Starfield is a sci-fi RPG, and as such it has no shortage of ray guns and spaceships. But if you don’t trust all that newfangled technology and instead prefer to rely on a strong sword arm and your stalwart faith, you can easily play through the game as a righteous crusader.
This build is inspired by one Sir Roger de Tourneville, a simple English knight who instead of helping his king fight the Hundred Years’ War, ended up conquering the interstellar Wersgorix Empire in Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade.
Character Creation
Background
Ronin will be our Background of choice, for what is a ronin if not a knight by another name. The skills our Background provides are as follows:
Dueling – our main Combat skill. Makes us better at using melee weapons.
Stealth – when dealing with technologically-advanced foes, stealth and subterfuge are a knight’s best friends.
Scavenging – lets us live off the land, only in this case, the land grows credits.
Traits
Extrovert – a knight thrives when supported by devoted men-at-arms.
Raised Universal – just because you’re a stranger in a strange land, doesn’t mean you should abandon your faith.
Since Starfield will eventually allow you to unlock everything, the build will be focusing on the core skills required to turn your character into a formidable knight. Outside of these, feel free to unlock supplementary skills that fit well with your playstyle.
This build will primarily focus on Physical and Social skills, with a quick dip into the Combat group.
The most important skill to raise early on is Dueling, as it will make us better at using melee weapons. We’ll be putting a lot of points into Persuasion and Scavenging to unlock the high-tier Social skills that will make us a worthy lord. And just about all Physical skills will be useful for this build, so don’t worry about maxing them out, just keep putting points there whenever you can to unlock the higher tiers.
Righteous fury or not, playing as a guy with a sword when most of your enemies keep shooting at you has its drawbacks. To overcome them, we’ll be grabbing the skills that help make us faster and sturdier. Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch or a trebuchet-launched nuke – a knight out of time can always get some use out of Demolitions.
Leadership will allow us to make proper squires out of our companions, while Martial Arts will greatly help with our damage output and make us a liege worthy of admiration.
The higher-tier skills will put the fear of God into our foes. Rejuvenation will let us shrug off their puny attacks, while with Manipulation we’ll be able to convert them to the cause of the righteous.
As you can see, this build eschews any and all high-tech solutions and instead focuses on becoming the ultimate melee specialist. This means utilizing everything that will make us faster sturdier while simultaneously maximizing our melee damage through a couple of key skills.
When simply hitting something with a stick won’t be sufficient, we’ll be using grenades and other explosives to even the odds, while our companions will be fighting with increased efficiency, and even our enemies will occasionally be swayed to join our cause. And once you’ve maxed out Dueling, Martial Arts, and Rejuvenation, very few targets will be able to withstand your onslaught.
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Val Hull
Resident role-playing RPG game expert. Knows where trolls and paladins come from. You must fight for your right to gather your party before venturing forth.
