Starships In A Campaign
Source Tech Core pg. 202
A starship sets a crew apart from any other adventuring party, giving them the ability to travel freely throughout the galaxy. The starship is the crew’s home away from home, a method of transportation, and a powerful weapon.
In a way, the starship acts like another character that levels up along with its crew. The crew’s starship is the same level as the PCs or, if the crew members are different levels, the average party level (add all the PCs’ levels together, then divide by the number of PCs in the crew). The crew keeps track of their starship’s abilities, conditions, equipment, status, and statistics using a starship sheet. You should always have an up-to-date copy of the crew’s starship sheet so you can adjudicate rules for their preferred battle stations and upgrades as needed. Additionally, keeping track of the player starship in your campaign helps you plan interesting encounters that challenge the crew and reward them for their choices.
In a way, the starship acts like another character that levels up along with its crew. The crew’s starship is the same level as the PCs or, if the crew members are different levels, the average party level (add all the PCs’ levels together, then divide by the number of PCs in the crew). The crew keeps track of their starship’s abilities, conditions, equipment, status, and statistics using a starship sheet. You should always have an up-to-date copy of the crew’s starship sheet so you can adjudicate rules for their preferred battle stations and upgrades as needed. Additionally, keeping track of the player starship in your campaign helps you plan interesting encounters that challenge the crew and reward them for their choices.
Acquiring Your Starship
Source Tech Core pg. 202
Most of the time, the crew gets a starship as part of an adventure hook. If you’re running a premade adventure, the introduction and players’ guide likely provide narrative guidance about how the starship fits into the story and how the crew acquires it. If you’re adding tactical starship encounters to a Starfinder adventure published before Tech Core, or telling your own story with custom encounters built for your crew, you’ll need to figure out how to fit a starship into the game.
Starships and starship equipment aren’t part of a character’s or party’s wealth. You should never force characters to pay for a starship or its gear, nor should you deduct its value from their rewards.
Many campaigns begin with the crew of PCs already owning a starship. The GM handles starship creation as part of their game’s session 0 or provides a premade option that lets players ease into the rules and story before asking them to build their own starship. If you want the crew to earn their first starship as a reward or play out how they acquired it in-game, consider running a one-shot adventure that ends with a wealthy benefactor gifting a starship to the party or a sketchy acquaintance handing them its security codes. If the PCs are members of a faction, like the Starfinder Society or the Stewards, they might get assigned to the crew’s starship at the end of their initiation mission. If they’re Free Captains, they might board and steal a starship as part of the session and either plunder it for themselves or trade it for a different model.
Starships and starship equipment aren’t part of a character’s or party’s wealth. You should never force characters to pay for a starship or its gear, nor should you deduct its value from their rewards.
Many campaigns begin with the crew of PCs already owning a starship. The GM handles starship creation as part of their game’s session 0 or provides a premade option that lets players ease into the rules and story before asking them to build their own starship. If you want the crew to earn their first starship as a reward or play out how they acquired it in-game, consider running a one-shot adventure that ends with a wealthy benefactor gifting a starship to the party or a sketchy acquaintance handing them its security codes. If the PCs are members of a faction, like the Starfinder Society or the Stewards, they might get assigned to the crew’s starship at the end of their initiation mission. If they’re Free Captains, they might board and steal a starship as part of the session and either plunder it for themselves or trade it for a different model.
Starship Backgrounds
Source Tech Core pg. 203
If you’re ready to get right into the action of your epic campaign, there’s no need to play out how the characters acquired their starship in a full game session. You might work with the players to create a background explaining how the crew got their starship (and who owns it). As you think about the origins of the starship, you and your players might use one of the following options as inspiration.
Divine Gift: A god or another powerful entity gave your crew the starship… but nothing in this galaxy is ever truly free. This scenario works best when all characters worship the same god, but creative players might come up with other arrangements.
Faction Resource: The crew’s faction loaned them a starship for a purpose. Factions are one of the best ways to introduce a player starship into your campaign, as most factions of the galaxy have starships to spare for their agents and allies. If all crew members share the same faction, they’re an official squad or team who travel to and from missions on board a starship belonging to their organization. If they’re members of different factions, they’re part of a cooperative expedition launched by several factions with a shared goal.
Inherited: The crew inherited their starship from a benefactor or mentor. There’s a dozen different scenarios to consider—perhaps a crew member’s pirate aunt left a starship to one of the characters in her will, or the party’s former ally vanished, leaving only their old starship behind. Maybe a crew member won it in a lucky bet.
Stolen Starship: The crew stole their starship from a faction or person. A stolen starship is the perfect option for a pirate crew or a gang of outlaws. If most of the group likes the idea of stealing their starship but one or more don’t want to play lawbreaking characters, they might find alternative ways to fit in with the crew, perhaps as stowaways, captives who prove their worth, or secret agents!
Divine Gift: A god or another powerful entity gave your crew the starship… but nothing in this galaxy is ever truly free. This scenario works best when all characters worship the same god, but creative players might come up with other arrangements.
Faction Resource: The crew’s faction loaned them a starship for a purpose. Factions are one of the best ways to introduce a player starship into your campaign, as most factions of the galaxy have starships to spare for their agents and allies. If all crew members share the same faction, they’re an official squad or team who travel to and from missions on board a starship belonging to their organization. If they’re members of different factions, they’re part of a cooperative expedition launched by several factions with a shared goal.
Inherited: The crew inherited their starship from a benefactor or mentor. There’s a dozen different scenarios to consider—perhaps a crew member’s pirate aunt left a starship to one of the characters in her will, or the party’s former ally vanished, leaving only their old starship behind. Maybe a crew member won it in a lucky bet.
Stolen Starship: The crew stole their starship from a faction or person. A stolen starship is the perfect option for a pirate crew or a gang of outlaws. If most of the group likes the idea of stealing their starship but one or more don’t want to play lawbreaking characters, they might find alternative ways to fit in with the crew, perhaps as stowaways, captives who prove their worth, or secret agents!
Crewing Your Starship
Source Tech Core pg. 203
Every starship needs a crew. Each player should consider which roles their character might perform for a starship crew as part of character creation. If you’re adding a starship to a campaign with preexisting characters, consider allowing them to retrain their skills for free when the crew acquires their first starship. Every crew benefits from someone helming the generator,
pilot’s console, and scanners. A gunnery is vital for a starship to be battle-ready, and a drone console provides utility and more firepower. A magic conduit is essential for a crew with a spellcaster.
Battle stations provide benefits and grant special station actions. They can be helmed by any character, but most of them require training to be helmed effectively.
Drone console: No requirements. There’s no class with an obvious edge when helming the drone console, but mechanics are likely to gravitate toward the role.
Generator: Crafting. Mechanics and technomancers are great at helming the generator.
Gunnery: Melee and ranged Strikes. Operatives, solarians, and soldiers are excellent gunners, but every class can perform the role to great effect.
Magic Conduit: Spellcasting. Mystics, technomancers, and witchwarpers make a magic conduit shine, but any crew member capable of casting spells can helm it.
Pilot’s Console: Piloting. Any crew member with the gumption and expertise can be an ace pilot, but solarians utilizing certain upgrades are always stellar pilots.
Scanners: Computers. While no class is best suited to this role, envoys, mechanics, and technomancers possess technical abilities that synergize well with the scanners.
pilot’s console, and scanners. A gunnery is vital for a starship to be battle-ready, and a drone console provides utility and more firepower. A magic conduit is essential for a crew with a spellcaster.
Battle stations provide benefits and grant special station actions. They can be helmed by any character, but most of them require training to be helmed effectively.
Drone console: No requirements. There’s no class with an obvious edge when helming the drone console, but mechanics are likely to gravitate toward the role.
Generator: Crafting. Mechanics and technomancers are great at helming the generator.
Gunnery: Melee and ranged Strikes. Operatives, solarians, and soldiers are excellent gunners, but every class can perform the role to great effect.
Magic Conduit: Spellcasting. Mystics, technomancers, and witchwarpers make a magic conduit shine, but any crew member capable of casting spells can helm it.
Pilot’s Console: Piloting. Any crew member with the gumption and expertise can be an ace pilot, but solarians utilizing certain upgrades are always stellar pilots.
Scanners: Computers. While no class is best suited to this role, envoys, mechanics, and technomancers possess technical abilities that synergize well with the scanners.
Mapping Your Starship
Source Tech Core pg. 204
Sometimes, tactical starship encounters spill over onto the decks of your starship, or enemies sneak on board while you’re docked safely at port. You’ll need a map to play out the action and to keep track of important objects on board your starship like your battle stations, expansion bays, and escape pods. You can use the same map for the entire campaign or design a new one whenever your crew upgrades the starship.
You might feel creative and invent a wacky new starship design to amaze your friends. Or, if you aren’t typically an artist or mapmaker, you might be intimidated and overwhelmed by the thought of creating your own map. Either way, you can make your own custom starship map! Creating a starship map is as simple or complex as you make it, and you don’t need to be a skilled cartographer. Remember, you’re making a visual representation of your starship to use in a game you’re playing with your friends. As long as you and the other players can tell where the battle stations, enemies, hazards, and escape pods are, you’ve got a great starship map. If you need more guidance, consider the following tips.
Only map what’s needed. Decide where the battle stations are, then add on the expansion bays. A good starship map might be a sketch of a rectangle with a few smaller squares inside it and symbols clearly marking the squares where battle stations are positioned. There’s even a P box next to each battle station on the Starship Sheet to help you keep track. You need to map only the interior areas of your starship where crew members are likely to spend time during exploration and encounter mode, so it isn’t necessary to draw out every expansion bay.
Size matters. The sample maps provided are intended to be drawn or printed as a physical map with a dimension of 24 inches by 30 inches, with a 1-inch-square-grid—the same dimensions as a typical Starfinder Flip-Mat. A map this size has plenty of space for players to move their character tokens, even when enemy boarders are invading!
Similarly, there should be enough room in every bay for the crew to move around. No bay should be smaller than 2 by 2 squares. If you’re using a standard grid map of the dimensions described above, your medium starship’s interior shouldn’t be larger than 120 feet (24 squares) by 100 feet (20 squares). It also usually shouldn’t be smaller than 60 feet by 50 feet. If you have more room to spread out a map or are using digital tools, you might decide your starship map has greater dimensions, but be careful that it doesn’t take too long for crew members to run from one side of the starship to the other.
Team Up. All players should be involved in the map-making process. You alter the starship map only when the crew levels up or spends downtime upgrading their starship, so it’s important to make sure everybody is satisfied.
Test your map. Draw or print your map out, and place tokens on the grid. Move them as you would your characters, counting each square as 5 feet of movement and seeing how long it takes the crew to move from one station to another at their Speeds. Ideally, all members of the crew should be able to get to another part of the starship in a round or less.
You might feel creative and invent a wacky new starship design to amaze your friends. Or, if you aren’t typically an artist or mapmaker, you might be intimidated and overwhelmed by the thought of creating your own map. Either way, you can make your own custom starship map! Creating a starship map is as simple or complex as you make it, and you don’t need to be a skilled cartographer. Remember, you’re making a visual representation of your starship to use in a game you’re playing with your friends. As long as you and the other players can tell where the battle stations, enemies, hazards, and escape pods are, you’ve got a great starship map. If you need more guidance, consider the following tips.
Only map what’s needed. Decide where the battle stations are, then add on the expansion bays. A good starship map might be a sketch of a rectangle with a few smaller squares inside it and symbols clearly marking the squares where battle stations are positioned. There’s even a P box next to each battle station on the Starship Sheet to help you keep track. You need to map only the interior areas of your starship where crew members are likely to spend time during exploration and encounter mode, so it isn’t necessary to draw out every expansion bay.
Size matters. The sample maps provided are intended to be drawn or printed as a physical map with a dimension of 24 inches by 30 inches, with a 1-inch-square-grid—the same dimensions as a typical Starfinder Flip-Mat. A map this size has plenty of space for players to move their character tokens, even when enemy boarders are invading!
Similarly, there should be enough room in every bay for the crew to move around. No bay should be smaller than 2 by 2 squares. If you’re using a standard grid map of the dimensions described above, your medium starship’s interior shouldn’t be larger than 120 feet (24 squares) by 100 feet (20 squares). It also usually shouldn’t be smaller than 60 feet by 50 feet. If you have more room to spread out a map or are using digital tools, you might decide your starship map has greater dimensions, but be careful that it doesn’t take too long for crew members to run from one side of the starship to the other.
Team Up. All players should be involved in the map-making process. You alter the starship map only when the crew levels up or spends downtime upgrading their starship, so it’s important to make sure everybody is satisfied.
Test your map. Draw or print your map out, and place tokens on the grid. Move them as you would your characters, counting each square as 5 feet of movement and seeing how long it takes the crew to move from one station to another at their Speeds. Ideally, all members of the crew should be able to get to another part of the starship in a round or less.
Battle Stations
Source Tech Core pg. 204
Battle stations each take up one 5-foot-square. Medium starships have plenty of space for crews to spread out. They might house their battle stations in separate bays arranged farther apart from one another. This setup usually places battle stations near a common area or hallway that leads to the escape pods and other parts of the starship in a way that PCs can move from one battle station to another with two or three actions.
Starship Encounter Mode
Source Tech Core pg. 204
When it’s time to roll initiative in space, the GM has a lot of choices. When planning an encounter that pits a player crew against fearsome foes, you might create a tactical starship encounter against an Azlanti klokworx nexus. Or you might decide a klokworx nexus is too difficult for the crew’s level and create a cinematic starship scene in which the goal is to escape it. If that’s too easy, you can add boarding creatures to the encounter when a squad of Sihedron Guard drill through the hull. Maybe you don’t have time for all that and decide to skip straight to the combat encounter with the boarders, so you leave the starship element out (other than the encounter taking place on the starship map).
Knowing when to deploy which tools takes a lot of practice, but here are some suggestions. Remember that fighting enemies on the sensor map and starship map at the same time tends to be more difficult and time consuming than a normal encounter of the same challenge level. It’s a good idea to begin with trivial and low encounters and add moderate and harder battles as the players gain more experience.
If you want the players to encounter a powerful enemy that’s beyond their level (but might be a fightable enemy later), consider using a cinematic starship scene. If you want something simpler, or plan to place the overpowered enemy in an encounter with other challenges, consider creating a starship hazard that represents the dangers of proximity to this enemy. For example, the Azlanti flagship’s capital aeon cannon might damage the player starship’s shield as it buzzes past, or the ship’s presence might make it difficult to target smaller foes using it as cover.
Knowing when to deploy which tools takes a lot of practice, but here are some suggestions. Remember that fighting enemies on the sensor map and starship map at the same time tends to be more difficult and time consuming than a normal encounter of the same challenge level. It’s a good idea to begin with trivial and low encounters and add moderate and harder battles as the players gain more experience.
If you want the players to encounter a powerful enemy that’s beyond their level (but might be a fightable enemy later), consider using a cinematic starship scene. If you want something simpler, or plan to place the overpowered enemy in an encounter with other challenges, consider creating a starship hazard that represents the dangers of proximity to this enemy. For example, the Azlanti flagship’s capital aeon cannon might damage the player starship’s shield as it buzzes past, or the ship’s presence might make it difficult to target smaller foes using it as cover.
Starship Exploration Mode
Source Tech Core pg. 205
Starship exploration mode is when your crew travels while helming battle stations on board your starship. You might be investigating an arcane nebula in the Vast or preparing to face down an ancient cosmic dragon terrorizing a Drift lane. You can't use the basic exploration activities described in Player Core while helming a battle station. Instead, you gain new exploration activities depending on the battle station you're helming.
Starship exploration mode is typically tracked in hours or days to account for the great distances being traveled. Space travel usually involves using special engines to slip in and out of a divine hyperspace plane called the Drift. Most starships have Drift engines, but some have rarer options that rely on travel through different planes to bypass great distances in space. All interstellar drives share the travel times listed in GM Core. Triune and their spectra, also known as “Drift angels,” protect the Drift, making it relatively safe to travel through hyperspace. Other planes tend to be far more dangerous, so install the following engines with caution.
Archon Drive: Forged for mighty cathedral-ships and closely guarded by the Inheritor's church, an archon drive travels through Iomedae's home plane of Heaven.
Chaos Sail: This unpredictable engine is rigged to run on any plane—if you know the way, or have Besmara's favor.
Constellation Orrery: This complex, interlocking device allows a starship to follow the imaginary lines that connect the stars in a constellation.
Elemental Engine: This category of starship drives enable travel through one or more elemental planes with a magical core attuned to that plane. Travel using an elemental engine is particularly dangerous for non-elemental creatures.
First Drive: Starships with this fey-engineered drive can hop between points in the First World, a primordial plane that resembles the early Universe.
Helldrive: This infernal engine transports a starship through Hell's devious shortcuts.
Shadow Engine: Pain fuels the core of this engine, which carries a starship through the shadowy Netherworld.
Starship exploration mode is typically tracked in hours or days to account for the great distances being traveled. Space travel usually involves using special engines to slip in and out of a divine hyperspace plane called the Drift. Most starships have Drift engines, but some have rarer options that rely on travel through different planes to bypass great distances in space. All interstellar drives share the travel times listed in GM Core. Triune and their spectra, also known as “Drift angels,” protect the Drift, making it relatively safe to travel through hyperspace. Other planes tend to be far more dangerous, so install the following engines with caution.
Archon Drive: Forged for mighty cathedral-ships and closely guarded by the Inheritor's church, an archon drive travels through Iomedae's home plane of Heaven.
Chaos Sail: This unpredictable engine is rigged to run on any plane—if you know the way, or have Besmara's favor.
Constellation Orrery: This complex, interlocking device allows a starship to follow the imaginary lines that connect the stars in a constellation.
Elemental Engine: This category of starship drives enable travel through one or more elemental planes with a magical core attuned to that plane. Travel using an elemental engine is particularly dangerous for non-elemental creatures.
First Drive: Starships with this fey-engineered drive can hop between points in the First World, a primordial plane that resembles the early Universe.
Helldrive: This infernal engine transports a starship through Hell's devious shortcuts.
Shadow Engine: Pain fuels the core of this engine, which carries a starship through the shadowy Netherworld.
Starship Downtime Mode
Source Tech Core pg. 205
Downtime gives you time to rest fully, repair or upgrade your starship, or just have fun. While spending downtime on board your starship, you have access to the basic downtime activities described in Player Core. Some downtime activities are more difficult to accomplish on board a starship, such as earning income and shopping, but aren't impossible— you might spend the time and credits now but only receive your purchased item or payout once you reach a port of call.
While traveling through the Drift or in Vast space far away from a planet or satellite, your starship lacks access to any infospheres that make instantaneous communication and remote shopping possible. Some starships support their own internal infosphere for crew and passengers, but data can only be sent and received while in sensor range of another infosphere or a Drift beacon.
Spending downtime on board a starship has perks. A crew member can use a holo den's programs to retrain without needing a mentor. A medbay allows crew members to treat ill and injured creatures.
When your crew members have a case of Drift fever, simply dock at a port on any planet, moon, satellite, or way station and check out the local sights! Characters at port can pick up their infosphere orders, go shopping, enjoy leisure activities, hang out with friends, and, of course, get into trouble.
While traveling through the Drift or in Vast space far away from a planet or satellite, your starship lacks access to any infospheres that make instantaneous communication and remote shopping possible. Some starships support their own internal infosphere for crew and passengers, but data can only be sent and received while in sensor range of another infosphere or a Drift beacon.
Spending downtime on board a starship has perks. A crew member can use a holo den's programs to retrain without needing a mentor. A medbay allows crew members to treat ill and injured creatures.
When your crew members have a case of Drift fever, simply dock at a port on any planet, moon, satellite, or way station and check out the local sights! Characters at port can pick up their infosphere orders, go shopping, enjoy leisure activities, hang out with friends, and, of course, get into trouble.
Rebuilding Your Starship
Source Tech Core pg. 205
Rebuilding your starship requires you to be docked at a major port or settlement, like Absalom Station. Your crew might handle the job yourselves using technical know-how and the fabrication facilities provided to crews at ports, or let the mechanics at the port handle the refitting. Over a week of work, you can change the starship’s frame, expansion bays, battle stations, equipment, and upgrades. There’s no limit to how frequently you can rebuild your starship.
Remember to record your new abilities and statistics on a blank starship sheet.
Remember to record your new abilities and statistics on a blank starship sheet.