As Wastewalker develops a following and the rules are refined, we’re going to take some time to call out various rules variations and adjustments Wastewalker makes. We hope that doing so showcases some of the different, and fun, elements of the game without making reading through the whole of the new rules text cumbersome!
Continuing from the previous discussion classes, and on one of the goals with Wastewalker being fast character creation, we’re going to take a little trip back in time, circa 2013, when Wastewalker first started taking shape!
Back then, before Starfinder was a glimmer on the horizon, I was writing quite a bit for a colonial gothic setting, Shadowglade, using the Pathfinder rule system. I loved, and still love, the setting but found myself increasingly frustrated with the sheer amount of work going into developing some of the stat blocks for monsters, NPCs, and the like. It was a lot of effort for values that didn’t always see a lot of use. As I started speccing out Wastewalker, “quick” character creation was one of my highlights.
One way I resolve part of that is limiting the level. The Shadowglade guides do a decent job of spelling out my preference, but the short of it is I find most players play in lower-level games anyway, and the numbers (and what needs to be added/tracked/subtracted) simply grow as the level increases without bringing as much to the game. Pathfinder has a great feel levels 1 to 10, hence my running preference for playing and writing in that space and that’s carried over to Starfinder.
Following that up, I broke up a lot of the concepts for unique Wastewalker classes into “skill sets” and “mutations.” Skills being the things that come from being a wandering gunslinger or a hardened battle marine, and mutations being things that come from embracing being a rampaging mutant abomination or a radioactive vampire. Each of these were constructed then as one half of a character class; characters got a relevant ability from their skill and their mutation, and then relied on “talent” lists for each, Pathfinder parlance for a class option that let you pick from a variety of feat-ish abilities and improvements, to expand their concepts. The design was players chose a skill-based “class”, such as what we have now as the Reclaimer, Stranger, or Wanderer, and a mutation-based “class”, such as the abomination, vampire, or walker and mash them together. They would earn new “talents” at alternating levels and grow each aspect over time.
The shift to Starfinder as the basis scrapped a lot of initial elements and I started reviewing the way things were laid out. The SFRPG does a solid job of covering a lot of ideas and bases I originally wanted to cover, which made sorting some things out a tad more difficult; why and how should these things exist, when they kind-of already do? The internal process for the actual class structure I hashed out here, which gave me a platform, but then came the work on how to do some of the other concepts…
A SFRPG element that originally got little attention from me took on some greater significance after my struggle with the class concepts worked itself out. I had given up on speccing out full custom classes, opting to co-op and adapt the three crucial roles of an expert, “spellcaster,” and warrior to the envoy, operative, and soldier. In exploring options from there, Starfinder’s archetypes sat front and center. Archetypes are replacement abilities of a sort; usually early in your character’s development, you can choose an archetype which replaces character abilities at proscribed levels. This allows you to run an envoy that specializes in medicine as a “medic” but also allows a soldier to have the same devotion, giving us two styles of medic in one option, a medic archetype. This opened a lot of frontiers for me, and made a lot of work a lot easier because Wastewalker was, essentially, already designed with this scope in mind!
Wastewalker implements the archetypes a tad differently, introducing them as “subclass” archetypes and “mutation” archetypes, based the same division I had originally intended.
Subclass archetypes provide common architecture for post-apocalyptic tropes like raiders, power-armored technologists, and the like. These function basically as the normal Starfinder archetypes. Using the “talent” style of design that allows someone to pick from a list of abilities or specially selected feats, also used elsewhere in Starfinder, the archetypes provide a “perk” class feature, allowing characters to choose from a list of abilities relevant to their subclass’ ideas. The berserker subclass is our raider stand-in; characters can focus on rage-style psychotic activity, or focus on firebug-esque fascination with flames. Wanderers, on the other hand, can focus on training up an animal companion as much as they choose or on exploring the territory. The beauty of archetypes is that these options are available to our expert, our “spellcaster,” or our warrior, without locking someone in! The subclass archetype also allowed me to work in suitable material from other classes; the reclaimer archetype benefits greatly from the mechanic Starfinder class, importing relevant abilities while avoiding kitbashing the starship-centric elements.
Subclass archetypes vary from stock Starfinder archetypes in that they normally provide a concept-centric ability at 1st level, with the cost of the normal 1st level feat. The berserker subclass, for instance, gets a Starfinder-appropriate, rage-like power. The stranger subclass gets a specialized weapon ability. From there, the rest of the perks for the subclass add on, reinforce, or run adjacent to that initial ability.
Mutation archetypes follow a similar concept, with the rule change that a character can choose a mutation archetype in addition to another archetype. Like the subclass archetypes, they offer some new options should a character choose to embrace their mutation and often have prerequisites related to another mechanical introduction, their namesake, mutations.
By using archetypes for the classic post-apocalyptic archetypes such as raiders, players can build out crafty, talky, raider-envoys who call the shots, raider-operatives who are lean, mean, somewhat unhinged fighting machines, and raider-soldiers, brutes who use heavy firepower or hulking muscles to turn opposition into a fine, red, mist. Likewise, a character can be anything they want as well as embrace their “weirdness” by taking a mutation archetype, enhancing their control and understanding of their elemental affinity, their lust for blood, or tap into their latent psychic abilities.
