the baseline you'll see them being much more like melee weapons in PF2