An Introduction to an Android Operative for the Starfinder Roleplaying Game

I had another name once, but I forgot it. Or, more precisely, I paid an old Lashunta technomancer to reach into my titanium skull, wrap her bony fingers around it, and crush it.

That was my first day on Absalom Station. The eleventh of Neth, nearly a hundred years ago. The day of my rebirth, of my freedom.

Now, it’s also my name. I am Neth-11.

I’m an Android. But I’m not like the androids you see today: more flesh and blood than machine, easily passing for something born.

I’m not flesh and bone. I wasn’t born; I was manufactured.

I was manufactured by the Xerxes Prime Mining Conglomerate, assembled from the very materials my predecessor had extracted from the asteroids of the Diaspora. For sixteen years, all I knew was labor: walking the surface of the asteroids, looking for any sign of something richer than rock, using my hands to dig out the pretties. You’d think a company like XPMC would have equipped us with tools to make the work more efficient—a laser pick or a plasma hammer—but no. Tools aren’t given tools.

I was fourteen when I heard the Great Blasphemy spoken for the first time. Triune—the great god who gave the Pact Worlds the gift of Drift travel, the god who was himself constructed—saw us. Triune saw the androids, and he recognized that we were not tools. He desired us to be free.

When the androids rebeled, I fought. I killed, tore men into pieces. Humans are so delicate. So fragile.

So cowardly. When I saw the executive starship—full of the fat, lazy humans who prospered on my labor—pull away from our mining colony and blink into the Drift, I vowed that I would find them all.

Month by month, year by year, I tracked down the members of executive management of Xerxes and its subsidiaries. I found them all. I judged them all. I sentenced them all. I executed them all.

Finally, my vow complete, I returned to Absalom Station. I no longer had purpose; I had no utility, so I decided to submit myself for renewal. It was a pleasant ceremony carried out by a priestess of Triune. She recited the Great Blasphemy, hailed my accomplishments, and spoke the incantation to release my soul from my shell.

It didn’t work.

I expected to drift into a sleep that wouldn’t end, but I woke again. Fresh. New. Like I had so many years ago in the mining colony, when I was first aware.

Except I remembered. I remembered everything. Every year I spent as property of Xerxes. Every cowardly executive I killed in retribution. I remembered the Great Blasphemy, and I remembered Triune.

I remembered everything. Everything except what they called me before.

I am Neth-11, and I do not know why I am still here.

Building an Android Operative

We’ve outlined Starfinder’s Android race in the description of P9KO, our Envoy, so let’s talk about the Neth-11’s class: The Operative.

The Operative is a skill monkey. Like the Envoy, the Operative comes equipped with 16 different class skills and gets 8 + Int Mod skill ranks per level. That’s quite a bit.

But wait, there’s more!

At first level, the Operative’s Edge gives them +1 to all skill checks (plus Initiative) and once they choose their Specialization, they get an additional +3 to the two specified skills for that Specialization and free ranks in those two skills with every level.

Neth-11 went with the Ghost Specialization, making his two buffed skills Acrobatics and Stealth; both of which come in handy when it comes to pulling off the Operative’s Trick Attack.

Trick Attack is another level one perk for the Operative that, if done successfully, grants them some additional damage to attacks. If the Operative passes a Bluff, Intimidate, Stealth, or other specialization skill check with a DC of 20 + the target’s CR, they deal an additional 1d4 damage to the now flat-footed enemy combatant. That damage scales with further Operative levels as well: 1d8 at 3rd level, 3d8 at 5th, and an additional 1d8 for every 2 levels after that.

And all of this is just at the first level! And second level really opens up your Operative’s custom build with the introduction of Exploits–nifty tricks that help hone the Operative into one heck of a weapon!

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Don’t miss Neth-11, Olin Essa, P9KO, Bokemper, and Lint (soon to be introduced in his own post) as they wet their feet as new members of the Starfinder Society on The Drift podcast. Subscribe to the podcast for live plays, commentary, conversations with the creators of Starfinder, interviews, and more!