Saturday, October 24, 2015

Side-note on Science Fiction

A while ago I made a huge rant about science fiction in Pathfinder over on Paizo's forums as kind of a summary of the state of space and scifi when it came to third party products I had glanced at or bought and how I use them. Here is the post, edited to make it less thread specific. There is definitely some  reiteration of information from my last post

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Amethyst & Neurospasta: Amethyst presents a setting where both magic and technology exists giving several classes and a slew of new technology rules. Neurospasta is in the same boat with very similar rules but has more of a cyberpunk slant. They are both from the same company so handle a lot of aspects the same way but I generally find Neurospasta more useful for my purposes as being a little less fluff and a bit more item crunch. Outside of the fluff they give a lot to work with and is nearly complete in giving you what you need to deal with the setting, however I found a few glaring holes that are largely subjective.

I never really got into the classes because of one glaring and unfair thing, some of the full BAB classes have 1 less BAB per level than usual. This has been so weird that I never gave the classes more than a cursory glance. Even then I'm not too keen on classes that 'could' be a fighter with different weapon proficiencies and fulfill the same roles, plus some of the classes do things that I’m not ready to allow like Strength or Wisdom to firearm attack and damage.

As a whole I find a lot of the crunch to be intuitive in a few places, even superior to how they work in Pathfinder’s core line but for the most part it feels more complicated and hard to remember.

Infinite Futures: Infinite Futures is kind of hard to judge because it has a lot of little supplements after it that I don’t have but in the context of single book space support it is relatively complete. It is pretty setting neutral. It has a Random Alien Generator for you to fill your setting with assorted Star-Wars esque alien diversity. There are classes that are reasonable for the most part but some classes have what are mechanically spells but aren’t for some reason which really doesn’t appeal to me because the tech-based classes I have from other products do the concept of spell-like technology so much better.

The items are not compatible with the technology guide and firearms function differently from mainstream Pathfinder but on it’s own it covers a lot of bases.  There are vehicles including mechs, vehicle mods, Speeders, cycles, cars, hoverbikes, spaceships. There are no premade mech stat blocks. There are space travel rules like warping, hyperspace and wormholes. There are also environmental rules.  At times all these rules are over complicated but not as bad as I’ve seen elsewhere and when it comes to space travel and vehicle modification its my go to. It also has the most interesting use of modern projectile weapon rules.


Between Chains and Starlight: Between Chains and Starlight was handy by being free but in the end it’s real contribution is spaceships both in the product itself and related supplements. Having pregenerated space ship stat blocks is more restrictive than having fully customizable spacecrafts but boy is it handy and in some way I prefer to add modifications to an existing stat block than generate one from scratch for simplicity sake. Especially since vehicles the size of star ships usually wind up being played ‘from the inside’ with players dealing with suppressing damage, interacting with intruders or otherwise dealing with things personally rather than driving the ship and leading it through combat. Shooting monsters that get on the ship is way more fun than one player making drive checks to make a ship fight another ship because you actually get to do things. I found that if players decide to actually attack a ship they’ll likely board it or ride in fighter ships before playing it like a naval combat simulator. Later I talk about

It Came from the Stars: This one has the least complete experience. You get some races, two new ‘space magic’ classes, and some symbiote feats as far as the notable player oriented stuff goes. For a GM it’s actually pretty nice for plot hooks and environmental cues.



As a whole I think that a lot of these products try to set up a setting or general mode of operating making them have to make new rules or modify rules which generates a lot of reading material which in some ways is a downside. The Technology Guide definitely dates these because of the added complexity because it does a good job of introducing all these new technological wonders without the need to have to read too many extra rules. You can feel this the most when it comes to new skills. I frequently see completely new skills while the Technology Guide simple gave new uses to skills which is huge for simplifying character sheets that don’t have those extra skills and is especially disastrous for classes that need those skills but don’t have the ranks to spare. For example if a Fighter can drive a mech using Knowledge Engineering for his drive check things are relatively fine and you don’t need to make an entirely new class for mech piloting because a Fighter of the future fits in and his weapon training can translate to the siege weapons that would be on a mech. If the skill is new there are new considerations, like whether or not the fighter is even appropriate for being a mech pilot and the fact that he does not have the ranks to throw around at things like the new piloting skill assuming its even a class skill. New skills also kind of choke on third party classes. In a nutshell the Technology Guide is accessible, doesn’t choke on third party, and allows a Fighter or Rogue to be a tech based class with a feat or give the feat away for free universally.  With it’s ease of use and general scope the Technology Guide renders a lot of crunch in a lot of the above books useless or cumbersome so they are only around now to poach pieces of crunch that I like or don’t have and fluff. I also have poached items from Skorched Urf’s technological products which is a very mixed bag and sometimes I have to attach battery packs after the Technology Guide.

The Technology Guide does lack in the arena of mechs, vehicles and hardsuits, and while vehicles can get a lot of love in other products mechs, spaceships and hardsuits either come off as too complicated or completely handwaved so I do rely on the above products to kind of fill those roles but I do long for something more compatible with the vehicle rules in Ultimate Combat. A short time ago Fat Goblin Games put out Fantastic Technology, and really the most useful thing in the book is the smallest thing, the concept of power source conversion, a concept that I ran with because like the concept of templates for monsters a single one multiplies the amount of creatures at your disposal being able to converting propulsion multiplies every existing vehicle stat block. I have Jon Brazer’s Vehicles of War and I wanted to give players flying surf boards in a deiselpunk floating continent setting, so I took the magic flying boards, replaced the magic propulsion with the combustion propulsion and suddenly I had gas powered flying surf boards. Since this is all compliant with the Ultimate Combat vehicle rules I don’t have to go through the trouble of conversion or translating to use all this stuff.

When it comes to Mechs and hardsuits in general I converted over material from the d20 Mecha compendium I linked above. Despite having to convert it the mecha rules are very intuitive and easier to deal with than most things I’ve seen before. Skorched Urf also made some gems in the form of some powered armor rules that are easy to deal with. Necromancers of the Northwest has a free supplement that has ‘golem armor’ that if you just say it’s not magical and attach a battery pack to it is very usable as powered armor. These all have essentially the same rules. It functions as armor but gives you a hardness rating, has to be targeted instead of you until it’s broken, gives you strength and speed boost and you can mount weapons or mods on it. I always have to manually attach a battery pack to the rules after the Technology Guide came out so that it can more easily interact with that stuff.

I also kind of piecemeal classes into whatever I’m playing because honestly most classes I find in general space campaign settings are kind of useless after the Technology Guide came out and especially pale in light of classes like the Machinesmith from Neoexodus. My general state of classes when I’m playing in space includes, The Machinesmith (plus the Host and Fleshwraith), The Tinker from Interjection Games, The Technician (with a modification) from Radiance House’s Age of Electrotech, and the recent Cyborg from Legendary Games. I feel like the Machinesmith handles most concepts is my measuring stick for the rest. Tinker and Cyborg feel a bit more limited but still function well and made for good classes for a future game. The Technician is probably more diverse than the Machinesmith but I had to modify it to be more compatible with the Technology Guide. As a whole all those classes have a similar formula in that they are generally ¾ BAB classes with 6 levels of ‘not casting’ with some kind of gadget generation as secondary class features. The Tinker dares to be different by being more robot minion focused with the smaller of the minions being capable of functioning as general devices and spells in a way.  I’m refraining from discussing the more steampunk or arcane technomancers/artificers. If you have a sole technological class I think the Machinesmith or Technician covers the most bases and concepts that you could imagine.

Beyond technology focused classes I had been using Rogue Genius Games Anachronistic Adventurers; Enforcer, Investigator and Sensitive but recently took a look at the compiled Anachronistic Adventures and really they remind me of how classes worked in D20 Modern/Future making them great for generic classes that can fit in any era despite advertizing as a more pulp-era focused book. For future/space campaigns it has the added benefit of being able to make a technology class that treats technology in a mundane way rather than being spellcasting by a different name.  I believe that Tripod Machine’s Conquest of the Universe (not yet finished) is using the classes from Anachronistic Adventures to fill in the non-tech based gap for it’s own space opera rules. Which is a good fit, as I mentioned above a pilot class that function out of a vehicle would be a ‘daredevil’ and Anachronistic Adventures has a Daredevil class that, with the right ranks in the right skills easily becomes a daring pilot with class features that can work with a vehicle.  In terms of magic, I have yet to disclude spellcasting classes from my space games but if I did Psionics is a natural fit by being able to represent more sci-fi feeling magic. Otherwise, It Came from the Stars fills a few needs on that front.

Races are pretty easy. Just say that a race came from outer space and you’re done. If you need more ‘scifi’ races than calling elves vulcans and calling it a day, Paizo has a whole splatbook of alien races and I’ll even allow Trox. Eridanus Books has a supplement that I find generally useless (being a conversion guide which makes me have to do work) but I keep around because it has 7 alien races. It Came From the Stars has 4 usable races that are quite interesting as well. But aliens are alien. There is no way to cover enough races unless you include some kind of Alien Builder but then you can’t really expand them the way you want because DMs really don’t want to put any kind of race builder in the hands of their players because there’s no way to make that perfectly balanced.

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