Two thoughts/queries regarding N.E.W. Character Creation

Nimmo · May 6, 2014

As I am working through the core rules for N.E.W. and trying to build my spreadsheet character generator I have come across a couple things that have had me scratching my head a little.

Firstly:
If a player selects Human as their race are they able to boost ANY attribute they wish, such as Luck, Rep, Credits, Luck etc, or should it be restricted to Strength, Endurance, Agility and so on?
I think that if I read the rules literally then I could choose to increase any of the stats I want, but wonder if that is what it's meant to be or if I am being daft and missing/misreading things.

Secondly:
When it comes to the Star Marines I feel as though I should have a choice as to whether I increase my strength or my agility (probably not both though) instead of only my Strength.
My logic for this is that a star marine is currently very strong and would be great as a melee attacker, but I would have expected that he should be good at shooting too/instead.

As things stand I had to change a character who was going to be a boarding party lead as a star marine and go for the sniper/infiltrator/assassin route instead so that he was a fairly decent shot, going from 3 attack dice to 5.

Thanks and any advice would be appreciated.

Morrus · May 6, 2014

I originally intended it to just be the main attributes plus PSI, but you know what? I can think of no compelling reason the others shouldn't be viable, too.

As for the star marine - yeah; my vision was that they were kinda powerful space shock trooper swordsmen in heavy battle armour, and a rifle for backup, and that I would create a more general soldiery type for the more standard stuff. I haven't done that yet, though!

Nimmo · May 6, 2014

Cool stuff, thanks for clearing both of those issues up.

I can understand your vision for the Stellar Marine and had that impression myself the first time I read about the career, but with the lack of another obvious alternative I wasn't entirely certain.

Really looking forward to the new playtest document for N.E.W. now!

Lord Mhoram · May 11, 2014

Another one here - just started creating a character to see how the flow works..

Decided to go with Genetic Experiment and the age is 1d6. When I ended up rolling the ages, I ended up 15. The other starting careers have more "normal" ages. Just making sure this was intended - i.e. faster maturity or something, rather than a mistake.

Secondly I saw a "Get access to a Technobabble"

I'm assuming 1 of 2 things - technobabble is going to be a name for certain abilities (like feats in D&D) or it is a filler world for when you come up with what exactly goes there. Just curious.

As an aside, I convinced my HERO only group to playtest N.E.W./O.L.D in a few months. We have some serious "gearheads" when it comes to system mechanics in the group. Looking forward to some interesting playtest reports to write up.

Primitive Screwhead · May 24, 2014

[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] The technobabble rules are missing from the April 7th playtest document...

early playtest document said:
GAINING PARTY DICE
Technobabbles and opportunities are a group resource. The group starts play with 1 technobabble and one opportunity per party member. The GM can hand out technobabbles as rewards for good play.
Technobabbles and opportunities can be purchased with XP. Each technobabble costs 5 XP, and each opportunity costs 10 XP. Any group member may purchase a technobabble to be added to the party pool.
TECHNOBABBLES 
By spending a technobabble, a character can gain an additional dice on an attribute check, but not on an attack roll. When using a technobabble, roll 1d20 three times on the table below, declare the technobabble, and then add the bonus die. You can only spend technobabbles in your own turn.

The following table gives a limited selection of Technobabbles (8000 combinations). For a larger selection, use the Technobabble Generator at EN World:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/dnd_view_block.php?id=158