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

[Ruin Explorer]

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».

Yeah if you want it to all work on Beyond, this is definitely the approach to take. You don't actually need any homebrew stuff "pre-prepared" for what I can see. I guess maybe if people getting chucked out of the "deep space" vessels happens a lot you might make up some rules for what happens if you get spaced, maybe make people take 3d6 cold damage/round and also get hit with the "suffocating" condition (this is not at all realistic, but realism isn't the goal).

 

[Fenris-77]

If you're eschewing sci-fi elements to some degree might it make more sense to use spelljammer flying ships rather than space ships? I'm thinking Treasure Planet here. It would obviate the need for some of the tech reskinning on the skill side. Also, if you used one maguffin as the power source for the tech you did have, lets call them Aether Crystals, you could have one skill for manipulating and fixing those, also saving a lot of work. Alternatively, you could approach something like Mechanics via a tool proficiency.

Weapons are the easy part IMO. The DMG provides some guidance and there are a ton of Sci-Fi sources for what kind of damage etc etc they might use. Even personal force fields can be found in the spell lists and used as an item with X charges that need to be recharged by doing X. This is why I suggested the Star Wars project, not so you could use it as-is, but because it's a rich source of 5e stuff reskinned as space-y.

A selection of stuff could be rekinned to remove some of the more medieval feel from 5e too. Necromancy, for example, could be reskinned as mad science. You could even keep most of the moving parts, just flavor it as chemical reagents and mind control or whatever.

 

[atanakar]

You can also use the idea of Technomages (Babylon 5) to reskin some spells and say that they are produced with a myriad of nanobots controlled by the mage.

 

[Oofta]

The big question of course is how to implement psionics. Because space opera must have it, right?

I'd consider going with either "advanced technology being akin to magic" or @Fenris-77 and do a spelljammer like campaign.

If the former it could be "lost" technology that most people don't really understand. I've toyed around with the idea now and then. Casters have to quest for power crystals that are actually some kind of passive energy generation collector to explain spell slots. Whether they use "guns" to cast spells or want to impress the locals with pseudo-magic is up to them.

In any case, mankind spread far and wide long ago then the inter stellar civilization collapsed. Lots of room for strange alien worlds, artifacts, lost tech gone wrong and ancient spaceships to plunder.

Great. Now you have me thinking of a new campaign.

 

[Fenris-77]

Great. Now you have me thinking of a new campaign.

But it sounds like an AWESOME campaign. I don't know about you, but this exact moment is why I'm still in the hobby 30-whatever years later.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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).

Those are great ideas, though if we increase tools enough I’d feel like maybe we would need to increase how many you get.

 

[Fenris-77]

Those are great ideas, though if we increase tools enough I’d feel like maybe we would need to increase how many you get.

I'd probably bake X number of extra tool proficiencies into every class. If you have enough proficiencies everyone can have a couple of tech skills off the hop without having to replace any class related stuff.

 

[jayoungr]

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.

Anyone know where I can find this?

 

[Tonguez]

Stars Without Number

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

My suggestion is a space opera, but with retropunk vintage look, like the comics from the 30's, Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon, for example. Today some comics from those age are public domain now.