 Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Chappie, and today we will be going into a world filled with space battles, action, techno wizards, star pilots, and laser beams, all set in a legally distinct galaxy far far away. The time has finally come for me to talk about Starfinder, the futuristic successor to Pathfinder, and one of my favorite games to play from all of the two games that I've managed to get in on. I'm gonna talk about its features, its differences from 5e, how to make your first character, and I'll give a short story on what to expect in the high futuristic fantasy setting. As always keep in mind that a lot of this is just my opinion, so if you feel like this system is just a gimmick, and that the real money is in the 40k RPGs, feel free to play your games however you want. But with that out of the way, let's begin. So Starfinder is a space RPG created by Paizo that came out back in 2017 with the intention of trying out new mechanics that could potentially be put into Paizo's sister game, Pathfinder, while also creating a new tentpole brand to wave in the faces of table nerds. Much like how Pathfinder pulled its inspiration from a bunch of different settings to create a hodgepodge world of tonal inconsistency, Starfinder took inspiration from all the different space stories from video games, movies, and television to create a universe where anything could be hiding behind the blackness of space. In fact, Starfinder is so much of a sequel to Pathfinder that it takes place within the Pathfinder universe just thousands of years in the future, which is why in addition to all the new alien races, those purists who only understand D&D, you can still pick out the classic fantasy races of elves, dwarves, and goblins. In fact, Starfinder was originally meant to be backwards compatible with Pathfinder, and it's still technically possible just somewhere along the line they must have decided to give Starfinder its own identity, because while the system that it uses is still the same, the two games operate very differently, like the difference between Pathfinder and 3.5, so you'll have an awkward time transitioning your characters from one game to another. With all that being said, it is very clear that Paizo also pulled a lot of inspiration from 5e in regards to simplifying the rules and introducing new mechanics that are almost carbon copies of the world's greatest role-playing game. It's not an updated clone like Pathfinder was, but it's cool to see 5e rules mixed in with old 3e rules and new experimental rules. As for the actual gameplay, players of Pathfinder or 3.5 will understand pretty quickly, but to break down for 5e stands, every turn is composed of three types of actions, standard movement and swift. Standard actions are your normal 5e action, movement actions are taken specifically to do anything with your legs, like walk, jump, crawl, or get jiggy with it, and swift actions are very minor actions that you don't really have to think about. You get one action of each type on your turn, and you can replace your movement action with another swift action, as well as your standard action with either movement or swift. There's also full actions, which take your whole turn, and reactions, which are exactly as you understand them. Most of your turns will be dedicated to the time-honored art of beating somebody's face in, and this is where one of my favorite mechanics come in. Unlike most other TT RPGs, Health and Starfinder is very non-standard. Instead of having the basic binary of, you have 40 HP, don't hit zero, loser, you instead have very little actual HP, but it's protected by stamina points, which can be thought of as a second HP bar that goes over the first one. Stamina points go down easily, but you can spend resolve to build back up your stamina points in the middle of a fight, mimicking you taking a breath after a heavy hit before getting back into the fray. Once your stamina's gone, further damage will take away from your small HP pool, and that's how you know you're in trouble. Luckily, you have two different forms of AC to protect you from getting kicked in the nards, kinetic AC for any physical attacks, and energy AC for space nards. Saving throws, however, don't use your ability scores directly, like in 5e, but they stick to Pathfinder's reflex fortitude and wheel saves. Additionally, one of the cooler things about Pathfinder is that it makes the martial classes more impactful via a huge selection of weapons, a lot of which scale in power with the players via having a level attached to them to represent what level the players should be before they get that weapon. It's not that the guns can't be used should the players get their hands on them, but a gun that does 20d10 is classified as a level 20 weapon because maybe third level characters should not be getting the Deatomizer yet. This means that not only are you getting new abilities and spells, but you're also rolling more die with every attack, which is an alternative way of increasing damage output since Starfinder doesn't really do extra attacks. When it comes to making a character, players from 5e will have little to no issue making a leap to Starfinder. You have three major choices mixed in with some smaller choices afterwards. Similar to 5e, you'll roll for some ability scores, which are the same as D&D, and then you'll choose your race, your class, and your theme slash background. There are seven races and seven classes, as well as a whole caboodle of themes, so you got plenty of options to choose from. Firstly, the races are pretty wild, and with the exception of humans and androids, none of them will look familiar to you, which I think is dope since this game is in space and you can bet that I don't just want elves in space or orcs in space. That being said, if you are totally lame and want elves in space, then the end of the book has a legacy races section so that your wheat toast self can play as a typical D&D fantasy race. As for classes, Starfinder has seven to choose from, and only a couple have any sort of magic system due to the change in setting, but most do harken back to the stereotypical class rule. The envoy, for instance, is the charismatic charmer slash skill monkey that behaves like a non-magic bard. The mechanic hacks the planet, mystic actually gets magic and behaves like a cleric, operative is your sneaky stabby road, salarans are a more unique class that builds up energy and then channels it into force powers, the soldier has gun and is big, and the technomancer is your space wizard and one of my favorite classes. Each class has their own weird gimmick that makes them badass, and instead of having specific abilities that you get at every level, classes in Starfinder give you a bunch of abilities that you can choose from, with more becoming available as you level up, allowing you to tailor your abilities to speak to exactly what kind of character you want to be. Themes are wild and varied, so I'm not going to list them all, but it should be noted that there is an expansion called the Character Operations Manual that gives you more of everything. Once you've picked your major three, you pick the particular abilities that you want from your class, you put points into skills where you're given points dictated by your class and intelligence score rather than flat, either you are proficient or not bonus, and then you buy equipment and boom, you're done. Starfinder does a really good job of making the character creation process easy, and the only things more complicated than 5e are things that I honestly think 5e went too simple on, specifically the skills and class abilities. I've mentioned that World of Darkness's storyteller system is my favorite RPG system, but I don't mind the simplicity here, and I really think that if you want to try out a new tabletop game after 5e, don't pick a different D&D edition, pick Starfinder. It borrows enough from 5e that you'll understand a good amount of what's going on, and it's different enough that you'll get a grasp for how other RPGs can be played. Obviously, you'll have to get over the hurdle of it being set in space and not medieval Europe, but we all have to make sacrifices. And now, to give a tale of galactic adventures that you know what you're getting into, my last Starfinder game found me as a robot technomancer traveling into a freighter ship, as a mercenary group that was investigating some illicit dealings. We made our way to the main warehouse where the workers were organizing cargo, and our envoy got to work talking to the captain. As he was smooth talking, our mechanic had their drone companion quietly take a look at one of the nearby consoles, and we found the contraband, 40 gallons of liquid space meth. Unfortunately, their security was tight, tighter than a cargo ship should be, and the drone was discovered, compelling all the workers to pull out weapons and start firing. During the chaos, I scanned the enemies to find the most vulnerable one, then held out my hand and charged at them, screaming in binary as I grabbed their shirt and sent 800 cc's of death into their body. A few rounds go by, and the party is forced behind one shipping container. Our mechanic was down, I was blue screened, and the envoy had a single face wound, which basically meant that they were out of the game. In a moment of decisiveness, our operator activated their reduced gravity shoes, leaped over the container, and sliced their energy sword through a chain that held up another container, sending it plummeting down and crushing the captain in space meth. The day was saved, we made it back to the ship, and I made sure to alt-f4 the person who knocked me out. This is a typical adventure in Starfinder, and once you get your crew together, you too can look out to the stars. Buuuut that'll about do it. I hope you enjoyed this video. Be sure to leave a like, comment, subscribe, ring the bell to get all those fancy notifications, and maybe support me on Patreon so that I can buy a spaceship all my own. But yeah. Dabby out.