Gm's Arsenal

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!

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.

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.

NPC starship statistics are calculated the same way as those of creatures, with some additional considerations. You can use the guidance below when modifying starships from the Starship Archive or building non-player starships of your own.

NPC starships often have the same battle stations available to player starship crews, though they don’t always have the same station actions as a player starship’s battle stations. Living starships typically have organs that function as battle stations. In most cases, all actions are associated with a battle station (except Repair Self and Seek Starships).

Like player starships, most of an NPC starship’s actions and features are granted by battle stations. While a battle station is malfunctioning, the actions and features granted by it (listed in the Battle Stations entry of the starship’s statistics) can no longer be used or benefited from. If a starship needs a way to make repairs or remove the malfunctioning condition on the fly, the NPC starship can always use two of its actions to Repair Self.

Starships in this section often use the weapons from the Ranged Starship Weapons table, attached to a gunnery battle station, though many have bespoke weapons and other attacks that are unique to them.

Many non-player starships in the pages that follow have one or more of the following actions or features. These common abilities are useful building blocks for when you wish to create your own starships or want to modify an existing starship.
Autonomous Starship The starship isn't helmed by living creatures. Autonomous starships have the tech trait and are immune to mental damage and effects.
Engaged Strike [reaction] Trigger A starship in the same zone moves to another zone; Effect This starship attempts the specified Strike against the triggering starship.
Living Starship The starship is a living organism or composed entirely of biomass. A living starship usually has organs or structures instead of battle stations. Living starships don't have starship immunities.
(generator) Fortify Shield Points [one-action] The starship regains Shield Points equal to the listed fortify value.
(generator) Tractor Beam [one-action] A target within 2 zones must attempt a Fortitude save.
(pilot's console) Boost Thrusters [one-action] (move) Frequency once per turn; Effect The starship moves up to its Speed in the direction of its heading.
(pilot's console) Change Heading [one-action] (move) Effect The starship changes its heading. If the starship is off-kilter, it's no longer off-kilter.
(pilot's console) Evade [one-action] to [two-actions] The starship gains a +1 circumstance bonus to AC for 1 round. The bonus increases to +2 if you spend two actions.
(pilot's console) Stick to Cover [one-action] Requirements The starship is in the same zone as a starship or object one or more sizes larger than it; Effect The starship gains a +1 circumstance bonus to AC and Reflex saves against attacks originating in its zone. This bonus lasts until the starship moves any number of zones, attacks, becomes inoperable, or ends this effect as a free action that's a pilot console's station action.

All non-player starships can always perform the following actions, even if the actions aren’t included in their statistics.
Repair Self [three-actions] The crew stops a battle station from malfunctioning and regains Hull Points equal to its level.
Seek Starships [one-action] The starship attempts a Perception check against the Stealth DCs of any undetected or hidden starships or hazards within sensor range.

A crew of three or fewer PCs might struggle with efficiency and firepower when helming a player starship. When preparing and running games for a small crew, treat your experience budget for tactical starship encounters as being 20 lower for moderate or harder encounters and 10 lower for low-or trivial-threat encounters to account for the crew's limited ability to helm battle stations. Alternatively, you can use the concierge upgrade variant rule found on the sidebar.

The starships in this section are far from the only foes a crew might encounter in space. If you want to introduce variety to a campaign’s tactical starship combat encounters or challenge players with different enemies, you can use these starships’ statistics as a starting point, then reflavor a faction’s common actions and features list, designing a starship that can fit in another faction.

Another way to make tactical starship combat more interesting is by secretly placing starship hazards in zones on the sensor map. Some hazards appear on the player starship map and directly threaten crew members with creatures or dangerous effects. Many of these hazards are the natural wonders and horrors of deep space; they might be just as dangerous to enemy starships or can be exploited by a player starship for a risky benefit. You should add all creatures and hazards to the encounter’s experience budget, just as you would in any other combat encounter.

A tactical starship combat encounter ends when either the player crew or their enemies achieve their objective.

Like other hazards, starship hazards have a trigger that sets its dangers in motion, and PCs have the opportunity to notice the trigger area or triggering mechanism before setting off the hazard. Starship hazards on the players’ starship can be run just like other hazards. For hazards on the sensor map, during exploration, determine whether the party detects a hazard when their starship first enters the general area in which it appears. If the hazard doesn’t list a minimum proficiency rank, roll a secret Perception check against the hazard’s Stealth DC for each PC. For hazards with a minimum proficiency rank, roll only if someone is actively using Seek Starships and only if they have the listed proficiency rank or higher. Anyone who succeeds becomes aware of the hazard, and you can describe what they notice. Magical hazards on the sensor map can be found using the magic conduit to Scan for Magic.

Although disabling starship hazards follows the same rules as disabling other hazards, some starship hazards—especially those on the sensor map—require players to use their battle stations to disable them, such as by hacking them with their scanners. If a skill check to disable a hazard lists a battle station, that skill check can only be attempted as a station action at the listed battle station (requiring two actions as normal unless otherwise stated).

Some starship hazards have the starship trait, which indicates that the hazard is meant to be used on the sensor map and can generally be damaged or interacted with by only other starships or other effects with the starship trait. Hazards without the starship trait function as normal hazards, meaning they’re intended for use on the players’ starship map, as are any other hazards that the GM finds suitable for their game.