Before your first scene you need a spacer worth the name — someone with a face, a trigger hand, and a reason to be out here in the black. The build takes ten steps, and the galaxy's full of wrong ways to do it. Here's the right one.
Step 1: Imagine the spacer
Start with a sentence. A discharged Legionnaire who still snaps to attention when someone shouts. A Guild Trader who can price a ship while it's still on fire. A psi-caster who hears the void whispering back. That sentence is your whole character in miniature — the rest of the steps just put numbers behind it.
Step 2: Choose a species
The Milky Way of 2870 holds twenty-three playable species, from the adaptable Human to the fox-faced Ke'bon, the giants of Vandu, and the slate-gray, red-eyed Evereni, the nomadic people of Everon. Each species grants traits — natural abilities, resistances, extra skills, or tricks like the Human's Ingenuity Under Pressure — plus a speed, a size, and sometimes darkvision. Not every species is a player option, so check the entry's playable line; the full roster lives in Player Options, and most tables pick species first because it shapes who your family and your enemies are.
Step 3: Choose a class
Your class is what you do when the shooting starts. Nine classes cover the frontier:
| Class | The job |
|---|
| Mage | Astral sorcery and the mysteries of Celestial Resonance |
| Mercenary | Power-armored gun-for-hire of the Mercenaries Guild |
| Outlaw | Smuggler, pirate, or syndicate muscle with a worn blaster |
| Psi-caster | Mind-science of the Arkanis Imperium — psychic weapons and wards |
| Ronin | Tech-sword duelist walking the line between blade and mind |
| Soldier | The disciplined backbone of every faction's armies |
| Stellar Knight | Plasma-sword knight in powered warplate, oath-sworn |
| Stellar Monk | Unarmed artist of Ambril, striking where armor isn't |
| Vicar | Holy or unholy priest, trading faith for miracles |
Each class grants a hit die (its size is on the class entry), armor and weapon training, skill proficiencies, and features at every level. At 3rd level you choose a subclass — the path that makes your soldier an Officer, your psi-caster a Frost-caster, your knight an Oath of the Royal Guard. Your class entry shows when each feature arrives.
Step 4: Choose a background
Your background is where you came from, and it pays for itself in skills and story. The seventeen backgrounds — Guild Trader, Starpilot, Imperial Noble, Iceborn Warrior, and the rest — each grant:
- +1 to three ability scores listed in the entry (the Guild Trader, for example, sharpens Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom)
- Two skill proficiencies and a tool proficiency
- Starting equipment — and often credits, like the trader's 100-credit stake
- An Origin feat, the background's signature trick: the Guild Trader learns Lucky, the Fallen Ronin something quieter
Step 5: Roll or buy your ability scores
Six abilities — Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma — drive everything, and every check, save, and attack reaches for one of them. Your table picks a method:
- Standard array: assign 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 as you like.
- Point buy: spend points from a budget to build the numbers you want.
- Rolled: roll 4d6 and drop the lowest, six times, in order or arranged by choice.
Then apply your species traits and your background's ability bonuses. Your ability modifier — the number that actually reaches the dice — is derived from the score, and your sheet computes it for you.
Step 6: Let the sheet do the math
Once the scores are in, the rest fills itself in:
- Proficiency bonus: +2 at 1st level, climbing at the standard 5th, 9th, 13th, and 17th level steps.
- Hit points: your class's hit die plus your Constitution modifier, with the sheet rolling or taking the average for you at each level.
- Armor Class: from your armor and shield, computed with your Dexterity modifier.
- Saving throws: the two your class trains you in, plus your ability modifiers for the rest.
- Skills: your class, background, and species proficiencies; the sheet lists which skills you're trained in.
- Speed, darkvision, and languages: from your species and background.
You don't track any of this by hand — the character sheet derives it from the choices you made. Spend your effort on the choices.
Step 7: Gear up
Your class entry lists starting weapons and armor; your background adds its equipment. Between them you should walk out the door with something to shoot with, something to wear, and something in your pocket — the Wealth tracker holds your Bits, Credits, and Stacks (1,000 Bits = 1 Credit, 1,000 Credits = 1 Stack), and the sheet's inventory tracks gear, weapons, armor, tools, magic items, and consumables separately. Most magical gear must be attuned to work, and you can attune up to three items at once — choose which relics are yours.
Step 8: Feats
At 4th, 8th, 12th, and 16th level, every character earns an Ability Score Improvement. You can raise scores, or take a General feat instead — the full list of trainings, from Plasma Weapon Training to Expanded Psi Reserve, is in the Feats chapter. Characters of 19th level and beyond can earn Epic Boons. Whatever you choose, it's permanent.
Step 9: Spellcasters
If your class casts — Mage, Psi-caster, Vicar, and their kin — your sheet tracks your known cantrips, your prepared spells by level, and your spell slots (or a Ronin's pact slots, which work differently). Your spell save DC and spell attack bonus are computed from your spellcasting ability. You prepare spells after a long rest, and casting a prepared spell costs a slot of its level or higher — spend them like credits, because both run out.
Step 10: Name, voice, and the last detail
Fill in your name, your alignment, and the fields that make you a person: description, personality, voice. Pick a detail the sheet can't hold — the scar, the keepsake, the debt — and put it in your notes. Then take your Heroic Inspiration: the GM hands it out for bold play, and you spend it to roll a d20 with Advantage, once, when it matters most.
When the sheet says you're done, you're a Licensed Independent Operator with a ship waiting and a galaxy that doesn't care yet. That's the point. Go make it care.