Anyone who plays Starfinder will need a character, but what kind of character do you want? A grizzled Space Marine specializing in explosive weapons? A fast talking schemer with a plan for every scenario? An engineer who's augmented their own body with cybernetics?
This is a list of the playable classes in Starfinder. For the iconic characters based on these classes, see here.
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Core Classes
Envoy
Ambassadors, con artists, and enforcers who have a knack for getting people to do what they want. In combat Envoys have access to improvisations that provide bonuses to allies and hamper enemies, while outside of combat they have a number of bonuses to boost their skills.
- Ambadassador: The general concept of this class (though it can be adapted to any social-using character type).
- An Adventurer Is You: "The Status Effect" type, as they focus on boosting their allies and debuffing their foes by acting as something of a Frontline General.
- Jack of All Trades: Envoys have a large number of class skills and get a large number of skill ranks every time they level up.
- Omniglot: An Envoy with the “skilled linguist” talent knows a number of bonus languages equal to their ranks in Culture. If combined with the Xeno-seeker theme’s “quick pidgin” ability they should be able to speak to someone in any port.
- The Social Expert: Navigating social interactions is the class's specialty. Even in combat, the Envoy contributes mainly with words and tactics rather than guns and explosives.
- Utility Party Member: Their large number of class skills and skill ranks in addition to their class ability "Expertise," which gives significant bonuses to a few select skills, make them excellent skill monkeys. This is reinforced by the fact that their core ability score is charisma, which makes them the best suited for social situations.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Envoys with the Polymorphic Disguise alternate class feature can shapeshift into a multitude of forms, the types increasing as they level up.
Mechanic
In the party, they're the one to turn to if you need something hacked, hotwired, or cobbled together. Masters of the technological, Mechanics have some avenues in which they use their tech on the battlefield and elsewhere:
- Drone: Partying along with a drone that they've constructed themselves, these mechanics can choose on whether it focuses on being a combat drone, a stealth drone, or a flying hover drone as its chassis.
- Exocortex: Implanting an advanced artificial processor into their brains, these mechanics are proficient in longarms, and have a host of abilities to help them use their gone as well as enhance their mind.
- Experimental Armor Prototype: Focuses on buffing up an enhancing a singular piece of armor well beyond what normal protective gear can do, creating powerful armor that can be tweaked to their own needs.
- Experimental Weapon Prototype: Much like the Armor Prototype, though with a singular weapon instead; gaining proficiency in it, this mechanic can double its ammo capacity, and can even compact it down to use in one hand, among other abilities.
- Cyborg: Mechanics with an exocortex have it implanted in their bodies to directly interface with their minds. Many of their later abilities have them implant drone modifications onto themselves instead.
- Energy Shield: Achievable via the Energy Shield trick, which gives the Mechaniac temporary hit points equal to their level and intellgence modifier. Later tricks build on the shield, giving it more hit points and resistances to various damages.
- Gadgeteer Genius: They're the best choice to specialize in engineering, which in turn makes them the best at building tech items.
- Robot Buddy: Their drones, which essentially function as Starfinder's equivalent to the eidolons and animal companions of Pathfinder. Though heavily customize-able, the base chassis for all of them come in three versions:
- Combat: Medium sized drones equipped with two weapon mounts (of either melee, ranged, or a combination of both), proficiency in one weapon category, and damage reduction, these drones are most useful on the front line.
- Stealth: Small sized drones that have one weapon installed on them, they're used for more stealthy incursion and activities, helped by the fact that they are automatically equipped with climbing claws to hang on the ceilings and walls, and the ability to blend into the environment when standing still.
- Hover: Tiny sized drones with only one weapon mount, but are equipped with perfect flying capabilities, making them excellent scouts.
Mystic
Spellcasters who draw power from sources greater than themselves. Mystics are good support spellcasters in a party as the only class with access to healing spells as well as a number of useful buffs and debuffs. Their subclasses are called "Mystic Connection", representing how they see the universe and how their magic influences it. The Connections are:
- Akashic: Representing the Akashic Records, these Mystics are focused on the collection and usage of knowledge above all else.
- Devastator: The Mystic is a Straw Nihilist, hoping to destroy everything and everyone, up to reality itself.
- Empath: Helps the Mystic get in tune with the feelings of those around them, making good diplomats or investigators.
- Geneturge: This Mystic sees hows they can adapt their or their allies very genes to help overcome obstacles.
- Healer: Helps the Mystic embue themselves or allies with life, keeping them on their feet for a little while longer.
- Mindbreaker: This Mystic warps the brain of their enemies, breaking their spirits and their minds.
- Overlord: This Mystic, wheather for good intentions or ill, realizes that there must been a dominant force in any situation, and if there is, hey, why can't it be them?
- Star Shaman: A connection to the very stars and planets of the universe grants the Mystic increased knowledge and mobility throughout the cosmos.
- Xenodruid: Connected to the very ecosystem, this Mystic uses this connection to utilize the great circle that is life itself.
- Akashic Records: One of the specialization options is Akashic, which revolves around knowledge and memories.
- Combat Medic: Far and away the best class in the game for providing healing, but they can also boast considerable firepower if properly built for it.
- Druid: The Xenodruid connection is a space-based version.
- Healing Hands: Gets exclusive access to the Mystic Cure line of spells. There's also their class ability healing touch, which can significantly heal a single ally once per day.
- Psychic Powers: Tends to carry elements of this regardless of how their magic is interpreted, thanks to the class's access to various telepathic and mind-controlling spells. The Empath, Mindbreaker, and Overlord vocations in particular pay homage to this trope.
- Religion is Magic: Not necessarily. While the source of their power can be a god, it can just as easily be something like nature itself, bypassing nature gods entirely. It's very convenient for avoid the issue of having your power source take your magic back if they don't like how you're acting.
- The Social Expert: Empaths not only have a constant bonus to Sense Motive, but their signature Empathy ability gives them a bonus to all social skills against a specific creature for one hour. At higher levels they become a Living Lie Detector.
Operative
Skilled infiltrators, thieves, and assassins.
- Back Stab: Their trick attack, which deals bonus damage and can impose some serious debuffs. Unlike the traditional "sneak attack" they don't necessarily have to make it from hiding, as each specialization has a different set of skills they can use.
- Blade Enthusiast: Most melee weapons that they can use to make trick attacks are knives.
- Jack of All Trades: They get a bonus to all skills, one that increases with level.
- The Sneaky Guy: Being good at stealth lets them make the most of their trick attacks.
- Sniper Rifle: Besides the Soldier, Operatives are the only core class to be proficient in sniper weapons. They're not able to use their trick attacks with them by default, however, requiring one of two specialized abilities in order to do so: the sixth-level Debilitating Sniper exploit, which allows a sniper weapon to be used with the debuffing effects of trick attacks at the cost of the extra damage trick attacks normally provide; or the first-level Sniper alternate class feature, which replaces the trick attack function entirely with a slightly harder-to-land variant that otherwise enjoys all the benefits of the original.
- Utility Party Member: Like the Envoy they also get a baseline of 8 skill points per level plus an Operative's Edge ability that gives a bonus to every skill, though Envoy Expertise can give a higher bonus to a limited selection of skills.
Solarian
Warriors who draw power from the balance of the cosmos, manifesting it as either a weapon or armor made of energy as well as a variety of gravity or light based powers. Solarians are good at crowd controlling enemies while staying mobile, with additional focus on frontline combat if they chose to manifest a weapon.
- Expy: They're essentially Starfinder's version of Jedi or Soulknife.
- Gravity Master: Their graviton powers, which channel the dancing pull of the cosmos.
- Laser Blade: Their solar manifestation can take the form of any one handed melee weapon they choose but always appears to be made of either blinding light or absolute darkness.
- Light 'em Up: Their photonic powers, which channel the radiance of suns into their powers.
- Mundane Utility: When not forming a weapon or armor, the Solarian's power condenses into a glowing mote that orbits them. The light is bright enough to see by, saving players the few credits a flashlight might cost.
- Yin-Yang Bomb: Enforced by Solarians, who's powers are based on the idea of balance between oppositional cosmic forces, with darkness on the one hand and light on the other. Solarians can use only one at a time, and a Solarian who finds themselves developing one to the exclusion of the other will find all of their powers more difficult to realize effectively.
- You Will Not Evade Me: The black hole revelation, which is granted automatically to all level 1 solarians, drags enemies closer.
Soldier
Warriors who excel at combat.
- Heavy Equipment Class: The Soldier is the only class that's starts with proficiency to longarms and heavy weapons, and along with being one of two classes that has innate heavy armor proficiency. On top of this, they are able to use advanced melee weapons.
- Magitek: The Arcane Assailant fighting style lets Soldiers add magical properties to their weapons.
- Multi-Melee Master: They're proficient in all weapon types right from the start.
- Multi-Ranged Master: They're proficient in all ranged weapon types too.
- One-Hit Kill: The "kill shot" ability at level 20 forces enemies hit by an attack to succeed on a saving throw or die.
Technomancer
Spellcasters who combine knowledge of magic and technology into a single field, allowing them to manipulate both in ways neither could achieve on their own.
- Spell Book: They have a technological device they store their spells on called a spell cache that serves the same purpose.
- Squishy Wizard: They have the least health of all the base classes.
Character Operation Manual
Biohacker
Scientists who draw on the various fields of biology to buff allies and weaken enemies. Their Fields of Study include:
- Genetics: The study of living creatures’ inherited characteristics; boosts allies hearing capabilities and strip away enemies immunities and resistances.
- Immunology: The study of how living creatures’ bodies fight off diseases and other maladies; boosts allies' Fortitude saves while debuffing enemies'.
- Neurochemistry: The study of the chemicals that affect creatures’ brains and nerves (or related cognitive systems; allows allies to ignore some mental status effects while making enemies more susceptible to them.
- Pharmacology: The study of drugs and their effects on living creatures; able to staunch allies' bleeding while making their enemies encumbered and sluggish.
- Toxicology: The study of the adverse effects certain chemicals have on living creatures; can have allies harder to hit with natural weapons, while making enemies sickened at the same time.
- An Adventurer Is You: The Status Effect Guy type, their biohacking abilities allowing them to buff their allies and debilitate their enemies.
- Combat Medic: They're as comfortable in a battlefield as they are in a lab, even doing bonus damage with injection weapons. With the right Theorems, their small arms can actually reach a higher damage potential than most other classes.
- Enemy Scan: While technically any class can do a skill check to figure out some traits of the enemy they're facing, Biohackers have the special ability to automatically take twenty on their skill check (as long as the enemy is close enough to them), ensuring that they'll know more than any other class on what they're facing.
- Liquid Courage: One of their late level Theroms is this trope almost verbatim: Liquid Bravery makes them immune to being shaken, and gets rids of some of the penalties to the frightened and panicked staus conditions.
- One Dose Fits All: As long as their biohacks hit, it'll affect the target no matter the size, whether it's a tiny creature to a Huge dragon, lasting as long and debilitating/buffing them the same amount.
- Playing with Syringes: They must inject their subjects either by a melee touch or a dart gun to administer their various serums. They're helped by the fact that automatically gain proficiency in any weapon that naturally (meaning without seals or mods) has the injection property on it, gaining bonuses to attack with it as they level up.
Vanguard
Front-line fighters who channel the energies of entropy with their touch. The ways they use their entropic powers, called Aspects, are:
- Boundary: Embodies the forces that keep a system separated from its surroundings; these Vanguards are experts at avoiding damage, gaining entropy by not getting hit and spreading their mitigating feature to their allies.
- Cascade: Embodies a single change in the balance of a system’s entropy that cascades into additional, progressively greater changes. These Vanguard work best when attacking or effecting multiple foes, or applying maluses to a single hostile.
- Exergy: Embodies the total amount of potential work the energy in a system can perform when accessed by entropy. These Vanguards are all about damage, gaining entropy points by attacking multiple times and increasing their (or anyone else's) damage on a single opponent.
- Inversion: Embodies the role chaos plays within entropy; the Vanguards can heal allies of their stamina or health while rerolling failed saving throws, making them even harder to take down.
- Momentum: Embodies energy states that are preserved in ongoing motion, isolated from entropy. The Vanguards are at their peak when either they or their enemies are moving.
- Reaction: Embodies the change entropy brings about through biological, chemical, and molecular reactions, such as rust and rot. These Vanguards excel when applying status conditions onto their enemies, even able to poison them with entropic energy.
- Attack Reflector: Their signature entropic strike only works after they've suffered damage.
- Barrier Warrior: Part of their gameplay style is taking hits in order to unleash an Entropy attack.
- Critical Status Buff: They gain Entropy points simply by getting hurt hard enough; with their larger health pool and abilities to actually *suppress* buffs to damage resistance and armor bonuses given to them, Vanguards are actively encouraged to get hit to gain more points.
- Entropy and Chaos Magic: All Vanguards are able to utilize entropy in order to power-up their strikes and to fuel their other abilities; while most of the Aspects deal with how entropy slowly corrodes and destroys various forces, some Aspects play with it, either negating or inverting how much entropy acts on certain property.
- Good Old Fisticuffs: While not necessary, Entropic Strikes have the unique property of simply needing a conduct to do damage by, meaning that a Vanguard's strikes could hurt even worse than a base maul or sword could do.
- Heavy Equipment Class: The Vanguard is one of two classes innately capable with heavy armor and is the only class that can use shields from the get go. While the only guns they can use are small arms without feats expanding their weapon range, they make up for it with their capability with advanced melee weapons.
- Mighty Glacier: They have even more health than Soldiers or Solarions, but lack the mobility powers that those classes can take.
Witchwarper
Spellcasters who draw potential realities out of alternate universes that could have been and into their own.
- Reality Warper: Their spells and powers flow from their ability to swap in things from alternate realities.
- The Social Expert: While not as good at it as Envoys, a Witchwarper's focus on Charisma gels well with other social skill checks that might come up.
- Squishy Wizard: Tied with the Technomancer for the system's lowest health.
Tech Revolution
Nanocyte
With nanites infusing their whole body, nanocytes are able to manipulate these machines in order to wreck devistation on the battlefield, solve obstacles off the battlefield, and have a tech item for any and every problem. While every nanocyte can configure their nanites into a sheathe, gear, or cloud array, the specializations they can take are:
- Discorporation: With their nanites breaking down and reforming their body, these nanocytes can meld into a flexible series of forms.
- Infestation: These nanocytes infest their foes with their nanites, eating them alive from the inside.
- Obliteration: Pushing weapons formed by their nanites to their limit, these nanocytes are able to devistate anything that lies in their path.
- Redirection: With forceful and energetic nanites, these nanocytes are able to push and redirect objects to gain an edge in combat.
- Regeneration: With nanites that can stitch together the worst of wounds, these nanocytes are able to stay in the fight longer, and eventually make sure that their friends can do so too.
- Jack of All Trades: One of the Nanocytes strengths is their flexibility. With their choice of arrays, pick of weapons from their gear array, and certain knacks, Nanocytes are easily able to fill out a party's weaknesses and/or switch their combat style on the fly. The only downside is that, compared to the Operative, they're more focused on combat abilities than skills.
- Made of Iron: Pun aside, having Constitution as their key ability score means that a nanocyte is hard to bring down. Paired with their high stamina and health, and the ability to spend a nanite surge to gain resistance to incoming damage, nanocytes are often able to bring down enemies by sheer attrition.
- Nanomachines: The bread, butter, and three-meal course for the nanocyte, as being infested with them (either intentionally or accidentally) allows them to come up with all sort of useful abilities.
- Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Their gear array allows them to literally form a weapon from nanites in midair, already loaded (if the nanocyte has the appropriate ammo on their person, of course).
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Discorporation nanocytes obtain new forms to transform into, from a nanite blob to a nanite smoke cloud.
Galactic Magic
Precog
With powers over the temporal forces of the universe and the ability to nudge fate to their favor, Precogs mix in magical spells with a proficiency in weaponry that makes them able to stand their ground on the battlefield. Their Anchors, how they interact with time, are:
- Chronomancy: Empowered by an otherplaner force, this anchor allows them to slow down enemies and speed up their own spellcasting.
- Dimension of Time: Empowered by the Dimension of Time itself, this anchor allows the Precog to unfetter both objects and themselves from the shackles of time.
- Doomed Future: Empowered by visions of a terrible future, this anchor gives more chances of survival by more chances of changing fate and toughing against terrible effects.
- Fragmented Past: Empowered by a moment in their history that they realize that really shouldn't have been, this anchor allows them to stay in the fight and redirect missed attacks.
- The Gap: Empowered by the mysterious event known as The Gap, this anchor smudges electronical recordings and even obscures sapient memories.
- Timewarped: Empowered by time-altering technology, this anchor can regain energy from spent batteries and can transport the Precog into a safe shelter far into the future.
- Magic Knight: Since their key ability score is actually Dexterity and they start out with their choice of longarms, sniper rifle, or advanced melee training, Precogs are usually more capable in combat than the other spellcasters.
- Time Master: Their foremost trait is their ability to manipulate time, starting with the power to change a die roll from one they've already rolled.
- Winds of Destiny, Change!: All Precogs start with the ability to swap out a dice roll with another they rolled at the start of the day.
Interstellar Species
Evolutionist
A mutative being in pursuit of physical perfection through cybernetics, magic, genetic engineering, or undeath. The Evolutionist is a light but highly adaptable combatant capable of creating weapons from their own flesh who becomes more powerful the longer combat lasts. Evolutionists grow to fill one of several Niches, including:
- Eldritch: Magical energy flows through their veins as they metamorphose into a fantastical being. But the mundane becomes increasingly harmful to them as they change.
- Mechanized: The flesh is weak, when stressed their body becomes partially mechanical.
- Sepulchral: Empowered by unliving energies, but must be careful not to succumb to the bloodlust of the undead.
- Vital: A riot of biological potential, driven by instinct but heals quickly.
- Anatomy Arsenal: Evolutionists can transform a part of their body into a weapon of some sort called an Adaptive Strike, damage type and range decided at character creation.
- Anti-Magic: Eldritch Evolutionists have spell resistance while they have Mutation Points, but they can also enhance the spells of their allies.
- Fragile Speedster: Depends on the adaptations they choose, but by default they have only median hit points and stamina and are only proficient with light armor and have a speed bonus that increases with their MP.
- Healing Factor: Vital Evolutionists gain extra stamina or HP from healing effects and can spend MP to regain stamina. The Regenerative Form adaptation available at 18th level grants temporary troll-like Regeneration.
- Made of Iron: Mechanized Evolutionists take reduced damage of all types but one kinetic and one energy damage type they chose at character creation, those two types instead inflict extra damage.
- Self-Duplication: The 18th-level adaptation Fission Form allows an Evolutionist to create a duplicate with considerably less HP than themself once per day.
- Squishy Wizard: Eldritch Evolutionists take extra damage from non-magical attacks as long as they have mutation points.
- Super-Senses: The 2nd-level adaptation Ocular Advantage gives the Evolutionist constant darkvision, low-light vision, or the unflankable ability, and can spend 1 MP to gain whichever two they didn't select for one minute. The 6th-level Extraordinary Sense adds some form of blindsense.
- Transhuman: Or trans-whatever species they are, one of their main features is that they get a discount on augmentations of one type determined by their niche. By level 20 they no longer count as their original creature type.
- Vampiric Draining: At 5th level Evolutionists gain a touch attack called Evolution Drain that temporarily sickens the target and grants the Evolutionist extra Evolution Points. At 11th level it gets upgraded to Evolution Drinker, which allows them to Drain after a critical hit with their Adaptive Strike.
