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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tjoneslo" data-source="post: 2009956" data-attributes="member: 4909">Blood and Space  Blood and Space is a 117 page PDF costing $8.95 available from RPGNow.com. The 7.8MB download package is a zip file with two versions of the document, a full version with the full color cover and added color edge bars, and a printer friendly version which lacks the cover and color on each page. Using D20 modern (or T20 or Dragonstar), Blood and Space adds space ships, space combat and a variety of equipment. Included are additional classes, feats, and skills to use the proper equipment. This book gets a poor rating due to its incomplete and unbalanced rules, poor writing, and unimaginative ideas. Chapter 1 contains a two page introduction to the book describing its contents and offering some generic advice for the potential GM using this book. Chapter 2 has the new classes, 9 classes and 8 prestige classes. Since all the classes are one or two pages it would have been nice if the layout allowed them to fit onto two pages rather than split across three. The Doctor, Engineer, Scientist and Pilot are all balanced reasonably well. The Marine is an unexciting fighter.  The Hotshot really should be a prestige class. The Mercenary's 1st level Show me the money class feature (+2 to all skills and attacks for the adventure) is unbalanced, and the Rage feature (+4 STR, +4 Con, +2 hp/level, -2AC) is either unbalancing or ridiculous depending upon your view of futuristic combat. The beginning of the section on prestige classes has four class feature/feats. As a layout problem, these should either be moved as class features for the prestige classes or become full fledged feats as they are used by several of the prestige classes. The Colonial marine as a prestige class adds nothing that isn't already available to the Marine class. The Pirate captain prestige class needs more work, in that if he's a great leader of evil men, he should have some of the leadership feats given to the marines or starship officers. Chapter 3 covers new skills and feats. The 23 new skills cover obvious things needed for a space game, piloting, navigation, craft skills for modern equipment and so on. The 41 new feats are more mixed. The Armor, weapons and item creation proficiencies are obvious and useful. The piloting feats should either be class features for the pilot or hotshot class, or they should be listed as simple combat maneuvers in the starship combat rules. Overall these three chapters are passable. There are some good ideas here, but as many bad parts as well. Chapter 4 covers money, equipment and trade. There are 24 new weapons, ranging from the simple baton (club) to the nasty sounding Tesla rifle. The weapon statistic have a damage type with each one which isn't explained anywhere. In the description of the 9mm pistol: "These old-fashioned weapons require oxygen to fire". I've never known any guns in real life or any science fiction to require oxygen to fire. The chainknife sounds nasty, but there's no rules on what happens when it runs out of power. There are 19 new armors ranging from basic flak through the heavy servo powered Orbital insertion armor.The Trade system rules are unclear. The rules seem to be the GM rolls on the supply/demand radio table, which gives a base price multiplier, plus a Negotiation DC. I make a check against this DC with Merchants skill. Failing the check means I can't buy the goods at all. Succeeded by more than one means I can buy them, with a better roll giving me a better price. Not mentioned is when I sell the goods, does the GM roll on the table again, or do I keep the same roll? Either seems wrong. A better way to handle the negotiations would be an opposed skill check against the NPC buyer, with the winner getting the 10% price difference per point of difference in the roll and letting the characters decide if they want to accept or not. The list of potential trade goods seems chopped off in the middle. And what is a pork plant?Chapter 5 is starship construction. This is the chapter I was most looking forward to in the book. This chapter is filled with inconsistencies and bad technobabble, reading it was like having my teeth dragged across a chalkboard. Starship construction is a five step process, and the book contains 26 pages of components to put in your ship. Step 1 is the hull. The Hull size table, which gives an overview of the hull sizes based around the D20 size names, but has no relation to the normal D20 sizes. All the hull dimensions are given in x by y feet, but most starships I've ever seen have a number of decks in a vertical direction. Each hull size is also given a maximum cargo rating, presumably the maximum size of the cargo hold after all the basic stuff like engines, weapons, crew spaces and so on are included. Except the Huge and Capital sized ships have the same cargo space, despite the fact that the Capital ship is eight times larger than the Huge ship. The hull types table has 25 predetermined hull sizes, ranging from tiny fighters to the enormous battle stations. As much as the having a fixed list of hulls makes building ships simple, there's no way to build a ship that isn't a size presented on the table. Step 2 is the drives, which make a ship go. The hard science, normal space drives have no size, they are presumed to be sized to fit these hull into which they are put, so each drive gives the same performance. I have a basic understanding of rocketry and the descriptions herein are a mix-mash of tech terms. They may sound impressive, but they are completely nonsense. The particularly two teeth grinding statements in this section: "Acceleration +20 is rated in game terms as .99 c". Either the author doesn't understand the difference between velocity and acceleration, or doesn't bother to explain it.  And "[super hot Plasma] then ejected from the rear of the craft at supersonic velocities.". I suppose, but wouldn't something like "near light speed velocities" be more impressive? And why are there no space opera style normal space drives?For rules, all engines cost exactly the same amount, mounted in a fighter or in a Capital ship. Shouldn't the engines for the larger ships cost more? Step 3 is adding weapons and armor. In this section the division between the hard science components and the space opera components is particularly arbitrary. This section also has some of the worst of the technobabble, for example:"The Quantum Space-Time Flux Amplifier is one of the most bizarre and terrifying weapons ever conceived. The Casmir effect is used to filter attractive quantum space-time flux from normal space. The attractive or negative flux is captured, stored, and amplified in a gravitational torus." The disturbing aspect of technobabble like this is it's apparent the author hasn't considered what else can be done with the technology besides making one cool sounding weapon (or other piece of equipment). There are two problems that come out of this, the first is the law of well applied technology. Which is, if there is a technology which can do X, it is the nature of humans (or any spacefaring alien race) to try and apply that technology to as many different endeavors as possible. The second is the law of unintended consequences, which is if there is a device which can do X, the players will find any number of unusual uses for it. If I, or another clever player, can think of an alternative use for the technology descriptions, the first breaks suspension of disbelief, the second can break the game. Step 4 is miscellaneous systems and computer. The 16 miscellaneous systems are designed to enhance the performance of one or another part of the ship. None of the items have any size, only a cost. The descriptions imply only one of each type of system need be installed. But there are no rules stating so and no description of what happens if more than one system is mounted. Step 5 is adding facilities, which occupy the limited amount of cargo space on ships to add space for more crew, passengers, labs, or transporting specific items like figher craft or additional weapons. A total of 39 items to modify the internal spaces of the ship.  Chapter 6 discusses starship crews. This is one of the more interesting sections of the book. It ranks the crew into one of seven levels, each of which has a skill modifier for performing or assisting the PCs. What's missing here is an idea of how to convert Joe Redshirt the faceless crewman into a named NPC, who has a full set of statistics. The abstracted unit vs. unit combat system is both quick and easy, though I would increase the lethality of the rules for having a PC accompany a unit on a combat mission. Chapter 7 is the starship combat system, using the ships built and using the crew rules. The combat section also has a number of omissions. The most glaring deals with the map. The book suggests two methods of dealing with the fact ships may well leave the map. The first (and as the author admits) unrealistic method is to have the map wrap. The second is to simply have any ship leaving the map be out of the game as escaped from combat. The book omits the fairly obvious option of shifting the map. That is, if during the combat all of the ships end up on the left side of the map, the GM can shift all the counters right by the same number of hexes (or squares) to give more space for continued combat. The combat system itself is a D20 combat with the addition of a few rules. The movement system as described plays like flying airplanes rather than spaceships, but this is neither good nor bad. Combat is D20 simple, roll to hit, roll damage, subtract DR for armor and shields, apply HP to ship. There is a optional system for damaging internal components when weapons fire gets through shields and armor. Here again are incomplete or missing rules. The rules for mines are suited for a more abstract combat system in that you are given the choice of going through the mines (and taking damage) or around the mines and loosing the pursuit of the enemy ship, even if your ship is faster and they're not escaping. Missing are the rules for the Hauler's class feature of adding more cargo space to the outside of the ship. The chapter completes with a description and rules for a variety of "terrain" to add spice to the combat system. These features are reasonably well described, but some (the Accretion disks, black holes, nebulas and novas) are so much larger than the combat scale you probably won't ever include them, though rules for comets, asteroids (even if the fields are too dense), moons and planets are good. The book completes with a collection of four pirate ships, two survey vessels, a cargo hauler and a light scout/warship.The book fails because it is incomplete. On every page I found something that I felt was wrong, incomplete or simply missing. And while I don't have high expectations for a $9 PDF, the amount of work required to make any or all of the sections useful for playing is too great. Blood and Space also fails by what it lacks as well. B&S perpetuates D&D's schizophrenic attitude toward classes. In an advanced, technological society everyone needs a good set of skills to be productive members of society. Skills which can only be gained by having one or more levels in a class. But all of the classes presented are not designed for "normal people", they are designed around PCs who want to be above the crowd. I don't expect a whole slew of new classes for the common folk, but I do expect a generic campaign book to address the issue. B&S is also missing a much needed chapter on how to run campaigns. There are hint's dropped throughout the book about how this class or that group of people work together and it may be an interesting idea for a group of players. For example, the hauler family in space, the marines at war, pirates vs. the patrol, and exploring new worlds are all lightly glossed over. These ideas need to be gathered into one chapter and expanded upon.Conclusion: Avoid this product unless you are desperate for D20 science fiction rules, and be prepared to do a great deal of work to make them useful.</blockquote>

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