NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Turanil" data-source="post: 2443646" data-attributes="member: 9646">Modern Advances: Alien Aductee, by Steve Miller, is a small 8 pages PDF (6 pages of actual game content) for d20 Modern. It features an advanced class, a new talent plus feats and skill uses, and a NPC of said class. This PDF retails at 2$ (at the time of the review anyway) and is 100% Open Gaming Content.Art and layout: The art merely consists in two photos of a girl (the abductee), and the layout is just basic. While the document is clean and easy to read, I have seen more exciting layouts. This PDF certainly looks more like a joke (based on a renown urban myth), than a serious gaming supplement. After all, in the introductory paragraph the author states that he had designed the character class to take care of missing players: when they aren’t there, it’s just that their characters have been abducted by aliens. Nonetheless, this supplement also reflects a 20th century legend that has great probability to appear in a modern or future campaign featuring mysterious and manipulative aliens. So now lets see what the PDF proposes:Advanced Class: Alien Abductee: Compared to other d20 modern advanced classes, I find the Alien Abductee a little bland. Yet it is done right, except for the 1st level ability. "Missing Time" has a chance (1 in 8) of giving you a free feat for a gaming session you missed (meaning that the character had been abducted by aliens). Even if it will seldom happen, I don’t like the possibility to gain extra feats beyond the normal allotment. In fact, if I ever use this class in a game, I will houserule Missing Time that way: first you get the XP the other players got during that gaming session you missed; then, where you would have got free skill points or feats, you instead gain some clue to something relevant to the campaign. Of course, all XP gained due to Missing Time can only be used to gain Alien Abductee levels, hehe… Talent Trees, Skills, and Feats: I like the talent that enables to spontaneously cast a zero-level spell a couple of times per day. The use of Mage Hand in a modern campaign without magic can be much useful in the appropriate circumstances. In fact, I think that this talent is what can give some flavor to the Alien Abductee class. Other than that, the feats are simply along the lines of “Alien Weapon Proficiencies” and the like.Alien Abductee NPC: I much appreciate that a NPC having levels in the Alien Abductee class has been provided. Too often, supplements featuring new classes don’t feature an example NPC. However, any new class has more chances to be used by a DM than a player, so I like that a DM’s job be eased with some pre-generated NPCs. This one (a security personnel woman) will probably fit fairly well in many d20 Modern games.Of course, you will easily understand that concerning this supplement, I can only be biased.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  Yet, if I ever run this d20 Sci-fi campaign I always wanted to run, I will certainly use this PDF. In fact, I can use it in a post-apocalyptic RIFTS-like game, as well as I could see it in a Transhuman-Space d20 Future campaign. Both the abductee character and the class would be useful. The first as a plot device, and the latter (as suggested in the supplement’s introduction) as a "punishment" for missing player’s characters. Fact is that in my groups, there is always one or another player to miss a gaming session (me included). As such, it would make for a near entire party of abductees whose adventures would eventually revolve around finding and countering these mysterious aliens that have kept kidnapping them ever and again over the course of the campaign. This could indeed make an interesting plot… I give Modern Advances: Alien Abductee a 3 (but would have liked to give it a 3.5). Despite I think it will be useful to any modern / future campaign featuring aliens (especially games ala “X-Files”), I still see it more of a joke than anything else. Then, the art and layout is really basic, plus I have never been fond of supplements just featuring a single character class (this is here that I am biased…). (Disclaimer: <s>we</s> aliens cannot be held responsible for neurotic and hysterical <s>female humans</s> women having problems of missing time and other urban legends. If they have missed their time, it’s not <s>our</s> an alien problem!)</blockquote>

Verification