Starfinder and Character Customization

 One of the notions that the designers of Starfinder apparently had for the game was to give it a "cantina" feel. The Mos Eisley cantina from the original Star Wars is something of a gold standard for introducing a sci-fi universe. Tons of varied, fascinating aliens show up in that little dive, and while the movies never explain just about any of them and what their deals are, it gives you a strong sense of the kind of diverse world of adventure the Star Wars galaxy is.

The Alien Archive, which is a (much smaller) equivalent of the Monster Manual, gives racial traits for just about every humanoid race seen in it (and even some magical beasts and other creature types). While the Core Rulebook has stats for Androids, Humans, Lashunta (basically Mantis from Guardians of the Galaxy,) Kasatha (enlightened, four-armed aliens with long heads), Shirren (friendly bug people who broke away from the locust-like swarm), Vesk (proud warrior lizard people) and Ysoki (scrappy rat people), along with most of the classic fantasy RPG races (elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-elves, and half-orcs,) the intention is for a Starfinder game to feature a bewildering array of peoples to interact with.

Racial traits are typically fairly straightforward - bonuses (and sometimes penalties) to ability scores, a few things like darkvision and some unique elements. The idea is definitely for players to be able to pick and choose whatever they want.

I think I was wrong when I said that classes don't have subclasses in the same way that D&D ones do - there's often some big choice one makes at level 1 that then grants additional traits and features as one levels up. For example, a Soldier's Fighting Style is more of a subclass, though they also get to take the traits of a second one when they get high enough level (though they start at low levels for that fighting style - so you might be getting all the really high-level Sharpshoot stuff while you're only getting the early Arcane Assailant stuff.)

In D&D, Feats are an optional thing and a typical character only gets one or two (unless you seriously forgo a lot of ability score increases.) Much as I'm given to understand Pathfinder works, Starfinder has you pick up several feats along the way, and some class features simply give you feats for free. For example, Soldiers get the "Weapons Specialization" feat for every weapon type they can use, which is basically all of them. This significantly boosts the damage you deal with your weapons (it lets you add your level to your damage - though I should also note that weapon damage scales up much higher in this game than in D&D - as you get more money, you can buy weapons that do more dice of damage.)

I will say that I think the breadth of character customization options available even at level 1 can be a bit daunting, though I suspect that once one has the character set up, it's not so bad. I rolled up (well, I used point-buy) an Android Soldier with the Bounty Hunter theme, and he basically just has a normal weapon attack with a laser rifle, which he can then do as a Deadly Aim (which is a milder version of Sharpshooter from 5th Edition.) I guess I'd need to get him his android upgrade slot, though.

Actually gear is probably the biggest thing to deal with at low levels. There's no standard "starting gear," so you just have to buy all the gear with a starting number of credits. In D&D, you'd just say "cool, I get a longbow and some arrows" and be done with it, but here there's a whole swath of different laser rifles to choose from, each doing different damage (and that's before we even get to other weapons within the same category.)

At the very least, gear is given levels as well, so a level 1 character is probably going to only be getting level 1 gear (especially before earning any credits in-game.)

Again, I like the way that the Starship rules are handled - it's basically a thing that you can level up and customize as a group, and by eschewing actual currencies in favor of the generalized "build points" that go up as you level, rather than as you earn in-game credits, you'll have a good sense of how much you have to work with.

I think I'm getting a little closer to the point that I could actually help others create characters for this game, but I think I've got a bit more reading to do (and I haven't even begun to imagine what I'd plan for an actual session - probably something involving either space goblins or undead on a derelict space ship.)