Tactical Starship Combat

2026-10-22

Basics

A player starship is given a starship sheet, which is like a character sheet for a starship. It can level up, making battle stations better and granting additional upgrade slots.

There are two maps: The player starship map and the zone map.

  • The starship map is a normal-scale map of the player's starship, indicating where battle stations (helm, ship weapons, etc) are.
  • The zone map is a more or less unscaled linear map representing roughly where the players, enemies and hazards are. It does not attempt to represent real distances.

Creatures with the 'starship' trait are capable of fighting starships.

Archive of Nethys has a starship builder. It looks good.

Battle stations

A starship's frame determines the number of battle stations slots and the default weapons in those battle stations.

You can helm a battle station if you are next to it and have a hand free. You cannot helm if you are unconcious or otherwise incapacitated. Any character helming a battle station is granted access to that battle station's station actions.

Battle stations also often grant passive effects, for instance allowing a character piloting to use their piloting DC instead of the starship's AC.

As in wildjammer, your class actions and abilities apply to battle station actions.

'Gunnery' is the battle station which has weapons. It can be equipped with a number of different ones.

Archive of nethys has lists of battle stations and ship weapons.

Movement and range

Starship movement and ability range is represented in zones, on the zone map. Starship speed is measured in zones.

Starships have a heading - which way on the zone map they are facing. Starships are off-guard to attacks from behind.

Ranges work as follows:

  • Burst: originates from the line bordering two zones and extends its value in both directions from the line. A 0-zone burst affects a single zone.
  • Cone: starts from its origin zone (normally the caster's) and extends in one direction equal to its value. Affects all targets in every zone, including the caster's zone, but not the casting starship.
  • Emanation: Affects the origin zone and it's value zones either side; e.g. a 1-zone emanation affects the caster's zone and one zone either side, for three total. A 0-zone emanation affects the caster's zone only.
  • Line: Affects the origin zone and zones in front of it up to its value. Can target only one starship per zone affected.

Damage and repairs

Starships have hull points and shield points. Shield points are depleted first, and do not 'shield gate' (damage can overflow from shields into hull). Hull and Shield are restored in different manners (generally hull is more difficult and slower to repair).

Starship saving throws can be rolled by any crew member; bonuses from battle stations apply to anyone rolling a saving through as long as the station is helmed. So someone manning a gun could roll a save for the ship, and if the pilot's chair is manned and gives a bonus, that bonus applies to the gunner.

It is very difficult for non-starship scale beings to affect starship-sized entities.

When a starship reaches 0 hull, it becomes compromised (analagous to dying). If hull is restored, it is wrecked (analagous to wounded). Compromised starts at 1, 2 if the attack was a crit, and then the wrecked value is added. A starship is fully destroyed if compromised reaches 10.

Upon becoming compromised, all of a starship's battle stations become malfunctioning. You cannot use their actions but their passive bonuses remain.

There are three ways to increase or decrease compromised:

  • hull integity checks,
  • taking damage,
  • ship repairs.

If a starship has compromised, it is added to initiative immediately below the turn where it was reduced to 0 hull. It must make a hull integrity check on its turn. Any crew member can attempt this check; it is a flat check with DC 10+compromised value.

  • Crit Success: -2 compromised
  • Sucecss: -1
  • Fail: +1
  • Crit Fail: +2

If you take damage while compromised, increase compromised by 1, or 2 if the attack crits or you crit failed a save.

Any time the starship looses compromised, it gains wrecked 1 or increases its existing wrecked value by 1. Wrecked is reduced by the Emergency Repairs exploration action.