Review: Starfinder Second Edition Player Core (Paizo)

On Thursday morning of Gen Con in 2017, Paizo released the Starfinder Roleplaying Game. In that moment, they performed a magic trick for the ages as they replaced Golarion, the main world of the Pathfinder universe, with Absalom Station, a technological wonder mysteriously created and populated with many of the same species as Golarion was before it.

Eight years later, the Pact Worlds of Starfinder faces an array of strange and mysterious dangers, as old gods die, new gods are born, and a powerful, long-vanished race of space explorers returns. Luckily, the heroes of Paizo’s Starfinder Second Edition Player Core are ready to tackle these challenges and much more.

Strap on your zero pistol and grab your medkit, because it’s a dangerous universe out there. Let’s explore the top five things you need to know about Starfinder Second Edition Player Core.

Compatible with Pathfinder 2e

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Let’s start with foundational news: Starfinder Second Edition (Starfinder 2e) is mechanically compatible with Pathfinder Second Edition and the Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster. Both games use the same character creation system (more about that in a moment), the same three-action economy, and similarly balanced statistics.

Mix the systems for some truly wondrous home game adventures. And in the organized play system, you can bring some of your favorite Pathfinder heritage characters forward into Starfinder. (Ask me about my super-cute gnome witchwarper sometime!)

Playing in the 3-action Economy

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During battles in original Starfinder, characters had two actions each round: a move action to shift around the battlefield and a standard action for fighting, healing, or even moving again. They could also use a full action (which took their entire turn) or, sometimes, a swift action that took almost no time at all.

Starfinder 2e introduces the same 3-action economy that Pathfinder uses. Different activities and abilities might take one action, two actions, or three actions, depending on complexity. Some abilities also grant characters a reaction which lets them interrupt whatever’s happening in a fight. (Unlike original Starfinder, characters don’t automatically get reactions against movement or some other activities.)

Picking a Heritage

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We talked a lot so far about what characters can do in the game, but we haven’t talked about making them in the new Starfinder 2e system. Let’s fix that!

Three key choices define the broad outlines of your character in the new Starfinder: ancestry and heritage, background, and class. Ancestry gives your character its foundation (what Starfinder 1e called “race”). The Player Core includes 10 basic heritages ranging from classic androids and humans to more exotic barathus and pahtras. The new season of Paizo’s organized play program adds two more heritages for free.

Within each ancestry, you select a heritage to further define your character. Perhaps your character grew up underground so they developed darkvision. Maybe they were blessed by a god so they have amazing luck. Each ancestry includes its own unique set of heritages, so you can’t mix and match.

The sort-of exceptions to that rule are the two versatile heritages, prismeni and boari, which you can attach to any regular ancestry. These open a whole new level of customization.

Finding the Background

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Your character did something before they became a Starfinder. That’s where backgrounds come into the picture. The Player Core gives you 39 possible background, plus a bunch more outlined in the player’s guide for organized play. (And if you took part in the playtest, that unlocks even more background options.)

Backgrounds add to your character’s story and also grant your character stat boosts and new abilities. Backgrounds work closely with character heritages, which explains why Paizo recommends starting with a heritage and a background before deciding on a class.

Six Classes (for now)

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The Player Core gives players six classes that Starfinder 1e players will recognize, but don’t be fooled. These new classes deliver a lot of changes and new approaches to what they can do and how they do it.

For example, soldiers can still charge into the heat of battle, but they might also unleash waves of automatic fire on their enemies, limiting enemy options and forcing them to change tactics. Likewise, the envoy class, which typically supported from behind the lines in Starfinder 1e, now offers various leadership styles that range from encouragement and organization to leading the charge straight into battle.

Verdict

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We’re big fans of Starfinder 2e itself and the new Player Core. The book gives you everything you need to begin playing the new incarnation of the Starfinder system. Just add dice and imagination!

Character building will take some practice (we miscalculated the skill modifiers for our first several characters), but the awesome options available make the learning curve worthwhile. The three-action economy opens more flexibility during combat and enhances the naturel action-adventure nature of the game.

Experienced Starfinder 1e players will notice two things missing from the Player Core: the technomancer and mechanic character classes. Those classes were in the final months of the playtest and, according to the Paizo website, will be released in a technology-focused book during 2026. But until that book comes out, you can still run these classes in both organized play and home games using the Tech Class Playtest rules.