Action Economy in Starfinder

 While I'm still a few weeks away (at least) from running a brief Starfinder adventure for my usual Sunday D&D group, I've been jumping around the Core Rulebook to try as best as I can to familiarize myself with the way the rules work.

In many ways, of course, the game is similar to D&D. But one thing that I was surprised to discover was that none of the classes have an extra attack feature, which is standard for just about every weapon-based class in D&D. The reason, as it turns out, is that there's a built-in rule for making multiple attacks per turn that anyone can use from level 1.

So, let's talk action economy.

In D&D, you have your movement, your action, and sometimes a bonus action, and then a reaction you can use once per round.

In Starfinder (and I assume Pathfinder,) there's a Standard Action, a Move Action, and a Swift Action, along with a Reaction.

For the most part, these correspond with one another. But you can also take a Full Action, which takes up your entire turn. One of these full actions you can take is to make two attacks, with a -4 to your attack bonus. In Starfinder, as you gain levels and better gear, the damage of a single attack scales up considerably, and so even with a pretty hefty penalty to hit, it becomes worth it if you don't need to move to make multiple attacks. Also, by level 9, a Soldier might have a +14 to hit with their, say, Plasma Doshko (a kind of axe-like weapon that replaces traditional triangular blades with jets of plasma that deal fire damage) and so might still be content with a +10 to hit when each strike is doing 2d10+14 damage.

Generally, maneuvering in combat is a trickier thing in Starfinder. In D&D, you only draw an attack of opportunity from a foe if you use your own legs (or whatever means of conveyance) to exit the reach of a foe. In Starfinder, not only do you draw one simply from moving at all within that area, but also if you attempt to cast a spell (with some exceptions for spells that have a range of touch) or make a ranged weapon attack against them.

As such, there are a wider variety of move action options, like a guarded step, which lets you avoid opp attacks but only if you move only 5 feet. There are also variations on dashing that can potentially put you at a full sprint, but make you vulnerable to attacks.

Honestly, this is an area of the game where I'm struggling to internalize a lot of the rules. For example, there's a rule where you avoid the opp attack for making a ranged attack on someone in melee if you're partially concealed, like if you're partially around a corner from them.

Unlike in D&D, there's no penalty for making a ranged attack while in melee range of a foe, except the potential for an opportunity attack, but you can pick up feats that raise your AC against such opportunity attacks.

On top of this, a lot of weapon types have various special properties that often allow for different attack options. For example, automatic weapons can be fired on full-auto, which depletes all the remaining ammo in the cartridge/battery but allows you to make an attack against every target within a big cone. Also, many weapons have the Unwieldy trait, which means you can only fire them once per round - so no full attack, but usually this means that they do a lot of damage.

All in all, I definitely think that Starfinder has a higher bar of entry than D&D. While newcomers might feel a bit overwhelmed by all the rules in 5th Edition, Starfinder seems built for people who can navigate the minutiae of its rules system. I think the benefit is that you can seriously customize the way that you build your character and play it in a way that D&D doesn't allow, but doing so requires remembering a whole lot of complex rules.