Developing to Spec: Part 14 – The Overrun Objective

This is the fourth section of Part Fourteen of a series of articles looking at creating a set of Starfinder feats under specific constraints.  You can read along as we convert every feat in the PF core rulebook to Starfinder (and  share my thoughts on that process, as a developer and writer)— or you can just look at the finished feats (as they are written, and I have time over the holidays to update the list) here.

Our journey of adaptation has brought us to Greater Overrun. Which is a problem, because the PF overrun combat maneuver doesn’t exist in Starfinder. And we can’t just create a new ability and call it Greater Overrun, because we’re going to have to convert Improved Overrun later when we get to all the PF “Improved” feats.

It’s not hard to see why overrun doesn’t exist in Starfinder — it’s a hybrid charge/trip that has special rules that allow a foe to move out of the way when it’s not their turn. Given one of the design objectives of Starfinder was to be simpler than PF, it makes sense to cut a combat maneuver that’s rarely used and has to bear the weight of special rules used only for that one maneuver.

But it’s inconvenient for us now.

The “obvious” solution is to create a new combat maneuver-like option you access through the Improved Overrun feat, and make a better version of it for Greater Overrun, while keeping true to the original concept of overrun but not making things as complicated as that option was. Which is a lot to try to manage, but we’re professionals, right?