Paizo is making big changes to its science fantasy tabletop role-playing game Starfinder, kicking off a playtest phase at Gen Con for a new rules set while also shaking up the setting by starting a war and blowing up a planet.
Starfinder first released in 2017 as Paizo was working on Pathfinder Second Edition and relies on the Dungeons & Dragons Open Game License, aka the OGL. When Wizards’ plans to change the OGL leaked last year, Paizo quickly moved to protect itself, releasing new versions of the Pathfinder Player Core and Pathfinder GM Core in November and shelving planned Starfinder books until Paizo could change the mechanics. Starfinder is set in the far future of the world of Pathfinder, and the games will now both be fully compatible with the Pathfinder Second Edition rules, which should make combining content easier.
“We had a whole section of the first edition Starfinder Core Rulebook dedicated to converting Pathfinder 1e content, but that was way too much of an investment for the GM,” Paizo associate publisher Thurston Hillman told Polygon. “In Starfinder First Edition there are three to four different stat blocks for a hellhound, which was a creature that already existed in Pathfinder First Edition. That just eats up our words. We ended up in this situation where we were just recreating Pathfinder stuff, which just became more and more annoying and took away from our ability to really build the brand.”
“[Now] we can just have a hellhound and maybe give it a gun,” Paizo senior developer Jenny Jarzabski added.
Compatibility also means more options for players who might otherwise be dissatisfied moving from the 100 alien species and fantasy creatures they could play in the original Starfinder to the 10 ancestries featured in the Starfinder Second Edition Playtest Rulebook. Hillman assures fans who want to create the diversity of Star Wars’ Mos Eisley Cantina that they can both play some of the odder Pathfinder ancestries, like the doll-like Poppets, along with rewritten Starfinder ancestries.
The aquatic Kalo are one of six ancestries that will be included in the Starfinder Galaxy Guide publishing in May. Image: Paizo
The Playtest Rulebook includes all the core species found in the Starfinder Core Rulebook along with some additions such as jellyfish-like Barathu and Skittermanders, a fan favorite six-armed fuzzy creature known for their chaotic helpfulness. It will feature new rules for most of Starfinder’s classes, though Mechanic and Technomancer will be tested in another playtest in early 2025 along with rules for starship combat.
A new edition provided the opportunity to redesign the classes. The developers built numerous expressions of each class internally up to level 10 and then swapped who was working on what to get fresh eyes and contributions to the project. That round-robin approach led to the present evolutions of the original Starfinder classes. Soldiers moved away from what Hillman called “fighters in space” to become focused on heavy weapons and laying down suppressing fire. Witchwarpers manipulate reality and now have anchors that keep their minds grounded. The catch-all spellcasters known as Mystics are now more focused on building bonds between party members.
Six more ancestries – including Dragonkin, the shapeshifting starfish-like Astrozoans, and the aquatic Kalo – will be released in the Starfinder Galaxy Guide in May ahead of the launch of the second edition Starfinder Player Core at Gen Con 2025. The 176-page hardcover book will provide players with an array of new backgrounds and archetypes based around the game’s factions while giving game masters plenty of inspiration. While previous setting books like Starfinder Pact Worlds were organized geographically, digging into what could be found on various planets and moons, the Starfinder Galaxy Guide will divide its content by genre.
“We decided to identify the types of stories that we think can be told in Starfinder — like dystopian adventures, or high-tech adventures with lots of machines and robots, or future fantasy where you have dragon riders in space,” Jarzabski said. “Our hope is that a GM and a party can say, ‘We want to have a horror game, the Event Horizon/Alien treatment. Where can we go?’ and be able to open up the Galaxy Guide and get a good idea where to start that campaign.”
The Starfinder Galaxy Guide will have new character options focused on the game’s factions, like the Stewards, an interplanetary peacekeeping organization. Image: Paizo
The book will focus on areas that are core to the Starfinder setting that could potentially be developed into new adventures, such as a recently opened vault on the undead planet Eox and a giant spaceship crashing on the Mars-like planet Akiton.
“This book is a big promissory note to players and GMs,” Hillman said. “Once we’re out of the core rulebook cycle, we enter a phase where we can start exploring a lot of different themes in depth.”
Starfinder Galaxy Guide will also build on big changes to the setting introduced in the adventure paths for the Starfinder Second Edition Playtest Rulebook. The first-level adventure A Cosmic Birthday will introduce The Newborn, a god of cosmic horrors, birth, and paradigm shifts that will hatch out of the Lovecraftian-inspired planet Aucturn. Associated with Nyarlathotep, the planet had a big role in Pathfinder’s higher-level play. But getting rid of it was just another way for Starfinder to assert its own identity. As part of the event, Shelyn, the goddess of art, beauty, and love, fused with her twisted torture-obsessed brother Zon-Kuthon to create Zon-Shelyn, who Jarzabski describes as “our artsy goth god.”
The 10th-level playtest adventure Empires Devoured will release on Oct. 10, placing players at the center of peace talks between the Veskarium and the Azlanti Star Empire that come under attack by rogue forces. Hillman wrote the adventure, which is inspired by his favorite Star Trek film, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
“I love broad sweeping stories where we can set something up and have ramifications and follow-ups,” Hillman said. “Empires Devoured is a very serious, high-stakes story but it’s also a springboard. At the end of the adventure, you don’t stop the war. You stop something else that would have had massive repercussions.”
Jarzabski and Hillman want the playtest adventures to be enjoyable to play, not just a way to stress-test the new system, so they’ll be less challenging than the ones used to test the Pathfinder Second Edition. There will be optional sections for GMs willing to risk killing all the player characters to try something new.
“We really hope that in a few years people can still play A Cosmic Birthday or Empires Devoured and that they’re still going to be fun,” Jarzabski said.
