The Pathfinder RPG (and by extension, the Starfinder RPG) has always been close to my heart because my introduction to tabletop roleplaying games was D&D third edition–and Pathfinder forked off from Dungeons & Dragons 3.5. I loved the core system then, and I love the core system now.

When Starfinder came out in 2017, it still had the same system at its core. Changed a lot, but still recognizable as the good ole, tried-and-true, 3e gameplay. Now, though, Starfinder is playtesting its second edition, which is based on the Pathfinder second edition and due out in time for Gen Con this year.

In preparation for that, my weekly group has been playtesting the current rules (the whole rulebook is downloadable for free as a PDF and Demiplane has the errata incorporated for free and a cool character builder) and running through the adventure A Cosmic Birthday, in which an eldritch god hatches from its egg that also happens to be the planet Aucturn. Or happened to be, I guess. Because Aucturn exploded suuuuuuper good.

There are three chapters to the adventure, and we're currently wrapping up the final dungeon. Overall, my group has truly enjoyed the adventure and the system. We're actually going to keep playing it (and Pathfinder on a different night) instead of Dragonbane and D&D 5e for a while. A Cosmic Birthday is well-written and interesting, but because it's a playtest adventure, there are still a few (expected) wrinkles that need to be ironed out.

Into The Ghost Levels

As far as intros to a setting and game system go, the first chapter of A Cosmic Birthday succeeds in most ways. It's got a good hook, the players can get invested quickly, and because of the Drift Crisis event that happened a while back, there's an easy way to make sure that the player characters would be at Absalom Station at this particular time.

The PCs accept a salvage mission from a mutual friend on Absalom Station. Shortly after, the entire station experiences strange power surges and spatial anomalies. What begins as a routine elevator ride turns into a one-way trip to the mysterious Ghost Levels, an extradimensional space hidden alongside Absalom Station. The PCs find they’re not the only ones stranded in the Ghost Levels, and they can only escape after overcoming several deadly threats.

The Salvage Job Hook Might Be TOO Good

I don't know if it's just my group, but my players went all-in on the salvage mission that their contact, the vesk Julzakama, gives them in the opening scene. They were engaged and more than excited to go into space and blast whatever was hiding on this ship so they could tear it apart for credits.

But here's the problem with that: the salvage mission itself isn't in the adventure at all. It's hand-waved away in chapter 2 because more important things are happening. The book says, “Julzakama tells them to forget about the original job because he’s got a better payday lined up for them—and nobody can get to the Armada right now.”

Maybe it's just my group, but my players were far more interested in making it to the ship they were going to salvage than saving the entire space station from an eldritch horror being born on the other side of the solar system. Did they care that nobody could get outside and to the ship? Nope, they were deadset on finding a way to do it.

Every decision they made while they explored the Ghost Levels was predicated on getting back to the main part of the station, meeting the pilot they hired, and completing their job to rake in the credits. So imagine their reactions when they're told to just focus on something else.

Because I knew my group and their dynamics, I changed two things about how this hook worked out:

The first was that time dilated in the Ghost Levels. It didn't pass the same way when they were trapped. So 10 days passed outside while they were gone for 1.

That led to my second change: their contact got someone else to do the job when it seemed like they ghosted him (more like ghost leveled him, am I right?) and the job was a bust because the salvage was next to worthless. That way, they wouldn't keep trying to get there or even get back at the guy for taking their payday away from them.

Was that the best (or even a good) solution? No, probably not.

It took agency away from my players and railroaded them into the next part of the narrative as written. I normally just go with the flow, improvise, draw up maps, and print minis for whatever shenanigans they want to get into. This time, though, we were specifically playtesting a system we hadn't internalized like we had D&D and Dragonbane, as well as an adventure that was made to do just that.

So I made an executive decision to cut off that narrative thread before it could tie everything in a knot.

Beware: The Animated Vesk Statue

This is a level 1 adventure. At the end of it, the players will be level 4 when they finish beating the final boss. But during their time at level 1, they get into some sticky situations. Not the least of which is an enemy called the Animated Vesk Statue.

It's a very fun enemy to fight. Well, it's a very fun enemy to run against the players. I can't say it's fun to fight at the moment because my players got pretty frustrated with it. I think they were supposed to, but only to an extent. They were level 1s, after all, fighting a level 3 creature. It was supposed to be a tough fight.

However, it was harder than intended, I think, because the players couldn't do enough damage to break through its Hardness value and it had immunities like any other construct.

In Pathfinder/Starfinder, Hardness is a trait that deducts a certain amount of damage from an attack. The statue I'm talking about (see the image below) has a Hardness of 6. This means that the players have to deal at least 7 damage to deplete its HP by 1. In Pathfinder, this wouldn't be a terribly big deal because so many classes are melee and get to add their strength modifiers to the attacks. So a character with a +3 Strength could still roll a 4 on their damage die and do at least 1 damage.

Ranged attacks, on the other hand, don't get a damage modifier from attributes. And Starfinder is a ranged-focused game. So my players were pew pew pewing at the statue and were unable to break past its hardness. The Solarian in our group basically broke the thing's armor single-handedly. If it weren't for him, I'd have had to fudge the encounter.

Now, this is a playtest, so that's pretty normal. Things are being worked out. In this case, I'd suggest the Animated Vesk Statue have its hardness reduced to 4 at the highest. We had stopped the session mid-fight because our game shop was closing down, and when we started the next session up, I had the first couple of attacks break its hardness to move things along and not fluster the group any further.

The Rest of the Chapter

Honestly, the rest of the chapter was really, really good. The only snafu we ran into was a player dying to a flame trap in one hallway, but that would have been totally avoidable had she and the other party members not each taken an individual hallway to explore. Because she was separated from the rest of the PCs, no one could reach her in time, and she reached Dying 4 right there in the hallway.

We enjoyed all the fun stuff with finding a tour group stuck in the Ghost Levels with them, and the electrovore who was guarding an observatory array like its own egg was a delight to play.

I have to say, we're really excited for this adventure. As I mentioned earlier, we've finished Chapter 2, and you can expect that review (plus the third chapter when we finish it) to be posted soon.

Rating for A Cosmic Birthday, Chapter 1:

4 out of 5 animated vesk statues

Have you had a chance to play the Starfinder second edition playtest? Let's talk!