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

[Capn Charlie]

Well yeah I guess the anti-armour weaponry would have very different aspects to it depending on the world you are in, but you are welcome to take ideas out from that guide that I sent. One thing that I will note, there are mentions of damage factors against vehicles, basically what that means is that a vehicle grade weapon does 5x more damage to infantry while spaceship based weapons do 25x more damage to infantry; the same is on the reverse where an infantry weapon does 1/5x damage to an atmospheric grade vehicle (rounded down) while they do 1/25x damage to a spaceship (rounded down), however certain infantry weapons that I've made are able to alter this as they are designed to damage vehicles and spaceships: autocannon to vehicle is /3, to spaceship is /15 ; anti-armour rifle to vehicle is /2, to spaceship its /10 ; las cannon to vehicle is /1, to spaceships its /5. You can use a sort of similar infantry factor system for yours aswell, because as it is now the average adventure could easily survive being hit by a spaceship from something like a heavy beam laser for example, as no damage factoring system is introduced.

Also one other thing, in spaceships, are we to assume artificial gravity technology has been invented and implemented in all ship designs, this way entities won't be acting as if they are in zero-g. If not, do things like grav-boots or mag-boots exist to do this in a pseudo sense. Because this have a real effect to gameplay.

Edit: Another thing actually, since you are using computers to do everything on a spaceship, does that mean that you replace all checks to be using the intelligence characteristic (E.g usually when using a gun its a DEX check, but because your using a computer to use a ship board gun, would it now be an INT check)?

I never factored in a multiplier for infantry/vehicle damage, this was mostly because the spaceship rules never got out of a very crude and early state. At my table the going rule was that anything big enough that ships cared about the damage would instantly destroy you. I wanted to roll a lot of dice for ship damage, but keep the absolute numbers within reason. (500hp is a lot for a ship). A multiplier system would work, but I think I will leave all sub-ship vehicles (which are not in a release yet) at the same scale as infantry, just with bigger numbers. (Tank: AC 16, 250 HP, Resistance to Damage) and let anti-armor weapons either do bonus damage to vehicles or ignore their damage resistance.

Artificial gravity is a bugaboo, and in the end I believe it creates more problems than it solves. As easy as it would be to allow artificial gravity deckplating, it just offers so many potential uses that it obviates almost every other technology. Artificial Gravity is a better weapon than... well, almost anything. As such, I went with more primitive technology, spin and thrust gravity.



This creates complications, and it makes the player's lives harder, and it should often terrify them. All of these are good. One of my favorite encounters had the pilot of a ship the party was boarding performing random maneuvering vectors, and every couple of rounds Down was a different random direction determined by a die roll, and when it would shift they would scramble to grab onto something, and sometimes someone would go tumbling down a corridor that is now a shaft, and fall to their death or damage. (Our intrepid heroes really quickly started tethering themselves to take hold bars, but the enemy was planetbound militia and didn't have tethers, and would fall screaming to their deaths occasionally.)

I consider magnetic boots to be a default component of a skinsuit, but I should clarify that. They are not powerful enough to let you walk up walls or hang from ceilings in 1g, but they let you choose to stand on a surface in freefall.

As for the computers, when performing most ship asssisted tasks (basically all of them) the characters use their proficiency bonus, and the ship's system bonus, not their own ability score. Basically, this is to represent that no matter how dextrous you think you are, a computer is faster, but it still needs an operator (the core conceit that allows us to imagine humans in space at all, and not just giant automated robot ships). This is why crew quality is such an important aspect of ship design, since if you have a dozen guys down in the engine room, and a massive +6 bonus to engines checks, you don't want a green recruit with a proficiency bonus of -1 operating your systems. (quality went from -1 to +4 I want to say). But, skilled crew costs...

This makes me really want to revisit the ship rules, I liked where they were going design wise.

Currently my to-do list for the project looks something like this:
• Create gritty realism optional rules
• Evaluate cover rules with an eye to making it more dynamic, possibly as an adjunct of gritty rules
• Vehicles and associated rules
• Add 5e compatibility logo to cover
• Add srd disclaimer
• Note reliance on srd
• Add notes to each chapter about deviations from srd
• Add stun batons
• Clarify skinsuit features (magboots)
• Mobile Infantry might be too good. (Armor hp = prof bonus x lvl?)
• Human racial abilities might be too good (reduce them to +1 each to two different stats?)
• Civilian specialization might be too silly, hit it with the flavor stick and add a second spec: “common sense” based
• Add short archaic weapon sidebar to the savage section
• Some people still have saving throws, should this be intentional?
• Synthetic HD bonus does not jive with online app capabilities, should this be changed to a static +4 hp/level bonus?
• Greylians still underpowered compared to other races, is the free mod enough? Talls too bland?
• Marine lackluster compared to other soldier specializations (testing additional combat style at lvl 4)
• Spaceship rules development

 

[PyroPhoenix]

I never factored in a multiplier for infantry/vehicle damage, this was mostly because the spaceship rules never got out of a very crude and early state. At my table the going rule was that anything big enough that ships cared about the damage would instantly destroy you. I wanted to roll a lot of dice for ship damage, but keep the absolute numbers within reason. (500hp is a lot for a ship). A multiplier system would work, but I think I will leave all sub-ship vehicles (which are not in a release yet) at the same scale as infantry, just with bigger numbers. (Tank: AC 16, 250 HP, Resistance to Damage) and let anti-armor weapons either do bonus damage to vehicles or ignore their damage resistance.

Artificial gravity is a bugaboo, and in the end I believe it creates more problems than it solves. As easy as it would be to allow artificial gravity deckplating, it just offers so many potential uses that it obviates almost every other technology. Artificial Gravity is a better weapon than... well, almost anything. As such, I went with more primitive technology, spin and thrust gravity.

View attachment 82536

This creates complications, and it makes the player's lives harder, and it should often terrify them. All of these are good. One of my favorite encounters had the pilot of a ship the party was boarding performing random maneuvering vectors, and every couple of rounds Down was a different random direction determined by a die roll, and when it would shift they would scramble to grab onto something, and sometimes someone would go tumbling down a corridor that is now a shaft, and fall to their death or damage. (Our intrepid heroes really quickly started tethering themselves to take hold bars, but the enemy was planetbound militia and didn't have tethers, and would fall screaming to their deaths occasionally.)

I consider magnetic boots to be a default component of a skinsuit, but I should clarify that. They are not powerful enough to let you walk up walls or hang from ceilings in 1g, but they let you choose to stand on a surface in freefall.

As for the computers, when performing most ship asssisted tasks (basically all of them) the characters use their proficiency bonus, and the ship's system bonus, not their own ability score. Basically, this is to represent that no matter how dextrous you think you are, a computer is faster, but it still needs an operator (the core conceit that allows us to imagine humans in space at all, and not just giant automated robot ships). This is why crew quality is such an important aspect of ship design, since if you have a dozen guys down in the engine room, and a massive +6 bonus to engines checks, you don't want a green recruit with a proficiency bonus of -1 operating your systems. (quality went from -1 to +4 I want to say). But, skilled crew costs...

This makes me really want to revisit the ship rules, I liked where they were going design wise.

Currently my to-do list for the project looks something like this:
• Create gritty realism optional rules
• Evaluate cover rules with an eye to making it more dynamic, possibly as an adjunct of gritty rules
• Vehicles and associated rules
• Add 5e compatibility logo to cover
• Add srd disclaimer
• Note reliance on srd
• Add notes to each chapter about deviations from srd
• Add stun batons
• Clarify skinsuit features (magboots)
• Mobile Infantry might be too good. (Armor hp = prof bonus x lvl?)
• Human racial abilities might be too good (reduce them to +1 each to two different stats?)
• Civilian specialization might be too silly, hit it with the flavor stick and add a second spec: “common sense” based
• Add short archaic weapon sidebar to the savage section
• Some people still have saving throws, should this be intentional?
• Synthetic HD bonus does not jive with online app capabilities, should this be changed to a static +4 hp/level bonus?
• Greylians still underpowered compared to other races, is the free mod enough? Talls too bland?
• Marine lackluster compared to other soldier specializations (testing additional combat style at lvl 4)
• Spaceship rules development

First thing I want to say is that the attachment you posted is not working. Secondly, I wholly agree with you that ships with artificial gravity generally does make more problems then solutions; how I've sorted this out in my game is that any form of armour that is void safe (vacc safe, however you want to say it), are all equipped with:4 hours air supply; grav-boots (not mag, as no space faring vessel should be made of magnetic material, as it would be so easy to bring them down with giant space magnets), these boots can't allow you to walk up walls or ceiling and only really produce any function when in a zero-g environment or extremely low g environments, they would basically allow you to stay stuck to the "floor", however they are only strong enough to make sure that basic walking and running won't cause you to fly "upwards" (spatial awareness goes out the door when you are in zero-g environments), as walking and by extension running does produce a fair amount of upwards force, however you could still jump and then fly of into the "ceiling" if moving around inside a spaceship or into space if on an EVA excursion onto the surface of the spaceship (or whatever space objects like asteroids or whatever); all have a 5ft duracable with carabiner hook on the hip area so that you can attach yourself to the railing of the a space vessel and move about and what not; 2 attachment rails near the shoulders, for other duracable grapples to get attached to you; some more decent quality void suits are also fitted with with a winch backpack system, this has a 50ft rope of duracable attached to a grappler tag (refer back to comprehensive guide to see what those are again), so if you do find yourself floating away from your ship you can through your grappling line back towards the ship and hope that you hook on and then pull yourself back to the ship; really good quality void suits would have a jump jets pre-attached to them; another thing to note that on spaceships I've made it so that all airlocks have atleast one motorised heavy duty winch with 1km of duracable and a heavy duty carabiner clip (or other things depending on its use) for boarding procedures and anchoring.

Just these slight things make spaceships slightly more fleshed out. Also I have made sure that all members of the party are aware of the fact that if they forget to strap themselves in before the ship has to accelerate or while in ship combat, I will make them flail around inside the ship and take falling damage everytime they hit a wall, most likely brain damage and maybe death if the ship changes direction hard enough (which will be most of the time).

 

[Dhemos]

Hey Capn! My party has been using your system for over a year now, and I have to say that I am loving it. I wanted to say, however, that one of my players works in graphic design and didn't like the look of the sheets that you made and decided to make his own.

The files are as follows:
the main page of the character sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxu3eA5VG0daZFRIRTNyUkNYM0U/view
and a character details page: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxu3eA5VG0dadHRkUnNVSl9IU1E/view

If there are any changes that you want, just let me know, as portions of it were specialized for what we needed at the table; also, the trademark and registered marks are there to make it look more professional, and may be removed if you wanted to use it. I already got permission from the artist themselves for all of this, so you, and anyone else who wants to, may use this as you please.

Keep up the good work, Capn!

EDIT: fixed

 

[PyroPhoenix]

Currently my to-do list for the project looks something like this:
• Create gritty realism optional rules
• Evaluate cover rules with an eye to making it more dynamic, possibly as an adjunct of gritty rules
• Vehicles and associated rules
• Add 5e compatibility logo to cover
• Add srd disclaimer
• Note reliance on srd
• Add notes to each chapter about deviations from srd
• Add stun batons
• Clarify skinsuit features (magboots)
• Mobile Infantry might be too good. (Armor hp = prof bonus x lvl?)
• Human racial abilities might be too good (reduce them to +1 each to two different stats?)
• Civilian specialization might be too silly, hit it with the flavor stick and add a second spec: “common sense” based
• Add short archaic weapon sidebar to the savage section
• Some people still have saving throws, should this be intentional?
• Synthetic HD bonus does not jive with online app capabilities, should this be changed to a static +4 hp/level bonus?
• Greylians still underpowered compared to other races, is the free mod enough? Talls too bland?
• Marine lackluster compared to other soldier specializations (testing additional combat style at lvl 4)
• Spaceship rules development

Answering some of those things to how I have seen it and attempted and altering it to improve it:
1) Gritty realism rules - probably introduce variants to the lingering injury chart, so if you do high damage to a character it could have some serious affects to the players body
- Its next to impossible to "dodge" a bullet in real life, so unless a player feasibly has somewhere to duck behind cover within (lets just say for realism sake) 5ft of them, then they shouldn't be able to add their DEX bonus to there AC, making a gun fight that much more dangerous.
2) Because of the high damage players are going to exposed to, you want to make it so that they would use cover, however you don't want cover to be too OP and let people just stick behind cover and just burst fire whatever they can from the safety of cover without every needing to get out or use grenades to cheese the system. Due to this i would suggest giving cover a HP/SP (structure points, the HP of objects) value, allowing users to literally destroy cover over time. This includes shields; one of my players wanted to have a shield and I gave him one with a HP score, however he can manoeuvre the shield into an form of cover, from quarter to full, and if that shield gets hit (more cover=more likelihood of getting hit) the shield takes the damage and degrades over time.
3)with mobile infantry, a good way to balance it is making it that the faster they move the more higher the AC they get, but the more harder it is to attack out of them, you can consult this vehicle movement and combat (sadly I don't use grids and models, so all my distances are in feet not squares), that I complied from various things and take ideas from how it works View attachment Vehicle Movement and Combat.docx .
4)Humans and there racial abilities - yes having more than there usual +2 to a single ability score, or +1 to two separate ability scores, is good enough, you can keep the further ability score improvements from there subraces, but maybe you could possible make some cons for each of the subraces that give you extra ability score improvements (e.g. cyborgs and how they are negatively effected by something like EMP, or possibly electric/lightning based damage).
5)Synthetics and HP - I mean that would probably be a decent way to do it to show how much more durable they are, possibly this getting affected by what model you are, e.g security models probably having the greatest HP increase.
6)From a marine that we have in our game, albeit they are at max level (10) now, they are very powerful in combat with how they've made there character. The character they have made is one that wholly relies on side arms, essentially making a cowboy gunslinger: dual wielding 2 gauss pistols, two weapon fighting combat style, ambidextrous feat, dual wielder feat (from 5e[I modified all the feats in the PHB to be more fifth age compatible], as technically not of the range weapons are light, not even a pistol, so he had to get that to dual wield pistols technically), he literally makes 5 attacks per turn, meaning a total 10d8+(5xDEX modifier) damage. Needless to say he would pretty much kill a lot of things in a matter of rounds. So marines being lacklustre is something that can only come about if you play certain styles I think.

 

[PyroPhoenix]

The character sheet that they made looks great, however you seem to have posted the character sheet link twice.

 

[Capn Charlie]

First thing I want to say is that the attachment you posted is not working. Secondly, I wholly agree with you that ships with artificial gravity generally does make more problems then solutions; how I've sorted this out in my game is that any form of armour that is void safe (vacc safe, however you want to say it), are all equipped with:4 hours air supply; grav-boots (not mag, as no space faring vessel should be made of magnetic material, as it would be so easy to bring them down with giant space magnets), these boots can't allow you to walk up walls or ceiling and only really produce any function when in a zero-g environment or extremely low g environments, they would basically allow you to stay stuck to the "floor", however they are only strong enough to make sure that basic walking and running won't cause you to fly "upwards" (spatial awareness goes out the door when you are in zero-g environments), as walking and by extension running does produce a fair amount of upwards force, however you could still jump and then fly of into the "ceiling" if moving around inside a spaceship or into space if on an EVA excursion onto the surface of the spaceship (or whatever space objects like asteroids or whatever); all have a 5ft duracable with carabiner hook on the hip area so that you can attach yourself to the railing of the a space vessel and move about and what not; 2 attachment rails near the shoulders, for other duracable grapples to get attached to you; some more decent quality void suits are also fitted with with a winch backpack system, this has a 50ft rope of duracable attached to a grappler tag (refer back to comprehensive guide to see what those are again), so if you do find yourself floating away from your ship you can through your grappling line back towards the ship and hope that you hook on and then pull yourself back to the ship; really good quality void suits would have a jump jets pre-attached to them; another thing to note that on spaceships I've made it so that all airlocks have atleast one motorised heavy duty winch with 1km of duracable and a heavy duty carabiner clip (or other things depending on its use) for boarding procedures and anchoring.

Just these slight things make spaceships slightly more fleshed out. Also I have made sure that all members of the party are aware of the fact that if they forget to strap themselves in before the ship has to accelerate or while in ship combat, I will make them flail around inside the ship and take falling damage everytime they hit a wall, most likely brain damage and maybe death if the ship changes direction hard enough (which will be most of the time).

You have put a lot of thought into the suits, that much is obvious. I detailed them at the table as needed, but never really went into detail in the book. A lot of this is the legacy of the origins of this project as my campaign notes, a lot of places are sparse where they should not be. And of course you are right about the spaceship materials, though not I think for fear of giant magnets. As cool of an idea as that is. I imagined more of a "walkway" around the skin of vessels and stations, like a trail of ferrous deckplate, not a lot of mass, just a little bit (like in a magnetic dry erase board) and let electromagnets in the boots do most of the work. Grav boots is another one of those things that worries me. I kind like the idea of using some metamaterial that just... sticks. We have a few things that are basically like that. But, this is a tangent.

Hey Capn! My party has been using your system for over a year now, and I have to say that I am loving it. I wanted to say, however, that one of my players works in graphic design and didn't like the look of the sheets that you made and decided to make his own.

The files are as follows:
the main page of the character sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxu3eA5VG0daZFRIRTNyUkNYM0U/view
and a character details page: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxu3eA5VG0dadHRkUnNVSl9IU1E/view

If there are any changes that you want, just let me know, as portions of it were specialized for what we needed at the table; also, the trademark and registered marks are there to make it look more professional, and may be removed if you wanted to use it. I already got permission from the artist themselves for all of this, so you, and anyone else who wants to, may use this as you please.

Keep up the good work, Capn!

EDIT: fixed

Wow, a year now? I had no idea people were actually using this that much, I am delighted to hear it.

Beautiful sheets by the way, I love them, and added them to my online repository. Sadly, I can't do much with graphic design, as evidenced by the sheets I made. Stark and utilitarian, but they did the job.

If you have any insights about the system, please let me know, balance is very important to me, and I love to hear about how classes perform compared to expectations.

 

[Capn Charlie]

Okay, another quick update:

At my table we use a lot of this app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wgkammerer.testgui.basiccharactersheet.app

It's great at what it does, and makes life a lot easier. You have to give them a couple bucks to level up characters, but just the free character creation at level 1 part is super useful. Well, I have made a Fifth Age custom data file for it, allowing you to use this ruleset for character building.

Now, the limitation is that I can't do custom weapons, armor or skills, so the skill system is a little hobbled together with placeholder skills (animal handling instead of law, lol).

For those interested in trying it, just download the app to your device, and in it access the menu (three vertical dots) and choose Custom, and put this link into the URL area:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9weYkvEU386Z0NqR1pJMTlUSFU

(Alternatively you can just add that to your google drive, and easily import it that way, if you use google drive).

 

[PyroPhoenix]

Currently my to-do list for the project looks something like this:
• Create gritty realism optional rules

Just got reminded of something, from a lot of the homebrew classes (such as the gunslinger, by Matthew Mercer) that have been officially accepted by wizards of the coast that use firearms and such (albeit still in the renaissance that D&D is set in), all firearms had a property called misfire (Whenever you make an attack roll with a firearm, and the dice roll is equal to or lower than the weapon's Misfire score, the weapon misfires. The attack misses, and the weapon cannot be used again until you spend an action to try and repair it. To repair your firearm, you must make a successful Tinker's Tools check (DC equal to 8 + misfire score). If your check fails, the weapon is broken and must be repaired out of combat at half the cost of the firearm).

You can probably implement something similar to that where the gun has a chance to jam in the case of solid shot weapons or overheat in the case of energy based weapons, and require an action (and possibly an engineering check) to attempt to fix the probably. This would definitely make the game more gritty and realistic as guns jamming and misfiring do occur in real life.

 

[David Norris-King]

Oh, one thing I was wondering Capn. Are the stun guns firing slug style taser rounds, or are they some sort of energy based weapon?

 

[Capn Charlie]

Oh, one thing I was wondering Capn. Are the stun guns firing slug style taser rounds, or are they some sort of energy based weapon?

Capacitor slugs. Alternatively I have some do poison damage instead when they are drugged darts.

Sent from my MT2L03 using EN World mobile app