Lowest Bidder Heroes in Starfinder
Everything the government bought used to be made by the lowest bidder, so when your cartoon heroes fight terrorists around the globe their government issue (GI) gear might not be too great.
Races: Colorful characters made to sell action figures, this one is so tied to our real Earth you might want to leave the aliens out this time.
Classes: We get soldiers, operatives, and envoys right out of the box, if your brightly colored ninjas run to the powerful side a reskinned solarion might do the job. Mechanics I’m sure we have Clutch as an actual mechanic, but does anyone have a drone or exocortex? Are the Joe’s animal companions better as drones or animal companions from Alien Archive 3? I really believe we need a Mechanic ability tree that doesn’t depend on the Drone or the Exocortex.
Skills: Without Magic, the skill Mysticism is probably the only one that doesn’t belong.
Are Dr. Mindbender’s powers psionic or psychic? Are Zartan and the Ninja’s powers supernatural? Is the weather dominator super science best emulated by certain spells?
Feats: Without Magic, the following feats (and their lesser greater versions) serve no purpose; Agile Casting, Combat Casting, Connection Inkling, Harm Undead, Mystic Strike, Psychic Power, Penetrating Spell, Spell Focus, Spell Penetration, Spellbane, Technomantic Dabbler.
Equipment: What about all the gear? Mechanics and Underwater Demolitions experts, Arctic Warfare specialists and the list goes on for 150 different action figures. I think an enterprising GM would get a lot of mileage out of Toolkits from the core rules and better toolkits in Armory.
Like Firefly I’m going to recommend 5 levels of armor and weapons and then extra damage at higher levels as well as an armor bonus equal to character level starting at level 3. If a named hero or villain picks up a weapon off an unnamed foe they don’t do less damage in the show.
Silver is the only Special Material from the Core Book that exists. Weapon Fusions shouldn’t exist, but you might see special ammo that emulates some of the properties they give you. Durable would just be for hardy weapons, but there are real cases for ammo emulating Flaming, Knockdown, rubber bullets might emulate Merciful, Shock are already in the works in the Ghost Guns book.
Armor, we see a lot of plainclothes characters and then some SWAT team folks in full assault gear, so we should probably allow 5 item levels of Light and Heavy Armor with an additional bonus equal to character level to EAC and KAC.
Armor Upgrades, what upgrades exist might be their own equipment such as Infrared Sensors doubling as Night Vision goggles. Radiation Buffer or Jet Pack, Automated Loader is probably better described as a belt-fed backpack full of ammo. The rest is just too fantastic for our little bounty hunting setting.
Cybernetic replacement limbs and body modifications like our Zartan has, but not too much in the way of cybernetics. Other cybernetics are on a case-by-case basis from your GM.
Everything in the Biotech category is beyond the setting. They did clone Serpentor, but there weren’t hundreds running around, just the one so I’m willing to say plot device over a robust technological base..
Computers, there are no Spell Chips in the setting. The real world hacking I’m working on for Ghost Guns might work better than the basic rules in Starfinder.
Technological Item, the Regeneration Table and Unlimited comm unit are probably the only things too far outside the setting.
Magic Items, don’t exist in the setting.
Hybrid Items, don’t exist in the setting. If your GM wants to let you rework your character you don’t need a Mnemonic Editor, just do a training montage at your next level.
Vehicles, both sides have a lot of vehicles, I would need to rework some vehicle rules to make them more realistic. Starfinder vehicles are super slow to keep character and vehicle combat compatible. Changes would make vehicles faster at the very least. Some folks complain Starfinder vehicles aren’t very durable for their level and while that critique might be true in general cartoon show vehicles usually can’t stand more than a few hits or are completely protected by plot, there is no in-between.
I’ll need to revisit the series and create some vehicles to finish this mini-setting. The Lowest Bidder Heroes will probably borrow from the work I have already done for the Ghost Guns campaign setting.
Starships: The few shuttles we see would be better off as Vehicles.
Magic and spells don’t exist in the setting.
Game Mastery nothing comes immediately to mind.
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Paul
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