Who Do You Think You Are; Ancestries in the Starfall Galaxy


The Starfall Galaxy is a vast and unpredictable expanse, shaped by ancient cosmic forces, emergent technologies, and the volatile energies of the Rift. Within this sprawling tapestry, countless intelligent species carve out their existences, each with unique origins, adaptations, and perspectives forged by their struggle and evolution. Some were once ordinary beings transformed by unimaginable science or primordial Mana; others awakened to sentience through strange cosmic flukes or the intentional designs of long-lost civilizations. From the cybernetically uplifted to the magically reanimated, the ancestries of Starfall embody the galaxy's boundless diversity and its ever-shifting nature.

A character has one ancestry and one background, both of which you select during character creation. You’ll also select a number of languages for your character. Once chosen, your ancestry and background can’t be changed.

Ancestry Entries

Each Ancestry Entry includes details about the ancestry and presents the rules elements described below.

Hit Points

This tells you how many HP your PC gains from their ancestry at 1st level. You’ll add the HP from your character’s class (including their Constitution modifier) to this number.

Size

This tells you the physical size of members of the ancestry. Medium corresponds roughly to the height and weight range of a human adult, and Small is roughly half that.

Speed

This entry lists how far a member of the ancestry can move each time they spend an action (such as Stride) to do so.

Attribute Boosts & Flaws

When creating a character of this ancestry, you apply attribute boosts to increase some attribute modifiers, and possibly attribute flaws to decrease others (depending on the ancestry).

Alternate Ancestry Boosts: 

Because of the wide variety of people within any ancestry, you can always choose to take two free boosts to represent your character, even if the ancestry normally has three boosts and a flaw.

Languages

This tells you the languages that members of the ancestry speak at 1st level. If your Intelligence modifier is +1 or higher, you can select more languages from a list given here.

Traits

These descriptors have no mechanical benefit, but they’re important for determining how certain spells, effects, and other aspects of the game interact with your character.

Special Abilities

Any other entries in the sidebar represent abilities, senses, and other qualities all members of the ancestry manifest. These are omitted for ancestries with no special rules.

Heritages

You select a heritage at 1st level to reflect abilities common among those of your ancestry in the environment where you were born or grew up. You have only one heritage and can’t change it later. A heritage isn’t the same as a culture or ethnicity, though some cultures or ethnicities might have more or fewer members from a particular heritage.

Ancestry Feats

This section presents ancestry feats, which allow you to customize your character. You gain your first ancestry feat at 1st level, and you gain another at 5th level, 9th level, 13th level, and 17th level, as indicated in the class advancement table in the descriptions of each class. As a starting character, you can choose from only 1st-level ancestry feats, but later choices can be made from any feat of your level or lower. These feats also sometimes list prerequisites, which are conditions that your character must fulfill to select that feat.

Common Ancestries

Characters of these ancestries slot into parties of other ancestries relatively easily and can assume most missions with minimal additional effort on the part of the Game Master.
  • Android: Synthetically created humanoids, often embodying peak physical and mental capabilities, grappling with questions of identity and soul.
  • Chassos: Magnificent and imposing humanoids blending the grace of a steed with human intellect, rooted in movement, honor, and mastery.
  • Geodan: Resolute and enduring people whose history is forged in the bedrock of the Starfall Galaxy, consummate builders and relentless explorers.
  • Grakken: Tenacious and fiercely chaotic small humanoids who delight in mischief and destruction, thriving on impulse and sabotage.
  • Grolak: Formidable and unyielding reptilian humanoids, defined by conquest and the relentless pursuit of strength, known for their marauding hordes.
  • Human: The highly adaptable and ubiquitous species, found throughout the galaxy, known for their diversity, ambition, and innovation.
  • Kasatha: Ancient and enigmatic four-armed humanoids, symbols of adaptability, martial prowess, and deep-seated reverence for tradition, traveling on worldships.
  • Khashadab: Resilient and fiercely pragmatic hyena-headed humanoids, masters of ambush and tactical feints, prioritizing efficient victory.
  • Klaris: Formidable and highly disciplined humanoids, embodying strategic might and unyielding resolve, with societies structured with military precision.
  • Pahtra: Vibrant and fiercely independent feline humanoids, known for their competitive spirit, love of music, and unwavering pursuit of freedom.
  • Shisk: Reclusive and enigmatic sentient species, whose forms echo cosmic secrets, steeped in knowledge, history, and subtle manipulation of energies.
  • Skittermander: Small, six-armed, and perpetually cheerful species known for their boundless helpfulness and an almost insatiable desire to make friends.
  • Tanyon-Unin: Aquatic humanoids defined by their profound connection to water, vibrant artistic expression, and evolving commitment to unity.
  • Tengu: Gregarious and incredibly resourceful avian humanoids, embodying adaptability, curiosity, and a knack for collecting everything from knowledge to odd treasures.
  • Tuken: Small, resilient humanoids who embody cheerful resourcefulness and a deep connection to the land and its hidden pathways, traveling as keen observers and storytellers.
  • Vesk: Proud and formidable reptilian species, renowned for their martial prowess, unyielding honor, and deep-seated warrior culture, linked to the Scale Hegemony.
  • Ysoki: Vibrant and tenacious sentient rodents, renowned for their incredible ingenuity, lightning-fast reflexes, and insatiable curiosity.

Uncommon Ancestries

These ancestries require GM approval before a player selects them, because their inclusion requires additional consideration for adventure design and campaign planning. These ancestries possess some advantages over common ancestries, or their lore considerations could put these characters at odds with other party members.

  • Automaton: Intelligent constructs that have developed true sentience, grappling with emergent consciousness and blending technological ingenuity with Mana-infused bio-circuitry.
  • Barathu: Ancient and enigmatic sentient species, embodying fluidity and connection, whose communal and empathetic nature led to the unsettling Khi'Myr Bio-Commune.
  • Choran: Diminutive yet resilient froglike humanoids, ecologically-focused guardians and engineers within the Scale Hegemony, masters of bio-engineering and camouflage.
  • Dracosmyr: Draconic in appearance and fiercely loyal, deeply empathic beings capable of forming a nearly unbreakable psychic bond with one other creature.
  • Enfong: Ophidian humanoids who carry potent, bio-engineered venom, largely misunderstood but driven by a powerful sense of community and creative pursuit, and welcomed into the Scale Hegemony.
  • Kashrishi: Stout, crystalline-horned humanoids with inherent psychic abilities, natural empaths adapting to cosmic environments through conscious evolution, capable of evolving new features.
  • Kwalen: Small, reptilian species whose forms and destinies are marked by the powerful entities, vast energies, or ancient technologies they choose to venerate.
  • Lashunta: Refined and ambitious psychics, their intellect and drive for self-perfection mirroring the grandiosity of the Inner Sphere, with a long history of interaction with the Vaelen.
  • Oculon: Rare and enigmatic humanoids with eight gelatinous eyes and thousands of tiny peering eyes on their neck, often perceived as "prey" and adopting intimidating personas.
  • Sarcesian: Natural spacefarers who glide through the void of space on butterfly wings of pure cosmic energy and light, inheritors of the shattered Diaspora.
  • Shadar: Small, wiry humanoids whose forms are extensions of cosmic shadows, masters of subtle movement and hidden artistry, diasporic sojourners from a corrupted Rift-Plane.
  • Shimmerings: Diminutive, whimsical, and exuberant creatures from scattered Mana-Shimmer Dimensions, pure expressions of magic and consciousness who love to play pranks.
  • Shirren: Fascinating and resilient insectile species, whose chitinous forms are a testament to their journey from enforced unity to cherished individuality, some having seceded from the Khi'Myr Bio-Commune.
  • Spark-Kin: Rare and unique beings, once ordinary animals, now infused with self-awareness and advanced intellect through intensive cybernetic and genetic experimentation.
  • Strix: Reclusive avian humanoids devoted to their deep-space territories and tribes, defending communities with broad, Mana-infused wingspans and razor talons.
  • Surki: Insectile and highly metamorphic species emerging from deep planetary crusts or cosmic dust clouds, subsisting on latent Mana and developing unique adaptations.
  • Umbran: Striking and enigmatic people, once human, fundamentally reshaped by a desperate flight into shadow-infused reaches of the Outer Planes, intricately connected to gloom and reflection.
  • Vaelen: Graceful and elusive humanoids, intrinsically connected to subtle cosmic energies and hidden dimensions, and the original creators of the Aether-Synapse.
  • Vividi: Diminutive and profoundly vibrant species, their essence a testament to curiosity and innovation, rooted in a connection to the Rift and facing the affliction known as The Fading.

Rare Ancestries

These ancestries require GM collaboration in character building; they possess potentially game-unbalancing ancestral abilities, or their lore demands additional attention from the GM to integrate them seamlessly into the campaign.
  • Astrazoan: Form-shifting enigmas resembling human-sized starfish in their natural form, capable of seamlessly integrating into almost any society by adopting new identities and expressions.
  • Bone-Echoes: Rare and enigmatic ancestry, animated skeletal remains of powerful alien predators, combat automatons, or ancient beings, retaining intellect and might through force of will or extraordinary circumstances.
  • Cerebral Nexus: Hyper-specialized thinkers, immense, floating brains with vestigial limbs, evolved through generations of psychic and bio-engineered pursuit of mental perfection, with natural telekinesis.
  • Florin: Rare and enigmatic species of intelligent plant-people, living testaments to an abandoned science project, possessing organic immortality through their seeds.
  • Mnemosyn: Mystical and deeply contemplative species whose very existence is defined by a cycle of reincarnation and the accumulation of countless lifetimes of knowledge.
  • Scarred: Profoundly unfortunate beings whose forms were created or radically transformed by cruel experiments, unstable technology, or the direct twisting by Rift-Entities, a grotesque blend of mutation and technology.
  • Spark Droids: Rare and unique beings, once ordinary, basic droids typically designed for amusement or companionship, that spontaneously gained true sapience and emergent consciousness.
  • Triosam: Enigmatic beings: shards of cosmic force given consciousness, who construct intricate exoskeletons from living, bio-luminescent materials to interface with the mortal world, looking to ancient Aeons to understand their purpose.

Universal Ancestry Feats 

These universal ancestry feats reflect experiences that transcend individual species, often tied to encounters with the Rift, the nature of emergent sentience, or the inherent instability of the Starfall Galaxy.

1st Level Feats

Echoes of a Glitch (Let's Try That Again): Your mind, touched by the bizarre echoes of the Rift, experiences a momentary temporal stutter. A flicker of a past existence—perhaps a simulated life within a forgotten AI, or a fleeting glimpse of a different timeline—resets the moment.
Void Scavenger (Like a Roach) Living with the bare necessities isn’t terribly hard for someone who has defied death or persisted through cosmic devastation.
Weight of Experience The experience you’ve accumulated over multiple lifetimes envelops you like a weighted blanket, providing comfort and bestowing confidence in times of pressure.
Data from Another Life (Wisdom from Another Life) Your consciousness is imprinted with fragments of knowledge from a previous existence or a forgotten data cache. Before you died or were re-encoded, you absorbed a wide variety of facts, and your soul or neural network still remembers slivers of this precious knowledge.

5th Level Feats

  • Spark-Kin Connection (Animal Soul Siblings) (Rare, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 5: Your eyes have been opened to the spiritual essence suffusing the galaxy, particularly connecting you to sentient fauna. You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to Diplomacy checks when interacting with creatures with the Beast or Spark-Kin trait.

    Empathy Incarnate (Rare, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 5: Reincarnation or persistent consciousness has given you a compassionate perspective and enabled you to relate to almost everyone you speak with, understanding their core emotional drives. You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to Diplomacy checks to Make an Impression on any creature.

    Mana-Influence (Fey Influence) (Rare, Universal Ancestry) Feat 5: Your exposure to powerful Mana-signatures, planar bleeding, or chaotic Rift-energy has given you some innate primal magic. You gain one common cantrip from the primal spell list. You can Cast this Spell as an innate spell at will. A cantrip is heightened to a spell level equal to half your level rounded up.

    Cosmic Careerist (I've Had Many Jobs) (Rare, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 5: Finding and excelling at odd jobs is child's play to one who has worked many occupations during many lives or through many system reboots. Once per day, you can choose to become trained in a single skill for 1 hour.

    Reincarnated Taunter (Reincarnated Ridiculer) (Rare, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 5: You've practiced the art of taunting an enemy, ensuring they know deactivation or destruction will only make you stronger. You gain the Taunt action.

    Taunt [one-action] (auditory, emotion, mental) You make a cutting remark. Attempt an Intimidation check to Demoralize a creature. If you are successful, the creature also takes 1d4 mental damage.

    Slumber of the Reborn (Sleep of the Reborn) (Rare, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 5: Philosophers compare the cycle of existence, deactivation, and rebirth to sleeping, dreaming, and waking. You gain a +2 circumstance bonus to saving throws against sleep effects and effects that would make you fatigued.
    9th Level Feats

  • Mana Drain (Drain Emotion) (Rare, Enchantment, Mental, Universal Ancestry) Feat 9: Prerequisites Mana-Influence. You touch an adjacent creature and attempt to draw out its excess Mana or emotional energy. As a 2-action activity, you can target an adjacent living creature. They must succeed at a Will save against your Spell DC or become drained 1 and you regain 1d8 Hit Points. You can only use this once per day.

    Planar Resonance (Fey Ascension) (Rare, Universal Ancestry) Feat 9: Prerequisites Mana-Influence. The Mana-influence on your form and features grows even more powerful and notable, reflecting your connection to planar energies. You gain an additional cantrip from your chosen Mana-Influence tradition, and your innate spells from Mana-Influence are heightened to a spell level equal to your level.

    Lingering Data-Echoes (Lingering Echoes) (Rare, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 9: Not everyone is reincarnated, and you feel a strong connection with the spiritual echoes of those who didn't receive the same opportunity as you. You gain a +2 circumstance bonus to Recall Knowledge checks about historical events or deceased individuals.

    Xeno-Flora Connection (Plant Soul Siblings) (Rare, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 9: You're now able to connect with the spirits present in the greenery and bio-engineered flora of the natural world. You gain the ability to communicate with non-sentient plant creatures.

    Rapid Reconfiguration (Rapid Retraining) (Rare, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 9: Some feel trapped by their choices and have a tough time reinventing themselves. You can Retrain any feat, skill increase, or spell in half the usual time.

    Familiar Faces (You Seem Somewhat Familiar) (Rare, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 9: You fought hundreds of foes in your various past lives or encountered countless archetypes across different existences. When you use a skill for initiative, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus to the check.
    13th Level Feats

  • Mana-Siphon (Cannibalize Magic) (Rare, Universal Ancestry) Feat 13: Prerequisites Mana-Influence. The Mana-magic inside of you is a vital part of your body, and you can steal other sources of Mana to replenish yours. Once per day, as a reaction when you are targeted by a spell, you can attempt to counteract the spell. If successful, you regain 1 Focus Point.

    Clinging to Consciousness (Clinging to Life) (Rare, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 13: This life still holds much for you, and you aren’t ready to fall back into the Void of Souls just yet. When you are reduced to 0 Hit Points, you can attempt a DC 15 flat check. On a success, you remain at 1 Hit Point instead. You can use this once per day.

    Cosmic Detachment (Eldritch Calm) (Rare, Universal Ancestry) Feat 13: Prerequisites Mana-Influence. Your planar heritage has altered your mindset to more resemble the uncanny perspective of cosmic entities. You gain a +2 status bonus to saving throws against emotion effects and mental effects.

    Galactic Glamour (Glamour) (Rare, Universal Ancestry) Feat 13: Prerequisites Mana-Influence. You unlock a new level of planar power and can manipulate the perceptions of others using a font of Mana-Shimmer Dimensions magic. You can cast illusory object as a 4th-rank innate spell once per day.

    Sense Malevolence (I sense Malevolence) (Rare, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 13: Your time in the Void of Souls has given you deep insight into the machinations of those who refuse to move on or embrace their cosmic fate. You gain a +2 circumstance bonus to Perception checks to Sense Motive against creatures with the undead or aberration traits.

    Multilingual Awakening (Linguistic Revival) (Rare, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 13: You achieved fluency in different languages with each reincarnation or through vast data integration. You can choose one additional language you know (beyond those granted by your ancestry).

    Suffering's Resilience (Pain is Temporary) (Rare, Concentrate, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 13: Cosmological philosophers know that suffering is a fleeting sensation that ultimately strengthens the soul and prepares it for a new reincarnation. As a single action, you can gain resistance to all damage equal to your level until the start of your next turn. You can use this once per day.

    Geological Connection (Stone Soul Siblings) (Rare, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 13: Prerequisites Xeno-Flora Connection. Your connection with nature’s spirits has progressed to the point where you can even have casual conversation with pebbles and boulders, or the sentient echoes within planetary geological formations. You can communicate with inanimate objects made of stone.

    Unbreakable Resolve (Rare, Fortune, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 13: The experience of coming back after deactivation or death has granted you a strong sense of resolve. Once per day, when you would gain the dying condition, you can choose not to gain it.
    17th Level Feats

  • Void-Archivist (Boneyard Acquaintance) (Rare, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 17: Before your soul returned to the Material Plane, you interacted with a host of other souls on their way to the Cosmic Archives or the Void of Souls. You gain a +2 circumstance bonus to Recall Knowledge checks about cosmic history, famous deceased individuals, or planar lore.

  • Planar Transcendence (Fey Transcendence) (Rare, Universal Ancestry) Feat 17: Prerequisites Mana-Influence. You become a powerful planar creature, gaining strengths tied to the Mana-Shimmer Dimensions but also some of the weaknesses against which all planar fey must contend. You gain resistance 5 to force damage, but weakness 5 to a specific energy type (GM's discretion, e.g., divine energy or pure temporal energy). You also gain an additional 5th-rank innate spell from your Mana-Influence tradition, castable once per day.

  • Indomitable Spirit (Rare, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 17: Your soul has accumulated countless particles of quintessence over myriad deaths and rebirths. You gain fast healing 5.

  • Release the Mana-Light (Release the Light) (Rare, Light, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry, Visual) Feat 17: Many people report seeing a bright light before their death. As a 2-action activity, you can unleash a burst of pure Mana-light in a 30-foot emanation. Creatures in the burst take 8d6 positive energy damage and are blinded for 1 round (basic Fortitude save). You can use this once per day.

  • Cosmic Reckoning (See You in Hell) (Rare, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 17: You aren’t sure if you’ll be reincarnated again, so you might as well take this foe with you. As a reaction when you are reduced to 0 Hit Points, you can make one Strike against the creature that reduced you to 0 Hit Points. If this Strike reduces the creature to 0 Hit Points, you both die.

  • Ethereal Shift (This Time, Bring the Body) (Rare, Reincarnated, Universal Ancestry) Feat 17: Since your soul has experienced not only deactivation/death but also rebirth, you can shift your physical body into a localized Ethereal Plane for brief intervals. As a 1-action activity, you can become incorporeal for 1 round. You can use this once per day.

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