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Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Starfinder RPG Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition)

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Chapter 4: Running Starship Campaigns / Building Starship-scale Creatures / Step 5: Special Abilities

Free Special Abilities

Source Starship Operations Manual pg. 128
All starship creatures (including undead) gain the living starship special ability. Spacefaring starship creatures gain several more abilities for free.

Living Starship: All starship creatures you create with this system should have the living starship ability, as described below.

Living Starship (Ex): This creature is so immense that it functions as a starship (and thus engages only in starship combat). It has no crew, but it can take engineer, gunner, magic officer (Character Operations Manual 148), and pilot actions (one of each, in the appropriate phases) using the appropriate skill bonuses and ranks. Because living creatures have unique anatomy, they require a special table for determining critical damage effects and conditions (Core Rulebook 321). This also serves as a list of systems an enemy science officer can target with the target system crew action. An example critical damage effect table is listed here, but you can tailor yours to reflect your specific creature’s anatomy.

Spacefaring Starship Creatures: Starship-scale creatures that live or travel in space have the void adaptation universal creature rule, which grants immunity to cosmic rays, immunity to the environmental effects of vacuum, and the no breath universal creature rule. In addition, they often have the spaceflight universal creature rule, granting them the ability to fly through space at standard navigation and astrogation speeds (Core Rulebook 290).
D% SYSTEM EFFECT
1–30 Weapons array Randomly determine one arc containing weapons; condition applies to all gunner actions using weapons in that arc.
31–60 Propulsion Condition applies to all pilot actions.
61–90 Heart Condition applies to all engineer actions, except when patching or repairing the heart.
91–100 Brain† During the next round, each of the creature’s attempted actions has a 25% chance of failure.
† The brain doesn’t gain critical damage conditions.