D&D 5E Science Fantasy and D&D

[Kobold Avenger]

I know as far as D&D is concerned, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and Blackmoor seem to be the main sources of such elements in D&D, even though Spelljammer claimed to be of genre though to me it seemed to be more of a swashbuckling/pulpish high-fantasy in space, and as someone who knows a lot of the setting I can point to some instances in Planescape where such elements pop up.

But somehow I feel science-fantasy might be making a bigger appearance in 5e beyond that DMG appendix. As there seems to be the trend of releasing adventures that revisit certain classic, it's probably inevitable that Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and that crashed spaceship will be revisited some day.

And that's not counting the sci-fi inspired origins of many D&D monsters like Illithids, Derro and the like, or where the concept of Vancian magic really comes from.

Some of the approaches I see with this hybrid sub-genre either goes:

Magic is a remnant of science and technology, possibly from an ancient age long in the past. Nanotechnology exists everywhere and many races and monsters might be the result of stranded aliens or genetic engineering. Psychic phenomena probably plays a part here. Gods and various spirits might be forms of super-advanced AI. This would be the approach of Numenera, Tekumel and Endless series of video games.

The opposite approach would be that advanced technology is simply magic, and that some who use such technology are deluding themselves of the fact that what they're doing is magic, they call Gods and spirits extra-dimensional entities, and are partially enlightened as their technology can do many wondrous things, but they are potentially blind to the whole picture. This would be the Mage the Ascension approach.

Taking this hyrbid sub-genre as a whole, what are your thoughts on such things and D&D?

 

[Tony Vargas]

As there seems to be the trend of releasing adventures that revisit certain classic, it's probably inevitable that Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and that crashed spaceship will be revisited some day.

Maybe right around the time we get an 8th version of Gamma World?

 

[AtomicPope]

I've been running a homebrew Spelljammer for exactly one year. It started in Bissel (-ish), and led the players on an Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. The group is a mix of long time players (10-15 years each) and noobs (first timers). The funny thing is even someone who played for 15 years wouldn't know anything about the classic Barrier Peaks adventure, nor Blackmoor, nor the Egg of Coot, nor the City of the Gods. So for my part, I took the plotline of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and changed it a bit. For starters, it was a crashed Spelljammer vessel, a hybrid of Scifi/Fantasy like you mentioned. Furthermore, it didn't crash alone. Several ships crashed but as debris from a space war and some were more intact than others. The damage from the fallen vessels varied. The basis of one crash was the Ioun Star shattered and opened a fluctuating portal to Doriat, the planes of ash in the Realm of Madness. Mind you, this was before Stranger Things. Since an opened portal to another dimension is also classic fantasy, I had to add a twist which brings us to the meat of the campaign.

As a hybrid, I spent time building up the common D&D fantasy elements to make it look like a normal game: Orcs, Goblins, Giants, Necromancers, Greyhawk Wars, and Zombies. I crafted several adventures and encounters to establish a D&D adventure: Zombies eating brains, Orc raiders kidnapping people as slaves, traumatized villagers, evil necromancer experiments, and massive structural damage from giants. Within those encounters were clues that would be also transform from normal D&D to Scifi-Fantasy. After the players got used to the roles of normal D&D monsters, I changed them flipping the script to Aliens and Outer Space. Intellect Devourers and Mind Flayers eating brains. Chuul relic hunters snatching people for Aboleth overlords. Villagers suffering from Space Madness. Alien experiments on humanoids: Mind Flayer reproduction, Aboleth Mutations, and Alien parasites. Gibbering Mouthers and Psychic Ooze ravaging the countryside and heading to the city. Massive structural damage from ship weaponry, unlike anything they've ever seen.

I dropped a LOT of the Spelljammer mechanics, especially the way the Helm created a One-Man-Show. I modeled the House Rules after Rogue Trader, a campaign I ran for years with great success. Unlike Spelljammer, each of the characters has a vital role in piloting the ship. I also created Spelljamming rules that allows characters to use non-Spells. In this way, all players can choose a role on the ship that best suits their abilities. For example, the Master Gunner is a Ranger who will Hunter's Mark other vessels before firing a volley. The OG Spelljammer lacked a group dynamic, which is at the heart of D&D and the class system. That's something that MUST be considered when adding technology or changing the genre. You want to keep the D&D feel, even though the props and sets have changed.

Whenever we add technology to a magic world we have to ask some basic questions:
* Why do they need technology?
* What will niches will technology hold?
* What is the relationship between technology and magic?

If we can make an Everburning Torch then we won't need light bulbs.
If we can make a Wand of Fireballs then we won't need grenades or rocket launchers.

Typically, the hybridization of Scifi-Fantasy means we meet somewhere in the middle and the niche is filled by the needs of a particular society. We often dig deeper into cliches. In other words, those who are technologically primitive are magically advanced. The most common cliche is Druids leading a technologically primitive but magically advanced society. Their skyscrapers are tree cities. Their rapid transit are Tree Stride points that require special keys. Their trains are bound Earth Elementals dragging impossibly heavy sleds of stone without disturbing the earth. I've used this in my own campaign.

Something else I introduced was a few House Rules for damage. The purpose was to change the nature of adventuring. I didn't want the players to spend the night in the dungeon. Instead, I incentivized the behavior of an "away team" but increasing the lingering damage of wounds. So after the away team was injured, they'd return to the Spelljammer for triage. Here's the rules:

Grievous Wounds – When a character is reduced to zero hit points they immediately suffer one level of exhaustion. Note: if their exhaustion level is high enough they could suffer Disadvantage on their Death Saves.

Slow Natural Healing – Characters don't regain full hit points at the end of a long rest. Instead, a character can spend Hit Dice to heal at the end of a long rest, needing a Healer's Kit, spells or abilities just as with a short rest. At the end of a long rest the character regains half of their maximum Hit Dice rounded up.

Treatment of Injuries Required – A character can't spend any Hit Dice after finishing a short rest until someone expends one use of a healer's kit to bandage and treat the character's wounds or they're the target of a healing spell or ability that grants healing over time such as Regenerate or Song of Rest.

True Grit – The Fighter’s class ability Second Wind no longer heals hit point damage. Instead, the character gains temporary hit points that last for 10 minutes.

Now the players need some technology to heal or special magic. Also, both technology and magic facilitate the natural healing process. As a result, a healer will be both technically proficient and magically apt thus blending the two genres. After a year it's worked precisely how it was designed.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Science-Fantasy has been around the game in most editions, to varying degrees. With Pathfinder doing Starfinder next year, not to mention all the currently existing techno-fantasy books they have, I don't know that we'll see an overt move for D&D in that direction any time soon.

For my part, I'd love to see some more Sword & Planet action in D&D. I had a lot of fun with Spelljammer and love the Barsoom tales of Burroughs.

 

[QuietBrowser]

I had the beginnings of a "hypertech in D&D 5e" thread back before the big server crash wiped out everything, based on attempting to do something similar to Pathfinder's Technology Guide for 5e. I remember coming up with new elemental damage types for more "sciencey" weapons or magitek/dungeonpunk campaigns - Plasma, Radiation and Gravity - and a basic guideline to installing cybernetic modules and replacements.

I've tried to motivate myself to rebuild the thread, but I've never been able to. If you guys are interested, I could probably dig up enough memories of the systems I made to recreate them here.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Krull, the D&D movie that was not a D&D movie. That is all.

 

[QuietBrowser]

Ah, what the hell, can't hurt... plus, it lets me finally get things out of my head. Now, let's see what I can dig up...


Technological Damage Types:
Alhough the classic elemental damage types exist for a reason, in a science fantasy or magitek campaign, alternate "technological" damage types may exist as well. Although most associated with science fiction settings, this does not have to be so; a magi order focused on investigating the stars and drawing power from them may well have magical items or even spells that can inflict "starlight" (Plasma) and "void" (Gravity) damage, whilst Radiation damage may exist as some kind of arcane pollutant or black magic energy; Pathfinder's Blightburn and Forgotten Realms' Sickstone are examples of "fantasy radiation elements".

When using technological damage types in 5e, a DM must consider the matter of damage resistance and immunity. All technological elements refer to a "base combination" of canonical elemental damage types they can be considered to emulate, which gives the DM extra options on how to handle this matter.

Tech-Damage Stands Alone: Under this system, only creatures explicitly established as Resistant or Immune to Plasma, Radiation and Gravity Damage have any protection against it. This can make these damage types overpowered, and to counteract that requires a lot of work on the DM's part, as they must individually assign appropriate Resistances and Immunities to creatures.

Weak Elemental Affinity: Under this system, creatures with access to Resistance or Immunity to either of the component elements of technological damage are shielded from technological damage. However, to represent the inferiority such defenses give, only the weaker of the defenses count - for example, a creature Immune to Poison but Resistant to Fire would only be Resistant to Radiation.

Strong Elemental Affinity: Under this system, creatures with access to Resistance or Immunity to either of the component elements of technological damage are shielded from technological damage. In this system, the stronger defense counts, so creatures immune to Fire or Electricity would be immune to Plasma damage.

Plasma Damage is a combination of Fire and Electricity damage.

Gravity Damage is a combination of Force and Necrotic damage.

Radiation Damage is a combination of either Fire/Poison, Radiant/Poison, Fire/Necrotic or Radiant/Necrotic. DMs must decide which combination makes the most sense to them.


Body-Modding:
Augmentations, the ability to install new components into a body or to replace existing parts of a body, are a big part of science fiction, and although not quite so common in science fantasy, they're not entirely unfitting. Half-Golems, for example, are simply a D&Dification of the Cyborg concept; mortals with artificial limbs, simply fueled by magic rather than science.

Of course, a body can only take so much replacement and implantation. For this reason, the following systems are used to govern body mods:

Limb Replacement: These are a distinctive classification of modifiers, and held seperately to the others. At a basic level, a character can have two arm replacements and one leg replacement - this is because leg replacements are always done in pairs, as no benefit is gained from simply replacing one leg at a time.

Body Implants: Modifications that replace or add to the existing physiology of an individual are considered body implants. This governs mods like extra hearts, armored skin, hyper-efficient immune systems, artificial breath weapons, attached jetpacks, etcetera. A body can only suffer so many implants before it's physically incapable of taking more; a character can only have Body Implants equal to their Constitution modifier.

Mind Implants: Modifications that are based on alterations to the brain and nervous system are considered mind implants. Expanded processors that boost intelligence or recall, datajacks, hyper-reactive nervous systems, etc. Again, the brain can only physically be replaced so far before there's nothing left and the victim becomes a drooling vegetable; a character only have Mind Implants equal to their Intelligence modifier.

Certain modifications may use up both Body Implant Slots and Mind Implant Slots simultaneously.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Later 3.5e had quite a lot of body modifications with all the grafts and symbionts that showed up in a lot of products.

And with magic around, implanted wings are definitely a thing.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Psychic phenomena probably plays a part here.

What's the point of trying to explain magic as psychic phenomena? Psychic phenomena are magic. They have just as little basis in science as any other form of witchcraft or wizardry. So if you're building a world where psychic phenomena are real, why not just admit that magic is real?

The opposite approach would be that advanced technology is simply magic, and that some who use such technology are deluding themselves of the fact that what they're doing is magic, they call Gods and spirits extra-dimensional entities, and are partially enlightened as their technology can do many wondrous things, but they are potentially blind to the whole picture.

What's the difference between magic and technology here? After all, in our own world, our scientists explore the invisible laws and forces of the universe, describe them in theories, and exploit them to create wondrous technologies, but are blind to the whole picture (and regard it as a core scientific virtue to admit their ignorance openly). We just don't use the word "magic" to talk about electricity and radiation and chemical bonds and such, because we've got those other, more specific words. So if scientists in the science-fantasy universe are doing all these things, but don't use the word "magic", what exactly are they wrong or misguided about?

 

[Kobold Avenger]

What's the point of trying to explain magic as psychic phenomena? Psychic phenomena are magic. They have just as little basis in science as any other form of witchcraft or wizardry. So if you're building a world where psychic phenomena are real, why not just admit that magic is real?

What's the difference between magic and technology here? After all, in our own world, our scientists explore the invisible laws and forces of the universe, describe them in theories, and exploit them to create wondrous technologies, but are blind to the whole picture (and regard it as a core scientific virtue to admit their ignorance openly). We just don't use the word "magic" to talk about electricity and radiation and chemical bonds and such, because we've got those other, more specific words. So if scientists in the science-fantasy universe are doing all these things, but don't use the word "magic", what exactly are they wrong or misguided about?

Big disclaimer, is I'm very much influenced by Mage the Ascension where it's the absolute canon that technology is just the magick of the Technocracy/Order of Reason.

But I'm just describing certain thematic approaches, that may seem like opposites the first example being essentially a "Top-Down" approach with Sci-fi first describing fantasy. The second one a "Bottom-Up" approach describing sci-fi from a metaphysical or spiritual view of things.