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Pretty straight forwards... what books do you want to see after Starfinder 2e launches? Both as an interesting thing to talk about and in hopes that the 2e team sees your list and thinks its a good idea.
1) Planar book. I've heard this one was planned for 1e before the OGL/ORC debacle pushed it in favour of 2e. Starfinder is a very planar-heavy setting including FTL that takes you through planes other than the Drift, so it really feels like we need this one.
2) Pact World Species. Oppertunity to get plenty of new species into the game, as well as flesh out the core species that never got the spotlight in 1e.
3) Pact World Gods. Galatic Magic is a thing, but I would really love to have a deeper dive on the gods and faiths of Startfinder. Ideally something like Inner Sea Gods rather than LO Gods & Magic (which is great, but I love those in depth summaries)
4) Some sort of lore line analagous to the Lost Omens line for Pathfinder. We do have the Pact World and Near Space books, but it feels like there is a lot more to explore on every planet. Plus, it would give use an oppertunity to go deep on other planets and systems outside the big two.
5) Azlanti Star Empire. Think this one is pretty obvious. They are big recurring villans and we've seen some glimpses inside the Empire, but I'd love to see more.
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2) Pact World Species. Oppertunity to get plenty of new species into the game, as well as flesh out the core species that never got the spotlight in 1e.
So much this...
A SF2e version of Interstellar Species compiling both the Pact Worlds and Veskarium species (all of them), plus as many others as will fit (some of the "rare" species may need to be published elsewhere where they make sense), should (IMO) be one of the first SF2e books after the core rules. Many of the options in Character Operations Manual, Near Space, and Interstellar Species just need to be converted to the ancestry feats model, so it's not like they'd be starting from scratch.
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1) Tech book to bring more Sci to the Fi and also get the technomancer and mechanic their 2e renditions
2) Big book of the Drift (it could be a planar book too...but I'd want the biggest section to be about the drift bc that's the starfinder original stuff and vastly more interesting to me).
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Please publish a Player Core #1 that includes the Biohacker, Witchwarper, and Vanguard classes right out the gate. And please please include in the core an option to play an actual, genuine medical doctor using primarily superscience instead of magic to HEAL people's HP and Stamina, not mutate or kill or merely buff them. Or at least multiclassing rules that make it painless to multiclass and DON'T nerf PCs who do this, so they can still be used in Organized Play adventures for their char level.
I love the setting, but I quit playing after 1st level because making the character I envision was totally impossible in SFS. Even now, IF Tech Revolution and SF Enhanced together maybe make it sort-of semi-possible, I'd have to buy 4 books just to have anything resembling my basic character concept. And I'd also have to use up my archetype, theme, and every single feat to make it work. It was very unfun to contemplate.
Please support Organised Play, including a way to convert 1E characters to 2E without losing their experience or boons.
Please don't make non-human Ancestry use up a Feat slot. That just automatically nerfs all non-human PCs compared to humans and takes away their options to use other feats.
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A Numeria AP full of suggestions on working SF2 stuff into PF2, honestly :p
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A little boring, but I would love a 'player core 2' for starfinder. Get the most wanted starfinder 1e stuff done, and then go hog wild with new options after. PC 2 could have another 6 classes (mechanic, technomancer, biohacker, vanguard, nanocyte, evolutionist) which doesn't seem too crazy. I also think only 6 classes for core might get old fast, even if they're designed well.
Also I really love vanguard and evolutionist so am biased
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Or at least multiclassing rules that make it painless to multiclass and DON'T nerf PCs who do this, so they can still be used in Organized Play adventures for their char level.
The core mechanics of SF 2E will be based on PF 2E, so I imagine that multiclassing will work just like PF multiclass archetypes do. In my experience, characters that take archetypes are pretty well balanced against other characters of their level. You're spending some of your feats on another class's abilities, but you still have access to your main class's abilities at your full level.
Please support Organised Play, including a way to convert 1E characters to 2E without losing their experience or boons.
I don't see this happening. The colossal effort it would take to try to work out how to do this in any way that resembles fair (which I'm not convinced is possible anyway) would be better spent on producing tons of new content for the new edition. Organized Play survived the shift from PF 1E to 2E just fine, and I'm confident that SF will, too.
Please don't make non-human Ancestry use up a Feat slot. That just automatically nerfs all non-human PCs compared to humans and takes away their options to use other feats.
All ancestries will get the same number of ancestry-specific feats at certain levels in 2E, just like in PF 2E.
I am curious to see if SF Society 2E will use the same boon slot types as 1E. PFS 2E doesn't really use that same framework, and IIRC, its ancestry and heritage boons that cost AcP don't have a type descriptor anyway.
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A little boring, but I would love a 'player core 2' for starfinder. Get the most wanted starfinder 1e stuff done, and then go hog wild with new options after. PC 2 could have another 6 classes (mechanic, technomancer, biohacker, vanguard, nanocyte, evolutionist) which doesn't seem too crazy. I also think only 6 classes for core might get old fast, even if they're designed well.
Also I really love vanguard and evolutionist so am biased
After my lukewarm reception of the APG classes, I dont fancy the idea of play testing more than two classes at a time after the release of the core book. That could have just been conservative design but I'd rather be on the safe side bc fewer classes in a book should mean less rush and more work hours on those classes.
I still use the first chapter of "Babylon 5 - Galactic Guide" for solar and planetary system creation. Still, science has evolved since that printing (namely, an explosion in detection of exoplanets, including around binary star systems) and could use an update,
Fortunately there is a book coming out on DriveThruRPG this year, Architect of Worlds, which will be all about generating stars and planetary systems. It's system-neutral and based on all the latest science, written by Jon F. Zeigler, who designed the solar system generator in GURPS Space. So although it won't do anything for magical worlds or planar influence, and might not have anything about megastructures, I trust it'll be awesome for realistic solar systems.
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After my lukewarm reception of the APG classes, I dont fancy the idea of play testing more than two classes at a time after the release of the core book. That could have just been conservative design but I'd rather be on the safe side bc fewer classes in a book should mean less rush and more work hours on those classes.A little boring, but I would love a 'player core 2' for starfinder. Get the most wanted starfinder 1e stuff done, and then go hog wild with new options after. PC 2 could have another 6 classes (mechanic, technomancer, biohacker, vanguard, nanocyte, evolutionist) which doesn't seem too crazy. I also think only 6 classes for core might get old fast, even if they're designed well.
Also I really love vanguard and evolutionist so am biased
That's a very good point. I do like to think that the devs have learned a lot since the apg playtest and that doing 6 classes at once is doable (I mean they're doing it with core, in *addition* to a ton of other rules to figure out), but yeah you are right that doing a couple classes at a time is much safer.
It is hard to be patient when none of your favorite sf classes made it into core, and releases beyond that are sooo far away T.T
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After my lukewarm reception of the APG classes, I dont fancy the idea of play testing more than two classes at a time after the release of the core book. That could have just been conservative design but I'd rather be on the safe side bc fewer classes in a book should mean less rush and more work hours on those classes.A little boring, but I would love a 'player core 2' for starfinder. Get the most wanted starfinder 1e stuff done, and then go hog wild with new options after. PC 2 could have another 6 classes (mechanic, technomancer, biohacker, vanguard, nanocyte, evolutionist) which doesn't seem too crazy. I also think only 6 classes for core might get old fast, even if they're designed well.
Also I really love vanguard and evolutionist so am biased
That's a very good point. I do like to think that the devs have learned a lot since the apg playtest and that doing 6 classes at once is doable (I mean they're doing it with core, in *addition* to a ton of other rules to figure out), but yeah you are right that doing a couple classes at a time is much safer.
It is hard to be patient when none of your favorite sf classes made it into core, and releases beyond that are sooo far away T.T
I feel you; SRO exocortex mechanic is my favorite part of the game. "THE FLESH IS WEAK! BOW BEFORE ME, MEATBAGS!!...and yes, I'll also fix the light in the bathroom"
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2) Pact World Species. Oppertunity to get plenty of new species into the game, as well as flesh out the core species that never got the spotlight in 1e.So much this...
A SF2e version of Interstellar Species compiling both the Pact Worlds and Veskarium species (all of them), plus as many others as will fit (some of the "rare" species may need to be published elsewhere where they make sense), should (IMO) be one of the first SF2e books after the core rules. Many of the options in Character Operations Manual, Near Space, and Interstellar Species just need to be converted to the ancestry feats model, so it's not like they'd be starting from scratch.
Something like this is my guess as to their first book or something like this. They want to keep that cantina feeling and one of the hardest parts from SF1 to bring in would be the plethora of ancestries. The first or second book they do is almost going to have to be something like this where they jam in as many various species with their ancestry feats they can to get people access to their favored races again asap.
Given SF2 is going to be pf2e compatible I think they can get away not going with a new class type book for the initial book or two because they are going to have all the pathfinder 2e classes + the starfinder mainbook classes. I think it would be more likely than a book that addds classes right away but more of a book that gives starfinder flavor to PF2e classes for feat/options. But I still think the ancestry type guide almost has to come first. With the PF2e compatibility they have enough classes and monsters to work with but one of the things that makes starfinder starfinder is playing a weird alien race. I never knew I wanted to play a sentient trackball until I saw the bantrid.
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There's really two books that I want to see, and they're kind of mirrors of one another.
- Hardtech book. Technomancer, Mechanic, lots of lovely tech goodies and gear to play with, probably some interesting stuff on some of the pertinent megacorps and how tech fits into the universe.
- Biotech book. Evolutionist, Biohacker, a bunch of grafts and other biotech gear to play with, probably some interesting stuff on a completely *different* set of megacorps, and so forth.
They're not going to come back-to-back or anything, and I know that. If nothing else, paizo would need to leave time for the playtest resources to refresh. Still, those are the ones that I want.
I don't think we're going to get Nanocyte in the tech book, though. Mechanics and Technomancers clearly get the first two slots, and I don't think we're going to see a book that has more than two classes in it.
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I'm courious what/when the first big lore book will be, we'll need something sooner rather than later to get up to date with the Lore/setting advances. I haven't seen Second Contact in person yet but from a YouTube video it looks like it has the Galaxy map on the inside cover, I'm wondering if that has been updated since the original Galaxy map was released.
Going to absolutely second, third and fourth calls for tech options BUT what I really want more than anything is a book that details how to run Techfinder - Starfinder without all the annoying magic. I get it, it won’t be a Paizo book, but a mu….person can dream raaaight?!?
Going to absolutely second, third and fourth calls for tech options BUT what I really want more than anything is a book that details how to run Techfinder - Starfinder without all the annoying magic. I get it, it won’t be a Paizo book, but a mu….person can dream raaaight?!?
That should be pretty easy, though? All you have to do is figure out what to carve out. Carve out the explicitly magical classes (Are Solarians magical? Up to you, but probably.) Carve out references to the gods. Turn Eos from an undead world to a dead world. Drop necrografts and arcanografts. So on and so forth. Sure, you have to make the call on what gets dropped and what doesn't for yourself, but it should be pretty obvious which is which, based on the feel you're going for.
Though... given that you're down to three classes in the starter book, you might want to let the player options accumulate a bit before you start your campaign.
Going to absolutely second, third and fourth calls for tech options BUT what I really want more than anything is a book that details how to run Techfinder - Starfinder without all the annoying magic. I get it, it won’t be a Paizo book, but a mu….person can dream raaaight?!?
Note that it doesn't do more than outline things, but the Galaxy Exploration Manual discusses modifying the SF1 rules for the cyberpunk and hard science fiction subgenres. Or using parallel worlds.
As mentioned, running SF1 without magic would mostly be a matter of removing the caster/magic using classes/archetypes/alternate class features and hybrid/magical items; depending on the setting, you might want to keep the phrenic adept. The hit point/stamina split and use of medkits, medpatches, and sprayflesh by someone using the Medicine skill reduces the need for a magical healer.
Wont happen, but a book that provides a non-spell slot magic system.
Wont happen, but a book that provides a non-spell slot magic system.
I think it's pretty likely that we'll get a class or two with a non-spell-slot magic system (as kineticist was for PF2) but if you mean a method to convert casters into something that doesn't use spell slots, i agree with you that it almost certainly won't happen. We might see something like that out of a third party, though.
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I suggested elsewhere that they need 3 books.
1: Biotech book, as SanityFaerie said, include the biohacker and the Evolutionist. Lots of grafts, bio-ships, drugs, bio-tech stuff, etc. Ancestries that are about biological changes. like the Entu colony and versatile heritage like the Entu symbiote
2: Hard Tech: I would say it should include the Mechancis and the NANOCYTE (instead of technomancer) of course lots of tools, cybernetics, special ships stuff. Ancestries that are about tech like the SRO and holograms.
3: Magic: include the Technomancer and the Vanguard. Lots of spells, and spell-tech items. Get into some lore (and mechancis) of how tech and magic can work together. Introduce some ancestries that have to do with magic
3: Magic: include the Technomancer and the Vanguard. Lots of spells, and spell-tech items. Get into some lore (and mechancis) of how tech and magic can work together. Introduce some ancestries that have to do with magic
Putting the Vanguard in the magic book seems like a really weird stretch. I mean, I get that you're kind of running out of options at that point if you want a magic-using class from SF1, but why does it have to be an old class? Why not something new?
Of course, that's an interesting question in and of itself. We'd want a class that...
- Was a slot caster of some variety. Maybe a wave caster, maybe a primary caster.
- Not any of the existing SF1 classes *or* the existing PF2 classes. Like, yeah, psychic works as an SF2 class... and if you want one in SF2 you can pull that thing directly out of Dark Archive and use it straight. No need to reprint it.
- Not overly bland. We'll have enough caster options at that point that "generic caster" isn't what we're looking for.
I almost feel like... two "different" kinds of technomancer. They'd need different names, of course. Still, on the one side we have the artificer-type, who creates and uses magitech items (temporary or otherwise) and is particularly good at drawing more power out of them and has a variety of buffs that they can use on tech items. On the other side, we have the hacker-caster, flips it around. Instead of using magic to empower tech, they use tech to inform and empower magic. They make deals with tech-spirits, they run magical scripts on their portable device, they cast spells through security cameras.
I feel like both of them are maybe wave casters. The magitech engineer gets some spells, but is also reasonably good at using weapons, and gets a lot of their class budget in being able to magically enhance gear. They probably have a class path that's really into the SF2 version of Beast Guns. The original technomancer is focused in on their spellcasting, but they're still technically a wave caster... it's just that they have an incredibly robust suite of metamagic that lets them swing like a full caster while using wave caster slots.
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I agree, I was stretching for Vanguard to fit in the magic book. And a new class would be AWESOME they did that for PF2e, so why not with SF2e?
What about a Primal caster? "The Terraformer" with some flavor text about not being sure if he is using magic, or technology or both." But what kind of mechanical signature would they have? Obviously battlefield control focused.
I agree, I was stretching for Vanguard to fit in the magic book. And a new class would be AWESOME they did that for PF2e, so why not with SF2e?
What about a Primal caster? "The Terraformer" with some flavor text about not being sure if he is using magic, or technology or both." But what kind of mechanical signature would they have? Obviously battlefield control focused.
I expect that we will get new classes for SF2. We might not get them as fast as we've been getting them for PF2 (unless SF2 becomes fantastically, gloriously more successful than I expect... which would be awesome.) but... there's only thirteen classes in SF1. We're getting six of those right out of the gate, and we've gotten confirmation that a seventh has already been eaten by one of the six. Some of the ones that remain might be downshifted to archetypes. Even if we get every single one of the remaining SF1 classes as classes, I really don't expect that they're going to hit six more classes after the first release and then stop. Like, PF2 has 23 of the things, and 4 more in the tank.
Most likely to go archetype? You're probably going to hate this, but I'm thinking Nanocyte and Technomancer, with Vanguard as the most likely to be dropped entirely. (...or somehow turned into a Solarian class archetype?) Alternately, we could get them all. At the same time, it's worth remembering that "number of SF1 classes that get dropped or downshifted" has essentially no bearing on "number of SF2 classes we wind up with in the end". The only question is whether we're filling those slots with old classes or new ones.
People keep mentioning technomancer and mechanic, but those both need to be in the 1st book released.
Now... "primal caster based on terraforming". It's an interesting thought.
There's two ways to take it, too. The first is that it's a skillset that's designed to *do* the terraforming. That doesn't fit particularly well, though. Like, I could easily imagine that primal casters might be useful in terraforming, and that there even might be specialized practices of primal casters that worked to optimize their arts for terraforming... but terraforming is slow. The primal caster who are out there optimizing for that are the kind that specifically aren't out there adventuring. They want very different things in life. The only way you're going to get a lot of terraformer primal casters of that variety pouring out onto the adventurer job market is if there was some awful cataclysm that somehow rendered a bunch of them unemployed and also radicalized them at the same time. Also, they probably wouldn't be going for magitech. Terraforming is a big enough job that you want specialists. You'd have them working with biohackers and whatnot, each one focusing on the jobs the other wasn't great at. You might want some kineticists in there too.
On the other hand, if terraforming is a thing, then you might have terraforming druids that get in tune with its spiritual essence, that vibe with planets as they are being terraformed and really try to grok that stuff... and walk away with new insights into their magic. They might drop by and pitch in for a while, but they're also a lot more likely to be adventurers, because they have a ready-made reason to want to travel across the galaxy, in order to visit many planets and understand their environmental differences, especially those that are being terraformed (or, I suppose, horribly polluted).
,,,and yeah, that sounds like a full primal caster with some interesting additional terrain modification tricks. I'm not sure it's interesting enough to be worth implementing, but it's na idea.
Seeing the swarmkeeper archetype makes me really think nanocyte would show up as an archetype in a tech book. I think that would be fine provided it was a beefy archetype. If it played out like that my SRO mechanic could employ nanobots for further tech shenanigans
Wont happen, but a book that provides a non-spell slot magic system.I think it's pretty likely that we'll get a class or two with a non-spell-slot magic system (as kineticist was for PF2) but if you mean a method to convert casters into something that doesn't use spell slots, i agree with you that it almost certainly won't happen. We might see something like that out of a third party, though.
I'm not meaning to convert, that would be a lot of time and effort for a system that would have to be insanely wonky to facilitate conversion. That would be terrible. Just stuff like kineticists but more than a single class limited to very niche concepts, since I am not a fan of d20 slot casting.
People keep mentioning technomancer and mechanic, but those both need to be in the 1st book released.
As far as we are aware, those two classes aren't core for 2e.
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I agree, I was stretching for Vanguard to fit in the magic book. And a new class would be AWESOME they did that for PF2e, so why not with SF2e?
What about a Primal caster? "The Terraformer" with some flavor text about not being sure if he is using magic, or technology or both." But what kind of mechanical signature would they have? Obviously battlefield control focused.
I feel like that'd be a very cool angle for a primal witchwarper. Assuming witchwarpers are still focused around altering the areas around them.
People keep mentioning technomancer and mechanic, but those both need to be in the 1st book released.
The first book released is going to have soldier, envoy, solarian, witchwarper, mystic, and operative.
Technomancer and mechanic are coming, but they won't be the first book. It was decided that they needed some more time in the tank. It's possible that they also need a bit more build-out on the gear list.
I feel like that'd be a very cool angle for a primal witchwarper. Assuming witchwarpers are still focused around altering the areas around them.
Well, that's fair. "Terraformer" works just fine as a background, and "primal witchwarper" is a very solid place to go with that one.
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Basically, if it was an augmentation category in SF1, I want a book on it. Cybernetics/tech book dealing with all the space-age stuff machinery, biology/biotech book dealing with all the cool organic stuff going on to show that futuristic technology isn't just "newer iPhone and bigger lasers", magic/magitech book showing how magic integrates into the future society, necrografts/necromancy book because it's interesting and a critical part of one of the Pact Worlds' (and personal bias), and a species book because... obviously.
I guess that mostly boils down to a request for books with more focus on biology and necromancy, both of which are very cool elements of science fantasy to me, and ones it would be great to see fleshed out.
Seeing all the calls for new species/ancestries, the thought that immediately occurred to me was "how many competing species can we cram into a finite space?" I realize this is fantasy, but I can only suspend my disbelief so far.
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Seeing all the calls for new species/ancestries, the thought that immediately occurred to me was "how many competing species can we cram into a finite space?" I realize this is fantasy, but I can only suspend my disbelief so far.
People aren't even calling for new species/ancestries. They're calling for the existing ones.
But yeah the near infinite reaches of space and the planes have a lot of different species in it in a space opera rpg. This is very common to the genre of media Starfinder draws upon. Star Wars, Star Trek, Farscape, etc.
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Seeing all the calls for new species/ancestries, the thought that immediately occurred to me was "how many competing species can we cram into a finite space?" I realize this is fantasy, but I can only suspend my disbelief so far.
"Only suspend your disbelief so far"? Pathfinder takes place primarily on a single world and has three dozen playable ancestries, with another half dozen coming in under two months. That blows Starfinder out of the water in terms of "competing species over livable area".
My only quibble with Starfinder is the density of inhabitable planets in the Pact Worlds and Veskarium home systems. I get that the Pact Worlds system is leaning in on the pulp tradition instead of a more "realistic" model and was described before the Starfinder rules were even developed; which is why it's a quibble.
As mentioned, a space fantasy/opera setting with a significant variety of cultures and/or species is usually pretty standard.
I wasn't limiting my objection to just Starfinder. As for "space" how many playable species should we expect to find native to "space"?
I don't mind a universe with N habitable planets and N≤M≤2N (ish) playable races. I do think that a single planet with 36 playable ancestries is pushing it, especially considering that one of them is as prolific and xenophobic as humanity.
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I wasn't limiting my objection to just Starfinder. As for "space" how many playable species should we expect to find native to "space"?
Although Starfinder 1e has 140 playable species only a few are native to "space" The only one I can think of off-hand are Novans who are a side product of dying stars.
I don't mind a universe with N habitable planets and N≤M≤2N (ish) playable races. I do think that a single planet with 36 playable ancestries is pushing it, especially considering that one of them is as prolific and xenophobic as humanity.
IMHO, Starfinder takes place in an entire galaxy so there's room for any number of playable species. As for Pathfinder, there are hundreds of sentient monsters why would a few dozen playable ancestries be out of place? Playable ancestries haven't had time to wipe each other out because they are too busy fighting Dragons and undead hordes. Also, gods don't like it when you wipe out all of their followers.