Tell Me About Aberrant D20

[Von Ether]

What some people forget in d20 Aberrrant is the Dramatic Editing and super science rules that add back some of the missing epic power in the game.

As for the trilogy of the games, the one advantage the d20 versions have over the Storyteller trio is that the d20 versions were crafted to work interchangably. Which may explain why d20 Aberrant is the weak sister among the three. It had to put forth superpowers, work well with the other two games AND maintian some d20 familarity. Big goals. So in essence, a 1st level Aberrant PC is on the same power level as a 1st level Trinity and Adventure! PC, something that didn't make Aberrant fans too happy.

The other two d20 games faired better because their power levels are much lower. For d20 Pulp, d20 Adventure is a gem.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

As for the trilogy of the games, the one advantage the d20 versions have over the Storyteller trio is that the d20 versions were crafted to work interchangably. Which may explain why d20 Aberrant is the weak sister among the three. It had to put forth superpowers, work well with the other two games AND maintian some d20 familarity. Big goals. So in essence, a 1st level Aberrant PC is on the same power level as a 1st level Trinity and Adventure! PC, something that didn't make Aberrant fans too happy.

I never had the opportunity to play the original system. Is there anybody out there that hasn't played the original, but has played the D20 version? If there is tell me what you think of it.

 

[Von Ether]

As a side note, I thought of d20 Aberrant as more of a "high powered mutants" game than really a supers game. With a little tweaking, it could be a fun set of powers with a more modest setting.

 

[Longshadow]

As for the trilogy of the games, the one advantage the d20 versions have over the Storyteller trio is that the d20 versions were crafted to work interchangably. Which may explain why d20 Aberrant is the weak sister among the three. It had to put forth superpowers, work well with the other two games AND maintian some d20 familarity. Big goals. So in essence, a 1st level Aberrant PC is on the same power level as a 1st level Trinity and Adventure! PC, something that didn't make Aberrant fans too happy.

emphasis mine

I don't want to dwell on this too much, as I think the original poster has more than had his question answered, but I did want to respond to this, as I think it's relevant. The problem here wasn't the d20 system per se, so much as a disparity in setting presentation combined with the philosophy of the d20 system. The philosophy is one of measurable balance stacked against different kinds of characters, broken into level-based progression. Aberrant was about broadly disparate characters across an enormous breadth of power, all of whom were considerably beyond human (yeah, there were exceptions, but those were exceptions). If the developers had changed the setting material to match the downgrade, fans of the setting wouldn't have gotten so upset. The motto was "What would you do with the power of a god?" [right from the back cover and the advertising text], not, "what would you do with a couple of spiffy stunts normal people can't do?" This was doable in emulation "straight out of the box" with the d10 system as presented -- but needed some adjustment in the d20 [I think my zero XP characters averaged about 12-15th level when converted, depending on how liberal I was in interpreting some power builds]. If there had even been a caveat, "you probably should begin Aberrant characters at something around level 10 to match what's presented for beginners in the setting proper," that would have nipped many complaints in the bud.

With all due respect to fans of the other two settings over the middle child, Trinity and Adventure are supposed to operate at considerably lower power levels -- there were reasons Primoris so outshown his contemporaries, and that the orders [even in VARGs and heavily armored warships] were still worried when dealing with just a handful of no-name Aberrant mooks.

 

[Longshadow]

As a side note, I thought of d20 Aberrant as more of a "high powered mutants" game than really a supers game. With a little tweaking, it could be a fun set of powers with a more modest setting.

Granted.
Divorced from the existing setting, I'm sure it would have worked fine as a generic low-powered "powerz" rules set for some people. I would still have had some objections to a mechanic or two, but then, I wouldn't have been using it as my choice for such a system anyway.