D&D 5E The Mechanics of A Fantasy Space Opera

[doctorbadwolf]

My regular group has begun a project to create a galaxy in which we can play a fantasy space opera, inspired by Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, Flash Gordon, Titan AE, Treasure Planet, and others. We aren’t looking for science fiction hardness, or the ultra-weird or spelljammer, and we aren’t really worried about making sure that everything D&D has a home in the galaxy.

The galaxy is being explored, closer to early Trek than Star Wars’ well defined map.

FTL has two modes; Star Lanes are FTL highways that propel vessels over light years in hours, making travel between stars take days or weeks, rather than lifetimes. Aether Slipstream Drives propel a single vessel at a rate ranging from 1/10th the speed of a Star Lane, to 80% the speed of a Star Lane, depending on the quality of the drive. This is a very very new tech.

There is D&D magic, and sci-fi and sci-fantasy weaponry, and lots and lots of races.

There is a “good guy” coalition called the Commonwealth and a “villain” empire called the Authority, which are in astate of civil war. The Commonwealth is not humanocentric, and in fact humans used to be a separate power called the Federation of Human Worlds, but the remnants of the old federation are split between the core worlds, which joined the commonwealth as the Star lanes opened back up after a thousand years of darkness, and the colony worlds where the wealthy landlords and corporate owners consolidated their power into an oligarchy of the wealthy, complete with noble titles and pseudo-feudal hierarchies. (Imagine all the rich jerks who owned moons and such in Firefly formed a new government together).

There are Aether ships that sail on the gas clouds that concentrate around suns, allowing natural creatures to breath and live in solar space, and deep space vessels that look more like classic sci-fi starships.

So, the question I have is, what mechanics can facilitate all this, sticking to mostly stock 5e D&D, with as little homebrew as possible. I want to be able to make characters in dndbeyond for this.

 

[Fenris-77]

There has been a rather extensive 5e star wars thing that has been done. Fan done, but high quality. Its called Star Wars 5e or something like that.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I mean, if you really want to stick to D&D Beyond and make it as simple as possible, you could just reskin the gear to be more sci-fi.

A longsword becomes a vibro-blade or light saber, a crossbow turns into a phaser or blaster, and plate mail becomes space marine armor (or the equivalent). A lantern becomes a flashlight while a book becomes a data pad.

 

[atanakar]

Everything you need to run a sci-fi 5e game is in there. Just pick and choose the parts you like :
Esper Genesis 5E Sci-fi - Core Manual - Alligator Alley Entertainment | Esper Genesis | DriveThruRPG.com

 

[doctorbadwolf]

There has been a rather extensive 5e star wars thing that has been done. Fan done, but high quality. Its called Star Wars 5e or something like that.

I’ve seen that, and it’s well done, but we all know SWSE well enough to just play that if we want. This project is something different.

I mean, if you really want to stick to D&D Beyond and make it as simple as possible, you could just reskin the gear to be more sci-fi.

A longsword becomes a vibro-blade or light saber, a crossbow turns into a phaser or blaster, and plate mail becomes space marine armor (or the equivalent). A lantern becomes a flashlight while a book becomes a data pad.

For some things that is satisfying, for others it’s not. We may have magitech weapons as magic weapons in ddb, flavored how we want.
But we won’t have fun pretending a crossbow is a laser gun.
One of the things we are working on is, what proficiencies can be reflavored easily and intuitively? Thieves Tools are Computers/Hacker’s Tools, easy enough. Arcana working for tech as well is great.
Vehicles (Sea/Air) as starships works.

But one of the group hates the idea of making one tool or skill into SWSE style “Mechanics”.

Everything you need to run a sci-fi 5e game is in there. Just pick and choose the parts you like :
Esper Genesis 5E Sci-fi - Core Manual - Alligator Alley Entertainment | Esper Genesis | DriveThruRPG.com

We aren’t looking for sci-fi. Fantasy Space Opera. And we aren’t looking to adapt from a fully fleshed out system. We want to make 5e characters on dndbeyond, with fairly minimal home brewing.

 

[Todd Roybark]

doc, the rules as is should work fine. Anything high tech can use Magic Item stats. A vibroblade blade could use adamantium stats...a ray gun is a wand etc

a tag for skills and tools like Medicine (advanced) could be useful, especially if your group will be on low tech, or standard D&D worlds. Advanced training would allow for high tech knowledge.
I ran something like this during the D&D Next playtest.

Arcana of the Ancients from Monte Cook Games, has literally hundreds of items that would work for this. It also has some pretty great monsters.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

doc, the rules as is should work fine. Anything high tech can use Magic Item stats. A vibroblade blade could use adamantium stats...a ray gun is a wand etc

a tag for skills and tools like Medicine (advanced) could be useful, especially if your group will be on low tech, or standard D&D worlds. Advanced training would allow for high tech knowledge.
I ran something like this during the D&D Next playtest.

Arcana of the Ancients from Monte Cook Games, has literally hundreds of items that would work for this. It also has some pretty great monsters.

Ther is a level of reflavoring that simply does not work for several of us. Because we are big fans of mechanically distinct options that each represent something in the world, things like “a ray gun is a wand” just doesn’t work. Especially because such a galaxy would also have magic wands.

It’s like when someone suggested that a monk can just take mobile and use a spear, anc call it a glaive. I can’t. I can kinda pretend a whip is a weird thin bladed polearm, but a spear doesnt have reach. Reach is a mechanical distinction of polearms in the game. Therefor, a spear can’t be a polearm, for me.

If D&D didn’t really distinguish between polearms and shorter weapons in any mechanically meaningful way, I could call a sword a glaive and be happy.

 

[Fanaelialae]

For some things that is satisfying, for others it’s not. We may have magitech weapons as magic weapons in ddb, flavored how we want.
But we won’t have fun pretending a crossbow is a laser gun.
One of the things we are working on is, what proficiencies can be reflavored easily and intuitively? Thieves Tools are Computers/Hacker’s Tools, easy enough. Arcana working for tech as well is great.
Vehicles (Sea/Air) as starships works.

But one of the group hates the idea of making one tool or skill into SWSE style “Mechanics”.

Fair enough. Is this issue with crossbows as blasters an issue of damage type, or does it go beyond that? Because I don't think changing the damage type would be unbalanced per se (although barbarians might not love the change). If it's more like your group feels a blaster should deal 3d6 damage, then that's trickier since that's a lot of damage for a weapon.

If you don't want a mechanic skill, then just use tool proficiencies as those are infinitely expandable. Create a new tool kit and you've created a new tool proficiency. Heck, you could have both a Mechanic skill (general engineering skill like you might expect from someone like Geordi [ST: Next Generation]) as well as something like a Starship Repair Kit for your Han Solo characters (who knows how to work on the Millennium Falcon but probably couldn't invent a new warp drive like Geordi could - even if they were from the same universe).

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

You could use the SRD of d20 Future and Starfinder.

The true challenge for the game designers is to give the right challenging rating or XPs rewards when a humanoid enemy become too hard, more than with a monster template, thanks high-tech. In the first movie "Alien: the Eight Passenger" one xenomorph was enough to kill almost all Nostromo staff but in the second movie they could kill dozens, maybe hundreds, with a "trap", the "sentinel" turrets guns. A psycho-killer, for example the night stalker from Sylvester Stallone's "Cobra" is a nightmare for unnarmed PCs in a survival horror game, but a one-man-army hero with enough weapons and ammo can kill all the evil cult of the new dawn. You can drive a truck to run over a horde of zombies, and with the right weapon you only need one-shot to kill an elephant. Let's imagine your PC is in a Battle Royal videogame. The first enemy is a goblin with only an axe and a shield, practically cannon fodder. The next time the same monster with the same stats, but with a snipe rifle from the top of a tree. Then this is harder. After the same monsters, but wearing an exosuit (do you remember Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare), later wearing a powered armor (like the ones of the Fallout saga or the javeling from the Anthem videogame), and the final boss is the same "level 1" goblin again, but piloting a mecha (Titanfall or the B.R.U.Te of Fornite: Battle Royal).

 

[atanakar]

We aren’t looking for sci-fi. Fantasy Space Opera. And we aren’t looking to adapt from a fully fleshed out system. We want to make 5e characters on dndbeyond, with fairly minimal home brewing.

Fair enough. If it has not been mentioned yet, look up the 5e DMG section on modern and future weapons. It has stats for laser guns and other weapons. It is «official».