I'm already running one game of Starfinder (apologizes to those that didn't get in - I really did get a lot more interest than I can support), so I'm all-in with it. I like what I've seen, though there are big chunks of the book I haven't looked at yet.
Carakav:
- I like the idea of themes, but I wish they were fleshed-out more. Really bare-bones. Should have been more like sorcerer bloodlines.
They're meant to replace Pathfinder's traits and take some cues from 5e's backgrounds. Thus, they are thin, but that's mostly on purpose. They certainly have more meat than the 5e version and they have a bigger impact than the PF traits, so I don't know that they need a lot more.
They mostly serve as a layer of flavor for a character and a chance to get a class skill you might not normally have access to with some other bonuses thrown in along the way at higher levels.
Carakav:
- Classes, okay. All bases covered. What on earth is a 'solarian'?
Solarians are meant to be completely different. They're based on one of the extra-solar race's traditions that they brought with them (the four armed guys, I think). They don't have a direct Pathfinder analogue. They're also kind of hard to wrap your head around (and I haven't quite figured out how they work).
Carakav:
- Lazer pistols start at 1d4 damage. What a joke. At level 20 people are dealing 11d6. Section on power armor only has a handfull of entries. Ugh.
There were space limitations, so there are lots of areas that'll get expanded in future books (this is Paizo, after all). I'd love to see more gear, personally, but I suspect people will be clamoring for more on starships first.
Laser pistols are in the small arms category which pretty much every class gets, and they're kind of crappy. On the plus side, they do fire damage, which is pretty good. In the same category, you also have projectile pistols that do 1d6, which is slightly better but requires bullets. If you want to do decent damage, you need to get longarms or better (and there are lots of ways to do that, though feats are the most universal).
Carakav:
- Item crafting is bare-bones.
That was an intentional change. Crafting uses skills you're already going to want, so the cost of being good at crafting is low. There are small bonuses to the quality of the gear, but the biggest thing that you get out of it is availability. If you find you really need a flamethrower, being able to craft one at cost on-site is a heck of a lot better than the week or two of travel time it might take you to get one from off world.
Carakav:
- Starship combat = yikes! I'll save this for later.
You and me both! They say it's meant to be fairly simple and should engage the whole party. I haven't read the rules in depth on that yet, though. I do know that they've release the first SFS set of quests and that includes a pretty in-depth set of handouts for space combat. That might be a good place to start?
Carakav:
- Spells are spells. Most are lifted straight out of Pathfinder and re-flavored.
There's also a good bit of rebalance in it, too. One of the biggest changes is that they're taking a concept the used in Occult Adventures and kind of synthesizing it with a 5e concept to give you spells that you can cast at a variety of levels. For instance, if you know Flight, you can cast it as a first level spell for one effect or a sixth level spell for a different effect. It's a lot cleaner than the Occult Adventures version (since all the spells are grouped together in one spell) and a lot more robust than the 5e version (which usually just changed one variable of the spell when you changed the level you cast it at). I haven't figured out quite how yet, but there are apparently ways to rarely cast spells that used to be 9th level spells in Pathfinder.
quote:
- Section on Pathfinder conversion will get a lot of use, especially when it comes to monsters. Aside from a level 20 goblin, there are no new critters listed in the book. Pathfinder is the only source, at the moment.
Alien Archive will have extensive rules for making monsters, which are apparently much more in line with the ones from Unchained than the ones from Pathfinder core. The goal is to have monsters be more consistent and easier to use than Pathfinder default.
If you need monsters
right now there are a few statblocks in the two free products they've put out (though First Contact
may have some inconsistency with current rules).