His criticism also applies just as strongly to medieval/early modern fantasy games, Starfinder actually excels when it comes to supplementary races (which it focuses on more than classes). Heck the corebook races make a lot of sense, they hit a good number of space fiction archetypes. You've got your artificial people, biomorphic species, humanoid reptile, intelligent gerbil, insectoid (arguably twice over, Lashunta have strong insect theming), psychic people (twice over) and enigmatic outsiders (again twice over).
There are more Non-Humanoid Races in other books, I assume they didn't want to go too out there for the first core book. Skittermander is my favorite of them.
I think maybe you're focusing on the numbers a little too much. I would assume the benefit of a four-armed character able to hold a weapon in each arm is so they can quickly swap their damage type during combat to accommodate for the resistances of their target unless they just aren't allow to carry a gun in each hand? I would assume that would be the idea, anyway.
Combat wise I believe a specific feat allows you to make four attacks from four guns, but the penalties are not generally worth it. Otherwise yeah, the big benefits are stuff like having more damage types available (an Operative Kasatha can have a kinetic ranged weapon, an energy ranged weapon, a kinetic melee weapon, and an energy melee weapon, and Trick Attack with whatever's optimal) and the 'minor' benefit of being able to do stuff while one pair of hands is full. Also probably occasional bonuses when exploring.
If you look at the races beyond the basic book, there some pretty wild ones, like drow, aasimar and even tiefling! But being serious though, there's like 100 races and you can even play a floating giant brain with rows of tentacles
Me, standing outside at night. "There's one... there's one.... there's one... there's another... Oop, there it is... Yep, that's a star as well... Wait is that? No that's a planet... but that's a star. Man, being a Starfinder is easy!"
Yeah, the unedited version of that rant went into how this seems to be a more recent development. If you look back to the 50s and earlier you see a lot of very distinctive and unusual alien designs, but as time has progressed things have been pushed more and more toward the norm that any intelligent life must be humanoid. Like, to the point where there are multiple episodes of various Star Treks based around "Wait, could this non-humanoid lifeform be _intelligent_ ?"
@@zigmenthotepto be fair it's gone more towards 'can easily be played by a human actor's, written science fiction still hops all over the place when it comes to aliens. On the one hand it's intelligent gerbils, on the other it's stuff like Pattern Jugglers.
I want to note that the supplement books do add a lot more wierd stuff to play as. Where a personal favourite is the Goldfish in a Bowl. Look I know it is not a bowl it is an antropromorphic body... let me have this.
A lot of people in the comments are already stating that "There's more alien playable races in the other books" so I won't exactly jump on that bandwagon... But I will state that most of them mention the Alien Archive which is the Monster Manual of Starfinder and some people have issues with playing as monster-y races and even in other systems, If you want to play as some freak of nature, the Monster Manual is typically where you look. So instead I'll mention one of the other books I have, The Pact Worlds book, also has more inhuman races to play as including sluggy shapeshifters, Humaniod plant with no eyes, Sentient Robots that don't look human, and a creature that is somewhat similar to what Zig imagined in the video funnily enough. Now, I will agree that if you want to play as an exotic non-humany alien, you shouldn't need to get a whole separate book to do so. At least one of the non-humany races should have been in the core rule book imo.
My friend is interested in DMing this... I'm not really feeling the races but I'll give it a try, I'll see if he will let me be a space dwarf in the legacy section lol. I've only ever played dnd 5e and I've been wanting to play pf2e so maybe this will give me an easier time with pf2e if I ever get to play it. Thanks for the video.
@@zigmenthotep aliens has the same potential to be non-humanoid as fantasy creatures do. DnD could always be inclusive of gelatinous cubes, ghosts and centaurs as PCs if they were interested in that, but they firmly stayed in the area of humans with slightly lesser hight and a bit more pointy ears. Although when I commented that I forgot that you _did_ actually called it out somewhere around 3e, so I retrieve my hypocrisy statement since you made the same criticism in both kinds of settings. Sorry if I offended you.
Could have done without the extended bashing of the species and art. The "mechanical" gymnastics likely to be involved trying to make radically non-humanoid races not only alien looking, but function differently while maintaining some sort of balance in the game (especially a new and unproven game at the time) would have been very difficult, at best.
‘’ they could’ve literally made one of the playing race look like…’’ and proceed to describe one of the actual playable race he didn’t know existed
His criticism also applies just as strongly to medieval/early modern fantasy games, Starfinder actually excels when it comes to supplementary races (which it focuses on more than classes).
Heck the corebook races make a lot of sense, they hit a good number of space fiction archetypes. You've got your artificial people, biomorphic species, humanoid reptile, intelligent gerbil, insectoid (arguably twice over, Lashunta have strong insect theming), psychic people (twice over) and enigmatic outsiders (again twice over).
There are more Non-Humanoid Races in other books, I assume they didn't want to go too out there for the first core book. Skittermander is my favorite of them.
I am personally a fan of the Izalguun. But the Brakim genuinely creeps me out.
It helps that Paizo has expanded the races and classes a bit... Loving seeing this stuff.
Picks Soldier with Kasathas. Complains he can't use four arms. DID YOU READ THE OPERATIVE CLASS??
I think maybe you're focusing on the numbers a little too much. I would assume the benefit of a four-armed character able to hold a weapon in each arm is so they can quickly swap their damage type during combat to accommodate for the resistances of their target unless they just aren't allow to carry a gun in each hand? I would assume that would be the idea, anyway.
Combat wise I believe a specific feat allows you to make four attacks from four guns, but the penalties are not generally worth it. Otherwise yeah, the big benefits are stuff like having more damage types available (an Operative Kasatha can have a kinetic ranged weapon, an energy ranged weapon, a kinetic melee weapon, and an energy melee weapon, and Trick Attack with whatever's optimal) and the 'minor' benefit of being able to do stuff while one pair of hands is full.
Also probably occasional bonuses when exploring.
If Starfinder is anything like Pathfinder, the reason for reducing DCs instead of adding a bonus is because bonuses might not stack with each other.
If you look at the races beyond the basic book, there some pretty wild ones, like drow, aasimar and even tiefling! But being serious though, there's like 100 races and you can even play a floating giant brain with rows of tentacles
Starfinder is amazing
Me, standing outside at night. "There's one... there's one.... there's one... there's another... Oop, there it is... Yep, that's a star as well... Wait is that? No that's a planet... but that's a star. Man, being a Starfinder is easy!"
Alright, what does everyone think the colors of stats are, here’s mine
STR; RED
DEX; Green
CON; Pink
INT; Blue
WIZ; Purple
CHA; Yellow
Let’s discuss
I’ve had the core book on my desk but none of my friends want to play it. So I mainly look at videos for characters ideas.
I see what you mean about alien races. I played TSR's Star Frontiers in the early 80s and the player races like Vrusk and Dralasite were just awesome.
Yeah, the unedited version of that rant went into how this seems to be a more recent development. If you look back to the 50s and earlier you see a lot of very distinctive and unusual alien designs, but as time has progressed things have been pushed more and more toward the norm that any intelligent life must be humanoid.
Like, to the point where there are multiple episodes of various Star Treks based around "Wait, could this non-humanoid lifeform be _intelligent_ ?"
@@zigmenthotepto be fair it's gone more towards 'can easily be played by a human actor's, written science fiction still hops all over the place when it comes to aliens. On the one hand it's intelligent gerbils, on the other it's stuff like Pattern Jugglers.
The idea of bulk is interesting. It means that large, but light things are still hard to carry around.
"...gives a bonus to small arms attacks" me "T-rex screech"
I want to note that the supplement books do add a lot more wierd stuff to play as.
Where a personal favourite is the Goldfish in a Bowl.
Look I know it is not a bowl it is an antropromorphic body... let me have this.
Sounds like you want a conrasu
A lot of people in the comments are already stating that "There's more alien playable races in the other books" so I won't exactly jump on that bandwagon...
But I will state that most of them mention the Alien Archive which is the Monster Manual of Starfinder and some people have issues with playing as monster-y races and even in other systems, If you want to play as some freak of nature, the Monster Manual is typically where you look.
So instead I'll mention one of the other books I have, The Pact Worlds book, also has more inhuman races to play as including sluggy shapeshifters, Humaniod plant with no eyes, Sentient Robots that don't look human, and a creature that is somewhat similar to what Zig imagined in the video funnily enough.
Now, I will agree that if you want to play as an exotic non-humany alien, you shouldn't need to get a whole separate book to do so.
At least one of the non-humany races should have been in the core rule book imo.
I hope you will cover Starfinder 2e when it comes out, as it is going to be very similar to Pathfinder 2e.
I'd like to see you cover Toon an archaic Steve Jackson release.
My friend is interested in DMing this... I'm not really feeling the races but I'll give it a try, I'll see if he will let me be a space dwarf in the legacy section lol. I've only ever played dnd 5e and I've been wanting to play pf2e so maybe this will give me an easier time with pf2e if I ever get to play it. Thanks for the video.
If you wanna see some cool alien species I'd recommend checking out the ones from "Humanity Lost."
Cool
There are more races in the other books
Books expand on background and classes and so on
You obviously didn't do any research on starfinder races lol
My exact thoughts lol
Over 100 races to play as but the man points to the core book, sad
I love your videos you do on role playing game keep up the awesome work
Ship combat I would love to see
Asking why a derivative of dnd has no races that aren't anthropomorphic is somewhat hypocritical, don't you think?
Elaborate, how is that hypocritical?
@@zigmenthotep aliens has the same potential to be non-humanoid as fantasy creatures do. DnD could always be inclusive of gelatinous cubes, ghosts and centaurs as PCs if they were interested in that, but they firmly stayed in the area of humans with slightly lesser hight and a bit more pointy ears. Although when I commented that I forgot that you _did_ actually called it out somewhere around 3e, so I retrieve my hypocrisy statement since you made the same criticism in both kinds of settings. Sorry if I offended you.
Could have done without the extended bashing of the species and art. The "mechanical" gymnastics likely to be involved trying to make radically non-humanoid races not only alien looking, but function differently while maintaining some sort of balance in the game (especially a new and unproven game at the time) would have been very difficult, at best.
2:17 says the guy who picked a d10 with an eye and gloves for his creative and animated representation... 👎
Game makes race with 4 arms. Cant use 4 arms to shoot 4 small guns or 2 big guns...laaaame