D&D 5E Fifth Age: A hard science fiction 5e conversion

digigirl said:

What is your feeling on Psionics in Fifth Age? I'm a little hesitant to allow it, because I think a psionicist might seem over powered (or too magic-y). On the other hand, it could provide an interesting twist. I'm considering maybe saving it for later, and introducing it through an NPC or villain, but not offer it as a player race, if I use it at all. Thoughts?

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Stefen Swanner said:

Personally i would introduce psionics with a new alien NPC race not available to players (at first), or else that's what I plan.

On another note, in the class section of the book, there are no saving throw proficiencies listed. Do we not include proficiency in the saving throws in 5th Age, or can I base saving throw proficiencies depending on which class is most alike to 5th Ed.?

Also, with the "wierd science" of hyperspace here, and the direct statement that the Singularity cannot enter hyperspace because of their nature, how would a Synthetic player view hyperspace travel? Would they be anchored because of the Organic lifeforms defining reality around them? Or would they be lost due to their mechanical nature?

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Warren Ellis said:

We see the Solar Credit in use by the LoSN so what kind of currency does/did the Galactic Hegemony use? If PCs are going at any point into Hegemony territory, would they have to exchange their currency for Galactic currency or something?

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Warren Ellis said:

Can synthetics like shut down or power down to protect themselves before a ship enters hyperspace?

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Stefen Swanner said:

If that were the case then the Singularity would be able to use it. No, in the book it says that a living crew is needed to hold to laws of physics in place while in hyperspace. If there is no living crew to do this then they would all just dissapear in the jump. I was asking if this affected a single synthetic player, since i refused to let the entire group be synthetic for this specific reason.

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The interceptor was a narrow spike of metal and ceramic, black as space and, where the hull was not interrupted by external hardware, smooth as glass. Zandy ran her hand along the hull of Interceptor CS-1-4. The ten meter long craft was nestled in its support cradle, one of six that were about to be loaded into the forward-starboard launch tubes. The interceptor was festooned with clusters of long "harpoons," nuclear detonation x-ray laser warheads fitted along the interceptor's sides. There were a dozen anti-interceptor warheads and six bigger anti-ship warheads; these were the business end of the tiny fighter-missile. Each warhead was a six-meter-long needle of metal. The anti-interceptor warheads were barely 10 centimeters in diameter, and the anti-ship warheads were only twice as wide. The x-ray lasing rods took up most of that length, with the actual warhead and short-duration fission pulse-drive crammed into the last meter of the weapon. Zandy smiled grimly.

This time would be for real; no simulations now. Those warheads were live; multi-kiloton nukes for the anti-interceptor weapons and megaton-yield nukes for the anti-ship warheads. She stepped forward to look at the retracted panels of the bow-shields, ran a hand along the sensors masts that would extend to look past the shield, then stepped aft to inspect the reflector array that, once opened to its full twelve meter span, would help focus laser energy onto the interceptor's drive. The drive section was retracted for now; in space it would extend from the rear of the interceptor, almost doubling the craft's length, placing the reaction mass nozzle right at the focus point of the reflectors. When the laser energy from one of the Conquering Sun's PLAs focused on it, the drive would be able to accelerate the interceptor at almost ninety gees. Zandy looked over the glossy half spheres of the interceptor's laser arrays.

The little lasers lacked the power to burn though heavy armor, but they would be able to blind an enemy interceptor's sensors. Aside for the bow-shields, the little lasers and the radical evasions made possible by the interceptor's huge acceleration were her only defense. She ran a hand along the cluster of recessed launch tubes for her sensor drones. Those would be her eyes when the main sensors of the interceptor were blinded by the glare of enemy lasers.

Everything looked perfect. It was odd, she thought, to be touching one of her bodies with the hand of the other... Now there was a thought only a daemon could have, Zandy mused. She could see the distorted reflection of her biosim face in the smooth metal of the interceptor, and for a moment it was as if the interceptor wore the same face. She wondered briefly which one was actually "her." But there was no time for that sort of thing now. She focused her mind and turned away from the interceptor.

It was time to head to the avatar storage compartment, where her current body would be safely stored while she inhabited the interceptor. There was just enough time left to walk to her assigned storage compartment before the Conquering Sun dispensed with the charade that she was a freight super-liner and went to a full three gees acceleration; a few minutes after that, the enemy would be in range and the assault-ship would open fire, with Zandy, in her interceptor body, as one of the projectiles.

The avatar storage room was a familiar sight; rows and rows of storage capsules for biosims and the occasional bioavatar. In an emergency, she could have transferred into her interceptor from her quarters, or from a dozen other places in the ship, but if the Conquering Sun accelerated hard, that would risk damage to her biosim avatar, left behind while she was in the interceptor. Zandy jostled past other crewmembers as they climbed into the capsules. Jessa was already in the command neural net, flying the ship. Her biosim avatar was already stored in one of the ship's other avatar storage rooms.

Zandy climbed into a storage capsule, plugged a data line into the back of her neck, and strapped herself in. The link to her interceptor lit up inside her mind and she transferred herself: A moment of disorientation... And she was in the interceptor; she was the interceptor. A systems check ran almost subconsciously as she tested her body: reflectors, maneuver systems, small laser arrays, sensors; all came up green, stretched and limber, ready to fly. She was used enough to the interceptor that she didn't feel a psychological need to take a deep breath. A query came into her mind and she answered it, "CS-1-4 ready to go."

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Time was measured in long seconds. Zandy was on the beam. The interceptor was centered on the output of the Number Three Primary Laser Array, boosting hard at eighty-two gees towards the enemy ship. The enemy was focusing a tertiary laser array on her; she increased polymer flow to the bow-shields and launched another set of optical sensor-relay drones on a trajectory that ought to take them out of the dazzle-blinding pattern of the enemy laser. No joy; the enemy seemed to have it in for her, personally; all three drones flared and died, giving her no new sensor data. She was flying blind. She had the sensor feed from the Conquering Sun, her mother-ship, but it was light-lagged by almost two seconds, and her mother-ship was being laser-blinded too. The data wasn't totally useless, but it was nowhere near as good as getting some of her own sensors into the game. Seconds were a long time for an interceptor on an attack run.

The interceptor was riding the laser of one of the Conquering Sun's Primary Laser Arrays, PLAs, catching the enormous output of the huge laser array in its variable geometry parabolic reflectors and focusing it to turn carbon reaction mass into high energy plasma thrust. Zandy adjusted the magnetic nozzle of her drive and her thrust vector changed accordingly, slewing the interceptor in a corkscrew as she signaled the vector change back to her mother-ship. She could direct thrust in almost any direction, so long as it was powered by the PLA of her mother ship. But she needed that laser; there was no way get sustained high thrust from an onboard power source in something as small as an interceptor.

There was also no way to focus killing laser energy from the assault-ship out as far as an interceptor could be propelled, using its reflectors to focus the distant laser of its mother-ship. That meant that interceptors, propelled by laser power from their mother-ships, were the weapons of choice for deep space battle. For a moment she was off the beam, switching seamlessly to a burst of micro-fission pellets for thrust, before the mother-ship tracked her maneuver and tasked another PLA to propel her. The engine switched back to laser power. She was out of the glare of the enemy blinding laser now, and she triggered another spread of sensor drones to launch. This time she had a decent few seconds of new data before the enemy blinding lasers found her. The bow-shields were bleeding vaporized polymer fast, and she upped the injection rate of fresh polymer into the shields to maximum.

The shields were deployable panels of smart-metal and composite mesh that held a fluid barrier of ablative polymer between her and the enemy lasers. Her onboard polymer reserves should hold out for the brief remaining duration of the attack run. More importantly, the new sensor data suddenly gave her a targeting fix on two enemy interceptors screaming out to meet her. Her closing vector towards the enemy ship was up to almost 680 kilometers per second now, and the enemy interceptors were doing about 370 kps reciprocal.

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Warren Ellis said:

In your setting, is mind uplaoding a thing? Because I found a way you can have hard scifi space fighters, which I found in a novel called Hegemony by Mark Kalina:

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Capn Charlie said:

I stayed away from mind uploads for similar reasons as the hyperspace requirements, it facilitates a stronger narrative based around personal risk. With mind uploading no sane spaceship crew would set foot on an alien world when they could send down uploaded copies risk free.

It is really cool tech though, and similar to how I imagine fifth age space combat. Combat rounds last up to an hour, and a lot can happen in that time.

Sent from my MT2L03 using EN World mobile app

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