Starfinder Tech Core Adds Tactical Starship Combat

AT THE ASHFORGE — Starfinder Tech Core, the newest rulebook for Paizo's Starfinder Second Edition, went on sale October 7. It's a 264-page hardcover at $69.99, per Paizo's store listing, and its headline feature is tactical starship combat. It also adds two classes, the mechanic and the technomancer. A book whose contents page reads like a parts list has my full attention.

How the ship fights

Starship combat, in chapter 6, runs on two maps at once, lead designer Dustin Knight explained on the Paizo blog. Characters move around a battle map of their own ship and spend their three actions a turn helming a station, repairing damaged areas, bolstering allies, or handling enemies and hazards that turn up aboard. A separate sensor map tracks the distance between ships. There the pilot can Boost Thrusters, Change Heading, or Juke to leave enemy ships open to the gunners.

Each class gets a job. Soldiers fire starship-scale weapons with their own proficiencies and feats and can hit several enemies with Area Fire. Operatives use Aim to deal extra damage to a single ship. Drone pilots plant mines or block incoming attacks, and spellcasters channel spells through the ship's magic conduit. Every battle station has upgrade slots, and Knight's examples include deploying a turret, installing mines into a drone, and turning the ship's prow into a solar weapon for ramming. I once bolted a ram onto a siege cart, but it never ran on a sun. I'm taking notes.

Ships can also take expansion bays such as a medbay or a holoden, plus upgraded escape pods, and the chapter gives guidance for introducing, upgrading, and running starships across a campaign.

The order slip

• Released: October 7, 2026 (per The Gaming Gang)
• Price: $69.99 hardcover; Paizo also lists Pocket, Sketch, and Special Editions, and a limited Retailer Edition with a retro game-box cover
• Pages: 264
• Classes: mechanic and technomancer
• Archetypes: nanocyte and junkomancer
• Ancestries and heritages: robotic SROs, living holograms, and cyborgs
• Also inside: tech companions, technology feats, armor, weapons, augmentations, magic items, high-tech spells, and sample starship foes and hazards
• Credits: designed by Jessica Catalan, Dustin Knight, and Aras Yazgan, developed by Jenny Jarzabski and Mike Kimmel, per Angus Abranson's PDF spotlight

The PDF is on DriveThruRPG, Abranson notes. For the record, a junkomancer is the closest thing the far plane has printed to my job description, and I'd like royalties.

— M.A., from the forge