Index | Playable Races | Monsters (Humanoids | Monstrous Humanoids | Animals | Vermin | Magical Beasts | Plants | Fey | Dragons | Aberrations | Constructs | Oozes | Undead | Outsiders)
This page is part of the character sheet for Starfinder, covering Monstrous Humanoid creatures. For tropes pertaining to the flayer leech effigy, see Starfinder Vermin.
For tropes pertaining to these creatures in Pathfinder, see Pathfinder Humanoids and Pathfinder Beasts.
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The Swarm
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Originally a race known as the kucharn, the Swarm is a vast legion driven by an innate need to spread, devour and absorb. Piloting living starships and capable of slowly twisting their own biology into formidable weapons, the threat of the Swarm forced peace between the Pact Worlds and the Veskarium in order to stave off mutual annihilation. Although it was repelled, the Swarm yet exists and will remain a threat until the day it is purged from the universe.
- Absolute Xenophobe: The Swarm sees every alien entity as either a food source or a threat.
- The Assimilator: The Swarm occasionally alters its own DNA in the process of consuming a world to take on useful qualities from that world's species.
- Bizarre Alien Senses: All Swarm creatures have blindsense (vibration) granted by hundreds of tiny, nearly invisible setae on their bodies sensitive to vibration in the air.
- Expy: The Swarm is uncannily reminiscent of the Tyranids, as well as of Pathfinder's own Horde of Alien Locusts, the hive.
- Hive Mind: Members of the Swarm are bound together into a singular hive mind.
- Horde of Alien Locusts: The Swarm is a single-minded collective with a desire to consume all things and absorb their best qualities into itself, with no desire to hold territory. They cannot generally be reasoned with in any fashion.
- Hungry Menace: The Swarm moves from planet to planet, consuming everything of use on one.
- Living Ship: The Swarm moves from planet to planet in organic hive ships.
- Natural Weapon: The Swarm rarely wields manufactured weapons, instead integrating biotechnology grown or grafted onto component creatures.
- No-Sell: They're collectively immune to acid and fear effects.
- Psychic Powers: Many Swarm components can assail the minds of foes with psychic abilities that are powerful but limited in scope.
- Telepathy: They have the Swarm Mind ability that functions as telepathy between Swarm creatures through the use of exuded pheromones, imperceptible movements of antennae and limbs, electrostatic fields, and telepathic communication.
- The Worm That Walks: Each starship-sized Swarm component is a colony of symbiotic creatures crafted into the shape of a starship.
Dredger
Challenge Rating: 1/2
Role: Combatant
Size: Small
Living tools for battlefield control. Operating in packs, they divert rivers, dig tunnels, and excavate trenches. Given sufficient time they can remodel the entire landscape to best suit the Swarm's attack.
- Fast Tunneling: They can burrow almost as fast as they can run.
- Tunnel King: They excavate tunnels for other Swarm components to use, allowing for attacks from unexpected directions. They also work closer to the surface to create trenches and dugouts, foiling attempts to use land vehicles against the Swarm.
- Utility Partymember: They serve as tools for battlefield control more than combatants.
- Zerg Rush: When dredgers attack, they attack en masse.
Vorphoma
Challenge Rating: 1
Role: Spellcaster
Size: Medium
Lesser Swarm creatures that sow discord and fear among the ranks of the enemy.
- Combat Pragmatist: They always target the weakest opponents first, and whenever possible, attack from the shadows or positions their oppoents can't easily reach..
- Gaslighting: They specialize in psychological warfare, wreaking havoc with frequent use of Ghost Sound and Daze, as well as the occasional Fear and Lesser Confusion.
- Poisonous Person: Their arm barbs carry a numbing enzyme that slows reactions.
- Spike Shooter: In combat, they attack with fired arm barbs.
Convecyte
Challenge Rating: 2
Role: Combatant
Size: Large
Living transports that carry smaller Swarm creatures into battle shielded under the plates of their carapace.
- Awesome Personnel Carrier: Can't get more awesome than a giant monster in its own right. Convecytes have several interlocking plates of rigid chitin running along their back and sides, under which are hollow cavities than can hold smaller creatures.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: When killed, they explode in a blast of acid. As Swarm creatures are immune to acid, this makes them even better at their job, weakening opponents for the troops that are disgorged from its corpse.
Nauphage
Challenge Rating: 2
Role: Expert
Size: Medium
While the Swarm exclusively uses biotech, they must still deal with other forms of technology used by their enemies. Nauphages provide the Swarm with technological and logistical support when simply smashing the troublesome tech either isn't feasible or tactically sound.
- The Cracker: Their role is as technical and logistical support when more complex tactics are needed than "smash it." To that end, one of their arms ends in a complex biotech claw that serves as an organic tool kit, which counts as any tool or basic kit needed for Engineering or Computers checks.
- Sticky Situation: Their primary attack is their Adhesive Cannon, which fires electrically charged glue to shock and ensnare.
- Stomach of Holding: They have a Storage Sack, a transparent membrane on their torso they can use to store small items.
Antecursor
Challenge Rating: 3
Role: Expert
Size: Small
The first wave of Swarm invasions, antecursors infiltrate target worlds and gather intelligence for the coming assault.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: Their tail ends in a stinger loaded with a paralytic toxin, which they can fire at foes.
- Chameleon Camouflage: Antecursors come in a variety of colors to better blend in to any environment.
- Cornered Rattlesnake: Those who force an antecursor into a confrontation discover its telepathy reaches considerably farther than most Swarm creatures when they're mobbed by a swarm of them.
- Dirty Coward: If confronted, they prefer to paralyze foes and flee.
- Flight: They fly better than they move on land.
Corrovox
Challenge Rating: 3
Role: Combatant
Size: Medium
Standard infantry components for the Swarm.
- Acid Attack: They can shoot volleys of acid from their organic Arm Cannons.
- Arm Cannon: A corrovox has an organic acid cannon grafted onto its forearm.
- Mind Rape: Corrovoxes are capable of psychically ravaging a foe's mind with their Psychic Assault ability.
Teracta
Challenge Rating: 3
Role: Combatant
Size: Medium
- That's No Moon: When the Swarm needs to build something but lacks materials, it does so from other Swarm components such as the teracta. Intruders in a Swarm structure made of teractas may not even notice them at first; the end result is terrifying, as the teractas literally climb out of the walls and attack en masse.
Revulsor
Challenge Rating: 4
Role: Combatant
Size: Medium
Spearheads for Swarm attacks that drive back foes with sonic shrieks.
- Blood Knight: Though of a less "enjoys combat" variety and more like a feral animal. Revulsors are front-line combatnats that attack relentlessly and fight until they or their opponents are destroyed, and thanks to their regeneration and ferocity ability, they're rarely the one to drop first. They almost never withdraw from a fight unless compelled to by the Swarm, which happens only rarely.
- Draw Aggro: Revulsors are brightly colored and draw the eye, as if daring opposing forces to target them rather than more dangerous and stealthier Swarm components. They even have swatches of ultraviolet pigmentation, theorized to make them more visible and intimidating to some long-forgotten and long-dead enemy species that could see such colors.
- Healing Factor: They have regeneration that can be disabled by fire damage.
- Super-Scream: Their accurately named Ear-Splitting Shriek lets them blast everything in a 30 foot cone with sonic damage, with creatures in the area also being deafened.
Effigene
Challenge Rating: 5
Role: Expert
Size: Medium
Effigenes are bioengineers and medics, masters of the bioelectric systems the Swarm uses in place of traditional machinery and capable of using it offensively.
- Shock and Awe: An effigene can unleash a blast of bioelectrical energy as a ranged weapon.
Escutchide
Challenge Rating: 5
Role: Combatant
Size: Medium
Escutchides are rarely deployed as combatants, instead serving to hold positions already seized by the Swarm, guard key areas, and to defend other Swarm components
- Horn Attack: An escutchide's most distinctive feature is the horn protruding from its head, often as long as half its overall length. It uses this horn to run through and knock down foes.
Molitera
Challenge Rating: 6
Role: Combatant
Size: Large
Large and sturdy components that can burrow through harder materials like stone and metal, allowing access to more heavily fortified areas.
- Tunnel King: Employed by the Swarm to dig through solid stone, moliteras are constantly and subtly vibrating at frequencies that soften the rock they tunnel through.
Mindreaper
Challenge Rating: 7
Role: Spellcaster
Size: Medium
Mindreapers are intelligence-retrieval components whose method of gathering intel is far from subtle: they use a bioweapon spike for lethal interrogations, impaling a victim through the brain and extracting neural tissue.
- Mind Probe: A mindreaper can use its arm spike to pierce the skull of a newly-dead creature, siphoning out a portion of the target's brain along with an impression of the memories.
Rematern
Challenge Rating: 7
Role: Combatant
Size: Medium
- Acid Attack: A rematern can expel corrosive chemicals or spit acid-coated rocks from one of its stomachs.
- Eat Dirt, Cheap: Rematerns consume and process the ore on worlds already consumed by the Swarm.
- Underground Monkey: On a world rich in starmetals, prolonged exposure causes fundamental changes to a rematern's physiology that allow it to excavate and refine them. For example, abysium causes them to radiate dangerous radiation, while those who process inubrix can burrow through even the hardest materials but lose the ability to process any other ore.
Dramovire
Challenge Rating: 8
Role: Combatant
Size: Medium
Tall, lanky assassins that seize prey in barbed forelimbs and inject them with acid.
- Acid Attack: A dramovire can cover the ground with a layer of acidic grease sprayed from its proboscis.
Ceretoram
Challenge Rating: 9
Role: Spellcaster
Size: Large
Swarm components that utilize powerful psychic attacks to soften up targets before moving in to consume them.
- Extreme Omnivore: Ceretorams can feed on nearly all forms of matter, including constructs and undead.
- Life Drain: A ceretoram's tentacle can siphon some of an enemy's biological matter, dealing additional damage and healing the ceretoram.
Bolaji
Challenge Rating: 10
Role: Combatant
Size: Medium
- The Worm That Walks: A bolaji is made up of thousands of insect-sized Swarm components. When sorely hurt, it breaks apart and flees. Swarm scholars believe that the first bolajis appeared only after the Swarm consumed a research station staffed by several hundred spathinae.
Thresher Lord
Challenge Rating: 10
Role: Combatant
Size: Large
Swarm components with potent melee capabilities that serve as shock troops.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: A thresher lord's arms are massive blades.
- Boring, but Practical: They have exactly one option in combat: arm blade attack. The thing is, they can make quite a few of those attacks in one round and each one can deal significant damage. They augment it with both a fly and climb speed, allowing them plentiful options when it comes to closing the distance with their prey and getting around any obstacles that may be in their way.
Dissolver
Challenge Rating: 11
Role: Combatant
Size: Large
Front line combat units that serve to protect smaller Swarm components while devastating enemies with gouts of volatile chemicals.
- Breath Weapon: They have one that's half Acid Attack and half Kill It with Fire. Their mouths contain two conduits that spray pressurized chemicals from glands in their abdomen. Individually, each conduit produces a harmlessly inert liquid. When mixed together, they explode in a conflagration of acid and fire.
- Use Your Head: A dissolver has horns as a last resort, allowing it to shove enemies away and give it room to use its Corrosive Jet.
- Wind from Beneath My Wings: Dissolvers do have wings, but they're too heavy to fly under their own power. Instead, they use the beating of their wings to create a powerful gust of wind that can extinguish flames and throw smaller creatures to the ground.
Klendat
Challenge Rating: 11
Role: Spellcaster
Size: Large
- Mind Probe: A klendat can interrogate a foe by boring into its mind.
- My Brain Is Big: The klendat is mostly brain matter, and is particularly vulnerable to attacks that can tear through its delicate neurons.
Psychovox
Challenge Rating: 12
Role: Spellcaster
Size: Large
Living relay points for the Swarm's hivemind communications.
- Brown Note: A psychovox can draw power from the Swarm hive mind to emit a shriek of psychic gibberish as a weapon against non-Swarm creatures.
Xersk
Challenge Rating: 16
Role: Spellcaster
Size: Medium
Rare Swarm components that rely on potent psychic abilities to mentally assault and frighten enemy forces.
- Agony Beam: Once a day, the can cast Mass Inflict Pain.
- It Can Think: Xersks have more free-will than most Swarm components, and outside of combat can be found quietly observing geographical features and distant constellations.
- Mass Hypnosis: A small-scale version with their ability to cast Greater Command, which can affect up to 16 creatures at once.
- Mind Rape: Their main method of attack is through psychic assault. They can cast a low-level Mind Thrust at-will, cast Feeblemind and Greater Synaptic Pulse three times a day, and for the truly special foes, a once a day use of Mind Thrust at maximum level.
- Psychic Link: A parasitic version with their Siphon Fear ability, xerks can forge a psychic connection to creatures with the shaken, frightened, or panicked condition. Once connected, they deal psychic damage as they drain the creature's fear to heal themselves.
- Supernatural Fear Inducer: Looking into their many eyes inflicts doubt and fear through their Demoralizing Gaze ability, causing victims to question reality and eventually lose their grip on it altogether. They can also cast Fear at-will
- True Sight: They have a constant See Invisibility effect.
- Your Head Asplode: Their one spell that doesn't involve mental manipulation is Crush Skull.
Fleetfury
Starship Tier: 1/2
Role: Combatant
Size: Tiny
Swarm ships deployed en masse as weapons of terror.
- Zerg Rush: How they're used. Each fleetfury has only a single weapon, and only has enough ammunition to fire it five times, but they're dispatched in such large numbers that even five shots per fleetfury can cause massive damage.
Altipheron
Starship Tier: 3
Role: Combatant
Size: Medium
Picket ships that defend Swarm-held worlds from outside assault.
Horaspa
Starship Tier: 4
Role: Combatant
Size: Medium
- Hollywood Hacking: By using highly focused psychic pulses, a horaspa can hack starship computers, turning them against the horaspa's enemies.
Gnawbore
Starship Tier: 8
Role: Combatant
Size: Large
Swarm ships designed to breach hulls, using conventional weapons to whittle down shields and cripple engines before closing in to chew through armored plating.
- Man Bites Man: The gnawbore's most powerful weapon is its set of titanic mandibles, which can tear through exposed starship hulls.
Dreadlancer
Starship Tier: 11
Role: Combatant
Size: Huge
Swarm dreadlancers are a colony of Swarm components that form a living starship built around a plasma bioweapon.
- Cyanide Pill: A dreadlancer's brains can self-terminate if captured.
- Heal Thyself: The dreadlancer's four brains allow it to repair itself, given time and access to materials.
Aqlath
Challenge Rating: 16
Role: Spellcaster
Alignment: True Neutral
Size: Large
- Horned Humanoid: Aqlaths' psychic abilities manifest as a crown of bone horns sprouting from their heads.
- An Ice Person: An aqlath can psychically manifest and hurl a shard of ice.
- Pig Man: Aqlaths resemble shaggy, humanoid boars with large tusks and three legs.
Formian
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
- Bee People: The vast majority of a hive's members are direct offspring of the queen. When a new queen takes over, a hive sees massive turnover as its members are rapidly replaced with the new queen's brood.
- Hive Caste System: Individual formians are divided into castes, each specialised to particular tasks. The queen leads the hive and is its sole means of propagation, while myrmarchs and taskmasters direct lower castes like warriors and workers.
Worker
Challenge Rating: 1/2
Role: Expert
Size: Small
- You Are Number 6: Many formian workers never gain a name beyond their number within the clutch.
Queen
Challenge Rating: 17
Role: Spellcaster
Size: Large
- Insect Queen: A queen's first responsibility is laying the eggs that populate the hive. Each formian hive has its own queen, and the hive is absolutely subordinate to her.
- Villain Override: A queen can possess any member of the hive to borrow their senses and inspect locations, interact with others, or confront intruders in person.
Grioth
Challenge Rating: 1 (grioth), 6 (eclipse seer)
Role: Varies
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Size: Medium
- Mutants: Due to prolonged exposure to the Dark Tapestry, grioths can be born with strange physiological alterations.
- Poisonous Person: Grioth saliva is laced with psychotropic toxins that overload neurological pathways, causing intense, rapid‑fire hallucinations, confusion, and violent seizures.
Hinkhetxi
Challenge Rating: 12
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Size: Medium
- Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Hinkhetxis see their own bodies as sacred and never hunt each other.
- Egomaniac Hunter: Hinkhetxis believe that the universe was populated with prey and dangerous creatures solely for their own coldblooded amusement, and base much of their culture around hunting for sport or validation. When they make expeditions to other worlds to hunt, they believe they are taking only what is due them.
Hivehead
Challenge Rating: 7
Role: Combatant
Alignment: True Neutral
Size: Medium
- Brain Food: During the first week after infestation, the neuralwasp queen slowly consumes the host's brain, transforming it into a kind of royal jelly to feed her eggs. During this week, the victim can still be saved, but can take months to recover from the loss of brain tissue, and some are never the same again. After that week, the infestation is permanent, since the brain has been almost completely dissolved.
- The Paralyzer: The neuralwasp's venom is paralytic, allowing them to take over the victim's body and transform them into a hivehead.
- Puppeteer Parasite: The creation of a hivehead involves a swarm of neuralwasps coating a victim's head with a waxy saliva, leaving only small openings to breathe through. The material dries over the course of a few minutes, after which the neuralwasp queen takes residence inside the skull and psychically assumes control of the host's senses and motor functions. The body still lives, but the queen is fully in control of its actions.
Ihonva
Challenge Rating: 4
Role: Combatant
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Size: Medium
Native to Verces's Fullbright, ihonva generally keep to themselves except during their gruesome reproductive process.
- Chest Burster: When an appropriate host is captured, an ihonva licks their mucous membranes, allowing its zygotes to enter the host's bloodstream. The larvae grow rapidly in size, sickening and eventually killing their host. When the baby ihonvas are mature enough, they exit through existing openings.
- Genuine Human Hide: The strongest ihonva newborn in a clutch claims its host's skin as a trophy, which is fashioned into ceremonial clothing by other ihonvas.
Jinsul
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Size: Medium
Originally inhabitants of the trinary star system in the Vast known to the Pact Worlds as the Scoured Stars, jinsuls built large and complex temples to honor their protector deity, Kadrical, who raised a mystical golden forcefield called the Godshield around the entire system.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Position jockeying is a brutal affair among jinsul grunts, who routinely fight in duels and sudden bouts of aggression. Since raw power and belief in Dhurus and Kadrical are the key factors determining rank, most troops see battling others as the only way to demonstrate superiority and advance their careers. This constant infighting makes the jinsuls even more aggressive toward outsiders, as they view other species as the greatest threat to their own advancement.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Jinsuls are a species of intelligent, human-sized insects.
- In a Single Bound: They always jump as if they had taken a running start.
- The Remnant: After they were driven from the Scoured Stars, many jinsul marauders still inhabit the Ruin around Izadamar, having either failed to evacuate the system or willingly stayed behind to prepare for the future.
- Rite of Passage: As part of a coming-of-age ritual, jinsuls implant razor-sharp sabres into their first set of forelimbs with no anaesthesia or pain management.
- The Theocracy: The jinsul species is unified under the collective banner of the Jinsul Hierocracy—originally led by warlords powered by the divine powers imbued by Kadrical within the Tear he sent them, and later by Kadrical's herald Dhurus.
Philosopher Worm
Challenge Rating: 7 (normal), 16 (teleologarch)
Role: Expert
Alignment: Lawful Good
Size: Medium (normal), Large (teleologarch)
Servants of the Forever Queen of Nchak who function outside of the usual command structure. They study the metaphysical threads of reality, using what they learn to challenge their ruler's thinking and educate her.
- Reality Warper: The appropriately named Reality Eddy/Reality Storm lets them create a storm of raw force energy.
- Sherlock Scan: They can cast Detect Thoughts as a swift action, and it automatically functions as if it had been active a full three rounds. If a creature fails the save against it, the philosopher worm's Evaluate ability automatically informs it of all the creatures defenses and weaknesses. As a result, a philosopher worm only needs a brief once-over to know exactly what won't work and what will be critically effective against anything and everyone they meet.
- Unique Enemy: The teleologarch is the Forever Queen's primary advisor and is second only to her in authority. Naturally, only one exists at a time.
Stormghost
Challenge Rating: 15
Role: Combatant
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Size: Large
- Shock and Awe: A stormghost can surround itself with crackling electricity or focus this static charge into a bolt.
- Super-Persistent Predator: Stormghosts live to hunt and hate losing quarry, and they persistently pursue fleeing prey, even forgoing rest.
Stridermander
A stridermander tyrant
Challenge Rating: 3 (normal), 10 (tyrant)
Role: Combatant
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (normal), Chaotic Evil (tyrant)
Size: Medium (normal), Large (tyrant)
- Belly Mouth: Their Badass Adorable, cooperative, playable cousins the skittermanders are born with bitey tentacular Lamprey Mouth umbilical cords, but lose them when they achieve adolescence (and sapience). These bastards retain theirs for life, and are more than happy to use them.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: A stridermander has four muscular arms to restrain prey and manipulate their environment.
- To Serve Man: Stridermanders prefer preying on skittermanders.
Void Hag
Challenge Rating: 10
Role: Spellcaster
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Size: Medium
Cruel beings of unknown origin, void hags have an innate desire to rule over other races.
- Agony Beam: They can cast inflict pain at will.
- Enemy Mine: They're at odds with the Dominion of the Black, but will occasionally work together.
- Eviler than Thou: Almost universally, void hags avoid Aucturn. The common theory is that they fear the Stranger and its inhabitants, though the void hags themselves claim other motivations.
Yotuhn
Challenge Rating: 11
Role: Combatant
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Size: Large
A species of giant from the magic-warped planet of Chonax.
- Absolute Xenophobe: Aggressive to all creatures besides other yotuhns. Made worse by their territorial nature and Hair Trigger Tempers, causing aggression to easily spill over into violence.
- Boulder Bludgeon: Combined with Improvised Weapon. They can turn any debris into a weapon, whether picked up or torn directly from their surroundings. Unlike other creatures, they take no penalties for using such improvised or primitive weapons, and they're equally capable of hurtling them as projectiles as battering foes in melee.
- Counterspell: Of a sort, though they could be more accurately described as the magical equivalent of a Walking Techbane. Any magic cast within a certain range of a yotuhn must be accompanied by a caster check. On a failure, the spell warps into a random effect, which can be anything from creating a cloud of butterflies to opening every door and window around you to creating a powerful explosion centered on the caster. This change also happens automatically if a spell is cast of a yotuhn from any distance and fails to beat its spell resistance.
- Killer Gorilla: They have a distinctly ape-like appearance.
- Power Glows: Their eyes and the segments between their jagged scales glow a bright electric blue.
Yrgytchee
Challenge Rating: 5
Role: Expert
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Size: Small
- Gravity Master: An yrgytchee instinctively warps gravity around them to divert danger, and can temporarily disrupt the connection between another creature and the dominant local gravity field affecting it.
- Heavy Worlder: And both very much in control of that, and culturally perhaps a bit too enamored of it.
- Lizard Folk: More like "theropod-folk." They resemble squatty humanoid coelurosaurs with brightly-hued scales and feathers, something like a larger and more muscular kobold.
- You Can't Go Home Again: Those few yrgytchees who leave Yrgytch willingly become apostates, never to return home for fear of discovery and execution.
