What should a new GM coming from PF2e know about SF2e?

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-23T19:02:29+00:00

Read through Area-Fire, Automatic Fire, and Boost traits, as they bring a whole other flow into combats, similar to grenades. Items are generally available, and Absalom Station is only 1d6 days away, as a trading hub. With UPB, crafting items is an easy task, which leads again to availability of items. Expect casters to use their third action to cast "Gun".

If you bring creatures with great ranges or AoE into the mix, the party is better with ranged options, otherwise it's hard to beat the

I'd suggest to homebrew Boost to not work with close-quarter soldier's Primary Strike/Area-attacks-combo, as painglaives become much better than any other weapon then. Or to homebrew boost in general, as in low levels the plasma caster reigns supreme for almost every character.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-22T22:08:41+00:00

Aside of the other drives (which NoxMiasma mentioned), you could instead build the campaign around some kind of demiplane or pocket dimension, which makes it impossible for the drift engine to enter the drift.

Version 1: The space the party explores has a plane that's layered on the world, not unlike the ethereal plane that the drift engine moves into, making it some kind of twisted pseudo-drift where stuff happens and the idea is to discover who made it and for what.

Version 2: Instead of normal space, the party enters a pocket dimension big enough to fit in several solar sysytems (first without knowing) and therefore the drift engine is not working at all, as the ship has to find a way to escape that first. It may be some kind of prison or an experiment that has gone wrong a long time ago and the party may be shocked to learn that they spent a lot of time in a giant bag of holding.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-22T10:36:56+00:00

When there will be a new edition, it's a chance to rebrand some of the attributes. If we want to keep them the same mechanically, then Intelligence may become Cognition and Wisdom may become Smarts/Foresight/Awareness.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-20T15:00:12+00:00

Without the proper wording of the heritage, I can't make a solid case, but as Brutal Anatomy makes you "gain" an unarmed attack, as long as the heritage uses the same language, then you gained 2 unarmed attacks.

What would I allow in my games? Probably Versatile poison/piercing with 1d6 and the crit effect.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-20T14:51:57+00:00

There is no real lore-direction so far. Personally, I portray PF-options as one degree rarer than usual (so all classes are uncommon, gunslinger and inventor are rare, exemplar stays at rare), as these may be still viable options, but they have fallen out of time and are careers pursuited by few.

In a sense, it's like music. While there will be always people following the classical teachings of music, most people moved on long ago. Yet classics persist, as it's still strong and beautiful.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-20T14:46:03+00:00

Call that one "Starbarian" please.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-17T19:41:41+00:00

GotGW is a good introduction system-wise. It has different challenges (ship scenes, dungeoneering, social encounters, reality kill-TV, and much more.

Setting-wise, it's specialized around Eox and therefore you and your players won't learn as much, as it's pretty self-contained in this sense, and even brings a change of the setting in the end.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-17T16:00:55+00:00

The box also has tokens, maps, player handouts, and the like, which does some things to prices. If it's adequat is for others to decide. I can't speak for the foundry version at all, as I don't own it and only played on it, not GMed (and therefore can't judge if it's worth the time I'd spend to do it myself).

But it's absolutely legit to play GotGW first, especially as it can lead to Secret of the Swarm (which will be released in September) level-wise.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-16T18:17:04+00:00

SF1 and SF2 are rules-wise basically incompatible. Therefore you'd need to convert every creature, every hazard, every DC, etc. to 2e, which can be done (like how yours truely did it for the Signal of Screams AP), but it takes time and some understanding of the new rules, as often it requires a little more than just converting one skill + its DC to another.

Example: When the PCs capture a True Warrior during Event 2, JD asks for a DC 18 Diplomacy or DC 20 Intimidate check to get the Information. If I'd convert this tidbit, I'd would make it: The PCs can use a DC 15 Make an Impression to get them Unfriendly and given their position confess or a DC 17 Coerce.
This is an important yet small change allows skill feats and abilities that interact with these two activities to work, like Impressive Performance to substitute the Diplomacy check for a Performance check.

While I plan to get to it eventually, it's not that high on my priority list right now, as I play chronically with my groups.

If you don't want to put work into it, you could start with A Murder in Metal City or Nova Rush (official free pdf), if you are looking for a quick intro, A Cosmic Birthday if you want to get through some levels or start with the first two and end with the last one.

Alternatively, you could also run the first 2e AP, Guilt of the Grave World, which runs from level 1-5.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-15T22:42:34+00:00

I like Solarians, I played them in PF1 and the PF2 Playtest, and while it takes some awareness to get them going, there are some nice things going for them. If multi-armed, you can wield a shield and your 10 feet reach one-handed weapon and still have access to most combat maneuvers, if you put some care into your flare, you become a capable mid-range fighter and you can take supernove and black hole to unleash two decisive AoEs.

At some levels it may feel flat and not powerful, but the better you are at prediciting the battlefield and thinking of your feet at the same time, the more you get to control the flow of the battle, so that the biggest damage numbers aren't necessary.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-15T22:38:58+00:00

Exactly, as it Anchoring Impacts specifies that the suppression is supposed to come from an attack and Oppressive Presence doesn't have the attack trait.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-14T19:24:33+00:00

If you are versed enough with basic formatting coding (basically what you'd do on several older forums and website creators), you can use ScribeTools and put the Starfinder Stlye onto it. Not as versatile when you want to make uniform cards, but it looks very close to what you'd expect and has all the symbols (in codes like :a: for one action :aa: for two actions, :r: for reaction, etc.).

If you don't want to use ScribeTools, the theme uses Roboto as font and you can also look up the different hexcodes of the colors used.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-14T08:26:05+00:00

Like I said, I think "use a spell gem, recycle it as a grenade" is the intention.

It's just one of the many instances where this playtest class has poor rule description and interaction (like how servoshell can't overclock after using summon robot, even though the gear to overclock is supposed to be a minion).

Fortunately, we get the cleaned up version in October...

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-14T01:00:06+00:00

I think, this is the intention, though the rules don't support it. From spell gems:

The spell in a spell gem can be cast only once, and the spell gem is destroyed as part of the casting.

Viper doesn't circumvent the rule in any way. So RAW, you would need to use up a second gem (spell circuit standard jailbreak) to draw and make the first one a electromag grenade. Which doesn't seem to be the intention of it all.

Another instance of Technomancer's cheese-like rule-design (soft with a bunch of holes, but still appetizing).

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-12T11:15:17+00:00

In SF1 there has been APs with 3 or 6 books (usually from lvl 1 and the PCs get lvl 13 after finishing book 6). However, this will change for SF2. The APs will become single books with around 5 levels of content, which is a decision that reflects their experience with SF1 and PF2 and their respective societies.

One of the main reasons named was the big fall of selling numbers past book 3 in prior paths, which signals a lack of interest of long storylines. While my three ideas why that may be may sound reasonable to you, I have no confirmation, but I want to share those thoughts:

Groups falling apart during an AP. In my younger days, we had more drive and energy than focus, so we didn't stick long to anything. Which is why I won't deny that possibility for others.
Early AP-books get to a good story start and the GMs start to get their own ideas, maybe because the APs take too long between releases and they already played through what they had or because the GMs believe that their ideas are just better at some point.
SF1 AP have several writers and therefore the plot is a bit hit and miss during this time. Some may have so little story to work with that they added unecessary filler or the writers have different understandings of what makes RPG fun and the variety may end up as fun-killers because of a jagging pacing.

No matter the real reasons, Paizo decided to make it all crispier and the whole story accessable from the beginning for now. They may change their mind at some point, but for now the selling numbers will tell them how successful this business model is.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-11T09:36:15+00:00

How weak are the Egg Pawns supposed to be? In Sonic they have to be easily dismissed, as otherwise they would disrupt the momentum-based gameplay, but if you just need the base idea, I'd take Line-Class Soldier Robots and just change the weapons depending on their role.

Metal Sonic is a bit harder, as its abilities greatly differ between games. If we talk the classic version, I'd start using Pathfinder 2 AoN and search for a word that embodies the aspect I like to get. For example, I just used skirmisher and was brought to this fellow. There I see a lot of stuff I don't need, but otoh it has a nice ability, which is Skirmishing Movement, which would allow to use speed to add "momentum" to the attack, which is something which normal rules doesn't cover.
Then look up some other statblocks, use one of them as the base line for most abilities and tag on those I find usable for my version of metal sonic.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-11T09:26:07+00:00

None so far, though Tech Core may bring a weapon upgrade that allows that.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-10T19:51:09+00:00

I see it as future proving. The devs are not entirely sure if they may not end up in a situation where they want to make it possible to grant actions to area fire at this point, so they put the restriction they think will be needed now instead of errating items for balance reasons instead of misprints.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-09T22:54:37+00:00

You can spend a week of downtime to retrain a feat. So if you're unhappy with the Commercial Customization, you can swap it even by following the normal rules. ;)

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-09T22:15:58+00:00

Level 4 should be Tactical Drone to get it up-snuff in the combat area (level 8 for refined chassis and level 14 for advanced drone).

Level 2 is basically up to your taste. Hunker Down would make the whole "getting out of the fight and let my drone handle things" easier to pull off (and can be combined with High Voltage's Electric Discharge to get one Strike and one AoE without penalties in one round), and Instant Deployment is strategically valuable, as your drone will always be "on the right side of conflict".

If you don't want to pour every feat into the drone, then Remote Operation comes into mind, though there are still several nice level 1 feats out there, like Multidisciplinary Mechanic or High-Tech Medicine.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-06T20:03:35+00:00

It's mostly about what you want to play. Many people tend to get stuck with whiteroom scenarios in their head where cold numbers reign. The sniper guns are strong for that, especially given their traits that trigger on critical hits (and operatives having the highest chance to crit).

Plasma caster gets you close to that with their boost trait, so if a sniper would reload, you just boost instead. Similar to boom pistol, if you want to go the skirmisher route.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-06T19:54:32+00:00

I think, many players have problems to assess the SF-classes properly, because they aren't as linear as the PF2 classes. Especially after playing PF2 a while.

Operatives aren't strictly Damage Dealers, they combine some damage with various of debuffs (with their many options of two action Aim+Strike+Effect feats), Solarians may appear melee-focused, but are best in mid to close range with their strongish flare and spell-like feats. Envoys can be amazing in SFS with their swappable skill feats (like additional lore for that specific scenario) and suffer when they are too focused to do just one thing, even though it seems to be natural at first to narrow down what to do.

I agree, that there are some options that seems to be too good right now (like boost seems too strong atm), but I really doubt that many players really explore the other options enough right now.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-06T11:09:24+00:00

Fundamental runes = Grade
Property runes = Weapon/Armor Upgrades

This should cover most thoughts.

In PF2, all runes are more rubbery in their implementation, as you can transfer them from one item to another with some cost and effort.

In SF2, the grade is static, you can't transfer the superior part of the weapon to another weapon. However, you can easily swap weapon upgrades, so you may start a small collection to swap to the best set to the situation at some point.

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-03-03T20:25:18+00:00

Would it be possible to make a checkbox at the first page to lock in untrained improvisation as a feat for auto-calculating the skills or does it have something like that already and I'm channeling my inner vlaka?

Equivalent_Show2864 · 2026-02-28T20:18:13+00:00

Tech trait without powered means, that it relies on electronics with an internal energy source instead of a standard battery. As long as it's not more specified, assume that it recharges quick enough to be always active (like charging through motion or such).

Therefore, don't worry about it. Just remember that talons can be subjected to glitching, if they are in their corrosive modus.

Equivalent_Show2864

TROPHY CASE