Welcome back to our Starfinder Society rollout! Last week, Jessica talked to you about Starfinder Society scenarios. Of course, in order to play these adventures, you’ll need a character or three, so today let’s dive into character creation!
In general, you’ll follow the rules as outlined in the Starfinder Player Core to create a player character (PC) in Starfinder Society. For a preview of these rules, check out the Pathfinder Player Core. The following steps will augment these character creation rules:
- When creating your character concept, remember that you are a member of the Starfinder Society. They must be able to work with any other Starfinder and abide by the Society’s motto: “Explore, Report, Cooperate.”
- Characters may use any ancestry, heritage, background, and class from the Starfinder Galaxy Guide or Starfinder Player Core.
- Players who participated in the Starfinder Playtest will have access to exclusive backgrounds based on these adventures. Additionally, all Starfinders will have access to campaign-specific backgrounds in addition to those found in hardcover material.
- Characters must be adults for their ancestry, and cannot be sanctified to unholy.
In Starfinder Society (second edition), characters may be created at 1st-, 3rd-, 5th- or 7th-level. While we encourage all players to start their first character at 1st-level to help them learn the system, we believe this flexibility will allow for greater ease of scheduling across the board. Characters who participate in an entire plotline from the very start will also find that later scenarios will reward having participated in earlier adventures.
Pregenerated characters will be available at 1st-, 3rd-, and 5th-level, though we want to caution you all that 5th-level content won’t appear until close to the end of our first season of play.
When creating a character at a higher level, you may select starting equipment using either the lump sum or permanent items as found in the Character Wealth table (Starfinder GM Core 59).
We do not intend to publish adventures for characters above 10th level. As scenarios get into higher level ranges, we see diminishing table counts. These high-level adventures are also significantly more involved to design and develop. We’re announcing this cap now to set expectations and to ensure you’re all aware of our plans from the start. We’d hate for you to create a character whose build comes online late in the game, only to find out that you won’t have a chance to play them in the campaign.
Those who are interested in play above 10th-level should look to our other published Adventure Paths and Adventure content. Organized Play is a great way to find other players you enjoy gaming with for these additional experiences!
Illustration by Renan Maurilio. Our plan, with a handful of exceptions, is to make as much of our published Starfinder content available to all Starfinder characters without purchasing boons or completing certain adventures. This means that at launch all ancestries, classes, and other options in the StarfinderGalaxy Guide, StarfinderPlayer Core, and StarfinderGM Core will be available for all characters, and future products will see similarly permissive access. Starfinder Society will not use variant rules such as Free Archetype or Automatic Bonus Progression.
Additionally, players will be permitted to use the technomancer and mechanic classes from the Tech Playtest until their release in a future hardcover book! We will have full guidelines for converting your character once we get closer, but expect that any technomancers or mechanics will be required to rebuild into the final rules once they are released.
We want you to purchase a Paizo product and be able to use that content immediately, without restriction. One of the core appeals of Starfinder is the cantina of alien options available, and we believe that’s a key component of our Organized Play program as well.
With that in mind, what might Achievement Points be used for? And what other rewards might scenarios unlock? Join us next week for more on adventure rewards and other program elements!
Follow along with our SFS2 rollout blogs:
Until next time – Explore! Report! Cooperate! And start crafting those Starfinder characters!
Alex Speidel
Organized Play CoordinatorJessica Catalan
Starfinder Society Developer
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