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

[Morlock]

Oh, I can take no credit for any of the artwork. Arrangement and selection I suppose, but I just shamelessly scoured the internet for pieces I found appropriate and arranged them to taste.

Indeed, that's precisely what I'm praising you for. You did a bang up job of it. We both know it's not at all as straightforward as "oh, I just grabbed it off the net."

You can see the places where I got desperate or just plain couldn't do better.

Yes, I can. Boy, do I ever know that feeling. Some concepts, no matter how commonly they appear in RPGs, just never get a decent piece of art to accompany them. Yes, I imagine images of 25th century court rooms don't grow on trees.

I'd love to credit more artists, but the way I found most of this stuff I just had no clue who did it. I feel bad for that, but found the art was just too cool not to use for this sort of project.

Mostly correctable; use a reverse image search to hunt them down (I recommend TinEye). I'd feel compelled to give 'em a plug when I could, and I'm not exactly Mr. Respectful of IP Law over here.

Two pieces of advice:

1) When assembling a portfolio, or other collection of work, it's best to load your best stuff at the beginning, and the end; control the first and last impressions. I felt the book tapered off a bit at the end. Feel free to ignore this though, because it may not apply to this sort of work - books from even the top publishers seem to get a bit thin with the art toward the end. Maybe just a single, really good piece at the end?

2) Chris Foss. I just love his stuff.

 

[Morlock]

I am considering cutting the spaceship construction rules entirely, and adding them to a second document that's just all complex fiddly bits, like itemizing and building synthetic chassis and similar unnecessarily complex systems.

Yes, I think that kind of thing belongs in a supplement. Primary rules would be better served with a list of the most common ships. Maybe some rules on common mods. I don't think I'd even want to bother with ship-building if I was playing in a sci-fi campaign, unless the setting centered around it in some very cool way that sucked me in. Btw, in case you hadn't given it much thought, historically speaking, stuff like ship-building is hugely expensive and doesn't result in nearly as much variety as for less expensive goods. Setting-dependent obviously, but for a typical sci-fi campaign you just don't need that many ship designs, and it's probably time better spent concentrating on putting more detail into the ships you do include.

Edit: I see you have:

If you’ve been keeping up with it all so far, you’ll have figured out that a spaceship is a mighty expensive piece of hardware. In fact, your average party probably won’t even own theirs. Most spaceships are owned by banking institutions, governments, investment companies and wealthy individuals. A party might operate a ship on behalf of an owner a hundred light years away and more, whom they never see, and as long as his portion of profits keep returning at a reasonable rate, they might never see a single word from their absentee landlord (spacelord? Shiplord?) until the day comes they contract a bigger better ship and drop the thing off with a lawyer.

 

[Morlock]

Melee seems just kind of awful compared to ranged combat, which is as it should be. I am keeping that interesting with some bayonet options, but am starting to feel the lack of kung fu. Normally I am predisposed against martial arts in a fantasy game, but feel like it has more of a relevant place in sci-fi, perhaps not as a whole class, but maybe as a specialization for operative or soldier, or even just as a feat with level variable effects. Seeing as feats are still disabled for this test, I am left undecided.

Personally, I feel that martial arts as a Big Thing belongs in games that have a compelling reason to have it, like Kung-Fu/Wuxia/Ninja genres. I trained in that stuff long enough to know that much of even the seemingly grounded in reality hype is just that, hype. Look at MMA; there isn't a lot of fanciness or variety in the real methods of winning hand-to-hand fights. Winning technique tends to homogenize into a standard style that everyone adopts. And bigger, fitter men tend to have a substantial advantage. All that "this ancient school and that ancient school" stuff seems more like religious practice to me than real combatives.

I could go on but I'll spare everyone the rant.

 

[Yaarel]

The MMA proved disappointing for traditional martial arts styles, such as Kung Fu, Karate, and so on.

Essentially the wrestler and the dirty fighter win real fights.

On the other hand, urban environments necessitate close combat and contact combat. Militaries today train soldiers in modern martial arts styles (that integrate wrestling and dirty fighting) because these skills are necessary to survive.

 

[Fragsie]

Hey, really wanted to have a look at your stuff, soon starting up my own SciFi campaign. But the PDF link in the OP is broken, do you have it hosted anywhere else?

 

[Capn Charlie]

Hey, really wanted to have a look at your stuff, soon starting up my own SciFi campaign. But the PDF link in the OP is broken, do you have it hosted anywhere else?

Here they are elsewhere, but the links here seem to work for me.

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/yv0eaji1li80iim,hkfd99du14jl0d8,t525s3t9u5sultc/shared

 

[MostlyDm]

Still working on this?

I really love this rule set. I'm super impressed with what you did with the classes in particular, to the point that I might be inclined to lightly reskin a few of the subclasses and use them in a grittier non-sci-fi game, even.

 

[MostlyDm]

I wonder if the 7,000,000 people bitching over in the main 5e forum about the lack of warlords have seen your Officer class. The Captain is all the warlord I could ever ask for.

 

[Hussar]

/edit - sorry, nothing to see here.

 

[AtomicPope]

It is impossible to slow the acceleration of technology.

Turd World immigration disagrees. That's how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.