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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2013468" data-attributes="member: 18387">This is the author of Blood and Space.  I have never responded to a review before, because I think reviews are more for the fans than for the writers (although a great review can help us learn to be better writers).However, this review makes many claims that I feel deserve a response."The Marine is an unexciting fighter. "The Marine is identical to the fighter in many respects.  However, it is included to show what feats from d20 Modern/Blood and Space are appropriate for the space combat genre.  I thought it would be better to include the entire class for convenience, so you didn't have to flip back and forth between a list of fighter bonus feats and the fighter class from the PHB.  It was an attempt to make things easier on the player. "The Hotshot really should be a prestige class. "Oh really?  The Hotshot is balanced with the Pilot.  Neither is more powerful than the other. The difference between the Hotshot and Pilot is akin to the difference between a fighter and a barbarian.  The Pilot gets bonus feats.  The Hotshot gets Outside of the envelope, allowing him to squeeze extra speed from his craft, and is on the whole a less polished, more instinctive brand of pilot than the Pilot.  The Hotshot is a science fiction icon.  Luke Skywalker and Annikin Skywalker are both Hotshots.  Never formally trained as pilots, loving danger and speed.  Luke is even called "hotshot" several times by Han in Star Wars, hence the name.  Since the class is no more powerful than the Pilot, and since the characters that provided its inspiration had the class at very low levels, I decided to make it a core class."The Mercenary's 1st level Show me the money class feature (+2 to all skills and attacks for the adventure) is unbalanced"The ability comes and goes on an encounter by encounter basis, and only appears when the Mercenary has the chance to gain "significant wealth".  Now let's look at that.  In the first place, it's an ability like the Favored Enemy, in that the Game Master has complete control over when it does and does not appear.  In the second place, as the Mercenary rises in level, the ability will appear less and less often, because "significant wealth" will come to mean more and more money.  "and the Rage feature (+4 STR, +4 Con, +2 hp/level, -2AC) is either unbalancing or ridiculous depending upon your view of futuristic combat."It's the standard Barbarian ability, only the skills affected (since the Merc has different skills than the Barbarian) were changed.  So if it's unbalancing I guess the PHB is too.  As for it being ridiculous, melee combat never goes away.   "The Colonial marine as a prestige class adds nothing that isn't already available to the Marine class. "Really?  Colonial Marines are very similar to Marines this is true.  They are still Marines after all.  But I wouldn't call the Favored Enemy ability, which the Colonial Marine gets for all unintelligent aliens ("bugs" as he calls them) "Nothing"."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. "This claim is outright specious.  The Pirate, in fact, has several abilities that make him a great leader of evil men.  He doesn't have the Marine Commander's abilities, because he leads in a different way.  The Pirate Captain can give his crew bonuses in Boarding combat, recruit more experienced Boarders, and gains a special cohort to either act as a first officer or lead his Marine boarding parties.  I'd say those abilities make him perfectly suited to his mission: seizing cargo."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. "This is true.  However, the Capital ship has a LOT more weapons, armor and HP.  It was determined that these things would eat up room that could be given to cargo space.  However, after reading Jeremy's review, it has been decided to include larger civilian vessels with more cargo space for the print run."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. "The speeds of all ships in the game are given by an Acceleration modifier.  It's a game statistic for Blood and Space.  When I speak of Acceleration +20 Im obviously referring to a game statistic.  The reason Acceleration is used to determine speed in the game is that space ships typically Accelerate half way to their destination, then slow down half way to their destination.  Therefore, when combat begins, both ships have usually been Accelerating for quite some time (perhaps months), and so their Acceleration, their ability to increase speed relative to their opponent is the key statistic."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? "In some science fiction, Large ships have no trouble mounting fast engines that make them as fast, if not faster, than their smaller counterparts.  Witness the Star Destroyer in Star Wars, and the Enterprise in Star Trek.  They are both fully capable of keeping up with smaller ships.  On the flip side, small ships in many genres, like Star Wars, are fast and nimble, like earth-bound fighter jets.  So both needed to be able to mount good engines.  I decided, since I was writing a game, and not a scientific technical manual, to use one price for the engines, since in the fiction the game is based on, both small and large ships are capable of being fast and agile. "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). "In the flavor text, I also use the phrase "the temporal spike would affect the ship's lateral slipstream".  It's a game.  Technolbabble is part of the fun.  Just repeat to yourself "It's just a game... I need to relax". There, doesn't that feel better?"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. "Good point and one that slipped past the editors and playtesters.  It will be fixed before the game goes to print."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. "It's not missing.  There is no need for such a system.  In the genre, the redshirts never rise in rank and become PCs or named NPCs.  Even when Chekhov first appeared on star trek, as a lowly ensign (the same rank as the redshirts), he was not treated like Joe Crew.  PCs are different, regardless of rank."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. "That is exactly what was described.  As Jeremy rightly pointed out."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. "Score one for you.  That is an editorial mistake, that rule is left over from an earlier, abstract version of the combat system and will be fixed before the game goes to print.  However, I would like to take this opportunity to point out, that you have labeled an entire 30 page chapter "incomplete" on the basis of that one paragraph.  One paragraph.  Feeling nit picky today?"B&S perpetuates D&D's schizophrenic attitude toward classes. "It's a d20 game.  It's kind of hard to write a d20 game and not have the idiosyncracies of a d... 20... game... "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. "Any d20 game is going to be based around characters.  Player Characters.  Heroes.  It's a d... 20... game..."B&S is also missing a much needed chapter on how to run campaigns. "That is not the point of this book.  It's a "toolkit".  It says so right in the title I promise!  It's designed to either help people make homebrew sci-fi (these Game Masters usually already have an idea in mind and don't want my bothersome notions of the future), or for those looking to add a little more detail to a Star Wars, Dragonstar et al game.  These people also do not need campaign information.</blockquote>

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