This is the first section of Part Fourteen of a series of articles looking at creating a set of Starfinder feats under specific constraints.  You can read along as we convert every feat in the PF core rulebook to Starfinder (and  share my thoughts on that process, as a developer and writer)— or you can just look at the finished feats (as they are written, and I have time over the holidays to update the list) here.

One of the difficult parts of writing for a constantly-evolving game system is that you need to keep current. Every new book released that is considered “official” (such as those published by the game’s original publisher, rather than depending on some 3pp license) can bring new rules, clarifications, options, and styles of play that change how your project should be handled. This can even happen in the middle of a project, which may require you to go back and look at work you have done but not yet turned over.

For example, while there is no “rage” mechanic in the Starfinder Core Rulebook for our Extra Rage PF feat to be converted to work with, the Starfinder Character Operations Manual adds a wrathful warrior fighting style, which is clearly inspired by barbarians. Since Extra Rage was only usable by a small fraction of total characters in PF, it seems reasonable to make our Starfinder version similarly focused only on fighting classes with anger powers.

EXTRA RAGE (Combat)
You are filled with a fast reservoir of fury you can call upon in combat.
Prerequisites: Wrathful warrior fighting style.
Benefits: Once per day as part of any other action you can activate your frenzied fighting ability. You may do this even if you have already used the ability and have not yet rested for 10 minutes to regain Stamina Points since doing so.

This is in many ways simpler than the PF version, and it includes an action economy buff when using this once/day version, but those are intentional choices to try to keep it appealing to players who are, after all, playing soldiers with tons of other options (especially if they have COM options to play with).

That brings us to Gorgon’s Fist, but since it has Scorpion Style as a prerequisite, it makes more sense to do that PF feat first.

Weirdly, Scorpion Style… works FINE in Starfinder. It doesn’t reference rules that don’t exist, it doesn’t impact the game’s combat math, and it doesn’t interfere with any game setting themes or logic. Given how easy it is to make a Starfinder version, I spend a fair bit of time checking things other than feats (such as class features and archetypes) to see if it had been co-opted for those, and the only thing I found I didn’t know about was hampering inhibitor for the biohacker (again, in COM), so we want this to operate a bit differently.

But otherwise my one and only concern is that it doesn’t use key ability score language and seems underwhelming in a game that has jump jets available by 3rd level. Those, however, are easily fixed.

SCORPION STYLE (Combat)
You can perform an unarmed strike that greatly hampers your target’s movement.
Prerequisites: Improved Unarmed Strike.
Benefit: To use this feat, you must make a single unarmed attack as a standard action. If this unarmed attack hits, you deal damage normally, and the target’s burrow, climb, fly, land, and swim speed (if any) are reduced to 5 feet for a number of rounds equal to your key ability modifier unless it makes a Fortitude saving throw (DC 10 + 1/2 your character level + your key ability modifier). Multiple uses of this ability can reduce a target’s speed multiple times, to a minimum of 0.

With that done we can hop back to Gorgon Style… tomorrow. 🙂

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