Let's Make a Starfinder Character

[@drrrgycc]

‘’ they could’ve literally made one of the playing race look like…’’ and proceed to describe one of the actual playable race he didn’t know existed

[@benedictrogers1478]

His criticism also applies just as strongly to medieval/early modern fantasy games, Starfinder actually excels when it comes to supplementary races (which it focuses on more than classes). Heck the corebook races make a lot of sense, they hit a good number of space fiction archetypes. You've got your artificial people, biomorphic species, humanoid reptile, intelligent gerbil, insectoid (arguably twice over, Lashunta have strong insect theming), psychic people (twice over) and enigmatic outsiders (again twice over).

[@nathang7014]

This video needs an update! My favorite part of dming starfinder is all the wacky diverse (playable) alien races that can be explored with their cool homeplanet descriptions!

[@Ishmu_the_Crazy]

There are more Non-Humanoid Races in other books, I assume they didn't want to go too out there for the first core book. Skittermander is my favorite of them.

[@MrVideo540]

I am personally a fan of the Izalguun. But the Brakim genuinely creeps me out.

[@ne0ph3wl]

Picks Soldier with Kasathas. Complains he can't use four arms. DID YOU READ THE OPERATIVE CLASS??

[@zidarose]

It helps that Paizo has expanded the races and classes a bit... Loving seeing this stuff.

[@almightydiplodocus]

If Starfinder is anything like Pathfinder, the reason for reducing DCs instead of adding a bonus is because bonuses might not stack with each other.

[@lukasz1kier]

Also at least in 1e pathfinder you can't make untrained knowledge checks with DC higher than 10, if there is such a rule in starfinder for Culture checks then reducing DC might be relevant.

[@Gakusangi]

I think maybe you're focusing on the numbers a little too much. I would assume the benefit of a four-armed character able to hold a weapon in each arm is so they can quickly swap their damage type during combat to accommodate for the resistances of their target unless they just aren't allow to carry a gun in each hand? I would assume that would be the idea, anyway.

[@benedictrogers1478]

Combat wise I believe a specific feat allows you to make four attacks from four guns, but the penalties are not generally worth it. Otherwise yeah, the big benefits are stuff like having more damage types available (an Operative Kasatha can have a kinetic ranged weapon, an energy ranged weapon, a kinetic melee weapon, and an energy melee weapon, and Trick Attack with whatever's optimal) and the 'minor' benefit of being able to do stuff while one pair of hands is full. Also probably occasional bonuses when exploring.

[@dantedetoussaint209]

Starfinder is amazing

[@Fnoffen]

In my opinion, the Gunslinger style of character would be better to tack onto an Operative (possibly with the Daredevil specialization) than a Soldier. Partly because of the Lvl 8 Operative ability "Triple Attack" which lets you make 3 attacks instead of two with a full attack. This is then increased to 4 attacks at level 13 with the "Quad Attack" ability. Worth noting is that the -4 base penalty for Full Attacks stays unchanged with these abilities. So with the Multi weapon fighting Feat you will be able to make 3 attacks at -3 by level 8 and 4 attacks at -3 at level 13. The Soldier does get the ability "Soldiers Onslaught" at level 11 which does allow them to make 3 attacks in a full attack but that specifically increases the Full attack penalty to -6. As for the 4 armed part, it does allow you to have up to 4 small arms equipped at once, each with different damage types letting you choose what damage type to attack with. Which can be very helpful with all the myriad of enemies having resistances to fire or cold, or what have you. The Operative can also always choose to instead of shooting many times instead make one Trick Attack with a nifty damage bonus very similar to the old classic Backstab.

[@3_14pie]

If you look at the races beyond the basic book, there some pretty wild ones, like drow, aasimar and even tiefling! But being serious though, there's like 100 races and you can even play a floating giant brain with rows of tentacles

[@larryveit9488]

The game came out in 2017. He's looking at the base game.

[@3_14pie]

@larryveit9488 why are you stating the obvious?

[@larryveit9488]

He doesn't seem to know, if you ask me.

[@JohnSmith-ch9sm]

The idea of bulk is interesting. It means that large, but light things are still hard to carry around.

[@FalkaRiannon]

"...gives a bonus to small arms attacks" me "T-rex screech"

[@retropuffer2986]

I see what you mean about alien races. I played TSR's Star Frontiers in the early 80s and the player races like Vrusk and Dralasite were just awesome.

[@zigmenthotep]

Yeah, the unedited version of that rant went into how this seems to be a more recent development. If you look back to the 50s and earlier you see a lot of very distinctive and unusual alien designs, but as time has progressed things have been pushed more and more toward the norm that any intelligent life must be humanoid. Like, to the point where there are multiple episodes of various Star Treks based around "Wait, could this non-humanoid lifeform be _intelligent_ ?"

[@benedictrogers1478]

​@@zigmenthotepto be fair it's gone more towards 'can easily be played by a human actor's, written science fiction still hops all over the place when it comes to aliens. On the one hand it's intelligent gerbils, on the other it's stuff like Pattern Jugglers.

[@DJchilcott]

Me, standing outside at night. "There's one... there's one.... there's one... there's another... Oop, there it is... Yep, that's a star as well... Wait is that? No that's a planet... but that's a star. Man, being a Starfinder is easy!"

[@Enforcer_Hound1]

I’ve had the core book on my desk but none of my friends want to play it. So I mainly look at videos for characters ideas.

[@larryveit9488]

They've got Starfinder society game just like Pathfinder society, if you're interested in playing

[@larryveit9488]

They're putting out a Starfinder 2nd edition this summer. It's going to be more like Pathfinder 2nd edition.

[@DogsandDragons]

Alright, what does everyone think the colors of stats are, here’s mine STR; RED DEX; Green CON; Pink INT; Blue WIZ; Purple CHA; Yellow Let’s discuss

[@gidofter_lukge]

Sounds like you want a conrasu

[@CommissarMitch]

I want to note that the supplement books do add a lot more wierd stuff to play as. Where a personal favourite is the Goldfish in a Bowl. Look I know it is not a bowl it is an antropromorphic body... let me have this.

[@CommissarMitch]

I hope you will cover Starfinder 2e when it comes out, as it is going to be very similar to Pathfinder 2e.

[@EastPort10]

A lot of people in the comments are already stating that "There's more alien playable races in the other books" so I won't exactly jump on that bandwagon... But I will state that most of them mention the Alien Archive which is the Monster Manual of Starfinder and some people have issues with playing as monster-y races and even in other systems, If you want to play as some freak of nature, the Monster Manual is typically where you look. So instead I'll mention one of the other books I have, The Pact Worlds book, also has more inhuman races to play as including sluggy shapeshifters, Humaniod plant with no eyes, Sentient Robots that don't look human, and a creature that is somewhat similar to what Zig imagined in the video funnily enough. Now, I will agree that if you want to play as an exotic non-humany alien, you shouldn't need to get a whole separate book to do so. At least one of the non-humany races should have been in the core rule book imo.

[@Fnoffen]

Actually you technically don't NEED to buy any books. All the rules and species stats can be found online. Primarily on the Archive of Nethys.

[@ryann4470]

I'd like to see you cover Toon an archaic Steve Jackson release.

[@dantedetoussaint209]

There are more races in the other books

[@dantedetoussaint209]

Books expand on background and classes and so on

[@tyleratherton1087]

Over 100 races to play as but the man points to the core book, sad

[@pepagacy]

To be fair, a new player would most likely just go with the Core Rulebook for the starting options. There are other books and the Archives of Nethys website that can give you a lot more options.

[@youcantbeatk7006]

If you wanna see some cool alien species I'd recommend checking out the ones from "Humanity Lost."

[@Badass_Torchic]

Cool

[@MrWarCraze]

You obviously didn't do any research on starfinder races lol

[@drrrgycc]

My exact thoughts lol

[@alanaran1575]

My friend is interested in DMing this... I'm not really feeling the races but I'll give it a try, I'll see if he will let me be a space dwarf in the legacy section lol. I've only ever played dnd 5e and I've been wanting to play pf2e so maybe this will give me an easier time with pf2e if I ever get to play it. Thanks for the video.

[@StanNotSoSaint]

Asking why a derivative of dnd has no races that aren't anthropomorphic is somewhat hypocritical, don't you think?

[@zigmenthotep]

Elaborate, how is that hypocritical?

[@StanNotSoSaint]

@@zigmenthotep aliens has the same potential to be non-humanoid as fantasy creatures do. DnD could always be inclusive of gelatinous cubes, ghosts and centaurs as PCs if they were interested in that, but they firmly stayed in the area of humans with slightly lesser hight and a bit more pointy ears. Although when I commented that I forgot that you _did_ actually called it out somewhere around 3e, so I retrieve my hypocrisy statement since you made the same criticism in both kinds of settings. Sorry if I offended you.

[@simpleroleplay2136]

I love your videos you do on role playing game keep up the awesome work

[@simpleroleplay2136]

Ship combat I would love to see

[@blackmagick77]

Game makes race with 4 arms. Cant use 4 arms to shoot 4 small guns or 2 big guns...laaaame

[@elric58]

Could have done without the extended bashing of the species and art. The "mechanical" gymnastics likely to be involved trying to make radically non-humanoid races not only alien looking, but function differently while maintaining some sort of balance in the game (especially a new and unproven game at the time) would have been very difficult, at best.

[@kellenbigman]

2:17 says the guy who picked a d10 with an eye and gloves for his creative and animated representation... 👎