PC Roles for Starfinder — For Loosening the Math (Patreon)

One common objection to Starfinder can be summed up as “the Math is too tight.”

One common objection to Starfinder can be summed up as “the Math is too tight.” Now there are a lot of ways of saying that — success is too rare, characters must be optimized to succeed, my spells don’t work often enough — but at the core it’s all saying the same thing. Starfinder is designed to make it difficult (well, the design shoots for making it impossible) for a character to be so good at any aspect of the game that they have no chance of failing an important check that is an appropriate challenge for their level.

(And, yes, operatives are *supposed* to eventually be unable to fail trick attack checks, since they can still miss with the attack roll even if it’s going to get extra dice if it hits.)

Put simply, some people want PCs to succeed more (and, by extension, NPCS succeed less) than the baseline Starfinder rules are designed to accommodate. And, as a play preference… that’s fine! (An associated play style preference is one where you take PCs of a given level, and throw hoards of significant foes of about their CR at them instead of 1-2. You still need PCs able to break the math curve to survive that, even if you don’t want PCs to have the overwhelming dominance of PC power you’d get by throwing hoards of foes with CRs 4 or more below the PCs’ level.)

There are lots of ways you can make that happen… including the optional rules of this article, “PC Roles.”

PC ROLES

A PC Role is a short, simple set of bonuses you give a PC to make them radically better at one thing. Even if a PC with a role is not optimized, within their role it’s unlikely any other PC without that role will match their effectiveness. Because the math of PC and NPC advancement are so closely matched in Starfinder, it’s not necessary for the benefits of a role to increase as a character gains levels.

A player selects a character role at 1st level, and this can’t be changed. While the roles have no prerequisites, in general it’s a good idea to elect a role that seems to be a good match for the character’s concept and class — being an Effects Expert can work for a broad range of classes from grenade soldiers to spellcasters, but it a terrible choice for a character with few or no options to force a foe to make a saving throw. Damage Dealer works for any combat-capable class, including operatives and mechanics.

For a higher-powered game (which might be desirable to compensate for not having enough players, or to create an even more epic feel to the campaign), a GM could even allow each PC to select two PC Roles. If the roles are in the same conceptual area (such as Damage Dealer and Tank, which are both straight combat focused), that PC is likely to overshadow all other characters when an encounter is focused on that concept

A mechanic with a drone applies the benefits of their role to both their own actions, and their drone’s.

Ideally, no PC Role is taken by more than one PC in a given group. The exception to this is if a GM builds a campaign with that concept included (such as running a group of starfighter pilots, and making them all Stellar officers).

The benefits from PC Roles apply to starship combat where applicable.

When a PC Role talks about doing something “normally,” it means without the benefits the skill role provides.

(Art by Grandfailure)

PC Role DescriptionsThere could be dozens or PC Roles available in a campaign, but we’ll start with just 10.

Arcane CombatantIf you cast a spell as a standard action that has a saving throw, and is not noted as being ‘harmless,” and no creature is affected by the spell in any way, you make immediately take an additional standard action. You cannot cast a spell or use a spell-like or supernatural ability with this extra standard action.

Damage DealerYou gain a +3 bonus to all attack rolls. If an attack of yours does less than its average damage, you may instead deal average damage.

Effects ExpertAny time you force a foe to make a saving throw (such as with a spell, class feature, grenade, or whatever), the DC of that saving throw is 3 higher than normally.

HealerYou gain the spells from the mystic healer connection as spell-like abilities. You can cast these on targets with a range of 60 feet. Treat your character level as your mystic level to determine which healer connection spells you know, and their caster level. You can cast the highest-level spell you gain from this role twice per day, the next-highest three times per day, and so on. If you expend a Resolve Point when you do so, you may cast these spells as move actions. Your mystic cure spell from this PC Role can cure Stamina Points, if you wish it to.

You also gain the the 0-level spells detect affliction, realign, and stabilize as spell-like abilities useable at will.

Skilla GorillaYou gain a +3 bonus to all your skill checks.

Skill MoneyAny skill check you could normally perform as a full action, you may instead preform as a standard action. Any skill check you could normally perform as a standard action, you may instead preform as a move action.

SpeedsterYou can take an extra move action each round. This move action can only be used to move, or adjust your equipment (such as pulling out or pulling away new equipment). You do not provoke attacks of opportunity by leaving a threatened space.

Stellar OfficerYou gain a bonus to all starship combat skill checks equal to 3x the tier of the ship you are in, a +5 bonus to attacks with starship weapons, and you can attack with a weapon someone else has already attacked with this turn. You count as two crew, and can fill two separate roles (taking all the actions of each, but you cannot take the same role twice), including taking a role another character has that is not normally able to be held by multiple characters at once.

TankYou gain +3 EAC/KAC, and +2 Stamina Points per character level. In combat, each round a foe could attack you, and doesn’t include you in any attack or offensive action, the foe suffers a -2 penalty to all its attack rolls and save DCs until the beginning of its next turn.

UnfalteringYou gain a +3 bonus to all saving throws, and +3 Resolve Points.

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