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I've heard a lot of concerns about the 2e engine's ancestry paradigm being too restrictive to accommodate truly wacky alien species, reducing them all to "humans in cosplay" rather than truly imaginative, diverse character options. I think this underestimates--or at least misunderstands--what the system is capable of. So, I'd like to try to prove that 2e can handle some weird stuff, without sacrificing balance.
Now, it is absolutely true that the aforementioned balance tends to enforce some restrictions on what an ancestry can be absent of any feats: it gets, at most, three attribute boosts and a flaw, a size, vision, movement speeds, hit points, and a couple special features to make it stand out. That's a pretty narrow set of parameters, but thankfully feats and heritages can add a lot of spice. As feats are locked to level progression, however, we can sometimes wind up with stupid stuff like truly impressive movement types and immunities not coming online until pretty deep in an adventurer's career. This can break immersion sometimes--"What do you mean my character with wings can't fly until level nine?"--so we should do our best to avoid that if we can. Any ancestry should get its Special Thing as early as possible, and feats should elevate that Thing rather than unlock it.
So, I decided to tackle this beast by going straight for the wackiest species I could find, one that is often cited as an example of what 2e can't handle and also happens to be my favorite: Stellifera.
Let's get squiddy with it.
STARTING STATS: +WIS/CHA/FREE, -CON, darkvision, speed 20 feet, swim speed 30 feet, medium size, 6HP, 120ft telepathy (cannot audibly speak).
Wait, hold on, medium size? Aren't stellifera super little guys? Don't they only have 5 feet of land movement? And where's the strength flaw? Well, what I've actually done here is give you the stats for the hydrobody, not the little cuttlefish itself. Check this out:
Disperse Hydrobody: One action. You withdraw your psychic grip on the water surrounding you. You become tiny, take a land speed penalty of -10, and are enfeebled 2. You cannot breathe without assistive equipment when not in water. (Note that enfeebled 2 accomplishes the same thing in 2e as -4 STR does in 1e. Also, we're being less mean with the speed penalty, so our little cuttlefriend gets an extra square and thus can flop away from something with reach and isn't SOL on difficult terrain.)
Reform Hydrobody: Three actions. You gather moisture from the environment to create a protective sphere of water around yourself. Your size becomes medium, and you shed all penalties related to being outside your hydrobody. (Remember, you get three actions per turn in 2e, so a swift action roughly translates to a single action, and a full action to three actions. Somebody who is actually a game designer might finesse this differently.)
For now, I'm going to ignore how differently-sized gear would work because that's a lot of mechanical nitpickery and I am Not a Designer, but I believe this more or less accomplishes what stellifera are all about right out of the box. Note, however, that a lot of the goodies our cuttlebuddies enjoy are absent. What about the free cantrips, squeezy features, and immunities? Well, we still have two sources of power budget we haven't touched: feats and heritages.
Let's start with heritages. The stellifera basically has three Cool Things that make it feel special and alien: A) innate psychic powers, B) having a hydrobody, and C) being a cuttlefish. Since all stellifera get a hydrobody by default, we can focus our heritages on A and C.
Scarlet Stellifera: When polite communication fails, you're not afraid to use your chromatophores to make a point, expressing displeasure with bold flashes of solid color. You become trained in Intimidation and gain the Intimidating Glare skill feat.
Flamboyant Stellifera: You love to stand out, and have learned to express yourself through careful manipulation of your chromatophores and hydrobody. You become trained in Performance, and gain the Impressive Performance skill feat.
Deepwater Stellifera: You're well-adapted to the chilling waters of the oceanic abyss. You gain cold resistance equal to half your level (minimum 1), and treat environmental cold effects as if they were one step less extreme.
Murky Stellifera: You're better adapted to polluted water than other members of your species. You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to saving throws against diseases and poisons, and creatures within 60 feet of you cannot become concealed to you when you are both submerged in the same liquid body.
Gifted Stellifera: Your innate psychic abilities are more developed than most. You gain the Psychic Gift ancestry feat. (I'll describe the Psychic Gift feat below, but it's basically a free occult cantrip.)
So, already, we have more options for making our stellifera feel more cuttlefishy (the flamboyant heritage was inspired directly by my wife's favorite animal). However, we're still at a lower power level than 1e's default stellifera, don't have full poison immunity, and have to choose a specific heritage to get any poison resistance at all. This nerf is a bit of a bummer, but it's consistent with 2e's design paradigms. We also don't get cantrips without taking feats for it, but yeah, let's talk feats!
Lv1 - Psychic Gift: You've tapped into your ancestry's natural psionics to unlock greater power. Choose one common occult cantrip to gain as an innate, at-will spell. Special: You can select this feat multiple times to gain additional cantrips. (With this, we've locked in a way to get both of the 1e stellifera's innate spells as soon as level 1, or level 5 without the Gifted heritage. Unlike 1e, however, we have more flexibility in which cantrips we can choose, and can gain up to 6 innate cantrips by lv17, or an insane 12 cantrips by lv19 if we use the optional Ancestry Paragon rule. This, however, requires we forego all other feats and hyper-focus on being a natural psychic.)
Lv1 - Emergency Dispersal: Reaction. Trigger: you are about to take damage that would reduce your HP to 0. You sacrifice your hydrobody to protect yourself from a lethal blow. You gain resistance to the triggering damage equal to your level x2, and instantly use the Disperse Hydrobody action. You cannot use this reaction again until you have reformed your hydrobody. (The DR here is a shot in the dark; again, I am Not A Designer.)
Lv1 - Adaptive Hydrobody: You can adjust the size of your hydrobody based on your current needs and available moisture. When you reform your hydrobody, you can choose to become small instead of medium. Your new size persists until you next disperse your hydrobody.
Lv1 - Camouflage: Your chromatophores help you blend in with your surroundings. When swimming or outside your hydrobody, you gain a +1 circumstance bonus to Stealth checks to Hide.
Lv1 - Ink Cloud: You've maintained some vestigial defenses that most stellifera shed generations ago. Once per hour (or day? not a designer), as an action, you can disperse ink inside your hydrobody, causing you to become concealed until the end of your next turn. Special: You can take this feat only at 1st level, and you can’t retrain out of this feat or into this feat.
Lv5 - Flexible Hydrobody: You have fine-tuned control over your hydrobody, allowing you to shape it in more complex ways. When attempting to Squeeze Through, you may treat your hydrobody as one size smaller for the purposes of the check. (Whoop, there it is! With this feat, we now have a path to a "complete" stellifera.)
Lv5 - Stretch Hydrobody: As an action, you shunt extra water into one of your hydrobody's limbs, extending your reach by 5ft for touch spells, interact actions, and one-handed melee weapons. This extension lasts until the end of your turn, and you can take the action twice to extend another 5ft.
Lv5 - Ink Shot: Reaction, requires Ink Cloud. You've learned to weaponize your body's natural defenses. When you successfully hit a creature with an unarmed attack, you can choose to expend your use of Ink Cloud to render the creature dazzled (blinded on a critical hit). The condition persists until the creature spends an interact action to remove the ink.
Lv5 - Chromatophore Semaphore: You can attempt to communicate simple information via carefully timed patterns and flashes. Creatures that can see you may roll a Society check to interpret what you are saying (with a -2 circumstance penalty if you do not share a language), or a Perception check with a -4 circumstance penalty. The DC is usually equal to an easy check for your level, but the GM may adjust it depending on the complexity of the information you are trying to convey. Creatures that share a language with you and either have the Read Lips skill feat or have spent at least one week of downtime learning to communicate with you in this fashion automatically pass the check.
Lv9 - Psychic Empathy: As an action, choose one creature within range of your telepathy. You immediately learn that creature's disposition towards you, as well as the strongest emotion it is currently feeling. The creature may roll a Will save versus your Perception DC to negate this effect. This ability has no effect on mindless creatures.
Lv9 - Propulsive Exit: You shape your hydrobody into a jet of water just before it loses cohesion, which you can then ride to relative safety. When you disperse your hydrobody, as part of the action you may move up to your swim speed in any direction. Special: If you take both the Explosive Exit and Propulsive Exit feats, you must choose the effects of either one or the other each time you disperse your hydrobody, but not both.
Lv9 - One with the Mud: You've become especially adapted to harsh aquatic conditions. Your circumstance bonus to saving throws against poisons and diseases increases to +2, and if you roll a success, you get a critical success instead. Furthermore, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus to spot creatures hidden within 60 feet of you, so long as you are both in the same liquid body. Special: Requires Murky Stellifera heritage.
Lv9 - Extended Telepathy: Your telepathy's range extends to 240ft, and up to a mile for those you have known for at least one week.
Lv13 - Master Camouflage: You are especially adept at manipulating your chromatophores. Your circumstance bonus to Hide when swimming or outside your hydrobody increases to +2, and you can attempt to Hide without cover or concealment so long as this bonus applies. Special: Requires Camouflage ancestry feat.
Lv13 - Hulking Hydrobody: You've learned how to draw extra moisture into your hydrobody for increased bulk and strength. When you reform your hydrobody, you may choose to gain the effects of the rank 2 Enlarge spell. The effects persist until you disperse and reform your hydrobody again. You may do this once per day.
Lv13 - Explosive Exit: Your hydrobody disperses with explosive force. When you disperse your hydrobody and before becoming tiny and enfeebled, as part of the action you may roll to Trip, Shove, or make an unarmed strike against all creatures within your reach. These attacks are affected by and count towards your multi-attack penalty, but the penalty does not increase until all attacks are complete. Special: If you take both the Explosive Exit and Propulsive Exit feats, you must choose the effects of either one or the other each time you disperse your hydrobody, but not both.
Lv13 - Landlubber: You've gotten used to life on land. When outside your hydrobody, you instead take a -5ft land speed penalty and are enfeebled 1. In addition, double the number of rounds you can hold your breath before suffocating (this stacks with the Breath Control general feat).
Lv17 - Telepathic Mastery: Your telepathic sense extends to any creature within line of sight, and to planetary range for those you've known for at least a week. You gain Translate as a once-per-day innate occult spell. Special: Requires Extended Telepathy.
Lv17 - Duplicate Hydrobody: As a three-action activity, you can create a second hydrobody in an empty space within 30 feet of you. This hydrobody shares your hit points and all your proficiencies, and has both the summoned, mindless, and minion traits. When created, you can choose to give the duplicate any equipment currently on your person. The duplicate immediately takes two actions upon its creation, and two more each round so long as you spend an action to sustain it (as a summoned minion). If not sustained, the duplicate immediately disperses. If you disperse your original hydrobody, you can enter the duplicate by moving into its space. When you do this, it is no longer a summoned minion, but is instead treated as your normal hydrobody.
Again, I must stress that I am Not a Designer, and thus have very little idea what I'm doing. I also went way more overboard on this than I intended to, and wound up with damn near a complete ancestry instead of a few examples. But hopefully I've proved that 2e's engine can indeed handle weird aliens. In fact, I think the variety of feats presented here help stellifera feel even more special, without locking them into a specific mode of play (I went out of my way to provide feats that would be useful for all kinds of builds).
So, what do you guys think? Was the above theorycraft any good? Satisfying? What other space freaks should we take a crack at 2e-ifying while we wait for the official playtest?
Also, I'm not sure what Paizo's policy is re: homebrew on the forums, as I don't want to get any authors in trouble if this winds up resembling an actual, published stellifera in the future (lol, as if). So, if I need to delete this or put some kind of disclaimer that I'm fine with inspiring official content either accidentally or on purpose (again, as if lol), please let me know.
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This is brilliant, and an excellent demonstration of how alien ancestries can be made to work with 2e's framework. I do think the ancestry as described may be on the stronger and more complex side (darkvision plus telepathy plus a swim speed plus the hydrobody makes for a lot of perks compared to the average ancestry), but if nothing else, the above demonstrates how even an ancestry as non-human as a stellifera can have their abilities broken down into components that'd fit 2e's framework.
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This is brilliant, and an excellent demonstration of how alien ancestries can be made to work with 2e's framework. I do think the ancestry as described may be on the stronger and more complex side (darkvision plus telepathy plus a swim speed plus the hydrobody makes for a lot of perks compared to the average ancestry), but if nothing else, the above demonstrates how even an ancestry as non-human as a stellifera can have their abilities broken down into components that'd fit 2e's framework.
Thank you for the feedback! I considered giving them low-light vision and making darkvision exclusive to the deepwater heritage, and tried to do some push-pull with the other stuff by balancing the high swim speed with the low land speed/innate telepathy with the inability to vocalize. Honestly, the 1e stat block was already most of the way there re: base features, it just needed some things trimmed down either for clarity or for the heritage/feat budget. But yeah, I think you could probably get even stingier with some of the goodies here and still keep the lil' squid's soul intact.
Honestly, I fully expect SF2's ancestries to be more complex and possibly a little higher-power than PF2's baseline, just because you can get way weirder with aliens than you can with typical Tolkiensian stuff. Also, it looks like a lot of lower-power ancestries will be able to play catch-up by purchasing gear.
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Honestly, I fully expect SF2's ancestries to be more complex and possibly a little higher-power than PF2's baseline, just because you can get way weirder with aliens than you can with typical Tolkiensian stuff. Also, it looks like a lot of lower-power ancestries will be able to play catch-up by purchasing gear.
I agree 100% on complexity; I'd like Starfinder 2e to allow ancestries to be a bit more out there compared to what we've seen so far in Pathfinder (and who knows, perhaps this could open the door to funkier fantasy ancestries as well). I think you're also right that Starfinder ancestries will be able to access certain abilities that are valued much more highly in Pathfinder, though not necessarily because they're meant to be more powerful: Pathfinder's got its own meta where combat is mostly melee and most adventures happen in a terrestrial environment, but in Starfinder, combat's meant to be much more gun-heavy and we spend lots of time in space and other weird places, where protective suits are commonplace. The devs have already said that we'd be able to fly at level 1, and I suspect other benefits should be able to be reevaluated accordingly.
For the stellifera, I think what could help in this instance would be to actually lean even more into them being cuttlefish in water bodies: for starters, they should have the aquatic trait, with the hydrobody providing the water they need to breathe. Following the example of poppets having a weakness to fire damage (because they're made of flammable material), giving the hydrobody weakness to electricity damage equal to one-third of the stellifera's level would help give space for the rest of the ancestry's power, while also creating more tactical reasons to shed one's hydrobody in certain situations. The resulting ancestry would definitely be on the more complex side, but depending on Starfinder's meta could find itself balanced alongside simpler ancestries like the android or vesk.
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This is excellent - well done! If this (or similar) were published in a SF2e product, I'd be perfectly happy with this! I think your heritages and feats accurately capture "the feel" of stellifera. It is more complex than your standard species/ancestry, but that's fine, imo: it was like that in 1e, as well. Some player options are just more challenging than others to use. And that's fine :)
I want to point out one thing specific here, though: one of the hidden complexities of stelliferas, being "communication." This wasn't even a super-well sketched out facet of the species in 1e, and it's not really called out in the 1e write-up, so it's easy to overlook. But the general gist is: stelliferas can't talk, vocally. It's not mentioned in the mechanical species traits in 1e, but it's hinted at in the flavour text: "stelliferas normally converse through a complex color language, changing skin and nearby water to various hues, supplemented with limited telepathy, so they had to rely on augmentations to communicate with their planet’s invaders." (Hilariously, the augmentations mentioned in the write up have no rules accompanying them, so there's no item support for that fluff.)
The species doens't have proper limited telepahy, like shirren or lashunta, but instead just have a spell-like ability to cast telepathic message, which, as a spell-like ability, takes time: it's a Standard Action. Usually it's more of a hand-waving peice of interesting character development - by convention, most GMs that come across a stellifera in their games will ask, "so, how does your cephalopod communicate?" It's interesting in combat, though: stelliferas can't combat banter, unless they take an Action to cast telepathic message, or someone else in the party takes the trouble to learn Stelliferan :D
So, it might be fun to add in something along those lines: stelliferas lack the physiology to communicate vocally, and so to communicate tend to learn the signed versions of other languages, or rely on allies learning stelliferan, or similar. Usually by mid-level it's easy enough to buy an item or augmentation to grab actual limited telepathy, or pick up some other way of communication.
Then again, this hindrance chaffed for some, so maybe it would be fine to just say stelliferas all grew mouths as part of the upgrade to 2e, in deference to playability.)
Like I said, though - this is really well done!! I was half-contemplating taking a crack of convering a handful of interesting 1e species to the P3AS as a side project to put up on Infinite for the Playtest Release; I was thinking of trying stelliferas, but, seeing this, I think I'd better choose something else! :)
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A second reply, unrelated to stelliferas specifically: speaking as one of the 1e players giving SF2 ancestries side-eye, I don't think anyone doubts that the Paizo 3 Action System has the chops to accurately and faithfully port over beloved 1e species. Instead, the problems are twofold: one, the size/effort required for a SF2 ancestry compared to a SF1 species, and two, the "back-heaviness" of P3AS ancestries.
I think this is generally well understood, but...just wanted to point it out. The problem isn't so much "no way SF2 can do the stellifera justice" but rather "will we have to wait for a book 7 years into SF2's lifecycle to get the SF2 version of stellifera?" PF2 is now at (per AoN, at least) 36 ancestries, and it's been out since Aug 2019, so, 4½ years now. By comparison, at 4½ years old, SF1 had just hit Alien Archive 4 - not even counting species from APs & scenarios, there were just shy of 90 (!) playable species. So: I don't think anyone is saying that the extra space and options devoted to each ancestry in the P3AS is bad - and, indeed, it fixes an existing complaint, that of species having so little to go on. Rather, SF1 Enjoyers are hesitant about if that trade-off, from higher quantity to higher quality, is worth it. Is it better to have 36 well-developed ancestries, or 90 less-developed ones. We're all waiting to see.
(Yes, granted, PF2's development hit a huge year-long stumbling block, with the Remaster/OGL and all that, but even so - you can't tell me that, were it not for the Remaster, they would have put out another 55ish ancestries by now.)
And that's the problem: how long will it take SF2 to get back to the 130ish species that 1e has, now? If the life span of a Paizo RPG Edition is in the decade-ish span (OGL garbage notwithstanding, laugh/cry) we might not ever get there, in SF2. Then again, we know the Star Friends have said that The Cantina Feel is a priority for them, so - who knows. Like I said - we'll all just have to wait and see.
The second point has already been well-discussed, so I don't want to re-litigate that, but: it will feel bad if a SF2 ancestry needs to take a bunch of feats at up to level 9, to get an ability the SF1 species got at starting. Speaking personally, this one feels like less of a big deal. I can stomach a nerf to some abilities, in between editions. Stomaching a steep decline in how many ancestries there are, and the speed with which they're published, though, is a different matter.
If I were to guess with absolutely no information and just intuition, I would say SF2E could have 50-70 ancestries before a third edition...and thats a LOT of design man hours and layout work hours to make that happen. Would half the playable ancestries be too little for the SF1E crowd? Not sure
It's not nearly so much the system as the paradigm.
If I need something that can stop an axe that's easy. here. Hold my anvil.
If I need something that is light and comfortable enough to wear and lets me move around thats easy enough. Cut some holes in a burlap sack and you have one of my shirts.
But If I need something that can stop an axe WHILE being light and comfortable enough to wear that's hard as heck to do. depending on the level of comfort/stoppage you want it can be impossible with current tech.
Nothing stops someone from running the full starfinder species through the sf to 2e translator and getting a reasonable result. (NICE job with the enfeebled by the way. very elegant solution) but doing that while maintaining pf2's ideas of tight balance AND page count and leaving room for higher level abilities and...
I think having the same balance point as PF2 is the kicker.
I like that the Disperse Hydrobody ability reminds us that the stellifera is a tiny fish. I would add an ancestry feat that when it disperses the hydrobody it can keep a one-centimeter thick layer of water around it to enable it to breathe, though that might compete with Landlubber.
And that's the problem: how long will it take SF2 to get back to the 130ish species that 1e has, now? If the life span of a Paizo RPG Edition is in the decade-ish span (OGL garbage notwithstanding, laugh/cry) we might not ever get there, in SF2. Then again, we know the Star Friends have said that The Cantina Feel is a priority for them, so - who knows. Like I said - we'll all just have to wait and see.
Paizo could print the SF2 version of Interstellar Species earlier than they printed the SF1 version and pack it full of ancestries ported from SF1 to SF2. And I would not mind a book series titled Homeworlds that gives a tour of many planets, their environments, their cultures, their settlements, and of course, playable ancestries on those planets.
The 2009 Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook has seven playable races: Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-Elf, Halfling, Half-Orc, and Human. The 2019 Pathfinder 2nd Edition Core Rulebook has six ancestries: Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Goblin, Halfling, and Human with Half-Elf and Half-Orc relegated to well-developed human heritages. The 2023 Remastered Pathfinder Player Core has eight ancestries: Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Goblin, Halfling, Human, Leshy, and Orc with Aiuvarin (half-elf) and Dromaar (half-orc) moved to versatile heritages. And the PF2 Player Core is essentially part 1 of the player's rulebook with PF2 Player Core 2 coming out in July 2024 with catfolk, gnoll, hobgoblin, kobold, lizardfolk, ratfolk, and tengu. The re-release of Pathfinder playable species is happening fairly rapidly.
The 2017 Starfinder Core Rulebook has seven playable races: Android, Human, Kasatha, Lashunta, Shirren, Vesk, and Ysoki. I can see that number going up to nine with an August 2024 SF2 Player Core and another eight ancestries in a general-purpose supplement in February 2026. Then then maybe 25 ancestries in an ancestry-themed supplement in August 2026.
The eight ancestries in PF2 Player Core take up pages 41 to 73, with versatile heritages on pages 74 to 83. That averages 4 pages for an ancestry. The Starfinder Core Rulebook takes 2 pages for a race. Starfinde 2nd Edition will need twice as many pages for each ancestry than Starfinder 1st Edition did, but that is manageable in book of 400 or more pages.
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I like that the Disperse Hydrobody ability reminds us that the stellifera is a tiny fish. I would add an ancestry feat that when it disperses the hydrobody it can keep a one-centimeter thick layer of water around it to enable it to breathe, though that might compete with Landlubber.
Actually I could see this being an alternate feat line.
Restrict the size to Medium, and state it's for oxygenation reasons. Then a feat where they can now choose at daily preparation to be small instead. And with this smaller form, you can actually use your hydrokinesis to slow falls, or guide your movement in low grav environments.
Then another feat which allows for you to make the change between small and medium whenever you reform Hydrobody. and when you disperse hydrobody you are left in an envelope of water where you won't start suffocating for 10 minutes
Then finally you have gotten used to manipulating your more compact hydrobody. When you disperse and leave yourself in the thin envelope of water, you actually gain a fly speed equal to your movement speed.as you have less weight to move with your hydrokinesis.
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I admit, I like what I see you doing here... but from what I could see, the Stellifera was never the problem. That species was always "the hydrobody basically functions like a human, and without it you're badly crippled" and PF2 can handle that. Even here you lose the poison immunity, but I feel like that's less of a hit. Having the cuttlefish be poison immune doesn't feel like it was particularly core to the fantasy.
That's not to undermine what you've done here. It does feel both delightfully weird, and at least close enough to balanced that it could get there with some effort. It would be really nice if the thing that came out the other end wasn't bound to "once per day" effects for all of its really cool moves.
As far as actions go, what you have here is pretty interesting - a lot of things can be made more balanced by making the action costs high, and then possibly having follow-on feats that trim those costs back down and/or add more action-efficiency in other ways. "You can totally do this thing, but it's awfully slow to be trying it in combat." feels a lot more reasonable for certain kinds of species effects than, for example, "You can totally do this thing, but for some reason you can only do it once a day."
Initially, some part of me wanted to take a bit of issue with the idea that shooting the hydrobody would necessary cause HP to deplete, but on further thought that's actually the stellifera having better simulationism than everyone else. As far as they're concerned, HP is a matter of psychic resources. Maintaining and rebuilding the hydrobody in the face of people shooting the thing exhausts those resources, until you run out entirely and fall unconscious. "Unconscious and stable" means that you've got a really minimal hydrobody around you keeping you alive, while "unconscious and dying" means that you're lying on the deck, slowly suffocating.
It might actually be a kind of cool way to give them a disadvantage, or even a combined advantage/disadvantage. Dropping below 0 hp means that you lose the hydrobody (and thus need to take a bunch of actions rebuilding it in order to stand up once you're healed) but also makes you much smaller (and thus harder for the enemy to CDG).