| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Like some ancestries will have two or three significantly powerful features and another ancestry might have only one or very little.
Dragonkin and Vesk are both 10 hp and 20 feet of movement... but Dragonkin have flight and darkvision and their partner bond while Vesk only have low-light vision.
I know flight is considered cheaper in SF but it's still a very good ability.
Astrazoans have low light vision and almost unlimited shapechanging, humans have no features, a hearing/sighted vlaka has less hp and a cool but somewhat situational skill feat, kasatha get four arms and... an extra language for some reason?
Some of these aren't huge on their own but in general it seems like ancestry bonuses are really haphazard, with some ancestries getting multiple high powered features baseline and others getting almost nothing without any real clear advantage in any other way.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Just wait until you see what Guilt of the Grave World brought to the table: one level 9 elebrian ancestry feat gives them a better than 50% chance to negate a crit as a reaction.
It's kind of annoying as a GM because I prefer to be able to trust Paizo to do the balancing for me, but with SF2 I find myself doing a lot of buffing and nerfing. I don't like this extra work, but the game feels fragile and unhealthy without it.
|
Welcome to the Cantina! It gets strange around here, and about to get stranger.
Starfinder Galactic Ancestries.
I'm courious to see if Worlanisi in SF2e will retain the ability to turn a nat 1 into a nat 20
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm reposting this from another theread.
I think the designers did a superb job on Starfinder 2e in general but they do have a smaller, less experienced team and, more importantly, we're talking a brand new game vs one that has had several years to fix balance points and improve.
There are some rough edges but so far I've seen nothing that is particularly egregious. Every class and ancestry is playable and none dominate the game.
And yes, I'd include a L9 crit negation feat in that analysis. A great many of my characters would absolutely take Multitalented over that.
|
|
SF2e is compatible with PF2e, but it has its own meta, ranged meta being the one most talked about. I suspect the Cantina has a bit more flexible ancestry meta, where they still need to be balanced to the overall math, but not necessarily to each other as much as PF2e would. When SF2e was announced, the number one concern of SF1e players was maintaining the Cantina feel.
Dragonkin still fall over when they get reduced to 0 HP. That's all the balance I need.
Vesk might look to have fewer abilities than Dragonkin. Vesk had more upfront in SF1e, but most of those got moved to ancestry feats and heritages. To try to balance Vesk up front with Dragonkin, they would have had to come up with something new that all Vesk would have that would not have been there in SF1e. I think that would have been too big of a lore change to do just for balance.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think there is only so much that can be explained by a different meta. As Squiggit points out, one need only compare Starfinder ancestries to one another to see that some are clearly head and shoulders above others, like dragonkin being straight-up better than vesk in terms of base ancestry abilities. Having played and run those ancestries, but also classes, guns, and monsters before and after the game's release, I feel the balance is really rough, and some bits of design are quite iffy as well.
With all of this said, 2e itself is a robust system, so it's rare that I've had to step in and house rule something that wasn't functional at all, but I don't think the system can be expected to make up for routinely inconsistent balance. One can talk about how the Starfriends have had less time to spend mastering 2e than the Pathfinder team, but PF2e was a much better-balanced game even at a time when the team had no prior experience with the system to draw from. Those years of refinement and lessons learned should have been transferred more consistently across teams, as should've the playtesting feedback that had accumulated over the course of more than a year. I don't think all is lost, either, as most of these problems could be easily fixed via errata, but I'm still hesitant to use Starfinder compared to Pathfinder because the balance is much less solid.
|
|
I'm still hesitant to use Starfinder compared to Pathfinder because the balance is much less solid.
I don’t know how much actual play experience you have in Sf2e. But if you don’t have much, then I urge you to just try it on its own terms.
Run a few games with JUST Starfinder rules and see if it is to your taste. So far I’ve found the game fine at the very low levels I’ve played and run it.
But do NOT start with a mixed Pathfinder/Starfinder game. That is ALWAYS going to be somewhat problematic due to different assumptions. It is going to be more difficult to balance.
Start simple and then add complexity. And then make whatever house rules you need to. And wait for the first round of errata before judging TOO harshly or prematurely
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
There are some rough edges but so far I've seen nothing that is particularly egregious. Every class and ancestry is playable and none dominate the game.
I mean yeah but "everything is playable" is a pretty low bar. Most modern systems manage that much, even ones with egregious balance concerns.
But that doesn't change like, obvious gaps in design like here with ancestries.
But do NOT start with a mixed Pathfinder/Starfinder game.
I mean you don't need to mix systems to run into most of these concerns though. It's also worth pointing out that ancestries like Human and Ysoki are nearly identical to their Pathfinder counterparts, so the whole "Starfinder ancestries are on a different level and you can't compare them" thing falls a little bit flat when that's exactly what Paizo did.
but on the subject of mixing, my experience has been the opposite. Allowing both types of content improves the balance somewhat, especially because Starfinder right now is so small it's difficult to have access to secondary options to help patch some of its shortcomings. You lose tons of quality of life improving archetypes and other options if you omit 80% of the system like that.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
After giving it some thought, I came to a couple conclusions re: badly balanced ancestries.
1. When it comes to core character functionality, your ancestry does not matter all that much. You could give yourself a generic 8HP/2ft movement/2 boosts with zero extra senses, heritage perks, or ancestry feats and still do mostly fine (hell, some builds can even get away with 6HP/20ft). This is because the bulk of your power comes from your class, with ancestries mostly providing some fun little bells and whistles. You can also just buy flight or darkvision if you want it, so at worst a bad ancestry amounts to a few extra expenses here and there. So, a fairly small, manageable nerf in the name of flavor. No big deal.
2. Problems emerge, however, when one ancestry does everything another ancestry does, except either better or with more goodies on the side (as is the case with vesk versus dragonkin, pointed out in the OP by Squiggit). This means that you are actively missing out if you choose the weaker version. That can lead to some sour feelings, especially when both the stronger and weaker option are present at the same table. The weaker player might feel like their ancestry is dead weight, or like they're being punished for choosing flavor over function. In a game that includes dozens of wacky alien species as part of its sales pitch, making a player feel bad for choosing the wrong one is unacceptable.
This leads me to conclude that undertuned ancestries are safer than overtuned ones. An undertuned option is a mild inconvenience at worst, only ever rendering itself undesirable. But an overtuned option is actively poison, as it has the potential to ruin multiple ancestries around it. This could get really bad for Society play in particular, as (excluding core rulebook options) players need to purchase specific books in order to gain access to the ancestries within. Not only is this pay-to-win (and *steep* pay-to-win at that, given how costly these books are), but it can lead to a lot of resentment if the thing someone spent $20-$90 for is powercrept by something else a year later.
All that said, vesk are still a little more popular than dragonkin at the tables I've seen so far, likely because they're free and come with a lot of fun lore and flavor (people find the ornery warmongers endearing). Flight and darkvision are also not exactly gamebreaking thanks to flashlights and pistols being dirt cheap. So while I sounded very doom and gloom above, the reality isn't so dire... yet. I nonetheless encourage the Starfriends to be careful, and am especially on guard after reading Guilt of the Grave World.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
It's not really about "balancing across game systems" but more about "balancing across the party." Since it's a bummer when player A finds that they get to do a lot less cool stuff than player B simply because Player A wanted to play a human or an android or a ysoki and player B picked something else.
On a table by table basis for home games, the solution might be for the GM to juice some under-performing ancestries to bring them in line with some of the superstars. Like, if you wanted to bring forward the Anadi from Pathfinder they are spending a 9th level ancestry feat for a climb speed that's only available in spider-form whereas skittermanders can get the same climb speed with a heritage. If you wanted to play an Awakened Animal in Starfinder you should absolutely get all the movement capabilities of your animal at level 1.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think it's good that the Starfriends continue the radical and controversial stance in post-Remaster PF2E that maybe your ancestry should be FUN. Maybe it should fulfill your fantasies, gave reliable abilities, and inspire fun roleplay.
If that was the actual design principle I would be all on board, PF2 ancestries are kind of bare bones and that's a bit of a shame. The trouble is it's not, instead we just haphazardly get a couple of notably overloaded ancestries among the pile of pretty bland CRB tier stuff.
|
|
There are some rough edges but so far I've seen nothing that is particularly egregious. Every class and ancestry is playable and none dominate the game.I mean yeah but "everything is playable" is a pretty low bar. Most modern systems manage that much, even ones with egregious balance concerns.
You left out the "none dominate the game" part of my quote above.
But I actually disagree with you, anyway. PF1 had a great many nearly unplayable character options if "nearly unplayable" means something like "this character is seriously not pulling their own weight and very seriously under performs".
I haven't played it enough to know from personal experience but I've certainly heard people tell me that D&D 5th edition has pretty egregious balance problems
Note - I'm NOT saying there are no balance issues. I'm just saying that they're not particularly bad, especially for a game that is 2 months out of release and has yet to issue its first FAQ/errata
I don’t know how much actual play experience you have in Sf2e. But if you don’t have much, then I urge you to just try it on its own terms.
Run a few games with JUST Starfinder rules and see if it is to your taste. So far I’ve found the game fine at the very low levels I’ve played and run it.
But do NOT start with a mixed Pathfinder/Starfinder game. That is ALWAYS going to be somewhat problematic due to different assumptions. It is going to be more difficult to balance.
Start simple and then add complexity. And then make whatever house rules you need to. And wait for the first round of errata before judging TOO harshly or prematurely
As explicitly stated in the comment you're replying to, I do still play Starfinder and have playtested it extensively, having written in-depth playtest notes for every class, the Barathu ancestry, and guns. I am also a seasoned Pathfinder player and would thus say I have a good understanding of how 2e works, though in this particular case my criticism was purely within the context of Starfinder and its own content. There was therefore no reason to try to undermine my "actual" play experience in order to discredit someone you disagreed with. Thanks for the advice though!
Every class and ancestry is playable and none dominate the game.
It is perhaps wrong of me to presume given the context of your comment, but I would encourage you to play Starfinder 2e at high level and reconsider your assumption. In particular, the Witchwarper reveals itself to be the system's Magikarp as the class hits level 19, and goes from this gimmicky yet largely inoffensive class to a monstrosity that makes an utter mockery of combat encounters. It's not simply that "playable" and "dominating the game" are inherently subjective criteria that are used almost purely to make unfalsifiable claims of balance in these sorts of discussions, SF2e does I think have examples of ancestries and classes that are clearly imbalanced in a manner that is disruptive to gameplay and player choices.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The problem with ban lists is that they require additional game knowledge that isn't present in official materials. Thus, the people who need it most--brand new GMs--are least likely to have it.
Circling back to what I said earlier about over/underpowered options, I'd like to acknowledge that, yes, stronger and weirder options are part of Starfinder's appeal. Furthermore, a lot of PF2's ancestries (especially the earlier ones) are far too conservatively tuned, to the point that they undermine their own point for existing (see: strix). So there's a balance to be struck here: we want to see the core fantasy of each ancestry fulfilled, but we don't want any of them to have clear supremacy over any other. Erring towards safety and stability may result in a boring, disappointing game, but erring towards making things fun and genuinely different can introduce the kind of toxic powercreep I mentioned yesterday. It's difficult to thread that needle.
I'll probably make a seperate thread about elebrians at some point, as I believe there's a lot more wrong with the ancestry than just being way too strong. I think they'd make a good case study in bad ancestry design. Thing is, most people don't have access to Guilt of the Grave World yet, and I'd feel bad dunking on something that isn't even officially out yet.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Circling back to what I said earlier about over/underpowered options, I'd like to acknowledge that, yes, stronger and weirder options are part of Starfinder's appeal.
This is the Cantina feel you often hear the developers talking about.
All that said, vesk are still a little more popular than dragonkin at the tables I've seen so far, likely because they're free and come with a lot of fun lore and flavor
Vesk were way more common in SF1e. I've been to a lot of parties with a vesk. It was one of the most commonly played species. I never once was in a game with a Dragonkin. That may have been because dragonkin came later in SF1e.
Something no one has mentioned is that vesk are medium and draginkin are large. Being large has its drawbacks. Large creatures have to squeeze through 5-foot-wide corridors; in a 10-foot-wide corridor, it's easy to block your own party. More opponents can engage you in melee at one time, and more opponents can flank you at one time; you're a big target.
Partner Bond is really hard to use in organized play unless you have a friend who plays your Bonded Partner that you know will be at every game with you. Easier to do in a home game, but it's an option that still takes 2 players to make it work; it's a powerful benefit, but it has a cost that playing a vesk or almost any other species doesn't have. Also, lots of species in Starfinder have limited telepathy that doesn't require bonding.
Vesk have a lot of lore, most of the book Near Space is about their home star system. They are involved in a major war with the Azlanti. Vesk have deep and varied history wiht the Pact Worlds. Dragonkin lore is mostly focused around planet the Triaxus.
Meanwhile, I know players who only play humans because they don't want to give up getting an extra general skill feat.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Something no one has mentioned is that vesk are medium and draginkin are large. Being large has its drawbacks. Large creatures have to squeeze through 5-foot-wide corridors; in a 10-foot-wide corridor, it's easy to block your own party. More opponents can engage you in melee at one time, and more opponents can flank you at one time; you're a big target.
Being Large is also a significant advantage. It means you threaten more spaces if you have Reactive Strike or some equivalent, and your auras and emanations reach out farther. It means creatures will have a harder time moving around you to get to your allies, and you'll be able to provide cover for your allies more easily too. A dragonkin Solarian or Soldier would thus likely perform better in many ways a vesk of those classes wouldn't.
Important to note as well that these benefits and drawbacks are not equivalent, because players are more likely to play to their choices' strengths than to their weaknesses: if playing a dragonkin as a squishy caster is inconvenient, the only end result is that fewer players will play squishy dragonkin casters. If playing a dragonkin provides a significant benefit to playing a tank, however, then more players will play dragonkin tanks. Thus, I would argue that being Large itself is also a net benefit, putting the dragonkin even further ahead of the vesk. While I do quite like the "cantina feel" of ancestries in Starfinder doing weird and wonderful things, which can require a greater power budget than what's given to PF2e ancestries, I do think it would be even better if that were extended to every Starfinder ancestry, so that some aren't quite so flat.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Like some ancestries will have two or three significantly powerful features and another ancestry might have only one or very little.
Dragonkin and Vesk are both 10 hp and 20 feet of movement... but Dragonkin have flight and darkvision and their partner bond while Vesk only have low-light vision.
I know flight is considered cheaper in SF but it's still a very good ability.
Astrazoans have low light vision and almost unlimited shapechanging, humans have no features, a hearing/sighted vlaka has less hp and a cool but somewhat situational skill feat, kasatha get four arms and... an extra language for some reason?
Some of these aren't huge on their own but in general it seems like ancestry bonuses are really haphazard, with some ancestries getting multiple high powered features baseline and others getting almost nothing without any real clear advantage in any other way.
Humans are a bit more limited in default features because they get some pretty strong ancestry feats. The one that just grants a level 1 class feat for some classes is extremely strong.
That said it does look like SF2 is just leaning into the ancestry weirdness and I am down for it. In a tech environment a lot of the default features get mitigated pretty fast. A lot easier to pick up things that grant low light vision, flight and I believe we will bee seeing bionic extra arm options for non multi armed ancestries to be able to have fun with that too if they want.