Starfinder I just played Starfinder

I had a read through the book at a B&M store but sadly lack purchasing funds as much as I would like to throw dollars at it.

All of the classes looked interesting, although the Solarian seemed like the most iffy perhaps? They seem to be a sort of Star Monk with a dash of Jedi. They get to manifest stellar power as either a weapon or suit of armour. The weapon looked solid, the armour looked like, how can i put this charitably? Underutilized design space.

The mechanic will never run out of interesting options, and the soldier is an extremely flexible class with lots of interesting choices as well although you will make one big choice of combat style at 1st level that will shape the rest of your play style. Envoy and operative both seemed interesting, and the casters as well.

In addition to race and class each character gets a theme. These are character defining, making you very good at something. In effect your theme is what you do, and your class is how you do it. (There is an undecided option but it is very weak mechanically compared to the others and they even call it out for being weak in the book.)

In addition there is an archetype system that lets anyone swap out some class features for abilities from the archetype. However since there are only 2 in the book I'm going to label this too as underutilized design space. Although it's probably going to see a lot of expansion in the future as one of the things you can use it for is to represent membership in and training from an organization.

As GamerPrinter said a lot of your characters power is in their gear and that gear is not level gated (although every item does have a level suggestion,) and are priced about like magic items with a cheap gun costing a few hundred credits and a top end gun costing maybe a half-mill. Campaigns that don't adhere to the level guidelines will probably go off the rails rapidly.

There is some definite 5e feel to the damage/hp inflation although it's also paired with to hit bonus and AC inflation, so I don't know how that will work in practice.

All in all I'd love to play a game and see it in action.

rooneg said:

The spoilers Paizo has been releasing on their blog include some pretty substantial differences.

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None of those strike me as substantial changes.

The HP change is basically 4'e "bloodied" and "Resolve Points" seem to function an awful lot like Surges. Two types of AC isn't really a change. Lack of interative attacks also isn't a change, it's a simplification, but also thematically closer to WH40K and similar games which gave you two "actions" per turn. The Attacks of Opportunity really isn't a change it's just a simplification. And again, "magic is magic" is a simplification, not a change. The different flavors of magic were always fluff elements, considering that spells often overlapped on spell lists but were labeled "arcane" on one and "divine" on the other but were functionally identical.

That's not to say I don't like some of these differences. I expect the system should flow smoother and faster, I doubt it will feel any different. As always what makes one game different from another is really more the language you use.

shidaku said:

None of those strike me as substantial changes.

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I think those changes are very much 4e and 5e like, being that it's not more like Pathfinder, makes them substantial changes - substantial for Paizo, not ground breaking new rules, just unexpected for a Paizo based game...

gamerprinter said:

I think those changes are very much 4e and 5e like, being that it's not more like Pathfinder, makes them substantial changes - substantial for Paizo, not ground breaking new rules, just unexpected for a Paizo based game...

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Yes, exactly. Nobody said these were ground breaking, just that they were different from Pathfinder.

Also, I think it's oversimplifying to say that HP and Stamina are just bloodied and surges, that ignores (as I understand it) the fact that different kinds of healing restore different things, so it's easier or harder to regain HP or Stamina depending on how you're doing it.

It's more difficult to outright get your PC killed, there's some "insurance" with the Stamina Points, which are easier to gain back, and there's the Resolve points you can spend one to fully regain your Stamina points, as long as it isn't through your entire Stamina pool and have reached your actual HP lost. When damage gets to your HP, only healing can get you back. Not only can Resolve points restore your stamina, but a full night's rest does the same thing. These mechanics have similarities to 4e power surges, but still not the same thing.

Healing in the game seems to be able to allow a healer to restore 2x the HP of the entire party, which isn't a lot of healing, but combined with the Stamina pool and your Resolve points - healing is more effective and faster, than Pathfinder HP system.

gamerprinter said:

I think those changes are very much 4e and 5e like, being that it's not more like Pathfinder, makes them substantial changes - substantial for Paizo, not ground breaking new rules, just unexpected for a Paizo based game...

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They're "substantial changes" if your points of comparison are the 3.0, 3.5, and Pathfinder core books.
But there are far more substantial changes in 3e's Unearthed Arcana, Pathfinder Unchained, or Star Wars Saga.
I've run homegames I still considered "Pathfinder" with armour as DR, wound points, and inherent bonuses that had more substantive changes.

There's so much they could have done, which they'd already toyed with and has seen some experimentation... to say nothing of additions they could have brought in from 4e, 5e, Fate, FFG's Star Wars, etc...

I didn't say it was a masterpiece of science fantasy game design or that Paizo made the best decisions from your or my point of view, just that I like it, plan to play and design as third party for it. No judgements beyond that, but it is different than my Pathfinder game, in a way I didn't expect - that's all.

how is space combat? Similar to WOTC star wars? Is there Warp speed/etc? Is only 1 person rolling dice for the ship?

wicked cool said:

how is space combat? Similar to WOTC star wars? Is there Warp speed/etc? Is only 1 person rolling dice for the ship?

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Space combat is designed to give everyone a chance to do things. You each take a role aboard ship (captain, engineer, science, gunner, etc) and each role has actions they can take during each turn.

No such thing as Warp Speed. Instead you have a Drift engine that allows your ship to enter in alternate plane called the Drift, flying in the Drift is no different than maneuver flying outside the drift, but when you leave the Drift, you've traveled FTL distances compared to within - so kind of a hand-wave to FTL. Planets outside the Drift have beacons that ships inside the Drift can see, and know where to come out of Drift and arrive there. I cannot tell you if SF ship combat compares to Star Wars - I never played that. It's a two phase combat round - movement, then attack for each ship engaged in combat.