Starfinder and 5e Weapons, Armor and Equipment comparison
I recently compared Fighters and Soldiers, as well as the base classes of Starfidner and D&D 5e. In this article, I want to look at the differences between Weapons, Armor, and General Equipment. Since D&D 5e characters increase their damage per round by taking multiple attacks or increasing the damage dealt by class abilities there is very little extra damage coming from magical weapon bonuses and certainly not the kind of damage scaling Starfinder uses. Therefore the Weapon list of any Starfinder 5e game would mostly include a single Laser Pistol that can be found as normal or +1-3 as the game goes on.
There’s no Energy AC, do we increase the damage of energy weapons to compensate for the loss of that advantage?
There are way more attacks at higher levels, do we increase batteries/magazines at all levels?
There aren’t attuned items in Starfinder,
There aren’t weapon fusions and seals in D&D 5e, assuming they are of the energy substitution type or have effects similar to spells are there other issues with bringing them over including enforcing time level (possibly character level) in a system without them?
Weapon Criticals are typically extra damage in 5e, not extra effects, conditions, etc.
Med Kits and Med Packs and Medical Bays have to interact with the very thin rules governing the Healer’s kit to stabilize characters and the Healer Feat to restore HP to characters during Short Rests. Medical gear might allow characters to spend hit dice, or simulate magical healing, we’ll have to see what works.
Armor would be reduced from huge lists down to 1/4 the original size and then accept that there are +1-3 versions of each item.
Stat Boosters from various sources would be like the Amulet of Health, Belt of Dwarvenkind, Belts of Giant Strength, Gauntlets of Ogre Power, Headband of Intellect, Ioun Stones, Manuals, and Tomes in 5e. The various belts might be replaced by powered armor, but like the belts and some of the other items, it is a static number, not a modifier.
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