Aryxbez wrote:So....Has anyone played Starfinder yet? I'm looking to try and actually read the damn thing at some point, and maybe several months from now run a game. I've become a little curious about it in coming months, especially after I got the product Deck of Many Worlds that showed off there being a plethora of interesting races (Telepathic Bear People in Power Armor, brain aliens, and otter people? Hell yeah). Though I know the Paizo-ism of cool ideas, shoddy execution always being a concern.
I've played about a dozen games in a campaign.
I will start out with this : If you expect actual science fantasy you won't find it in anything more than art and terminology. The mechanics of Starfinder are absolute shit for science fiction or science fantasy settings. If you expect to do anything interesting in this, get ready for disappointment. You are ineffective at effecting the world in any meaningful way, and you can get the exact same experience out of calling a longbow a laser rifle in some other game.
I will follow with this : You MUST find the errata and start playing with that because the math is actually provably broken without it. It also fixes a ton of other things like the mechanic's hover drone being unable to hover, and falling out of the sky if it does anything besides move. And that is not an exaggeration, it actually does not work as written RAW or RAI. The entire book is filled with stuff like this.
Moving into the details:
In my 6 person group, everyone has pretty much the same skills, at the same level. So much so that at least 30 times when a skill has been asked for, everyone has said 'I can do that' and they're all close enough that you don't care who does it. That being said, if you have an operative, just let them make all the skill checks, because everyone else is worse at pretty much every skill than them.
Equipment is absurdly weak, and you are on an enforced actual MMO grind to increase your gear, by buying/find new stuff. You can't upgrade the old stuff to save money, you can't sell it for effectively any money towards a new one. Once you out level you laser rifle, you throw it out and get a new higher level one.
Monsters and players don't follow the same mechanics, which would mean more if the monsters were memorable, or players could actually do things. I have a special beef with the race selection, it's bland, uninspired and I don't know what they think androids are, but what they printed are not androids.
Magic sucks, like it's almost entirely worthless. No one wants to play a technomancer because they're gimps, and the mystic regrets his choice because he can't do anything useful with his spells, in or out of combat. This is hate boner levels of nerf on magic, a lot of it without rhyme or reason.
I wanted to play a technomancer, but it's so bad I didn't even need to look at for more than 10 minutes before finding it easily the weakest class. I went mechanic because it was the only one that seemed like it could do anything interesting. Then I ran the numbers on hacking and found out it was mathematically impossible for me to do anything unless I was 5 or more levels above the item level of what I was hacking, and I had keep the skill maxed at every opportunity. I can't craft anything, because it's exactly the same as buying it. I have a 'pet' in my drone that gets 1 action a round unless I direct it using my actions. Woo, I'm feeling the high tech here.
Ships are really, really stupid. They don't make sense in terms of mass/size, the mechanics for having to work as a crew are pretty shitty for forced 'everyone helps' and (assuming you're using the serrated numbers so you're not screwed out of being able to pilot your ship) they're a solved problem: go fast, have the longest ranged weapons.
I want to turn around on ships here and bad math again. When you level up, even if your ship doesn't change, it literally gets harder for you to make the exact same check you've been making the entire previously level.
Autoscaling DCs abound, and are mostly poorly thought out, besides autoscaling DCs being bullshit to begin with.
On top of all of this, the books layout is horrific, and finding anything in it is a dumpster fire. I've played it for a couple months and I still can't find basic shit like how grenades work with out involving 3 other people. I gave up even trying and just copied the relevant rules down in my notes program so I don't waste 10 minutes to throw a grenade for d6 damage to 1 creature.
Combat is also boring bullshit. In 12 sessions, I was attacked once. I have the highest damage output, but because everyone of my turns (again not exaggerating) is 'I shoot, my drone shoots, done' that nothing ever pays attention to me because no one realizes I'm the damage dealer. I'd like to pretend I know the difference between stamina and HP, but I don't, and I don't really care.
It's a shit game that only has even an inkling of success because it's Paizo that published it.