Voidrunner Using Technobabble

The upcoming Voidrunner's Codex takes inspiration from some of the best sci-fi shows as it expands your 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition games with a comprehensive set of sci-fi rules!

Invert the polaron frequency! Reconfigure the shield harmonics! Recollimate the reciprocating interface array!

The Science skill, and especially its technobabble specialty, can be used to leverage fringe scientific hypotheses and devise new and unorthodox solutions to technological problems (Engineering is then used to implement these measures). It is up to the Narrator whether technobabble is appropriate to a given situation, but many starship-based exploration challenges are ideal circumstances for such desperate measures.

To devise a quick technobabble solution, roll once on each column on the following table.

d8​
1	amplify the	nucleonic	actuator
2	recalibrate the	auxiliary	manifold
3	oscillate the	ionic	stabilizer
4	harmonize the	verteron	field
5	invert the	reciprocating	capacitor
6	modulate the	shield	frequency
7	reconfigure the	polaron	relay
9	recollimate the	subspace	array

Technobabble can achieve incredible things, but it does not come without risks!

Disadvantage. Technobabble attempts are always made with disadvantage.

Critical successes and failures. A critical failure (a natural roll of 1 which would have failed) results in the ship suffering one critical malfunction (see page @@). A critical success (a natural roll of 20 which would have succeeded) provides an expertise die to any further Science or Engineering checks while in this region.

Temporary. New technology devised in this manner is always only temporary, and applicable to the specific challenge being confronted. Once the challenge is overcome, the alterations no longer benefit the ship–perhaps there are unacceptable side-effects or risks, or the systems can only operate like this for a short while without exploding; or perhaps the solution was hyper-specific to this one single phenomena, and would be useless against even a similar event.

The Voidrunner's Codex launches early next month. Click here to be notified when we launch!

 

[lichmaster]

I love how some WOIN rules (first the countdown mechanics, and now technobabble) are slowly making their way into LU. I'm secretly hoping @Morrus has a masterplan to then use LU as a gateway for (a renewed?) WOIN, somewhere in the future.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

I love how some WOIN rules (first the countdown mechanics, and now technobabble) are slowly making their way into LU. I'm secretly hoping @Morrus has a masterplan to then use LU as a gateway for (a renewed?) WOIN, somewhere in the future.

Level Up: Become WOIN

 

[RangerWickett]

Hm. I wonder how hard it would be to convert my WOIN sci-fi horror adventure Waking Nightmares to work in Voidrunner's.

There was a gimmick that made special use of the character creation system, which normally had you pick different careers that accumulated your abilities. Waking Nightmares had you wake up with amnesia and whenever something dangerous happened, the jolt of adrenaline unlocked your memory of one of your careers, so you could make your character while running away from the monsters.

Then after you'd recalled all your memories, you now had enough skills to actually have a fair chance of winning a fight against the monsters, which (at least when I playtested it) helped justify the PCs leaning into horror tropes by running away early, then rallying for the fight.