Starfinder 2e is Apparently Fully Compatible with Pathfinder 2e

 I still haven't had a chance to run a game of Starfinder - as I've written about a lot on this blog, most of my players are pretty familiar with D&D 5E, and generally are more interested in trying out simpler RPGs rather than crunchier ones - Starfinder, I'd argue, is probably a little crunchier but not to an absurd degree, but I understand the friction.

I've never actually played Pathfinder - back before 5E came out, some friends had been talking about potentially getting a Pathfinder game together (warning us that D&D wasn't so good anymore - I think in the last decade 4E has gained some love, but it was pretty widely decried back in the day) - but this game never game about.

Starfinder came out in 2017, three years after 5E had seen D&D return to prominence as the big fantasy RPG. Starfinder was built on the bones of Pathfinder, which itself was built on the bones of 3rd Edition using the OGL.

Still, structurally, it was pretty different, as far as I can tell - Starfinder, for example, has a two-tiered health system.  You have Stamina Points, which are relatively easy to get back, and are depleted first, and then Hit Points, which take a lot longer to recover. Losing the former is the kind of ding or graze that your character can laugh off, while losing hit points is when you start sustaining real injuries.

What's curious about the second edition is that the intent is now to allow Starfinder and Pathfinder to be fully compatible with one another - meaning that you should be able to take classes, ancestries, and monsters from one game and use them in the other.

I'm really curious to see how this works, even if I don't know that I'll have the mental bandwidth to really get invested enough to understand how it all works. But it does look like pretty much everything from the Starfinder core rulebook will be there - I believe every race (probably called ancestries now) and class will return (along with the Witchwarper class, which showed up in later supplements).

To me, as someone far more familiar with 5E, I was really hoping for a harder commitment to science-fantasy with the Spelljammer setting. Starfinder hits that balance quite well, but it's just an unfamiliar rules system.

I think Paizo is probably making a really good decision in allowing "cross-play" between the systems, though I also wonder how Pathfinder itself is doing in this era where so many other fantasy RPGs are cropping up.

Sci Fi Storytelling for Starfinder and Spelljammer

 I'm a big fan of both Science Fiction and Fantasy as genres. I spent my childhood in the 1990s, which was a period in which there wasn't really a lot of fantasy-genre stuff. The 80s (the decade I was born in, though I was only about three and a half by the time 1990 came around) had seen a ton of fantasy movies, but a few things, I think, pushed the 90s more toward science fiction. First, you can't ignore the growing presence of computers in daily life. My dad's a professor of computer science, so I think there was never a time while I was around that we didn't have a computer in the house, but the idea of having a computer went from a somewhat rare thing to basically universal by the year 2000. The Internet and specifically the World Wide Web (a term people don't really bother with anymore, but specifically this thing that you access via web browsers, and upon which you're reading this blog, as opposed to, like, email) exploded in use and popularity.

At the same time, the popularity of Star Wars, and the Star Trek films, which started in the late 70s and were at their height in the 80s, the latter of which then spawned Star Trek: The Next Generation, which itself helped to inspire a number of other popular spacefaring sci-fi shows, meant that the public was thinking sci-fi a lot. Furthermore, the 90s was a period of space exploration - the Hubble space telescope and the Pathfinder Mars mission made it look like life in space was just around the corner.

I think it was probably the Harry Potter series (books and movies) and especially the Lord of the Rings movies that came out in the early 2000s that elevated Fantasy to similar heights. (It's crazy for me to think that it's been longer between now and Return of the King than it was between The Fellowship of the Ring and Return of the Jedi.)

As a consummate nerd, then, I've sort of tilted back and forth between the genres. My household, particularly from my Dad's side, was always very rational. We weren't religious (at least not spiritually - I still feel a strong cultural connection to my Dad's Judaism and my Mom's Catholicism). My sister likes to joke that our religion growing up was Star Trek, and certainly I think the optimistic humanism of that series remains very appealing to me.

This is all a very winding road to lead to the following discussion:

Immersed in the fantasy landscape of D&D for many years now, I've been itching to try out some sci-fi roleplaying. And I'm finding that inspiration is a little harder to come by.

I think there are a couple reasons for this.

Fantasy, ultimately, is the genre where literally anything can happen. You're unbound by just about anything because you can literally say a wizard did it (or a god, or something else). Sci-fi at least requires some internal consistency, though admittedly you can always invoke Clarke's Law about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic.

Still, there's this other issue: Fantasy has a lot more kind of "public domain" tropes. Tolkien codified the classic fantasy elf, but he didn't invent them. Dwarves, orcs, goblins, and any manner of existing folklore creatures from any culture are fair game for fantasy.

Sci-fi, though, tends to expect novelty. Whether you're going for the deeply alien entities from 2001: A Space Odyssey or Arrival, or for more human-like ones like the Vulcans of Star Trek, there's not generally a list that any casual fan of the genre could point to and say "oh yeah, those are the classics."

For example, if you look at the default playable races in Starfinder, Humans and Androids are really the only ones you could show to people and expect them to immediately get the basic gist of them. Kasathans, Vesk, Lashunta, Shirren, and Ysoki all require an explanation.

Compare this even with Pathfinder's main races: Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-Elf, Halfling, Half-Orc, and Human. While Halfling is arguably more specifically tied to Tolkien (and haven't become as universal as Orcs have) you can probably expect any casual fantasy fan to know what you're talking about with these (the most explanation you'd need for Halfling is "oh, those are Hobbits").

Now, sci-fi does have its own popular tropes for villainous threats, but I think it's relatively straightforward to say "this adventure is about fighting the undead" or "this one has a mad wizard" or "this one has a demonic incursion" or "this one has you slaying a dragon."

Often, science fiction builds itself around a novel conflict and trying to logically determine how people would respond to such a thing.

Now, one fallback that one gets to enjoy with both Spelljammer and Starfinder is that both of these still take place in a fantasy universe. Fantasy often puts these sort of arbitrary limits on technological development - as if magic and technology up to a certain level couldn't co-exist. But by embracing the science-fantasy hybrid genre, it actually gives you a bit of an out - you can still tell stories about undead legions, demonic incursions, mad wizards, and rampaging dragons. Just, this time, rather than slaying the dragon with a legendary sword, you can shoot it with a rocket launcher.

Honestly, I don't know if I have much of a point so much as I'm walking myself through how to tell a story in a sci-fi setting.

Gold, Credits, and Player Motivation

 So, while I'm not really anywhere close to running it, I have at least gotten one friend to build a Starfinder character (a Brennari Xenodruid Mystic) and hope that some time this year I'll actually be able to run something.

One of the issues I find myself having running D&D is that after a certain point, most characters don't really have a need for gold anymore. The most expensive piece of personal gear you can buy that has a standardized price is plate armor, which is 1500 gold. That's enough that Paladins, Strength-Fighters, some Clerics and Armorer Artificers will need to save up for a good long while and probably not get a set until they're about halfway through tier 2 (historically I think around level 7 to 9). Once that purchase is made, though, gold as a reward starts to drop off in urgency.

There are, of course, spell reagents that cost gold - in particular the diamonds required for resurrection spells, though also components for powerful buff spells like Heroes' Feast - but I think that the kind of exponential growth of gold acquisition if one is giving it out as loot starts to make a lot of character builds stop caring. Your Rogue, for instance, can get kitted out with Studded Leather Armor for only 45 gold - something they can probably afford at level 2 or 3. From there on out, other than maybe buying replacement arrows (which are trivially cheap for anyone who's not a 1st level adventurer) there's not much you can explicitly buy that will be necessary to succeed at your role in the group.

So, what about magic items?

Here's the thing: while the books claim that you can run a whole D&D campaign without any magic items, I quibble with that when you start to look at a lot of high-level, epic monsters. A lot of legendary creatures in the higher CR range become immune to most weapon attacks unless the weapons are magical. Now, yes, a character can cast Magic Weapon, but I think the assumption is, instead, that the characters will have gotten each of their weapon-wielding characters at least your basic +1 weapon (Adventurer's League characters, at least the last time I played in AL, could pick up any +1 weapon of their choice upon hitting tier 2).

Furthermore, the primary expected means of acquiring magic items is through loot - you find a Defender Longsword in the dragon's hoard. This does introduce a great convenience to the DM, which is that they can control how and when the party gets access to the magic items that they select.

Now, comparing this with Starfinder, things are very, very different.

In Starfinder, literally every item in the game has a value in Credits (the sci-fi equivalent of gold). This ranged from weapons to armor to cybernetic implants to magical jewelry to holographic strategy games (the latter very clearly meant to be the game on the Millennium Falcon). The only "item" that doesn't is your spaceship and its components, which instead "levels up" with your party.

But this also translates to character progression. In D&D, every Greatsword, from a common, nonmagical one to a crazy Holy Avenger, does 2d6 slashing damage, to which you add your Strength modifier. The bells and whistles on your magical weapon can potentially increase that damage by a lot, but nothing that's being mass-produced is going to have anything particularly fancy - depending on how prevalent magic is on your world and how well understood it is, even a +1 weapon could potentially be made with the lost art of a bygone age, and cannot currently be reproduced, making such weapons jealously sought after.

In Starfinder, though, mundane weapons can get insane as they become more expensive. Your standard laser pistol does 1d4 fire damage (there is no "radiant" damage in Starfinder) but by the time you hit high level and can drop a lot more credits, you can get a laser pistol that does 8d4. And that's not some "laser pistol of incredible magic power" or anything. It's a fully mundane and nonmagical piece of technology that, at most, is maybe some bleeding edge new tech, or a weapon that is strictly regulated and only permitted to be used by especially elite soldiers or operatives (...crap, those are both class names in Starfinder. I meant the terms more generically).

But even if the mundane weapons and armor come in a broader variety, on top of that even magic things have a price.

Now, what's the upshot of all of this?

In the early days, D&D was, I think, conceived as a more morally neutral affair - it was all about delving into treasure-rich dungeons and plundering them. Indeed, when you look at the alignment system, the idea of a lot of morally ambiguous people working together makes a lot of sense. Your lawful good character might want that gold to help the innocent and bring order to the wilderness, and your neutral evil character might instead want to use it to establish themselves as the king of the criminal underworld. But everyone can make use of money, so you band together to get it.

I think most players of my generation tend to instead prefer more of a narrative basis for their campaigns. Gold becomes a secondary or tertiary objective - what you really want to do is instead slay the evil monster that is threatening to destroy the world.

Indeed, I think a lot of modern campaigns are built around responding to a crisis rather than going out to explore and acquire. Compare, for example, Tomb of Horrors with Tomb of Annihilation, the latter of course being a kind of modern update to the former. The original Tomb of Horrors was a death trap, and the only reason to go in was to get the treasures found within - indeed, the "twist," if one can call it that, is that the dungeon itself is basically a big honeypot to try to lure adventurers there and feed their souls to Acererak's phylactery. In Tomb of Annihilation, on the the other hand, there's a massive crisis where resurrection magic is failing, and anyone who had been resurrected previously is wasting away. The dungeon there is an obstacle not to the glorious treasures hidden within, but the resolution of a crisis that threatens the whole world.

And I think that this change in story structure reflects 5E's ambivalence toward gold as a reward. Yes, you're never going to be upset that you have more gold, but if you were to tell a group of level 13 adventurers that a sum of 10,000 gold was sitting in a dungeon somewhere, but that it had nothing to do with whatever the main story of the campaign was, they'd probably be reluctant to go. After all, if you're a heroic adventurer in a world where there's some crisis like an ancient lich coming back to send an unstoppable army of the dead across the world, you might say that a several-day detour to delve into the lost mines of some dwarven clan aren't going to be worth it (except perhaps through the players' meta-knowledge that the DM worked hard on that dungeon and that they'll probably have worked in some narratively convenient clue that can only be found within).

By tying money directly to player power in a way that 5E does not, though, I think Starfinder might potentially work better to motivate a more mercenary group of adventurers.

Here's the thing: I think that you build the system that rewards player power along the lines of the experience you think people will gravitate toward.

And you might notice that most people who play 5th Edition these days don't really bother with experience points as a path to player power. Milestone leveling is, anecdotally at least, a much more popular form of play. And what does milestone leveling encourage?

Story. Plot.

As an example, in the Wildemount game I'm playing, the milestone moments where we've gotten to level up typically happen when one of the "prophecies" in the "heroic chronicle" system are reached. (This is a pretty thorough character-building system in Explorer's Guide to Wildemount that gives you step-by-step instructions on how to build a character tied into the setting and with goals and personal stakes).

As such, if we want our characters to get more powerful, we need to work our way through their plots - which leads to a very narrative-driven system.

Experience Points for killing monsters, though, naturally pushes players to want to fight monsters as much as possible.

And when money becomes a progression system because everything has a price you can buy it with, you're going to have a game where people want to make lots of money.

Now, I'm someone who likes narrative. I am a writer, after all, and I love telling a story with my D&D games. So, milestones work very well for me.

But I think it'll be interesting to run a system like Starfinder, where at least in one aspect, there will be other incentives in play.

Naturally, as a GM for Starfinder, I think you could basically play it like a D&D game - maybe only lower item-level items are available for purchase, and you might reserve the right to only allow people to get super-fancy weapons and armor or magic items by finding them in the world.

By contrast, you could also set prices for magic items in a D&D game to make gold more of a constant motivation (there's some guidance on these things, but if you want to do this, I recommend sitting down and really figuring out how much each thing you want to make available should cost).

This is all kind of theoretical at this point for me, and while I want to run some Starfinder before the end of the year, I also think that any extended campaign is unlikely to happen until one of my two current games I'm DMing reaches a conclusion.

Getting Prematurely Invested in Starfinder

 So, I have not yet run a single game of Starfinder. But two days ago I ordered two supplementary books beyond the Core Rulebook and the first Alien Archive.

I have never played Pathfinder, largely because the genre in which it exists seems to be handled sufficiently by D&D 5th Edition. Pathfinder was, of course, released something as a response to 4th Edition and an attempt to build a kind of new edition that was more of a continuation of 3.5th Edition.

The point is, Pathfinder was built, pretty explicitly, to just be something you could play D&D-like games in.

Now, the nitty-gritty of it is something that players might have strong opinions about - Pathfinder's relative open customization versus 5E's more streamlined and narrow approach to character builds (not to say that complex multiclass builds don't exist in 5E). But the point is that just about any story you could play through and most character concepts you could come up with in 5E would have some analogue in Pathfinder, and vice versa.

I think the reason I've become so interested in Starfinder is its farther lean into true Science Fiction tropes. Spelljammer in D&D makes no attempt to change game systems - indeed, it does even less than what I think we expected it to do, which was to create ship-to-ship combat systems (there are such systems in Ghosts of Saltmarsh, but I haven't heard a lot of people using them).

This got me thinking, though, about the utility of new game systems.

In the midst of the OGL controversy, a number of companies announced plans to build their own new RPG systems. I believe Kobold Press, Paizo, and MCDM (and likely others) have all been talking about doing that.

On one hand, I think that a more diverse marketplace would be great for the TTRPG world - competition can drive innovation. But it's also true that these games tend to be difficult to learn - there are tons of nuances and tricks to them that can be daunting for a new player.

Those same nuances and tricks are, of course, also part of the appeal. It's exactly these sorts of things that allow clever players to come up with clever builds and strategies, and which get online communities playing around optimization or even just building ridiculous concepts that focus on narrow strengths (I played a one-shot with a Fighter who had specialized into grappling, and literally held an archdevil underwater while we pummeled it to death).

The point is, purely from a player perspective, if there's a system that does what I need it to do, I'm probably going to be very hesitant to try out systems that do the same thing. Starfinder looks like it can scratch an itch that D&D doesn't quite reach (though it comes close).

There are, of course, simpler RPG systems. I briefly played a bit of Kids on Bikes, and while I think that's almost absurdly easier to pick up, it's a system that is sort of there to be unobtrusive and avoid getting in the way of the improvised storytelling. I don't think there's such a thing as a really effective "build" in Kids on Bikes. And that's fine given that its focus is more about telling a story than being about overcoming challenges (the story might be one of people overcoming challenges, of course).

One thing I do wonder about is whether Starfinder could be used to tell more Star Trek-like stories - the ones that are less about the big phaser fights and starship battles, but are more conceptually complex. I think D&D and Starfinder kind of default to just making a bunch of ability checks or skill checks to resolve things like that, though on the other hand, it seems that most systems do that anyway.

I don't know if I have a huge point here, other than that I really hope I can run (and maybe, maybe, play in) some Starfinder one of these days.

In Praise of D&D's Redundancies

 In the Player's Handbook, every class that has the spellcasting feature (and also Pact Magic, which is technically a different one) has a lengthy explanation for how you calculate the saving throw DC of your spells. It's a lot of repeated words, always following the same formula: you take 8, add your proficiency bonus, and then add your spellcasting ability, which of course is different for different classes.

This fairly substantial block of text takes up a good half a page or maybe a little more in each of the class descriptions - and it's really almost all of them because even the Rogue and Fighter have subclasses with the Spellcasting feature. Likewise, Monks get a similar explanation for their Ki saving throws. So Barbarians are the only ones without this description, meaning there's about five and a half pages dedicated to repeating this.

And I think that's a great thing.

See, I was doing some character building for Starfinder - just to help me wrap my head around it in case I ever need to help others do so. I was building a Soldier, and took the Bombard fighting style (fighting style in Starfinder is the name for Soldier subclasses) that, at least at first, focuses on grenades. The cheapest grenades - a reasonable thing to stock up on at low levels - deal 1d6 piercing damage in a 15-ft radius, and thanks to the fact that my Soldier has an 18 Strength and is a Bombarder, I can throw them an additional 20 feet, for a total of 40 feet away.

But I had to search through the Core Rulebook to find any explanation of what the saving throw DC was for those grenades. This is true for a lot of abilities - class abilities will refer to abilities forcing a saving throw, but there's no explanation there, or even in the general class description.

When I was first looking at the rulebook when I bought it initially, I actually made a cheat sheet for each class because I didn't want to have to flip back and forth through the book before I'd memorized them.

Now, part of this is certainly due to the fact that I have seven years of experience with 5E D&D and have never actually run or played Starfinder. I'm sure this would become second nature over time. Starfinder also has variable DCs in some cases. For example, the Operative (rogue equivalent) has one DC that foes must meet to succeed on saving throws against your abilities (which is 10 plus half your Operative level rounded down, plus your Dexterity modifier) but a different DC for features that have enemies make a skill check against you (10 plus one and a half times your Operative level, plus your Dexterity modifier).

Indeed, there's really no place in the Soldier class description that makes any mention of how to calculate a saving throw, despite their capstone feature, Kill Shot, requiring one. So, one needs to look to the "Key Ability Scores" section on page 58 to find that, ok, it's 10 + half your soldier level + your Strength or Dexterity modifier (whichever is higher - like Fighters, Soldiers can focus on Strength or Dexterity).

D&D, given that it separates out the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide, has a bit more room, but I really think that the format here, where the book frequently reminds you how to calculate these things, is a lot more user-friendly.

Pillaging Starfinder for Spelljammer - Ship Building and Combat

 Some day, I really want to play in a Starfinder campaign, or run one (though I'm less confident about that unless I can find a player who knows it decently). As I said in a recent post, I prefer Starfinder's take on space-based sci fi over Spelljammer's version, the latter of which dispenses with many science fiction tropes and invents bizarre new physics to justify retaining D&D's more medieval setting.

As someone who grew up on Star Trek the Next Generation and Star Wars, I actually feel like we lose something by having literal wooden sailing ships out among the stars. I don't dislike Spelljammer, mind you, but I thing the futuristic sci-fi feel of Starfinder jives more with my overall aesthetic.

One of the perhaps more controversial ideas presented in the Astral Adventurer's Guide for Spelljammer is that using ship-mounted weapons is less efficient and effective than having players simply rely on their own character abilities. The siege weapons that are mounted on ships can deal a substantial amount of damage, but their use requires multiple actions (or multiple creatures using their actions) to launch ordinance. The Bombard, which has one of the most powerful weapons of any ship with its main cannon, which deals 16d10 damage on a hit, also takes four actions to fire it - three to load and one to shoot. As a result, the damage-per-action here is 4d10, and while that's still 22 damage, which is decent, player characters can pretty early on manage more damage, and likely with a better hit chance than the cannon's +6 attack bonus would give.

5th Edition D&D puts a lot of power into the players, independent of things like magic items. Player classes are the main source of power. As such, in most cases a Wizard with no magic items versus one of the same level with a bunch are not going to be all that different in terms of power. Characters are strong.

And so I think, philosophically, the intent with Spelljammer was not to overcomplicate things by driving characters to use a ship's mounted weapons when they can just cast spells instead.

Ships in 5E have damage thresholds - for example, the Bombard's is 20, so any hit that deals less than 20 damage is simply ignored - a bullet or arrow or fire bolt just bouncing off the hull.

In other systems, including Starfinder, rather than a damage threshold, large things like ships are simply operating on a different scale. A "Tiny" spaceship in Starfinder does not fit within a 1-foot cube. And shipboard weapons are assumed to be doing about 10 times as much as a personal weapon would. But they're also aiming at something that is much bigger. So, while your shipboard laser blaster is doing 1d10 fire damage, if it were to hit a person, that'd be the equivalent of 10d10 fire damage. And if you shoot a ship for 1d10 piercing damage, you're really doing next to nothing to it.

Ship combat in Starfinder also has a different rhythm to it - ships act as a unit, with players manning different stations to perform different roles. Initiative thus determines the order in which ships, not players, act.

Players then use skills that are relevant to the combat role they're playing - piloting the ship and using the weapons involves making Piloting checks (a skill in Starfinder) while you might use Computer Sciences to hack the enemy ship computer, or Deception to harass the enemy captain into making mistakes.

Again, I haven't played the game myself, so I don't know how good these systems feel in play, but one of the things I love most about the Starfinder approach to starships is their Build Point system.

In Spelljammer, the cheapest ships are 20,000 gold. That means that it's unlikely a typical adventuring party will have the gold to buy one until well into tier 2. Naturally, DMs can make these ships available to a party early on (and can always have the party come across a windfall if they still want the party to make a purchase) but it does mean that getting a cool ship (like a Bombard) creates tension with other expenses.

To be fair, this actually helps to solve an issue with 5th Edition, which is that after a certain point, gold's more or less a scorecard. But the relatively narrow range on prices for ship means that it won't be super long before a party can afford the ship they want and not have to worry about it anymore, rather than having a progression of ships that they'll upgrade from over the course of a long campaign.

In Starfinder, ships are heavily customizable, and their progression system is more like leveling up than spending Credits (the sci-fi equivalent of gold). Rather than having any components of a ship cost Credits, instead you get BP - Build Points - that are determined by the Average Party Level. As the party levels up, they get more BP to put together their ships and can make them faster, tougher, more deadly, and generally more powerful. One can even swap out for a different kind of ship.

At its core, Starfinder wants your ship to be your party's home base, and to be a source of shared identity. Each character has their own class progression, but the party as a whole has ship progression.

Indeed, the abbreviations for some things conveniently make it clear that the ship is kind of an RPG character in its own right. Player characters have Hit Points and Stamina Points (the latter being easier to regain - one takes damage to your SP before you start dipping into your HP, and this kind of distinguishes between momentary pains versus serious injuries) while your ship has Hull Points and Shield Points, which work similarly.

I would be tempted to just pull the entire Ship system from Starfinder into a Spelljammer-like D&D game, except for the one problem: while ships have their own weapons and damage and capabilities, using things in combat requires the use of Starfinder skills, and Starfinder is built to allow these skills to progress much higher than they do in D&D.

For example, if you want to play a character who's really good at piloting, you might be a Dexterity-focused character like an Operative, take the Ace Pilot theme (themes are similar to Backgrounds) and then take feats and invest skill ranks into piloting. Your Piloting bonus might go up by 1 every single level, so that by the time you're level 10 or so, you might have a +20 or something to the skill.

The most focused D&D characters cannot, I believe, get to a bonus like that unless your DM has somehow allowed you to use multiple Manuals of Quickness of Action. A level 20 Rogue with +5 to Dexterity and Expertise in Stealth has a +17 bonus - outstanding in 5E but not terribly impressive in Starfinder.

So, I wouldn't really think that you could just fully take the Starfinder system without making any adjustments.

For one thing, D&D doesn't have the sort of sci-fi proficiencies that Starfinder uses. Here, we can see how Paizo's decision to make a similar but ultimately separate game to Pathfinder helps the game grow into its own systems.

But, if we're sticking with the Spelljammer approach and not making "Stars & Spaceships" or "Star Frontiers" (the old TSR sci-fi game that some of the Spelljammer races are based on,) how can we make this work in 5E?

One thing that might help is letting the hit bonuses on weapons scale up not with player stats, but with the weapons themselves. This is already how siege weapons in D&D are treated - a Mangonel (your classic catapult, as opposed to a trebuchet) has a +5 to hit with attacks, regardless of the person operating it.

In Starfinder, the various defensive systems increase the AC or make it harder to hack the computer's systems, in addition to letting shield and hull points increase in quantity. What I might do is, rather than have the various crew abilities rely on the player character's statistics, instead allow more advanced weapons to come with larger to-hit bonuses.

Alternatively, if we really want to muck around, we could add new systems to spend build points on (and then also probably increase the build points per level) that would increase your accuracy. Do you invest in heavier weaponry that will do 3d10 damage instead of 2d10? Or do you upgrade your targeting computer to give your weapon attacks a +8 to hit instead of a +6?

Ideally, this would scale at roughly the rate that player power in Starfinder would, but because it's all integrated into the ship's systems, you could toss D&D characters in there and still let them function.

The other alternative here would be to take Starfinder's ship-building mechanics purely as an inspiration and rebuild them with D&D's numbers and skill proficiencies in mind. This might make keeping that science fiction flavor a little difficult - perhaps instead of a computer that uses the computer science skill, you have some kind of arcane matrix that uses the Arcana skill. And then, the armor plating on your ship only raises the AC of the ship a few times - maybe taking it from 14 to 20 at the most.

To do it this way, I think the number of upgrades you would get over time would be far fewer - weapon scaling in D&D is a much flatter curve than it is in Starfinder. But I think you could still implement the Build Point system to have a ship gradually get more powerful as the party does.

Spelljammer vs Starfinder

 Some time ago (what is time in this apocalyptic age?) I got the Core Rulebook for Starfinder, as well as the first Alien Archive, the game's repository of creatures, with stat blocks and many rules for making the creatures within playable races.

Starfinder was created as a science-fantasy adaptation of Pathfinder, itself an RPG created after the introduction of 4th Edition D&D, intending to replicate and synthesize a D&D-like fantasy adventure RPG that hewed closer to 3.5 Edition's model, rather than the dramatic changes of 4e.

Like Pathfinder, and D&D in 3rd edition and beyond, Starfinder's a d20 system, so the very basics of it should look familiar to players who have played 5e - when you want to do something that could succeed or fail, you roll a d20, add the appropriate modifier, and the GM tells you whether or not you've succeeded. It has races and classes, feats, equipment, skills, and other familiar elements.

Spelljammer is D&D's space-based setting/meta-setting. First published in the late 80s, the setting was a flop at first, only getting a new publication... like a couple weeks ago.

What I find interesting is that the two games take wildly different approaches to the concept of "fantasy RPG in space."

Spelljammer is built around the idea of preserving familiar D&D rules as best as possible. This goes to the extent that space even works differently than it does in the real world. Space ships are literally ships that sail in space, and have open decks that one can walk upon without the need for a spacesuit.

Ultimately, Spelljammer is a setting rather than a new set of rules, and the only real modifications to what we know of D&D is how things work in that environment. If your spelljammer vessel lands on Toril, and you get out to do some adventures there, there's nothing whatsoever that is different from a Forgotten Realms-set adventure or campaign, other than that when you're done you can hop in your ship and leave the planet.

Starfinder, on the other hand, is genuinely a different rules system than Pathfinder. It's similar enough that the Core Rulebook gives you a guide to converting existing Pathfinder characters to work in the system, and also gives you the stats for the base, classical fantasy races (elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, gnomes, halflings) in the back of the book.

The distinction, I think, is that Starfinder really wants to build a futuristic setting. Skill proficiencies like Computers and Piloting place this firmly in a sci-fi, or at least technological realm.

Starfinder's default setting is, in fact, the same solar system as its Pathfinder game, except that the primary world has mysteriously vanished and been replaced by a giant space station.

Starfinder's rules are comprehensive to allow for science fiction tropes. Not only are there many different kinds of weapons, including many types of firearms that deal different sorts of elemental damage (also melee weapons that do,) but there are items like cybernetic implants and body modification and modules (some magic-based) that can be installed in armor and weapons to add various effects.

Vehicles also get extensive rules systems - there are rules for land-based vehicles, but the real centerpiece is the rules on Starships - allowing a party to customize their ship with various elements, automatically getting to install fancier upgrades as the party's average level goes up (and divorcing this system from Credits, the sci-fi equivalent of gold).

While magic and deities and planar outsiders are still very much part of Starfinder, the game leans in hard on the science fiction tropes popularized in the 1970s and 1980s onward. The ships are futuristic, and indeed the technology behind faster-than-light travel is explicitly technological and not magical (there's a god who prevents magic from being used to enter The Drift).

Comparing the two systems - one of which is not even a system of its own - shows, again, markedly different approaches.

Personally, as someone who grew up on Star Trek the Next Generation and later Star Wars (and who lists The Expanse as one of my favorite TV shows ever,) I really love to sprinkle in some true science fiction into my fantasy.

Spelljammer's approach is mostly more whimsical (though there are some truly terrifying aberrations in Boo's Astral Menagerie). The weird conception of space in it seems more like something someone in the late 19th Century would imagine - there's a certain George Melies vibe to the idea of tall ships sailing among the stars (or, as a more recent reference, Disney's Treasure Planet, which came out when I was at that age where I felt Disney movies were behind me, so I never got around to seeing it).

So, honestly, I've got to say that I prefer the approach Paizo took with Starfinder, letting players go all in on sci-fi tropes without really losing any of the fantasy elements.

But.

Starfinder, like, I assume, Pathfinder, is a really fiddly, crunchy system. And D&D 5e has so many resources at this point to build off of. It's also, crucially, a system that both I and my players are familiar with.

I've heard a lot of people on social media constantly bemoaning people complaining about things in D&D and recommending they check out Pathfinder 2e or the like. And I get that. D&D looked fairly complicated when I first started playing it, but now it's mostly instinctive to me. (Though I've been beating myself up for the past week after doing a little bit of railroading in my last Ravnica session - I'm hoping the next session will make up for that.)

But even though I'm game to try to figure out Starfinder and run at least a short campaign/adventure, I doubt that my friends, many of whom even after years playing D&D are still shaky at it (because they don't obsess over it as much as I do) would want to learn a new system.

So, what I think I'm probably going to do is try to cannibalize elements of Starfinder and work them into the limited (I think) Spelljammer game that I'm going to be running for my Sunday group (which is a "game while we're on a break from the main campaign" for a "game while we're on a break from the main campaign.")

The first, and simplest, thing to implement, is that I'm going to allow for four kinds of elemental weapons - Cryo, Plasma, Sonic, and Shock weapons will work the same as normal, except that they do cold, fire, thunder, and lightning damage, respectively (Sonic I might make rarer because there's way less resistance to Thunder damage). The weapons will cost 3 times the usual amount and are not magical items. Also, renaissance firearms are available at their normal price, but also have elemental equivalents. (Likely these items won't be guaranteed available, but I'll toss them in at shops that the party comes across).

I figure this isn't game-breaking, but can give us some sci-fi flavor. A Plasma Greataxe, for example (inspired by the Plasma Doshko from Starfinder) is a pole at the end of which is an array of jets that shoot a fan of superheated plasma in the shape of an axe blade.

I'm tempted to do a similar thing with the cybernetic implants - at least the ones that just add storage space. We'll have to wait and see how necessary those become.

Starfinder's ship-building system is very cool, but I'm going to play cautious and simply take the Spelljammer approach for now. While I was tempted to simply pull the whole Starfinder ship system into the game wholecloth, given that it's somewhat divorced from individual player power, the fact is that it does still rely on skills like Computers and Piloting, and furthermore expects the much higher progression of such skills that Starfinder grants (even at level 1, the Operative - equivalent of a Rogue - that I made has a +15 or something to Stealth, and had to hit a 21 on Stealth in order to get its "Trick Attack," roughly equivalent to Sneak Attack.)

I still really want to try Starfinder at some point, but there are so many games piled on top of one another that I have no idea when I'll get a chance to.

Science Fiction, Science Fantasy, and High Fantasy in Space: Spelljammer

 So, I'm very excited about Spelljammer, but I'll confess that I have some differences in opinion about how to approach fantasy in space. I grew up on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and when I was eight or nine, I discovered Star Wars and became totally obsessed with it (I had a few blessed years before the prequels came out, each of which I convinced myself I liked and then that opinion changed upon reflection).

Spelljammer's approach to space-faring, at least historically (and, given the ship that just straight up looks like a sailing ship in the reveal trailer, probably in 5th Edition as well) is very much based on the idea that this is a fantastical version of space travel. The original creators of the setting were concerned with how to justify people fighting with swords and shields and wearing wizard robes in a sci-fi setting and basically said "well, it's not sci fi. It's just fantasy in space."

For me, though, I really love the idea of combining the technological elements of science fiction with the magic and forces of fate, destiny, gods, and such of fantasy.

Star Wars is obviously the most popular and well-known example of this type of science-fantasy. There are starships that have to be airtight, technological explanations for things like faster-than-light travel (something that, if you read about the physics of hypothetical FTL is way more complicated than it seems intuitively, given the relationship between the speed of light and the nature of time and causality), along with robots and laser blasters. But Star Wars also has a deeply mystical aspect - the Force is this sort of non-anthropomorphic god and even as the average person has no access to anything supernatural, the fate of the galaxy is fundamentally shaped by the supernatural conflict at play and the individuals who stand as representatives of those supernatural forces.

Still, I think a lot of people file Star Wars away as simply science fiction. It's not at all "hard" sci-fi like The Martian or The Expanse, but the mere presence of modern or futuristic technologies disqualifies it from those who define fantasy as an inherently pre-industrial, pre-scientific revolution environment.

And to be fair, the line's blurry - actually I'd argue it's a spectrum rather than discrete categories. Consider Dune, which is one of the biggest classics of science fiction. This one, too, has a sense of broader forces at work steering humanity - but the means are, in theory, not mystical but the result of sociological and technological development. Those prophecies that Paul seems to fulfill on Arrakis were planted in that culture over ten thousand years ago by people who were planning to produce someone like Paul through their deeply creepy breeding programs. But if he (or his son) winds up effectively being that same messianic figure that the Fremen were hoping for, what difference does it make?

In the event (eventuality?) that I run a Spelljammer game, I would want to lean in more toward the sci-fi look and feel. I have a deep love of that genre, but I also have a deep comfort and familiarity with D&D.

And, in all honesty, I think the genre blend that Paizo went for with Starfinder is actually much closer to how I would want to run such a campaign. Starfinder has their default Pathfinder setting, which even in its fantasy RPG involves a bit of planetary romance (the old-school genre of space-faring sci fi like John Carter of Mars,) and imagines a far future in which there's a big historical gap in everyone's memory and the main "Earth"-like planet that serves as Pathfinder's central setting has disappeared and been replaced with a massive mega-city space station.

Starfinder still has magic. The Technomancer is sort of the equivalent of a Wizard while the Mystic is sort of the equivalent of a Cleric (with a bit of Druid thrown in). But most classes instead rely on technology - weapons are more complex, with the upgrading of weapons a major part of player progression (your starting dagger might only do 1d4 damage, but by higher level you'll easily be able to buy a non-magical dagger that deals 4d4 or more). There's a huge variety of guns to choose from, though also plenty of melee weapons (some of which do elemental damage, like a "flame doshko" which is somewhat like a spiked axe whose blades are actually superheated plasma pumped through jets on the hilt).

Starfinder, of course, is not the same system as Pathfinder. They had to rebuild a lot of the game from the ground up to support this more sci-fi setting. There are different classes. There is a conversion guide to transform Pathfinder characters into Starfinder ones (and even if they push for more sci-fi appropriate playable races, there are instructions on how to use fantasy races like elves and dwarves in it).

Spelljammer, by contrast, is still fundamentally part of the same game system as 5th Edition D&D. There's no "computers" skill in Spelljammer, because they want you to be able to use the same character sheet that you have in D&D games.

Honestly, I can see this being an easier way to get people into a game. At least in my game groups, I'm skeptical I'll be able to get people to play Starfinder simply because it require learning a new game system (one that, while similar to D&D, has, for example, a pretty different action economy in combat).

Still, there is a part of me that want WotC to take a page out of Paizo's book and create some alternate rules to handle a truly sci-fi conversion of D&D.

Sci-Fi D&D, Spelljammer, and Thoughts Coming from Starfinder

 While I've said it before on this blog, I'm not going to assume you've read all my stuff, so here's my background: I've played D&D 5th Edition for about six years. I recently picked up the Starfinder Core Rulebook and Alien Archive, and have been reading the book back and forth to learn the system. I've never played Pathfinder.

The most recent D&D Unearthed Arcana seems to imply that we'll be seeing a Spelljammer campaign setting sourcebook some time next year (I'd guess around early spring).

I've never officially played in a Spelljammer campaign, though I did play in a one-shot my friend ran that took place in Realmspace (it was an all-Warforged party, but with one player who didn't get the memo and played a human.)

While I've never read an actual Spelljammer sourcebook, my basic sense of the setting is the following: it does involve spaceships and interplanetary space, but the physical laws of reality are still very much within a fantasy context. Gravity on the setting's spaceships, known as Spelljammers (though there's also a legendary vessel called The Spelljammer) simply treats the middle of the ship as a plane of gravity, which carries an atmosphere with it. So you can fight on the deck of a ship in open space because your pocket of air will simply stick to the ship (you can also go to the underside of the ship and be stuck to the bottom, as the other side of that plane also attracts things).

Each canonical world in D&D (at least those in the Prime Material Plane) exists within a "crystal sphere" that serves as the bounds of that physical realm. So, places like Krynn (Dragonlance,) Toril (Forgotten Realms,) and Oerth (Greyhawk) are planets that float within their own crystal sphere. These spheres can contain other planets and such, but are relatively small compared to the grand expanse of the universe. As I understand it, simple teleportation magic like the Teleport spell can allow transit between those worlds, as they are still on the same plane of existence, but an individual would be unlikely to have the familiarity to make such transit safe. The Dream of the Blue Veil is a reliable and safe way to travel these worlds.

However, one can also do so in a Spelljammer, which requires you to use magic to open a portal in the Crystal Sphere and enter the Phlogiston, which is a sort of endless ocean of magical matter with currents that can be navigated to take you to other worlds. One of the oddities of the Phlogiston is that, while arcane magic works normally there, the gods are unable to have any effect on it, meaning that divine magic is nullified while in it.

The concept of Spelljammer was meant to evoke archaic models of the universe. Generally, when we look at space travel, it's usually within a science fiction context - even works where the supernatural is a powerful force (such as Star Wars) often treat space-travel as something to be solved with technology. Spelljammer, on the other hand, seems to firmly push things into the magical and fantastical realm. As I understand it (and I could be wrong,) the world of Spelljammer is not one of jump-drives, plasma blasters, and scrappy rust-buckets outfitted with illegal technology, but rather the magical equivalent thereof.

Starfinder (which, having the actual book, I'm obviously a bit more familiar with) mostly plays in a sci-fi context. However, it's also distinctly science-fantasy - it has gods that are not just theoretical, as well as magic and other planes of existence from which outsiders (such as angels, devils, and demons) come. It's also got elves, dwarves, and other such stock fantasy races on top of more original, otherworldly aliens.

But while magic exists, there's less of an emphasis on it. For example, The Drift, which is the most common from of faster-than-light travel, does happen to be another plane, but it can only be reached via technological means (the technology happened to be gifted to the various mortal races by a god, but on the other hand, it was the god/goddess of artificial intelligence, so we get a bit of a ping-pong effect here.)

The ships in Starfinder reflect a diverse number of alien homeworlds and designs, but they look more compatible with Star Trek, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica than Spelljammer's "sailing ship but in space" looks.

Starfinder is based on the Pathfinder rules system (and to be fair, as someone who has not played Pathfinder, I don't really know how much has changed) but it's clearly been overhauled to accommodate a more sci-fi genre experience. For example, there are skills one can learn like "Computers" and "Engineering," and "Piloting."

Class design is also very in-universe. The Mechanic could arguably be likened to the Artificer, but it has many abilities that only make sense in a sci-fi setting where there are computers to hack. The Technomancer, which is Starfinder's Wizard/Sorcerer equivalent, does focus on spellcasting, but you also get abilities that, for instance, draw on the power of an ordinary battery (which is usually used to power various technological devices or serve as ammunition for energy weapons).

Clearly, Paizo was not willing to just slap on some new races and subclasses can call it a day in designing Starfinder. However, this does carry with it the consequence that, while you can convert a Pathfinder character to work in Starfinder, it is pretty much a separate product line.

When it comes to Spelljammer, I don't think that Wizards of the Coast would want to break it off as a truly separate game, and I think as a result it has to bow to the demands of the fantasy genre.

On one hand, I get that - and I would really benefit from the ability to use my huge library of 5E books to provide content for a potential Spelljammer campaign.

I guess the question I then have is if Spelljammer must give up some of the sci-fi tropes that I enjoy. Even though I think of myself as more of a fantasy guy than a sci-fi guy at this point, I grew up obsessed with spaceships and robots. While Starfinder has a whole dedicated system to hacking computers or building starships or running vehicle chases, I suspect that at least some of that would require a bit of homebrewing.

Of course, this is all speculative until we actually get an updated Spelljammer book - and that's not actually confirmed yet.

Starfinder has a default setting written into its core rulebook, but I think the system is easily versatile enough to let a GM homebrew a new setting. While I know some people really prefer a rules system to have the setting and specificity built in (I think that Matt Colville talked about how he had designed a class that was specific to its setting, and how this was good practice,) I sort of feel differently. Especially for rules systems, but even for something as broad as a class, I think giving them a great deal of flexibility in the lore allows people to do with them what they want. I like that, for example, various Colleges for Bards are just a broad sense of their vibe and style, rather than specific places in a specific setting (though giving examples from various worlds is fine).

I don't know what the ratio of DMs/GMs is between people who run things in established versus homebrew settings, but I feel like part of what makes TTRPGs so fun is that you get to be so inventive. While I've enjoyed running my Ravnica-based game (and at some point want to run a Ravenloft one - though that's much more homebrew-friendly) I do really miss having full control over the setting and letting myself build the world to serve the kind of adventures I want to run (and add in things the players come up with as canonical to the world.)

That's getting a bit off-track. I do really appreciate the way that WotC (and predecessors) handle the kind of meta-settings. The Prime Material Plane is large enough to allow everyone's homebrew world to be "canonical," just as the Demiplane of Dread allows every homebrew domain to be.

But, the question is: within those settings, can you make significant shifts to the genre?

Arrays and Grafts - Monsters for GMing Starfinder

 The Alien Archive is the initial "monster book" for Starfinder. But if you compare this with D&D's Monster Manual, it's rather thin - both literally and in terms of content. Each two-page spread tends to have a creature or two under a certain theme (such as two examples of Reptoids or two Drow statblocks) but there are some real gaps. There's a grand total of one devil presented in the book, and no demons or daemons (what in D&D would come to be called Yugoloths,) which is a super-high CR that would likely serve as an endgame threat (it's a colossal - which is bigger than gargantuan - devil that can transform into a starship).

However, if you go to the back of the book, there's a section on how to create your own monsters. I've only scratched the surface of this, but it does seem a super-useful tool when you need some quick stat blocks.

The book presents you with three arrays for each challenge rating starting at 1/3 and going up to 25. These arrays are combatants, experts, and spellcasters. Combatants are going to be major physical threats, attacking with weapons and other sorts of attacks. Experts are going to be more skill focused, and might be more of a challenge to deal with outside of combat (though they do have combat stats) while Spellcasters are, well, spellcasters.

Again, I've only scratched the surface, the charts here give you the fundamental basics of how to use them in the game - you get HP, AC (both of the KAC and EAC varieties,) saving throw bonuses, attack bonuses, and attack damage (usually with some harder-hitting major attack and a less powerful alternative).

What this made me realize is that if my party winds up going into a sketchy bar to try to meet some source who can, say, tell them about the guy who's been selling hacked cybernetic implants that take over the host's body and turn them into assassins (basically the plot of a Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex episode) and the local gang isn't too happy about people asking questions and tries to kill the party for putting their noses where they don't belong, I can just flip to the back of the Alien Archive and grab an appropriate CR array to give the party a decent fight.

Now, the arrays aren't everything. There are also several "grafts" that you can add to them. To a large extent, this will just give the creatures racial features - so for example, if that thug trying to shoot your technomancer is a Lashunta, you can give them that species' limited telepathy.

Grafts go pretty far and wide - it also includes things like creature type, so you can make Archons or Devils or Undead that conform to these arrays, gaining the natural features of a being like that (for example, your undead monster isn't going to worry about breathing.)

There are also grafts to apply various class features. This I'm a little hesitant to use, as I think generally class mechanics are more complicated than monster mechanics should be - a player only has one PC to control while a GM has all the NPCs.

Still, I think getting used to picking up these arrays on the fly could be very helpful for running the game. I'm super excited to try the system out and start telling space opera stories.

Rolling Up Another Starfinder Character and Getting Used to It

 After beating Metroid Dread, I've been feeling the urge to start a new game of it - having gotten 100% of the items, the only real challenge is to try to clear it quickly. (I'm sure that I'll do significantly better against the bosses this time around, at least). But, I also decided to try to roll another character in Starfinder to get a better sense of how the game works.

When presented with the possibility of playing an Android, though, I really had to wonder what race I'd be interested in playing otherwise, and what I landed on was the Gray from the Alien Archive. The Grays are the classic "alien," the short, big-headed, creepy alien abductors who fly around in flying saucers. So, a Gray Operative seemed like a good fit. While they don't get any bonus to Dexterity, they do get a rather huge one to Intelligence, so it would be very easy to get a whole ton of skill ranks.

I had been a little surprised at the high DC of the trick attack feature for Operatives. You need to beat a DC equal to the creature's CR plus 20 in order to get your bonus damage and the other effects. However, I then realized that you get a ton of things to boost the abilities that you use for these. I went with a Ghost specialization, which gives bonuses to acrobatics and stealth. First and foremost, you get a +1 to everything thanks to Operative's Edge. Then, you can factor in the Skill Focus feat that you get with your specialization's key skills, which adds a +3 bonus. Then, you take into account that these are both class skills, which gives an extra 3. Then, you automatically get a rank in these two (which doesn't allow you to have two ranks at level 1, but is still nice.)

And on top of it all, as a ghost, you get a +4 bonus to Stealth checks that are made to get you a trick attack. So all in all, at level 1, with only a +3 to Dex (which also gets factored in,) I had an effective +15 to Stealth checks when trying to see if I got a trick attack. That means that, against a CR 1 creature, I'd have to roll a 5 or lower not to get the trick attack.

One thing I do miss a lot from D&D when making Starfinder characters is starting equipment. There is so much to buy in Starfinder that I wish they had an option for "basic gear." You could even make it relatively simple by saying "get a survival knife or a tactical baton and a small arm weapon that is level 1," to preserve options. I went with a survival knife and an azimuth laser pistol.

With the 1000 credits you start with, I did also pick up a few other items. I got a Second Skin armor suit, which seems like a good one to start with for any light armor character. Then, I picked up 2 Serums of Healing, 20 R2Es (basically a day's rations,) a Personal Comm Unit (which seems like a staple - I'd assume that as a Gray, who relies on telepathy, he'd use it to text) along with two extra weapon batteries. Then, I got an Industrial Backpack, which increases carrying capacity (by a small amount - it weighs one bulk and then can carry 2 bulk that don't count against your limit) and then, the most exciting thing: a hideaway limb, so I can keep a weapon hidden in his leg, which seems like a useful thing for an operative.

There is a ton of exciting stuff to spend credits on, and you're definitely going to have things to work toward after you've spent your initial 1000.

Oh, and for my level 1 feat, I took Mobility, which increases your AC by 4 against opportunity attacks made because you moved, but more importantly unlocks additional feats later on.

I do think it's a shame that Operatives get proficiency in sniper weapons, but both their trick attack and their big multiattack can't work with that type of weapon. I'm also a little surprised that their BAB is 0 at level 1, so my dude only has a +3 to hit with his attacks (though with a successful trick attack, he makes the foe flat-footed, which lowers their AC by 2, so effectively he gets a +5).

With 10 skill ranks per level, it does seem that this character (whom I've named Alpha) would likely be quite good at many things in the course of leveling.

I will say that Paizo's style guide does seem a lot more concerned with efficiency than WotC's. There are things that I know Wizards of the Coast would be very explicit about that are kind of left up to you to discern. For example, the description in Alien Archive of the Grays is that they never speak, even to one another, preferring telepathic communication. You get the Telepathic Message spell as an at-will racial ability (the equivalent of Message in D&D) but it doesn't say if Grays can't speak, or if they just don't. So, for example, if I try to communicate something to someone in the heat of battle, am I going to need to use my standard action to cast Telepathic Message and then draw an opportunity attack because I'm casting a spell, or can I be the Gray who breaks with his culture and is willing to shout a quick "he's got a grenade!" when I see some hostile dude pull out an explosive?

There are other things like this, like a Soldier's 20th level ability allows you to force a creature you hit to make a Fortitude save or immediately die, but it doesn't say how that DC is calculated. Instead, buried in some other chapter, there's a single sentence that says "oh, and by the way, class abilities have a DC that's equal to... like 10 plus your character level, or something - honestly, I don't actually remember.

I think this is in part due to the fact that the Core Rulebook is a combination of both DMG and PHB, which makes a ton of sense (only D&D can get away with making you buy three 50 dollar books to play the game) but also forces Paizo to sacrifice clarity in favor of efficiency. (Similarly, creatures in the Alien Archive have their attacks kind of buried as this single line amidst a bunch of other statistics). I think it's also possible that Paizo's philosophy is less geared toward accessibility. Certainly, from a game design perspective, players are expected to make a lot of impactful decisions at level 1, whereas for a lot of D&D classes, you have a bit of time to get used to the class before you, for example, pick a subclass (of course, not always.)

I have talked with friends who have played a lot of D&D who like the way that Pathfinder and Starfinder really force you to build a character carefully, as there's a bit more strategy involved. I think that makes sense, and I think a game having these more complex rules is a good thing when there are simpler options (I realize that newcomers to D&D might be gobsmacked at the notion that D&D is the simpler game in this comparison.) I suspect that if I had a comparable level of experience with Starfinder I might even prefer its style of complexity. But to me, TTRPGs are only as good as your ability to get your friends to play it, which means accessibility is always going to be a concern.

Still, I'm planning to make my regular Sunday group play Starfinder for a short, couple-week adventure, and we'll see how much we like it. (I'm more nervous about GMing for it. When I started with D&D, I had very little ego at stake if I screwed things up, but as someone who's very comfortable running D&D, I want to be able to provide the same smooth experience with Starfinder, which just flat-out isn't going to happen.)

I also think the Alien Archive is a bit anemic compared to the Monster Manual - it is a much shorter book, of course. It does seem like the expectation is that you'll be homebrewing more creatures using its creature creation guidance, but I'd love to just have a big selection of space pirates, alien monsters, and such that I can just toss at a level 1 party without fearing that I'm going to wipe them out.

I'm also trying to wrap my head around Computers. As a technologically-advanced setting, computers are ubiquitous, and there are a ton of class features (especially for Mechanics) that tie into them, but I'm not sure how many random computers to add to an environment and how much I need to plan out how well-defended they are from hacking. While a plot-relevant computer with various countermeasures makes a ton of sense, I guess I've just got to improvise super low-tier computers like lighting controls.

Don't get me wrong: I love that there are systems for things like vehicle chases and starship battles and computer hacking. But it's also a ton of information to try to internalize before running a game. I guess the key is to keep it simple and start the players off with a classic adventure of "go into a spooky place, investigate a mystery, encounter monsters, fight monsters" structure as my typical D&D one-shots tend to go, except they'll be on a derelict spaceship rather than some haunted crypt. Then, if people enjoy the game, we can get into the more elaborate stuff (I do think that I've got to have a starship battle in there, if for no other reason than to justify building the party's starship, which will probably happen only after they've had some time to fight "on foot.")

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.

Starfinder, D&D, and Simplicity Versus Granularity

 Reading the rules of Starfinder is making me appreciate some of the streamlining that 5th Edition D&D does.

I don't mean this to badmouth Starfinder - the game looks insanely fun and I can't wait to run it - but there are little things about the way that Wizards of the Coast presents things that make it a lot easier to comprehend.

Last night, while reading through the Alien Archive to see what kind of creatures I could send up against my players in a hypothetical first session, I came across a few abilities that had no description in the stat block. Things like "Inexplicable Orders." I searched through conditions and spells and all manner of things, having no idea what these features actually did, until I realized that they were the subclass features of a particular kind of Mystic (which is one of the playable classes - kind of Cleric/Druid equivalent.)

There's a lot in the Alien Archive that serves to conserve space - when you get multiple examples of an alien creature that have a common ability, the second stat block will often say "see above," referring to the previous stat block. This does allow the creatures of a particular category to fit on a two-page spread, but it also requires a little more effort on the part of the GM to track down the ability.

WotC is going to be making significant changes to a lot of existing stat blocks with their Monsters of the Multiverse and 2024 "5.5" core rulebooks to make them easier to run. The notion of "class levels" for a monster were more or less done away with in 5th Edition (though they still have abilities that can detect them) in favor of just drilling down to the essentials to show what carries over. A rogue-like NPC stat block might have sneak attack, but you won't get bogged down in things like Uncanny Dodge or rogue subclass features, and the stat block itself will tell you what all the things do.

Spellcasting is going to be getting the most significant changes in the 5.5 rework, giving DMs less to track vis-a-vis spell slots and which spell the creature would actually use on a typical turn in combat.

Pathfinder (which led to Starfinder) was created in large part to preserve the feel of 3.5th Edition D&D after 4th edition introduced some significant changes to the way the game worked. 5th Edition was also a return to those roots, but clearly they chose different things to emphasize.

I will say that 5th Edition also has a big benefit in how enormous the Monster Manual is. Creating a level 1 adventure is never easy, given how limited you are in what sort of creatures you can have the party fight, but the 5th Edition Monster Manual has a pretty wide variety of options. Starfinder's Alien Archive is a much smaller book, and while there are certainly a few options, it definitely feels like there are CR ranges with only like 1 creature that fits it.

I do have to cut Paizo some slack, though. Within the TTRPG world, of course, Paizo is one of the big names. But I don't think that anyone is remotely on the same scale as Wizards of the Coast when it comes to the resources available to them. I'd imagine that for non-gamers (and even gamers who don't do TTRPGs,) D&D is the only such game they're remotely familiar with.

Among TTRPG veterans, I think one of the complaints people have made about D&D is how limited character options are. It's true that if I'm playing, say, a Soulknife Rogue, most levels I don't really have any choices to make about how my character progresses. Between feats and "tricks," not to mention skill ranks, it seems that Starfinder characters are going to be making significant choices every level. That's exciting, I think, for people who really like getting into the nitty gritty of strategy, but I can also imagine that for a lot of the people I play with, who like to focus a bit more on the roleplaying and character stuff, it might be intimidating.

I'm definitely going to try to run at least a one-shot, and hopefully some shorter campaign with the Starfinder system, but I think I might try to hybridize them a bit for a full campaign. I'd love to take the Starship rules almost wholecloth even if the base system I'd use for the player characters themselves is D&D. A sci-fi campaign would of course require that some of the skills be reworked, but I think that wouldn't be too terribly difficult.

Naturally, there's some hope that the sketch by Hydro74 teased during this year's D&D celebration could mean we've got a Spelljammer 5th Edition book coming out next year or so (even though Boo, the miniature giant space hamster, is actually from the Baldur's Gate games, which were not terrible spelljammer-focused) so I wonder if we'll get more 5E native spacefaring and science fantasy rules. We'll see.

Closing in on Being Ready to Run Starfinder

 When I first started running D&D, I had a couple advantages. One was that one of my players was already familiar with 5th Edition, and could catch some of my newbie errors (like when I thought that every player got XP for the full encounter, rather than dividing it between them). Another was Acquisitions Incorporated, which had been showing off 5th Edition since it was called "D&D Next."

I'm not entirely without advantage here, though. While I jumped into D&D as a DM after only some brief experience playing the Song of Ice and Fire TTRPG, at this point I've been running and playing D&D for several years. Starfinder's systems are different, but not so different that it's unrecognizable.

What I think is perhaps trickier is recalibrating my sense of scale. In D&D, things like ability checks don't get that much harder as you level up. Given that you're unlikely to increase ability scores that aren't your primary focus (like a Rogue's Dexterity or a Wizard's Intelligence) at least until far later in the game, a DC 20, say, Intimidation check for a character who isn't proficient in it and isn't Charisma-based is probably going to be just as hard at level 1 as it is at level 20.

However, in Starfinder, bonuses go up a lot more as you level. Every level, you gain additional skill ranks, so even if your Intelligence isn't going up, your Computers skill (which is used to hack or otherwise use computers) might go up each level if that's something you want to focus on, which you might want to if you're the party's science officer on their starship.

Each class has a "base attack bonus" that they add in addition to Dexterity or Strength to their weapon attacks. This typically starts at 1 but goes up to 15 for most classes by level 20, or to 20 if you're a Soldier (in fact, for soldier's the "BAB" is just equal to your level.) In D&D, by level 10 you probably have a modifier for your primary ability at +5, and your proficiency bonus at that point is +4, meaning you'd have an attack modifier of +9. Then, if you're a martial class, by that level you likely have a +1 or +2 weapon, so you could have a +10 or +11 total bonus to hit.

In Starfinder, I believe you could get a +5 to your Strength or Dex by that point, and if you're a Soldier, you'd have a +10 BAB, meaning you've already got a +15 to hit. Now, as far as I can tell (and again, I'm a total noob here) there's less of a chance to get a +X modifier on a weapon's chance to hit. (There is a "Weapon Focus" feat you can take that adds a bit to it, but it doesn't seem to come with the weapon itself.)

Thus, while nothing in D&D (apart from player characters, potentially, as well as rare monsters with high AC and the ability to cast the Shield spell) has an AC higher than 25, Starfinder can afford monsters with significantly higher ACs given that 25 would be a 50% chance for a Soldier at level 10. (For example, one of the highest CR creatures in the Alien Archive, the Endbringer Devil, has an EAC of 35 and a KAC of 34).

Likewise, weapon damage scales up a lot higher as you purchase more advanced weapons, so while in D&D, class features like Improved Divine Smite or the increased damage of Rage will gradually increase your damage output, Starfinder sees your damage going up by huge amounts - a level 1 weapon might do 1d6 damage, while an equivalent level 10 one (which you could likely get around level 10) could do 3d6.

To sum up the past several paragraphs: I'd need to seriously adjust my sense of what is a big number or a small number for this new game's systems.

Initially, I was pretty intimidated by the class sections, given the vast array of abilities. However, Starfinder (and I think Pathfinder) is built around letting you make a lot of choices in building your character, which means that for all those features, you're only going to be choosing one at a time. For a one-shot involving first-level characters, that means that once the character sheets themselves are put together, it's not actually going to be all that complicated.

My next move, then, I think, is going to be to figure out some fun encounters that won't be too complicated, but will also show off the sci-fi elements of the game in contrast with D&D. Even though Space Goblins seem like an obvious first foe to face, I might try to do something a little weirder.

I'd also love to have a starship combat in there, though I think that might be better to save for a second session - let people get to know their own characters before we introduce the complexities of space battles.

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.)

Starfinder Starship Building and Combat

 One thing I've really come to appreciate about Starfinder's approach to starships is that this pretty central part of the game is treated as less of an economic system than a leveling system. The game assumes you have a ship, and doesn't worry about whether you have the credits to afford one.

Selecting the components of your ship has a cost in "Build Points," which limits how powerful your ship can be as you level up. The APL (average party level) determines the Tier of the ship (the tier is basically the "level" of the ship) and as you level up and your ship has more build points, you can get fancier systems.

The most important system is the Power Core, which provides power to the rest of the ship's systems. While life support and artificial gravity are handwaved as taking negligible power, other systems like thrusters, weapons, shields, the ship computer, and other amenities will consume a certain amount of "PCU," or Power Core Units. A fancier power core will provide more PCUs to spend, but of course it will also cost more Build Points ("BP") to get, so you need to balance the budget. You could build a ship that has very powerful shields at the cost of other systems being less powerful, but I think most would probably try to go for a balanced approach.

There's a nuance here when it comes to Drift engines. In Starfinder, Drift is the technology that allows beings other than gods (or those who have earned the gods' favor) to travel faster than light, by essentially plane-shifting into another plane called the Drift. The Drift can only be accessed through technology, not magic. Once in the Drift, travel returns to normal thrusters, but distance is also a little funny - there are Drift beacons found on various worlds, and the more drift beacons there are in a place, the faster one can get there. Actual distance means nothing. Absalom Station, which is the central hub of the Starfinder setting, has an intensely powerful beacon, so regardless of where you are in the galaxy, you can always get back there in a few days. But even if two star systems were next-door neighbors within "The Vast," (aka the outer reaches of known space,) it would take just as long to go between them as it would be to travel there from anywhere else.

More powerful drift engines will allow you to reduce the time spent traveling through the Drift. Rather than constantly consuming a number of PCUs, you only need to have a minimum amount your core can produce, as the assumption is that you'll be turning off various systems in order to engage the drift engine (explicitly, you have to turn off your thrusters to do so.)

Naturally, starship combat has its own rules that work a bit differently than normal combat. Player characters will have specific roles on the ship - you can be a Captain, Pilot, Engineer, Gunner, or Science Officer. Each round of combat is then divided into different phases - Engineering, Helm, and Gunnery phases. Rather than having an initiative order, the Engineering phases happen simultaneously as people work to repair systems or divert power. The helm phase has each pilot (a ship can only have a single pilot and a single captain) rolls to see who acts first - but it's the loser of the role who has to go first, as the second pilot will be able to decide what to do based on what the other ship is doing. For instance, if the enemy ship maneuvers so that they can attack your ship with their most powerful weapon, you might then maneuver to get out of that weapon's firing arc.

The last phase is when people fire off their weapons, which are resolved in order of who moved when, but all take effect regardless of whether the enemy ship is destroyed or its weapons disabled.

Each role has a number of actions it can take, which are detailed in the chapter. The Captain is the only one who can act during any phase (though still only once per round, I believe.) The Captain has various ways to aid their crew or distract and taunt the enemy. Science officers can scan enemy ships to target specific systems or rebalance shields. Pilots can do various stunt maneuvers to position their ship more favorably. Engineers can repair systems or divert power to give a system a boost.

I think most starship combat is built to be one-on-one between the party's ship and an enemy, though I imagine as a party and GM get more comfortable, they might go for more complex battles. Notably, a starship that is large enough can have a hangar in it, and one could potentially have a fighter launch from it.

Generally, there isn't really much of a rule for having ships catastrophically explode. Usually if you reduce a ship to 0 hit points, it's just adrift. That said, I think a GM could make for a more dramatic moment by their own discretion. Still, I think you could very much build an adventure in which you need to first defeat a ship in ship-to-ship combat and, once it's disabled, have the party board the ship and take it over.

There are many ship frames to choose from, which go from little racers and fighters to shuttles, light freighters (which I think is what the Millennium Falcon would count as) to, eventually, battleships and dreadnoughts. The Huge and larger ships generally require a crew that is larger than the average party, but I could imagine a high-level party might have a number of NPCs serving as their crew.

A level 20 party has 1000 BP to work with, and if you wanted a Dreadnought, the frame itself would take 200 of those. (You'd also need at least 125 crew). But I think the assumption here is that you'll likely keep the same frame over the course of a campaign and just upgrade it with each tier. What began as a dinky junker will, by the end of a high level campaign, be a legendary vessel that can wipe the floor with ships a hundred times its size.

Starfinder Starships

 While you could theoretically run a Starfinder game without the party getting a ship, where's the fun in that?

I've been hopping around the Starfinder core rules, and I've just read through the rules on putting together the party's ship.

Initially, I was surprised that there wasn't a cost in credits (money) for the various models, but then it occurred to me that the point here is that the party should get a ship as soon as possible - they're here to have space adventures, not spend however many levels saving up money to buy a ship.

Instead, the party can get a ship of a certain "tier" based on the average party level. Tier is essentially the ship's level, and as you level up, your ship gains tiers, which then gives you more "Build Points" that you can use to upgrade the ship's systems.

This basically would be the subject of a session 0 kind of game, or perhaps if you want to start your campaign on the ground level, you could take a break once the party gets their ship to have the players put together what they want.

Build Points are a kind of currency for what you can put in - more advanced systems will cost more BP, and you get more BP as your ship progresses in tier. So, for example, when you're level 1, you'll only be able to afford a dinky power core, weapons, shields, etc. But as you gain levels, you can upgrade your little laser blaster mounted on the starboard side into, like, a tactical nuke launcher.

Upgrading a power core gives you more PCU (power core units) to provide the juice for your various systems, meaning that it's a good thing to upgrade first. You've also got a ship's computer that can aid in various checks made on the ship, and works the same way that other computers in the game do (which I haven't fully read about, but have various systems for hacking and countermeasures.) Then, beyond weapons, armor, shields, thrusters, and "drift" drives (which is your FTL transport system,) you can also add various facilities like extra guest quarters, hangars or shuttle bays, labs, or even entertainment like a freaking holodeck.

Similar to a player character's Stamina Points (SP) and Hit Points (HP,) ships have Shield Points and Hull Points (with conveniently the same abbreviations) that work in a similar manner. However, the shields are actually spread out between four quadrants, and can be rearranged by a crew member each round to provide more protection to the side of the ship that's getting hit by more things.

I have yet to read about starship combat, but I actually think that the starship building rules are pretty fun, and while it was a little shocking to see that you don't actually spend any of the PCs money on the ship, the more I think about it the more that feels like a way of getting rid of an impediment for fun. I mean, I'd want to get my character the coolest weapons and armor and not worry that I wasn't contributing to the ship's badass-ness.

One of my favorite current TV shows is The Expanse. In one of the first episodes, the main characters get a hot-shot Martian warship through "legitimate salvage" (technically the ship was given to them by a dying officer while its mothership was about to blow up,) which I sort of think of as being like if a level 1 or 2 party suddenly got their hands on a Tier 10 destroyer.

A starship often acts as "home" in a sci-fi story. The Enterprise (original, -D or -E, or the NX one,) the Roci from the Expanse, the Millennium Falcon - these are iconic but are also kind of beloved, a character in their own right. It sounds to me like a Starfinder campaign would really benefit from such a thing (also, the AI in the ship's computer tends to actually develop a personality, so you could have a lot of fun with that as a GM.)

We'll have to see how the combat rules work, but honestly, I was worried this system would be too complicated, and now I'm fairly pleased with how setting up the ship, at least, works.

Starfinder Ground Combat

 Jumping around in the book a bit, I've been approaching Starfinder very much from my perspective as a veteran of 5th Edition. This is not a tutorial in the system, but is more a journal of my sussing out how the game works.

There is a whole lot here that is familiar, but there are tweaks and differences that do play a noticeable role.

Looking at combat, things work in a fairly similar way. You still roll initiative, with a bonus based on your Dexterity. And each turn is broken up into three main things on your turn and one reaction at any time.

Standard actions are what you'd expect, likely to be spent attacking or casting a spell or doing your significant "thing" for the turn. Swift actions are similar to bonus actions - you won't always have something to do with it. Notably, changing grip on a weapon is considered one of these, so for example if you have a weapon that could be wielded with either one or two hands, you'll use your swift action to do so. You also have a Move action, which obviously can be used for movement, but a number of other class features and such can use it as well - you might forgo moving on your turn in order to do something like manipulating an object.

Notably, as well, a few familiar rules work a bit differently. For instance, opportunity attacks can occur any time you try to move from a space that is threatened by a foe - meaning that if you try to position with an ally to flank them (which is a core, rather than optional rule here) while already in melee range, the creature can thwack you even if you stay within that range.

As far as I can tell, there's no penalty for making ranged attacks while in melee. One of the Soldier fighting styles seems built around using ranged weapons in melee, which is pretty badass.

Overall, though, I think D&D veterans shouldn't have that much trouble with the system. There are a lot of conditions to learn, but I don't think that it's going to be all that difficult getting the general flow of it figured out.

One thing I am noticing is how 5th Edition's introduction of both the Proficiency Bonus and the concept of Advantage and Disadvantage, the latter being a replacement for varying bonuses and penalties, really simplifies a lot of these systems. For example, Androids have a -2 penalty to Sense Motive checks (and others have a -2 penalty to sense theirs). I think if you were to do this in 5th Edition, you'd just say they have disadvantage on Insight checks. Granted, -2 is a more granular penalty (I believe that on a d20 disadvantage on average comes to about a -3.5 penalty).

One thing that's a bit surprising is that I don't believe that any classes get a second attack per turn. That said, with the Weapon Specializaiton feat, you can do pretty serious damage with a weapon. You pick one of the weapon types (such as longarms, advanced melee weapons, etc, each of which represent a class of about a dozen or so different weapons) and you get to add your character level to the damage you deal with that kind of weapon. Notably, ranged weapons don't get a bonus to damage based on your Dexterity (melee and thrown weapons still get a bonus from Strength) so the total balance of it all is a little complex.

Weapon damage also has a much wider range - the low-level things you can buy with your starting money will do like 1d8 and the like, but by the time you're high level with a lot of credits, you can get something like an Elite Autobeam Rifle that does 12d4 fire damage. A lot of weapons also have a special effect on a critical hit - laser rifles like the aforementioned will typically cause the target to burn for additional damage on subsequent turns until they're extinguished.

This, I'll actually say, kind of solves an issue that D&D has - at a certain point, D&D characters don't really have a use for gold. Once you get your heavy armor wearers in plate, you're really looking out more for magic items than anything you could just buy for gold. In Starfinder, there are magic items as well as "fusions" and "upgrades" that you can get for your gear, along with just more powerful gear that is prohibitively expensive at lower levels.

Another wrinkle with combat is that there's a special Maneuver AC you have in addition to your Kinetic Armor Class and Energy Armor Class (usually the former is higher than the latter, so it's a bit easier to hit things with lasers and other elemental weapons). Maneuver AC is 8 higher than your KAC, and when someone tries to do something like shove you, grapple you, etc., they need to hit that AC instead.

Generally speaking, I think DCs and ACs go a lot higher in Starfinder than they do in D&D. With the most expensive heavy armor, you could get a KAC of 32 without any other enhancements (you'd also need +4 to Dexterity.) But also, by level 20, your base attack bonus (which is sort of your Proficiency Bonus but only for attack rolls) is +20, and that's before you even add your Strength or Dexterity and whatever other bonus you might get. A Ksarik, which is a large plant-beast, is only CR 4 but has a +12 to its attacks (though I haven't figured out if CR scales quite as it does in D&D.)

The game's Monster Manual equivalent, the Alien Archive, is a much thinner volume, and so I suspect that if/when I run a longer campaign I'll need to either do some homebrewing or buy more books. But I think I should probably have enough to work with for now. I've gotten very comfortable homebrewing monsters in D&D, so I could try my hand with Starfinder once I'm more comfortable with the system.

The fact that the Core Rulebook is a sort of combination of the PHB and DMG does make sorting between what is crucial versus what is somewhat supplementary a little tricky. For instance, there's a section within the equipment chapter on computers, with rules for hacking and such, that seems likely to come into play only if the GM wants it to.

Anyway, things are starting to make sense a bit more. I don't think I'm quite at the point where I could run a game yet, but once I get through the rest of the classes and maybe re-read the section on skills I'll be in a better place to do so.