D&D 5E 5e Supplements For Tech?

[doctorbadwolf]

What I’m looking for is gear, kit, vehicles, consumables, gadgets, and whatever else, from Star Wars to aetherpunk/crystalpunk magitech, to Eberron, to Final Fantasy.

Now, for Star Wars you can honestly mostly use the Saga Edition gear as is. The damage math for the two games isn’t far off.

But for anything else, I don’t really want to sift through every DMsGuild product relating to gear I can get my hands on, so I’m attempting a bit of crowd-sourced curation.

Do any of the folks here have recommendations (that aren’t just blatantly absurd weirdness, I’m looking for stuff that takes it’s own premise at face value) for things like airships , guns, bombs, gadgets, robot, steam/Aether/crystalpunk and sci-fantasy tech/magitech, etc?

Do you think it’s best to just take the stats of the entire equipment catalogue of Star Wars Saga Edition and just change the thematics and the names? The YT-1930 light freighter becomes an airship, the astromech droid becomes a homoncaulas or autognome or soemthing like that, the thermal detonator is called an alchemist’s inferno bomb, etc.

What do you think?

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

There is homebred versions, for example Star Wars for 5ed, and by 3PPs there is Esper Genesis among others.

 

[majorarcana02]

Have you looked at Arcana of the Ancients?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

There is homebred versions, for example Star Wars for 5ed, and by 3PPs there is Esper Genesis among others.

I really wish I liked SW5e. I just plain don’t, though. I’ve tried, and it’s just…not at all what I want. The engineer really disappoints me, in particular.

Have you looked at Arcana of the Ancients?

I haven’t! I’ll do that today. Spending the whole day in the ER, so I might as well.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Okay, so, looking at current adventuring gear that deals damage and has a price, I think they are within margin of error of spells by spell level in terms of damage combined with secondary effects and other modifiers.

Assassin's Blood targets one creature, poisons them, save for half damage and no poisoning. It deals 1d12 damage, which is roughly half what a level one single target spell with save for half damage should deal, according to the DMG chart.

That feels about right, to me. If that was an attack spell, I'd probably want a little more damage, but I'm not sure I'd be justified. Unfortunately it costs the same as learning a level 3 spell as a wizard, but has the power (ignoring that laughable saving throw DC) as the level one spell ray of sickness, since it does nearly as much average damage, and poisons for 24 hours rather than until end of your next turn.

So, my theory doesn't hold up too well, at least as a way to make costs of equipment make sense. Serpent Venom does level 1 spell damage and costs 200gp.

However, I think it still works as a way to cost learning how to make things. Taking the fact it costs that for every use into account, I think that it might make more sense to drop the actual price per unit dramatically, but then we've got poisons that deal 3d6 damage for 50gp, which might get out of hand.


Looking at Star Wars Saga Edition, a frag grenade does 4d6 and costs 200 credits, and never felt overpriced to us in play but did limit how many we tended to buy. Incidentally, thats the damage recomended for a second level AoE with save for half damage spell, and costs twice what a 2nd level spell costs a wizard to learn.

Yeah tbh it may be that the equipment from that game just works in 5e. A strong baseline costing of 50g per spell level equivelent to learn or buy one of, and 25g per spell level equivelent to make, modified by rarity.

Now lets see how far away we landed from xanathar's rules for crafting consumable magic items.

So, crafting common consumables costs 25g per unit, and can be equivelent to cantrips or weaker level 1 spells. 100g for uncommon, which can go from any 1st level spell to weaker 3rd level spells. So, our frag grenade would cost 100g to craft, haggling starts at twice that to buy, IIRC. Okay, that's actually pretty close.

I think I've go the tools needed to put some fairly robust but simple equipment rules in Chevar: Champions of The Ninth Realm, but I still want ot hear from anyone else who is into expanded gear rules.


Should I use the math of the SWSE equipment (including modifiers for rarity/legality), blended with Xanathar's crafting rules, to make a uniquely 5e equipment chapter for worlds where such kit isn't so rare it's solely the province of specialist brokers and crafts-masters?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Having established that the saga equipment chapter can largely be used as is in a 5e star wars hack, now I want to figure out how much we can use that chapter as a shortcut for expanding 5e's equipment system, and codifying the cost of magic items in a sensible way that doesn't feel just vaguely eyeballed.

So, in SWSE, you have availability rankings that modify cost by way of licensing fees, and black market cost multipliers.

RESTRICTION RATING	LICENSE FEE1	BLACK MARKET COST	SKILL DC	TIME REQUIRED
Licensed	5%	x2	10	1 day
Restricted	10%	x3	15	2 days
Military	20%	x4	20	5 days
Illegal	50%	x5	25	10 days

Now, don't worry about the names of things, just consider the math. The black market cost can be a rational progression of rarity cost, while the crafting cost is the listed price plus the license fee percentage. Even the skill DCs and time required have uses, as the time required can be how long it takes to gather materials to craft, or locate a crafter or seller of the item in question, and the skill DC speaks for itself, it's the DC for the set of skill checks used to determine crafting time and whether you incur additional cost and possible complications.

applying this to a more aetherpunk style setting, or something like Eberron, you can start to price out stuff that doesnt have to be a classic magic item, as well as giving a systemic pricing model for magic items.

So, using a combination of prices from 5e equipment, saga equipment, and xgte's prices for crafting magic items, we can set baselines and work from there.

I tried using the chart above to rationalize 5e magic item numbers, but at the very least it needs to start with common magic items, not uncommon items.

Spoiler

If we use a formula of a baseline price for a category of a common magic item plus the license fee percentage times the black market multiplier.

So, if magic weapons start at 200g, 5 percent is 10g, and 210 x 2 is 410, meaning that most rare weapons should cost around 410g.

then for very rare we add the next license fee of 10 percent, which is 41 for 451g, multiplied by the next rank of multiplier which is times 2, we get 902. Very rare items should be around 900g.

Then we move down the chart one step, add 20 percent to 902, getting 1082.4, times 3 comes to 3247g. Obv we would these numbers and use them as average prices, or round down and up and use the two numbers as a price range. Legendary items should be around 3250g.

For artifacts, it's probably fair to throw the system out and just multiply by ten or something, but lets play it out. 3247 plus 50 percent times 5 comes to 24,345g. I think these number could help bring down the absurdity of 5e gold drops, but it still doesn't quite work.

If we assume that all these numbers go down one rarity level, starting at common rather than uncommon, and add a line that is 75 percent and times 6, artifacts jump up to 255,717g. That seems legit, actually, but probably puts uncommon items at too high a cost.

I think I'll dig deeper into costs in saga, looking at ships and droids and upgrades, and finding a point between those numbers and the ones in the spoiler above.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Okay I suck at tables, but basically what I'm seeing is a tier list for power level that sets average price, expressed as a normal range, and a way to roll dice to get a number within that range, and a crafting/sourcing time required entry.

Then, a separate tiered rarity level similar to SWSE's restricted item ranks, that gives multipliers of cost and time required, and can be assigned irrespective of power level tier. that is, a tier 1 (currently called uncommon) item can be an artifact, because an artifact is an item with a rich history and significance beyond it's power level, and maybe can't be crafted, except in rare "reforge the sword narsil and rename it anduril" type situations, or times where there are a type of item that can be forged if you rediscover how, like the Dragonlances, which are the default be that you forge it yourself or find a crafter to help you recreate this mostly lost special item that was once more widespread.

You can then have dice modifiers for things like buying an item in a place far from where it's normally available, or buying magic weaponry in a place that discourages carrying weapons publicly in the first place.