Spelljammer in a Race=Class environment

[Fenris-77]

So I'm looking at DCC as my base for a Spelljammer hack (hereafter called Planejammer). This presents a difficulty as there are a bunch of classic SJ races that were never given the RaC treatment. I obviously still want to include them, but it's going to take some hacking. This is going to be formed around DCC rules as a base because there's a handful of more interesting buttons to push in terms of design. The first two races I wanted to take a crack at are the Gith and the Thri'Keen.

First, the Gith. I decided to go Githzerai, for, um reasons. Really it's the same thing but it lets me play with magic resistance as an idea. I'm going to base this off the DCC Elf and just call all the GZ F/MU and go home happy. So here's the race as class.

The base is the DCC Elf. Take away the following: Infravision, Extra Spells, Vulnerabilities and immunities, Heightened Senses, and all the Mithril stuff. Then up the base HD to d8, add some weapon proficiencies and some kind of magic resistance mechanic (which I haven't decided on yet. I have no idea what to do with Plane Shift as an innate ability, and I may just ignore it. Stack on a magic weapon ribbon (maybe) and it's pretty much done.

The Thri'Keen are a little more work, but not much. I'm going to work off the Dwarf base but with the following:

Remove: Sword and Board, Slow, Underground Skills,
Add: Two Weapon Fighting (from the Halfling), Base Leather AC but with no mod and no stacking, limited telepathy, no need for sleep, a small chameleon stealth bonus

Neither of these is play tested in the least, and I would welcome suggestions and whatnot. Also, what other races would you like to see in a R=C Spelljammer hack?

 

[Voadam]

AD&D allowed a lot of races to spelljam on their own because of cleric options working with standard spell powered helms. Dwarves and hippo guys and thri-kreen and lizardmen and orcs and scro in a race as class setup probably will not have spellcasting so a decision will have to be made as to whether they are crew only (mercenary hippos), or helms work differently, or they use nonstandard helms, or they have a second shaman race class.

 

[Fenris-77]

My hack isnt going to have the helms. I cant stand that particular bit of setting. I want any character to be able to pilot the ship. YMMV of course.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

FWIW, the last time I HRed Thri-Kreen for something, I reduced their size to S and gave them flight and bioluminescence. The bioluminescence was equivalent to torchlight, but heatless. Just like the insects I borrowed that idea from, the Thri-Kreen could use it for communication.

I think changes like that that could make for an interesting race in a Planejammer context. Imagine a ship traveling between the planets, and suddenly, someone notices a field of stars moving, twinkling, and getting closer- a blackThri-Kreen raider pouncing out of the darkness…

 

[Voadam]

My hack isnt going to have the helms. I cant stand that particular bit of setting. I want any character to be able to pilot the ship. YMMV of course.

Classic spelljammer had the dual issues of you have to be this magical to spelljam so half the party cannot, and if you do you lose all your spells for the day.

I dislike "be a wizard with no spells" situations in general in D&D which comes up more than it should. Even with my mid level AD&D switch class fighter wizard with a few items (which is about as good a situation as you can be in as a spelljammer) getting jumped by pirates when spelljamming was generally more of a frustrating than fun combat. The incentive should not be to hire a low level NPC caster to be a spelljammer so your full party can still do their thing while on the ship.

Houseruling default spelljamming mechanics into a different paradigm is a good idea IMO.

However, since it is the default and you had not mentioned that change I thought it worth bringing up, particularly for the scro.

 

[Fenris-77]

Classic spelljammer had the dual issues of you have to be this magical to spelljam so half the party cannot, and if you do you lose all your spells for the day.

I dislike "be a wizard with no spells" situations in general in D&D which comes up more than it should. Even with my mid level AD&D switch class fighter wizard with a few items (which is about as good a situation as you can be in as a spelljammer) getting jumped by pirates when spelljamming was generally more of a frustrating than fun combat. The incentive should not be to hire a low level NPC caster to be a spelljammer so your full party can still do their thing while on the ship.

Houseruling default spelljamming mechanics into a different paradigm is a good idea IMO.

However, since it is the default and you had not mentioned that change I thought it worth bringing up, particularly for the scro.

That's entirely fair. I'm writing my own navigation mechanics, based more on gate travel that anything else (so like Treasure Planet for example). There's won't be any spell casting requirement to navigate or power the ship, for most of the reasons you list above. I don't like game mechanics that have such an obvious influence on character gen choices and party composition.

I suppose it may be the case that the ships of some groups might have that requirement, for a group that's all spellcasters for example, or psionic races, but it won't be the default.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Idea: use willpower (life-energy) to send ships through space. While classwou still matter somewhat, everyone has life-energy. The Will Helms magically convert that energy into directional force.

Every N hours, the person at the helm must make a Will check. If it’s a success, there’s no ill effects. If it’s a failure, the pilot becomes fatigued. Subsequent failures means the fatigue increases until the pilot passes out.* To recover, the pilot must rest.







* falling to the deck with a Will Helm scream.

 

[Fenris-77]

Idea: use willpower (life-energy) to send ships through space. While classwou still matter somewhat, everyone has life-energy. The Will Helms magically convert that energy into directional force.

Every N hours, the person at the helm must make a Will check. If it’s a success, there’s no ill effects. If it’s a failure, the pilot becomes fatigued. Subsequent failures means the fatigue increases until the pilot passes out.* To recover, the pilot must rest.







* falling to the deck with a Will Helm scream.

That would make enemy captains Will Helm Da Foe then? Marvelous.

 

[Fenris-77]

So on a more specifically design topic, I want to write some rules for randomly generating 'systems' (call that adventure locations that are usefully close together, somehow). The IP that I have in mind here is the rules in Into the Wyrd and Wild for generating what the author calls 'wilderness dungeons'. So to embiggen the scale a little it might look something like this:

1. Roll for number of locations, probably a number of d6s (either chosen or generated) with the result on the d6 indexing 'size' of the location. These will be plotted by die drop on a large hex base. The locations end up in the hex the die lands in.

2.. Roll or chose a theme. This could be anything, but the exemplars might be things like Jotun Ruins, or Sylvan Fae Paradise, or Mindflayer Slave camp, stuff like that. I'll probably match a bunch themes to the elder races I've already written. There will be nested tables here that mostly provide evocative detail.

3. Tack on some nested table action for other details. For each size of location you have a set of rolls that establish type and some evocative detail (so town, dungeon, ruins, pirate lair, whatever) - this will match the overall themes. So you take the theme and use it to fill in the physical nature of the locations.

4. Roll to connect locations - this determines the nature of the connection between locations. It might be clear sailing, or it might by a gyrating asteroid field, or a patch of the astral beset by magical storms. These will determine travel time and types of hazards.

The overall design goal here is to provide the GM with some notion of danger levels and (more importantly) a nice whack of evocative detail they can use to flesh things out.

 

[Voadam]

* falling to the deck with a Will Helm scream.

That would make enemy captains Will Helm Da Foe then? Marvelous.

Fine. Then you need Prussian Giff riflemen manning the imperial flag ship that has the Kaiser's Will Helm.