I wanna try Starfinder and I'm wondering if anyone knows if the system is enjoyable or not.
Anyone here play Starfinder?
It's pathfinder in space.
That should tell you everything
Why would you do that to yourself. There are dozens of better systems for that a lot less complicated, like Gurps.
Or Traveller, Cepheus engine, Eclipse phase and dozens and dozens indie ones.
It's really not good.
Learn either Traveller or Gurps if you want something more Scifi and realistic-ish, or Stars Without Number if you really like the idea of D&D adventures in space.
I second stars without number,at least all the tools it has are top tier.
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That's definitely true. Pretty much everything Kevin Crawford has made is a fucking goldmine of guides and tables and resources for the genre
It's fine I guess. If you specialize for something you are actually good at it. There you go, one thing better than 5e.
Too bad about the massive hp bloat and shitty equipment section though. And that the typical DM will make you roll 20 different skills to succeed at unscrewing a ship grate.
playing tonight actually. Its not bad if you ignore ship combat. Though the economy is kinda fucked, they literally said "we're not gonna worry about your party making money any way but killing shit", so crafting everything is the cost effective way to go as everything is made from UPBs and you only need like 50-75% of the total cost of the item in UPBs and they never get inflated or are in short supply from what we can tell.
Some of my friends played a game. Their observation was thus:
>If you play a caster, you can't deal damage.
>If you play a healer, no, just don't it's not worth it.
>If you play a martial character who uses physical ranged weapons, you are basically firing money at the enemy and that's painful to think about.
That being said, you can still break the game very easily.
user already linked my hot take on this system but as a dedicated group GM I would advise you to avoid it. Wait for the third edition rule book, an actual equipment section instead of the piss poor one they have, an advanced players guide, a real monster handbook that isn't 70% Pathfinder monsters, and maybe a shrimp sized manual that lays out everything about ship combat as the chapter on combat, building ships, utility, is terrible and overbalanced. Which is ironic because the ground combat is terribly under balanced.
What is the alternative to Starfinder that has a big playerbase and is easy for new players to learn?
I know it's not Traveller or GURPS.
Traveller is probably the closest you'll get.It's fairly easy to learn, but playerbase is nowhere near Paizo levels. Then again, what non D&D 5e game is?
Rogue Trader/Warhammer 40k rpg?
Sure, but I wouldn't consider that a general SF system, it's pretty tightly bolted to its setting.
I guess that's true. I'd say it's more freeform with Rogue Trader than any of the other subgames though. I mean, if you end up going out into deep unexplored space, aside from The Warp and Psykers it could be a pretty generic sci-fi.
this is basically true, Martials are incredibly strong tho, even with the money burning
I use the Starfinder setting, because I quite like it as a vague basis for group-based adventures.
The rules... not so much. I'm not a fan of Pathfinder.
The game only has 2 casters, one of which is potentially damage oriented. It is arguably OP at low levels.
Generally energy weapons can be recharged for free past low level. As for firing physical ammunition this has always been the case in these games. Very few games have no costs associated with ammo even when they are more abstract. Regardless only the party Soldiers should be using non-energy weapons and only once they have the relevant gear boosts.
So, a science fantasy game where you build a character from a lot of smaller choices with emphasis on incremental advancement in a few different ways at once. Is being class based important as well?
There's this one point-buy system that I forget the name of which could work for this sort of thing really well. It has Legend in the name, which obviously isn't very helpful. It's skill based and generic but seems mostly geared towards fantasy or gonzo sci-fantasy.
Then there's Rule of Cool's very interesting and very dead 'Legend,' which is a few spaceships and a bestiary away from being just the thing for this.
Playing it at my table soon. Withoutship combat because it looks boring and I'll actually have to check the errata.
Looks fairly easy to play and I got the book cheap.