Starfinder General /sfg/

An idea for a faction that just came to me.

The Stranger's Cult

A strange psuedo religious group an ideology recently coming into popularity among Android circles. The Stranger's Cult is one where it's members shun the idea of being relatable to humans or humaniods in general and wish to discard the familiar forms of their former masters.

Androids who take on the ideology of the cult will modify their bodies to try and "dehumanize" themselves and try to unlearn human habits as well identify more with their machine like nature.

However this ideology is received with mixed feelings. The mechanical beings of Aballon are divided seeing them as posers wishing they can be truly mhecanical as they are and others who praise them for embracing the purity of machine like body and thinking.

The group trying to build their own planet do not like them and see them as a disruptive force that will impede their efforts of building a homeworld for androids.

Even still, there is not completely hegemony in the idea of the Stranger Cult. Some do not go as far as completely altering their bodies instead doing things like not wearing shoes or wearing helmets always ingesting nutriets via liquid form.

There are rumors still that certain sections of the cult are driven by dangerous and evil powers.

ok ive writen a pretty good chunk of stuff for the nagarta with the help of other anons. alot if incomplete and im not the best writer in the world so help/criticism is welcome to make it better. we still need to write most of the society and alignment, adventurers, and names sections. once the writing is done does anyone have photoshop skills to make it look like a page from the book?

Now that I'm seeing it in the PDF, which is cool if you user, I can't help but cringe at what I wrote.

Let's do government stuff. Should they have a bunch of governments? Maybe one main, UN like government that runs the big things? A Theocracy?

What do y'all think about their NASA equivalent certifying people to go out into space?

>Unless of course you want the whole damn ship to starve...

Do you know how much the aeon stone that makes you need no food or water costs?

It costs fuck all.

>Let's do government stuff. Should they have a bunch of governments?
they probably have 2 governements/factions because of what remained after the proxy war between the pact and veskarium? sorta like how the koreans have 2 governments today? one is aligned more with the pact the other allied more with the veskarium. then after the proxy war ended, the two governments made peace?

Nice, so they still share thoughts and ideals from their old benefactors but aren't 100% merged. A few questions:

Are the Vesk and the Pact worlds still trying to influence them now that the Swarm has been dealt with?

Would they have a smaller galactic 'foot print' since their governments pick who leaves the planet, or did the Vesk and the Pact Worlds ship a bunch of them out when the Swarm came?

>Are the Vesk and the Pact worlds still trying to influence them now that the Swarm has been dealt with?
probably, a little bit? but since the pact and vesk are nominally allied, atm, to a much lesser if barely noticable extent. it would just be soft power and diplomacy operating behindt he scene instead of overt influencing.

>Would they have a smaller galactic 'foot print' since their governments pick who leaves the planet, or did the Vesk and the Pact Worlds ship a bunch of them out when the Swarm came?
i like to see them as a very cosmopolitan race because of the +2 cha, and i think they should be very involved in galactic happenings and an up and comer in culture

I'm so used to Humans being the Up-and-coming species that it is weird to give it to another

>Being very involved in Galactic Happenings
This kind of makes it feel that the Nagarta governments are very active off-world. A concerted effort, not just seeking profits. Do you think the Swarm attack made them believe that their future lies in the stars? Would they be more careful about where in the Vast their people went?

We've got a lot of work to do since Paizo isn't going to do it. Get some rest and let those work juices flowing

Captain Intreghan finished his docking paperwork quickly and exited the ship only a few minutes behind his crew. He was five minutes out into the crowded Concourse when he realized he was still using his sustenance stone. It had been orbiting his head for so long it had all but disappeared from his consciousness.

He made a move to grab it from the air as it passed in front of him, then stopped. Once the stone was deactivated the hunger would set in, he knew. He and his crew had been in the Vast for weeks, and in the Drift coming back to Absolom Station for another week. The magic of the stone was good, and thankfully reliable, but he knew better than to end it without food in front on him.

The outfitter could wait. Intreghan changed course as he waded through the Concourse crowd, now angling for a brightly lit shop that promised the cuisine of a thousand worlds, hot and on demand. That would do nicely.

Okay, I tried to make a thing. Because current DCs for ship actions make me really angry.

docs.google.com/document/d/1GyRefWQ8wC_OIEzqkR75N1pSX7_ti4ooFVWnnxdxUeA/edit?usp=sharing

Well, there was the resouce angle that was brought up initially since there isn't a whole lot of land to use and you have different groups fighting for it all the time so maybe a lot of them go out with the purpose to secure capital for their respective groups by various means doing such jobs as being negoitators and business intermediates because of their cha bonus.

That said, it would be a shame to leave their homeworld with just them as the only species on it and would suggest at least another.

My vote is for small penguin harpies who are good at magic and maybe some kind of mammalian aquatic race as well

Why is Starfinder unpopular?

Not that much material
Sci-fi is less popular than fantasy
Done on the base of Pathfinder
Authors somehow were able to fuck up even most basic math
People who play sci-fi/space opera games are normally much more open to trying other systems and as such don't care about Pathfinder/Starfinder

Bad math endemic in the system
Pretty shitty races
Classes are all problematic with the exception of the operative which is just so much better
Setting is frankly a mess
The 'science' is so bad it physically hurts
Pazio actively filters legitimate negative critiques and concerns on their forums

Take your pick I guess?

When I took a look through it nothing really hooked me except the col powersuit wearing lizards. Beyond that it's really all over the place and incoherent. If I look at other Scifi games like Travaller, Numenera, Dark Heresy, Shadowrun, etc you get a clear sense of the tone, style of gameplay, unique concepts, etc but here the synposis is "Pathfinder IN SPACE" and I don't think that's enough in this modern era.

Also the design of the ratfolk is offputting, they don't really fit at all and seem copy pasted from something else entirely.

I think even GURPS - Spaceships has more hooks than Starfinder. And it's a technical "design your own setting" book as many GURPS books.

No bestiary or GM manual are out yet. And they fucked up the starship math and high-level skill scaling.

Can you elaborate? My group is pressuring me to run this and I'm already a bit hesitant. I'd like to know what the issues are so I can better prepare myself and not be dumbfounded when they arise in the middle of a game

>The 'science' is so bad it physically hurts
I thought there were still Inner Planes and the universe is made of air, earth, fire, water, negative energy, and positive energy?

Check the previous thread. The numbers get wonkier the higher you go.

Now, tell us what type of game you want to run for them?

How do I convince my GM that a Solarian's key ability score should obviously be WISDOM?

if all of /sfg/ combined their powers we could complete the names section in one day

Go to the Discord and ask 2hu to give you a few reasons why

To be honest, I was going to cheat a bit and mix around the scientific names of all our pet fish

shotguns
The game need space shotguns

It's both. Instead of taking the four elements plus positive/negative energy, and maybe adding void or whatever they made it so physical world and fantasy metaphysics exist at the same time. It sucks.

Discord here:

discord.gg/YAk263j

I'll take a look.

We were doing quite well with Star Wars, but a lot of the players are Pathfinder vets who I guess are dying to go back to the system. If I did another Sci-fi game I'd like to at least try something with a wildly different concept or gameplay like maybe The Sprawl or Numenera but as you can imagine those are harder sells

Oops looks like old thread is dead

What is this, I need to download an app? Thank you but Veeky Forums is fine enough.

there's a web version of discord you can read without making an account

Ok, let's try make it short.

For starships DC of any check is based on 10-15 + 2x Tier of the ship. Sometimes 3x Tier of the ship. Where Tier of the ship is basically level of PCs.

So a tier 1 ship will have DCs like 12-13 and Tier 10 ship will have DCs 30-40.

For skills you are looking at Level + Ability Score (+2/+6) + Class bonus(+3) + Skill Focus (+3). So our level 10 PC, if it fully invested in skill will have +18-24 to the roll. Unpleasant but working more or less.

Now let's see Tier 20 ship and tier 20 PC. DC is 10+40/60 = 50-70.

With PC having +28-34 bonus for the roll. Which means that PCs are completely fucked. Or at least must drive their ship in most straightforward way possible and pray nothing will break, because they won't be able to repair it.

the ratfolk look like some weird Redwall in Space job,but they thought they were going for some edgy space-skaven

Man having played 5e and non-d20 games for a while I completely forgot how much of a mess modifiers were

I think there have been a few ideas for homebrew fixes for Solarion.

One I can think off off the top of my head is letting them get their cha bonus to hit/damage for weapons and for eac/kac for armor.

I would like to hear some ideas for the attunement issue. I for one would let them attune whenever they want as normal and if they chose to stay in a particular attunement they start off with 2 points at the start of combat but switching drops you to zero. With some re-writing the advances would allow you to have one or two points attuned if you switch instead of nothing at later levels while the initial attunement starts full at the beginning of combat.

Yeah it's fine if they were more skaven like, gross mutant looking things but it's like the artists went "Nah they should be cute and fuzzy". If wanted to play mice like that Mouse Guard is a really fucking good game for that.

Go away 2hu.

my group wanted to start up a starfinder game, after looking at the book and having a session zero, we almost-unanimously agreed to play mouse guard.

I meant what kind of story did you want to tell with your players.

Meh, they could work, you just need to be not a complete retard when doing them. Never. FUCKING NEVER! NEVER I SAID! Never use multiplication in modifiers! And division too. Just forget about them. When dealing with d20 rolls you must use only addition and subtraction. In this case everything will work fine (more or less). It's the most basic rule when you are dealing with a limited amount of results that your random numbers generator can give you.

But no. SF devs decided to hire some retards that are incapable of adding two and two together.

my online group had a long running campaign, ran for about four years game time and man, not many games give you a true sense of character development as that and other BW derivatives. By the final winter the young tenderpaw, eager to fight, had become incredibly jaded. Not because the player up and decided it, but because of natural evolution through the game's mechanics. It's pretty neat.

solarians are fine. they dont need fixing any more than the rest of the classes that arent operative do

Yeah I agree with that, if you're using modifiers it should really be simple, like +5 at the most, maybe up to +10 for extreme situations. That's why when playing the 40k rpgs we're quick to establish that modifiers have limits, because if you miss that rule it becomes mathhammer super fast.

I tend to reflect a bit of what the players are looking for. Part of the reason Edge of the Empire was an obvious fit was because this group is completely incapable of playing good people for any length of time. I have other groups that like noble deeds and honor and all that but this group is the classic murderhobo jerk group (not ideal but oh well, we still have fun). So bandit/mercenary style games make a lot of sense.

Star Wars works perfectly, and they've been having a lot of fun dealing with local scumlords and the like. I think Traveller could also be a great system for exactly this, especially given how money minded they are, but there's not enough "weird" stuff in that game to hook them (oh well).

I THINK Starfinder can do this easy but the setting is all over the place from what I'm reading it's hard for me to get hooked. It feels too much of a "everything and the kitchen sink" to feel distinctive.

Yep, something like:

+2/+5/+10/Auto Success
-2/-5/-10/Auto Fail

Starfinder is all about Murderhobos IN SPACE. One of the organizations they can join is literally that.

The trick is to take an energy drink right before they game and let them get themselves in trouble. Have them escort a container-of-drugs-and-chemicals-that-shouldn't-be-opened, send some other groups at them, and see what happens. At least in Starfinder, you're free to throw all sorts of cool police groups at them.

The problem isn't mission setup, but the setting just doesn't immediately draw anything from me. I get that PF games are less about an established setting and more about *~*I*M*A*G*I*N*A*T*I*O*N*~* but it feels less like I'd be drawing from the setting and more like using a story from another game/movie/fiction and just plastering whatever setting elements from Starfinder I can fit.

For example let's take a Dark Heresy investigation, The setting oozes with plot hooks, the retinue investigates a potent new drug that is bringing a hive world to its knees, caught between conflicting evidence that this drug may be a xenos conspiracy to rot mankind from within, a heretical infestation of a foul Slaanesh cult seeking to rapidly expand their influence for a takeover, or even both in a three-way showdown.

So far from what I'm reading in Starfinder nothing really jumps out like that. The Vesk went around and dominated other races, cool, what are those races? I'm sure there will be a lot of books I can fork money to Paizo for but the core book really doesn't seem to know what kind fo story it's trying to tell. Compare this to a game like Numenera where the concept is an instant hook and you know exactly what a game is going ot be about.

Story isn't really my issue, more concerned about how it meshes with the gameplay

I think Starfinder would have been much better if every major player on the galactic scene was an asshole. Like big time douchebag.

-Androids
Their core worlds are trying to move from humanoid bodies into some kinds of cyber monstrosities and to crack the total immortality for themselves. Their worlds look like what machines had in Matrix.
They also try to fuck over most other species on the regular basis just because they evolved more or less naturally and were not created. Except maybe robots.

-Humans
Have a number of different nations in a state of constant trade wars with each other and everyone else. Also they are not above hiring pirates or mercs to move it all into a more physical phase. Human supremacist movements are pretty strong and profess that all other species should bow to them and acknowledge their superiority.

-Kasathas
First encounter was not so peaceful and they were booted from the system. A lot of nuclear missiles and lasers were used during their espace to make sure they would not return. As a result they don't have a homeworld and everyone treats them like gypsies while they are trying to preserve their traditions and not die out travelling between stars. Periodically they gather an army and try to conquer some planet that they like.

-Lashuntas
They are running a little more low key 1984 system. With mind scans and Big Brother included. Everything should be in its place and work as intended or police may come for you and suggest re-education. Constantly suggest for others to adopt their practices and work for this endgoal.

that was the great thing about 40k. No one was the "good guy" everyone was just different versions of horrible.

tfw a literal murderhobo in my campaign

The peculiar language of nagarta includes whistles, clicks, and other phonetic elements that are difficult to pronounce for other races. As a result, nagarta names are often commonized for the benefit of others. Examples include: Avris, Soreen, Berathian, Corvelle, example2 example 3 example 4 example 5 need help here.

ONE INCH TO THE LEFT.

40k has like.... 4 decades of fluff to build on. this game has 1 month. anyway i really like the setting, so far. i think its the strongest part of the game. its a kitchen sink setting but thats still alot of fun.

I totally understand 40k has decades of fluff, just used it as an example. There are other games that are also fresh and new but have just as easy influence to draw, as said Numenera is as easy as it gets.

Maybe it's just because the races are weird, and not in an eye catching way, that I'm not sold on it, but it also seems like they went for a super broad brush stroke rather than a focused and defined setting concept.

For example, it's cool when a planet has ruins from a strange, ancient alien race, makes a good idea for exploration, but EVERY planet has it so it loses the novelty a bit.

>Maybe it's just because the races are weird, and not in an eye catching way
thats true. ive been bitching about the shitty races since pre release. whoever designed the rats needs to be dragged out into the street and shot. if i made the races i would replace the bugs with mothfolk, the rats with otters, and the coneheads with.... idk... plant people.
>For example, it's cool when a planet has ruins from a strange, ancient alien race, makes a good idea for exploration, but EVERY planet has it so it loses the novelty a bit.
but theres only a few planets with ancient ruins? apostae is basically a planet sized dungeon, and that one moon around liavara

Nagarta also have a chromatic name, a pattern of moving colors that can be expressed only through their color changing fins, or special technology.

Frankly ysoki could have been pretty good. As other species too. If someone didn't try to make everything as bland as possible. Where is the conflict? They even put vesk into alliance with Pact Worlds.

Azlanti in theory are the evil guys. Because they are evil. Also they are slavers because they are evil. They are also evil. Embroi too. But it all presented in such a bland manner that it is boring to read.

probably because fuckass OP ruins the thread with anime bullshit instead of relevent images

>Azlanti in theory are the evil guys. Because they are evil. Also they are slavers because they are evil. They are also evil. Embroi too. But it all presented in such a bland manner that it is boring to read.
who are those guys?

Azlanti are the guys who pissed off their aboleth masters and got meteor showered by magic in return. It seems some of them were able to use super teleportation and get to another planet. Now they are running a slaver empire in space.

Embroi are in theory are just aliens but their world is actually in the grip of one of the devil lords that even got a permanent portal to Malebolge on their planet and runs everything from the shadows.

It is in the back of Setting part of the rulebook.

So just don't upgrade your ship to something you can't handle?

ship tier is based on party level, not on the ship itself.
Yes, it's really fucked.

...

Well, looks like this system needs a LOT of homebrewing done.
I'm really not a fan of the solid HP they give to races, nor this.
The system looks good an all, but it looks like they went and tried to 5e it or something.

>The system looks good an all, but it looks like they went and tried to 5e it or something.
I don't know what that means... what did 5e do?

Well "On foot" part is more or less serviceable, as much as something based on PF/3.5 can be. They even made some things better. A little.

But the starship part is absolutely fucked. You need to rewrite more or less from ground up to not be so bad.

5e simplified DnD to a REALLY bad degree, is what I'm saying.
Like, classes that used to have some reliance on other ability scores just use one. A paladin doesnt need WIS in 5e FOR ANYTHING, but they need CHA, and obviously CON and STR.
A rogue doesn't need INT at all, but they need DEX as they always have.
Etc.

Personally, it really does not float my boat.

Here's the thing, in a ski-fi setting, the tech and how it works has a specific impact on the universe your characters inhabit. When designing anything about that, be it mechanics or setting, you need to understand the impacts that science and tech is going to have on your setting.

Starfinder does not have any idea of this.

Starfinder is adding 'real sci-fi' guns to pathfinder and saying 'space station' instead of city or 'derelict spaceship' in place of dungeon. There are no hooks, nothing to capture the imagination because there's nothing to it. Everything is just an ill-considered mash of sci-fi imagery on a game system that only barely handles fantasy well, and only within a specific range of power even then.

>tried to 5e it or something.
If they'd tried to 5e it they wouldn't have had "normal difficulty" DCs of 50+ ever. 5e is set up so that 30 is "impossible", and the maths supports that. Starfinder needs a more 5e, not less.

I get what you're saying, although MAD being applied to some classes and not others was and is a serious balance issue when everyone uses the same amount of character building resources to increase their abilities.

A game that wasn't trying to and succeeding in being The Default RPG that everyone plays first could have gone the opposite direction and given every class benefits from, say 4/6 of the abilities. Like how Fantasycraft does its Mages, Int for spellcasting rolls, Wis for spells known, Cha for DCs. But while that extra complexity helps to differentiate two characters from the same class, it isn't necessary if you're at the level of player experience where Steve the new roleplayer wants to play Stevvan the Human Fighter and see what all the weird dice are about.

5e differentiates its classes with archetypes, which are a simpler way to do the same thing. You play to level 2/3, you get a sense of what your class is about, and you make a decision that didn't require advanced planning that gives you a bit of customization on your basic class package. No charop proficiency required. No charop proficiency rewarded.

Starfinder have tried to copy this part of 5e, but without as much finesse, despite not having the same audience. They could definitely have gone for a crunchier chargen system, since that's what all the Pathfinder stalwarts will be looking for. Starfinder is never going to come close to 5e's niche as The Default RPG.

I really want a good space fantasy game. The last okayish one was Dragonstar. Of course I could use M&M, it can even do space fights in pretty ok manner but it lacks the tactical combat part. Unless you impose really hard limits on what could be used fights on a grid don't make sense and are pretty hard to pull off.

>Starfinder lived and died before I could even find a game

Fuck.

it was never alive

Starfinder was a stillbirth

Starfinder never really lived, it was one of those pregnancies everyone was excited for, they threw the baby shower and everything, but then it died in the womb.

Which is probably for the best because when the thing finally slithered out of the womb it wasn't even the same skin color as the father.

Don't worry user, we can still play Pathfinder together, cutie!

im in a game. im having fun too.

anyone notce that the captain is a PAWG/PAAG? look at that ass, dam

You act like theres never been a game that wasnt the most popular thing in the world that people still played.

I mean seriously people play some incredibly terrible games. You can find a game if you really want.

Silly boy, that ass is for pure love only!

i do have pure love for DAT ASS

At least give us the full size man.

nice work anons, added to the PDF. does anyone have any more recomendations for names? once we get a few more, this section can be considered complete. and all that is left is "society and alignment" and "adventurers"

No no, this game is terrible and nobody's playing it. That's the issue.

Anyone see any decent starfinder rulle 34 yet? I wouldn't mind seeing her or the antennae chick's boobs

There's that one guy who regularly does PF r34, you could commission something from him.

I wouldn't mind a slice of that Bundt cake

Do you mean the guy who did the council of thieves stuff? Yeah that guys pretty good

I guess if you are only looking on the internet. There are plenty of people wanting to play crappy Ganges out there. Maybe you take a turn playing their shitty game and they take a turn playing yours. Run a game if you want to play one

Anime was a mistake

level-scaling DCs was a mistake.

thats not anime, its from a video game called starbound. space terraria. its pretty good. good r34 for it too.

Jesus that bird has some fat drumsticks.

The kawaii art style I meant