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Shadowforce Archer questions

Axegrrl

First Post
I've been looking at Spycraft & Shadowforce Archer. One thing I can't tell from the descriptions of Shadowforce Archer on the AEG site: does it require the main Spycraft book to be usable?

How interconnected are the two games?

What's the magic like in SA?

Could you incorporate psi stuff from the psi handbooks into SA?
 

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Byrons_Ghost

First Post
Could you incorporate psi stuff from the psi handbooks into SA?

Are you talking about 3.0/3.5 psionics? If that's the case, then no, or at least not without a lot of adaptation. SA uses a "skills and feats" system similar to Force powers in Star Wars- entry level feats grant access to psionic powers in the form of skills. Since there arent' individual powers or levels, you couldn't really port those over directly.

You could probably allow access to various psionic feats if you wanted to (Up the Walls, etc), but I think that SA had most of those already covered. For that matter, their powers cover most of the sorts of things you'd do with 3rd ed psionics, provided it at least sort of fit in the modern world (ie no plane hopping, astral constructs, etc).

As for magic, the system's again feat based, though there aren't any skills to go with it. Instead, the feats allow you to use more and more powerful occult-style spells called rites or rituals. The trick is, you have to have followers to draw power from for these rituals, you can't cast them on your own (well, eventually a magician can get powerful enough to cast lesser spells on their own, but that's more in the province of "mad villain" NPCs).

So magic isn't really something the PCs can fling around at whim- that's why the psionic classes are in SFA, to give them access to FX. It's set up so that the psionic classes will get most of the access to powers, but other characters might be able to spend a feat or two to get minor abilities, depending on how the GM wants to do things. Oh, there's also various occult prestige classes that revolve around the use of relics, spells, etc. The only one in the SFA book is the Shadepseaker, a sort of mystic assassin who communes with the dead.

Hope that helps. A couple of other notes- SFA has been cancelled, and there's supposed to be a new version of Spycraft coming out sometime, maybe later this year. So maybe that will change your decision, maybe it wont. At any rate, I'd say that you would definately need the Spycraft book to make sense of most of the SFA rules.
 


Axegrrl

First Post
With that info, I think we'll hold off on SFA. I wasn't fond of the feats+skills approach to psi stuff. That said, has anyone tried incorporating psi from the Psi Handbook/XPH into Spycraft? How about magic?
 

Gundark

Explorer
Axegrrl said:
With that info, I think we'll hold off on SFA. I wasn't fond of the feats+skills approach to psi stuff. That said, has anyone tried incorporating psi from the Psi Handbook/XPH into Spycraft? How about magic?

Maybe spycraft isn't the game for you then. I would maybe go with d20 modern if your looking for D&D style magic and psi.
 

Axegrrl

First Post
Gundark said:
Maybe spycraft isn't the game for you then. I would maybe go with d20 modern if your looking for D&D style magic and psi.

We've looked at that, too, and disliked it.

The dot-based resource system, while nice in theory (and even looked fairly elegant at first glance), becomes far less useful when there's no method given for converting D&D magic item costs to d20 modern costs.

The way they handled character classes, with the "smart", "strong" etc "base" classes, just rubbed us the wrong way --are the other classes "stupid" and "weak"?!?

Dragonstar had the weakness of using standard D&D classes and just planting them in the futuristic setting with almost no changes. Some of the setting-specific classes we were looking for weren't there.

Traveller d20 (T20) is just waaaay too different from anything else out there.
 

Ranger REG

Explorer
Axegrrl said:
The way they handled character classes, with the "smart", "strong" etc "base" classes, just rubbed us the wrong way --are the other classes "stupid" and "weak"?!?
Actually, I kinda like this new concept. I thought it was going to be the same D&D style of class by profession, but class by attribute is refreshing. Besides, these are basic Hero classes. At about 3rd or 4th character level, you should be able to qualify for Advanced classes (which are by profession or calling).

http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/msrd/msrdbasicclasses.rtf
http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/msrd/msrdadvancedclassesI.rtf
http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/msrd/msrdadvancedclassesII.rtf
 

Starglim

Explorer
Axegrrl said:
We've looked at that, too, and disliked it.

The dot-based resource system, while nice in theory (and even looked fairly elegant at first glance), becomes far less useful when there's no method given for converting D&D magic item costs to d20 modern costs.

The way they handled character classes, with the "smart", "strong" etc "base" classes, just rubbed us the wrong way --are the other classes "stupid" and "weak"?!?

Dragonstar had the weakness of using standard D&D classes and just planting them in the futuristic setting with almost no changes. Some of the setting-specific classes we were looking for weren't there.

Traveller d20 (T20) is just waaaay too different from anything else out there.

I agree, the more I look at the Wealth system, the more weird cases I can find for it.

Have you considered the revised Star Wars rules at all?
 


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