Traveller t20 and d20 Future

[tjoneslo]

Of course, the most obvious suggestion is to rewrite the classes to balance them better.

I would be very interested in seeing what you would suggest doing to the "weak" T20 classes to empower them to the level of the "strong" classes, or vice versa. I don't see there being a significant difference between the classes.

 

[Ranger REG]

I would be very interested in seeing what you would suggest doing to the "weak" T20 classes to empower them to the level of the "strong" classes, or vice versa. I don't see there being a significant difference between the classes.

Define the "weak" areas of T20 classes.

 

[shady]

I seem to recall reading somewhere, by the way, that T20 was built to widen the audience for Traveller and for more generic Traveller source material, and so it's unlikely to be moved to a D20 Modern framework (pity, but I can live with it as is ... and I'd rather see further material published for it than see a revision).

 

[shady]

I wrote an article about building your own prior history tables so they could be better adapted to your game. This is now posted with the other articles in the Moot.

The downside of a prior history system is characters end up at wildly different levels. During the T20 playtest campaign I ran the character level spread was 7th to 17th. I, nor none of my players had too much of a problem with it, but you may need set expectations for your players particularly if they are old hands at D20.

Unearthed Arcana has a kind of prior history system for D&D (Character Background). It doesn't really work - a pity (though maybe these things need to be setting specific). Maybe you ought to send them your article.

The level spread manifested itself in the original Traveller as skills spread, and was even more of an issue there because of the lack of an experience system (most people had house rules to get round it, at least until the advent of the Instruction skill). But it worked OK. I think Traveller works particularly well in PBEM, where the players can be scattered and running against multiple parallel plotlines ... the fact they're not necessarily together makes the level spread completely irrelevant.

 

[jeff37923]

A note on combat in T20 to better understand why it should be avoided and why character-level combat skills are de-emphasised when compared to other d20 systems.

The most potent weapon in the The Traveller's Handbook is the USP 27 Spinal Mount Meson Gun, a weapon that fires pi-neutral mesons which do not interact with normal matter (like neutinos) but decay into particles which do interact (preferably at the target point). This is a weapon that has an effective range of 75,000 kilometers; ignores armor and has been known to fire through planets without losing any damage potential; has a critical damage threat range of 10 or higher (x10 damage); and causes a base (character scale) 26d20 damage plus 26d12 radiation damage to everything in a 270 meter radius from the target point. Now, to fire this weapon in T20 requires the Gunnery skill (WIS) and the Feat Weapon Proficiency (Ship's Weaponry). T20 skills for using heavy weapons like this acknowledge that the BAB for a character class does not make sense when dealing with large technological weapons that require fire control systems. Even today, an expert sniper may not know how to direct a fire mission for artillery, since they require different skills from the individuals.

That academic class that people keep wondering about may just be the source of guys with enough knowledge of ballistics and rocketry to enable a missile to be fired over-the-horizon at an enemy. Historically, if you look at the original German rocket scientists from WW2 (the ones that defected to the US), I doubt that you can see any of these academic guys as "Buckaroo Banzai, combat scientist" even though their flight from Germany during a war was definitely an adventure.