How to balance a campaign without a magical restoration

Question

I'm currently GMing a Starfinder game for a group consisting of an Envoy, a Mechanic, two Soldiers, and an Operative. With the Operative acting as a jack-of-all-skills, I'm less worried about mystical story elements than I would be otherwise. My primary concern is dungeon and encounter balance, lacking magical healing in the group. The mechanic and one of the soldiers should be decent with the Medicine skill.

Assuming I'm not expecting them to spend all their money on healing serums... How well does technological/skill-based healing plus the Envoy's "Inspiring Boost" taken at second level measure up to magical healing in terms of healing through extended dungeons? Assume for example, that I'm running through published modules. Should I tone down/reduce encounters or maybe lower enemy HP? Will the scaling of restoration abilities change at higher levels?

Answer 1

From my experience, there is little need for magic healing in Starfinder compared to Pathfinder 3.5. The combination of resolve and stamina points as laid out in the system should give the party enough longevity which you can certainly supplement with technological healing. Just make sure your players who take the heal skill also grab themselves a med kit. I wouldn't worry about it or tone down anything. Although, that being said, I haven't actually played the published modules, so maybe they are a lot scarier than I am expecting. So, if you find your PCs are having trouble, try just tossing in a few extra healing items their way. Take the adaptive difficulty approach. The one where like modern video games go, "You suck, I'm going to throw you more items.".