Hello! Just got to say me and a few friends are excited to be running Fifth Age (hopefully this month!) We've been playing D&D 5e a lot and wanted to take a little break from the more fantasy playstyle. Since we are going to be playing it on Roll20 (we all live in different states/countries so can't meet in person) we were hoping for fallible PDF character sheets like asyouwish58 was talking about. Mainly adding in the numbers to ability scores, skills etc etc. As of now you can't really type anything into it (least not that I've found).
We were also wondering about the various speeds of the races. I jokingly told one player that the Stoph races had 25 feet of movement since they probably have no legs and are well.....close to slugs.
Can't wait to be running the first session. I'll be sure to tell some of the adventures that we have, when we start it!
I am thrilled you find this usable, this is the ruleset I use at my table, and it is very interesting to see what other people do with it.
As to the character sheet: okay, I will hack something fillable together. I had not thought about people needing it that way. I might not be able to make it auto-calculate, this is not my forte, but I will try to get it at least fillable. There is a really pretty sheet up above, but I did not make it, so I am loathe to mess with it, but I feel comfortable making my shabby old ones fillable.
As to speeds: 30 feet is the default, technically the layout I used for the races mirrors that of the PHB, so the base speed is set in the initial stat block, and then would be modified as an ability in the subrace (which is what the stoph and daht are) but I can see how this is confusing, the alien races came a lot later in the design process and were more of an afterthought, examples of what weird alien races might look like, than any big part of the core rules. This is why synthetics and greylians have so many more words than they do.
I run the stoph at 30 feet, it seems fine. Remember, they are only vaguely sluglike to a human frame of reference, though the climb speed is super weird. Interestingly, due to their high wisdom scores (and weird senses) stoph make incredible doctors and navigators, which jives with their flavor.
Love your work, by the way. My brothers and I have been playing 5e for a while, and one of my brothers has followed me down the path of DMing and campaign planning. He wants to run an Aliens vs Predator campaign, and was expecting to have to write up the stat blocks for all the aliens, and create custom races/classes for the players.
Then we found some decent stat blocks already created, and when we found your Fifth Age document, it was everything we'd wanted and more for the character creation side. Thank you so much for your work!
Glad you are getting use out of it! It would take fairly minor re-skinning (no pun intended) to work for an AVP game, the human side of things works as-is, and I have seen statblocks for xenomorhps before, so that isn't a big deal. Probably the biggest issue would be playable predator, but honestly the savage hunter would work with minor tweaks (mostly weapon and armor proficiencies, which might be better handled by just adding those to the yautja race instead, and let them just be savages with nice ships that do as they are told).
Let me know if you run into any snags, and as always: I love feedback about what works and what doesn't, what seems balanced, etc. This is my favorite project, and I am really going deep on it.
Well looks like one of the players had a few questions: Are any melee weapons meant to be finesse? If so which ones? (Like based off of dexterity)
When it comes to synthetics: How long can they remain active during the day? How can they charge? Is there purchable 'batteries' to extend their time.
Is it purposeful that many classes do not add saving throw proficiency?
With the civilian "Nine Lives" feature, are they essentially invincible?
Finesse weapons are a sore point for me, Dex is pretty heavily loaded in 5e in general, and even more so in space (what with guns, less armor, etc) and I was afraid to load it down too much. In my initial game I let combat knives be finesse, and it just let gun guy be a badass in hand to hand as well (albeit not as much as the daht with a power sledge). Honestly, I would rule it case to case depending on what you want at your table.
Synthetic particulars are left intentionally vague, I would only worry about charging times and such as a plot point or as a part of general DM dickery. If I had to get nailed down to something specific, I would say every 24 hours with a charge cycle, a synthetic gains a level of exhaustion, until finally they shut down. Something to keep in mind is the energy density of batteries in my default setting. For a laser handgun to exist, you need a pretty impressive amount of power, so a big 'ol robot? Their battery packs should be quite extensive. In a lot of places, there might even be passive wireless power, and some synthetics might have 'skins' with photovoltaics to help passively recharge their onboard power reserves.
As to saving throws: I am intentionally stripping saving throws from the system, as most of them are fairly pointless even in normal 5e, and it becomes even more slanted here. In my last pass, I thought I got rid of them all, but I must have missed a few. During playtest at the table the issue was brought up, and after discussion, I decided that letting the savage have universal saves made a lot of sense, and I will be keeping that, probably as a frontloaded benefit alongside natural explorer.
As for the civilian: Honestly, I am not proud of this class. I feel like it needs a major re-flavoring, and nine lives is silly. I mean, the class works, even the Luck based specialization, but... it doesn't feel on flavor for the rest of the rules. I was in a whimsical mood when I wrote it. As for ruling it as-is, I would let them stay alive, but take them out of play. Think taking them hostage, or letting them be downed with a debilitating wound. Sure, the soldier might have hit 0 hp, then soaked that grenade blast and died, but this guy survived and is in traction for the next session.
