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Alternate Class/Background Structure

Noble

Requirements: SOC 16

Starting Feats: AP/Light, WP/Swords, WP/Marksman

Bonus Feats: Carousing, Noble Presence, Connections, Fast Talk, Hobby, Interrogation, Iron Will, Legal Eagle, Natural Born Leader, Noble Indignance, Patronage, Trustworthy, Trust Fund, V/Any

Skills: Appraise, Bluff, Bribery, C/Any, E/Any, Gather Information, Innuendo, Intimidate, K/Any, Leader, Liaison, P/Any, Sense Motive
 
Professional

Requirements: None

Starting Feats: AP/Light, Professional Specialty

Bonus Feats: Acrobatics, Acting Prodigy, AP/Vac, Athletic, Barter, Brawling, Carousing, Connections, Credit Line, EW Specialist, Fast Talk, Gearhead, Hacker, Interrogation, Hobby, Jury Rig, Legal Eagle, Miracle Worker, Naval Architect, Research, Tracker, Trapping, Trustworthy, V/Any but Starship, Vessel Specialization, WP/Swordsman

Skills: Appraise, C/Any, E/Any, Gambling, K/Any, Leader, Liaison, Astrogation, Pilot, P/Any, Survival, T/Any, Trader
 
Rogue

Requirements: None

Starting Feats: AP/Light, AP/Medium, WP/Swordsman, WP/Marksman

Bonus Feats: Alertness, Dumb Luck, Brawling, Carousing, Fast Talk, Fence Stolen Goods, Hacker, Improved Search, Sixth Sense, Smuggling, Spot Trouble, Stealthy, Toughness, Tracker

Appraise, Bluff, Bribery, Disguise, Forgery, Gambling, Gather Information, Hide, Innuendo, Intimidate, Listen, Move Silently, Search, Sense Motive, Spot, T/Electrical, T/Mechanical
 
Jered

Thanks for putting the work into this.

Do you have a sample character to help put this all in to context for those of us unfamiliar with D20 Modern?

- Neil
 
Neil-

I sorta have one character I made up to make sure the system isn't overwhelmingly munchkinny, but I haven't really gone much farther than levels/feats. Here he is:

Cmdr. Jake Kilburn
Race: Human
Homeworld: AgNiRi, TL 14, Port A
Class/Level: Smart 3, Fast 3, Gunslinger 2
STR 15 BAB: +4
DEX 17 HP: 14
CON 10 INIT: +7
INT 15 Fortitude: +2
WIS 11 Reflex: +7
CHA 11 Will: +5
SOC 13
EDU 16

Feats/Abilities: AP/Light, AP/Vac, WP/Marksman, WP/Laser, WP/Ship's Weapons, V/Grav, V/Starships, Improved Initiative, Gearhead, Savant(T/Astrogation)*, Advanced Knowledge(T/Astrogation), Evasion, Increased Speed*, Point Blank Shot, Double Tap*, Cross Training, Close Combat Shot*, Weapon Focus(BlasTech DL-44)**, Quick Draw

*- From D20 Modern. Increased Speed adds 5ft/1.5m to your base speed. Savant adds +1/Smart level to the chosen skill. Close Combat Shot allows attacks with Medium or smaller ranged weapons without provoking AoO's. (A good note is that gun sizes are different in Modern.) Double Tap gives -2 attack, +1 damage die. (Goes with autofire from Modern)
**- This is Han's blaster pistol, it's one of the guns in our game.

We haven't yet decided if we're going to use the burst/autofire rules from Modern or T20, so I left both in.

I didn't include skills because I didn't choose them when I was writing up the char. World skills are T/Computer, T/Mech, Gambling, Liaison, and Pilot. T/Astrogation is this guy's specialty, and he can have up to 14 ranks, +3 Savant bonus, plus some others. Doesn't seem like it's balanced, but we're going to give it a try first.

Now for his Background:

Term 1: Navy
Training Bonus
Duty: Battle
Commission: Yes
Promotion: Yes
End Levels: Smart 1, Fast 2
Term 2: Navy
Duty: Patrol
Decoration: MCUF
Promotion: Yes
XP Bonus: Yes
End Levels: Smart 3, Fast 3
Term 3: Navy
Decoration: MCUF
Promotion: Yes
XP Bonus: Yes
End Levels: Smart 3, Fast 3, Gunslinger 2

And yeah I really did get awesome rolls on the history. Which is probably better for playtest purposes.
 
Scout

Requirements: INT 10, DEX 8

Starting Feats: AP/Vac, AP/Light, WP/Marksman

Bonus Feats: Barter, Brawling, Carousing, Contact Specialist, EW Specialist, Hacker, Gearhead, Geological Survey, Improved Zero-G Adaptation, Jack of All Trades, Naval Architect, Negotiator, Obscure Knowledge, Ship's Tactics, V/Starship, V/Ship's Boat, V/Grav, V/Water, V/Ground, WP/Laser, WP/Ship's Weapons, Xeno-Medicine, Zero-G Combat, Zero-G Adaptation, PMOS

Skills: Bribery, Forgery, Gambling, Gather Information, Gunnery, Leader, Liaison, Navigation, P/Admin, P/Survey, Pilot, Ride, Spot, Survival, T/Any, Trader
 
This is something that seemed a glaring omission from the T20 book: A pirate!

Corsair

Requirements: STR 10, DEX 10

Starting Feats: AP/Light, AP/Vac, WP/Marksman, WP/Swordsman

Bonus Feats: AP/Medium, Brawling, Carousing, Connections(Pirates), Improved Zero-G Adaptation, Jack of All Trades, Jury Rig, Natural Born Leader, Ship Tactics, V/Starships, V/Ship's Boat, V/Grav, WP/Ship's Weapons, Zero-G Adaptation, Zero-G Combat

Skills: Appraise, Bribery, Gambling, Gather Information, Gunnery, Intimidate, Leader, Recruiting, Spot, T/Astrogation, T/Electronic, T/Mechanical
 
But isn't a pirate a multi-class belter/merc or navy/merc or rogue/scout

The class list in the book is fine as far as I can see. If anything I would reduce it more and have something like :-
Fighter
Professional
Academic
Social

Where prior history has the various subclass types (ie scout/Merc/Pirate/Spec Ops etc etc etc) giving the players a rolled up background. This being seperate to the actual classes .

So after character generation someone might have done eight years in the navy gaining medals and stuff ending in a dishonorable discharge, employment as a merchant for four years then play starts. In that time they have become a Professional 3 (Ship Pilot, Ship Engineer) Fighter 1 and Social 2

Something more like the d20 modern, but with prior history.

The Mink
 
Mink-

This is almost exactly what I'm proposing. What we have currently is two columns, one of classes and one of backgrounds. They're identical. In my system, the classes are very generic, and the backgrounds slightly more specific. Under this system we have:

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Base Classes: Backgrounds:
-Strong -Academic
-Fast -Adventurer
-Tough -Army
-Smart -Barbarian
-Dedicated -Belter
-Charismatic -Marines
-Merchant
-Mercenary
-Navy
-Noble
-Professional
-Rogue
-Scout
-Corsair</pre>[/QUOTE]As to what's a corsair? Sort of a mix of navy and rogue, I feel it deserves its own structure however.
 
Mr. Farstrider, very, very interesting! I don't know the D20 Modern system at all, but it looks good to me. I have a couple of friends who do play it, and I'll have them look it over and see what they think. At the very least, it looks like it allows a bit more variety in character generation. BTW, what is the Gunslinger class? Do you have any description of it?

Mr. Whipsnade, Mr. Whipsnade, Mr. Whipsnade, what can I say? There are so many cracks in the facade of the RPG community, do we need to open this one up again? Besides, CT did have "classes" of a sort, we just called them Professions then. Once you generated a ex-Marine, he was an ex-Marine till you stopped playing him. Sounds like a class to me. The big difference between CT and games that have classes the way you are talking about is that in those games, there is almost always some way to advance your character. This was not so in CT. Your CT character may get wiser (in knowledge and information about the world around him), he may get richer (or not), but his basic skills list didn't change, and his stats (barring severe injury or aging rolls) didn't either. To me it's 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.

Some people like the old CT, some didn't. Some people liked MT, TNE, or T4, some didn't. Some people like GURPS Traveller, some don't (and then some loath, despise, and hate it, but that's another story). Some poeple like T20, classes and feats included, and others obviously don't. For me, I would rather PLAY, even with a system that wasn't perfect, than stand around and grouse about how much better things were "in the old days" and not play at all.

I just turned 40 this year, and I took a brief inventory of all the friends from back in my early years of gaming who I still had contact with that still gamed. The answer was 2. Everyone else that I knew had either drifted away from it for more "mature" hobbies, got "religion" and quit, or just stopped because they ran out of fellow players. My current group, the closest in age to me is 10 years younger, the rest vary from their mid 20's down to 17. Role playing seems to be a young persons hobby, so trying to relive the "glory days" of Traveller is futile. I'll settle for introducing the Traveller world, even in the form of a variant of D&D, to players who's only prior knowledge of SF RPG's is Cyberpunk.

As always, YMMV
John Hamill
jwdh71@yahoo.com
 
Jon Hamill wrote:
Mr. Farstrider, very, very interesting! I don't know the D20 Modern system at all, but it looks good to me. I have a couple of friends who do play it, and I'll have them look it over and see what they think. At the very least, it looks like it allows a bit more variety in character generation.
Click to expand...
I heartily recommend D20 Modern to anybody interested at all in playing action-movie style RPG's, as it's just about the best I've used for it so far. It's main strong points are a good, well-balanced mostly cinematic combat system and a very fluid character system. Mainly this comes from the separation of 'class' and 'job'. You can be a Strong Wizard, it'll just take you longer to get there than a Smart Wizard.

BTW, what is the Gunslinger class? Do you have any description of it?
Click to expand...
Well the best description I can give is that the iconic character art in the book looks disturbingly similar to Antonio Banderas(sp?) in Desperado.

Class abilities focus around gun-fu: Weapon focus, close combat shot(negates attacks of opportunity), bullseye(big damage bonus).

Stepping slightly away from that, my group hasn't decided yet what advanced/prestige classes to use and which to toss out. Probably we'll end up making some ourselves, too. Gunslinger I picked because I wanted this character to have a Han Solo kind of feel... Gotta bring it back to the classics.
 
Thanks, Mr. Farstrider, for the info on D20 Modern, sounds good. I might pick it up after all. The Gunslinger sounds cool, and you're right, you gotta stay with the classic archtypes...

As always, YMMV
John Hamill
jwdh71@yahoo.com
 
Have a question regarding Merchants. I have in my head the concept of "Free Trader" a la "Citizen of the Galxay" Like a belter, except that instead of prospecting rocks in the black, the family owns a ship and shuttles cargo from planet to planet. I think such a "Free Trader" class or profession, would start at 14 vice 18 for Merchant. But other than that, I don't see much difference.

What do you all think?
 
All the way back to CT, Merchants always have been portrayed as the free trader type, at least as player character's have been concerned. So no real need for a seperate class/profession IMO.

- Neil.
 
Actually, what I'm thinking is that there needs to be a feat for those who got started younger. Something like:

Early Start
Prerequisites: 1st Level only.
Your character begins learning their chosen trade 4 years earlier then normal. As a result, they have a greater familiarity with skills related to their profession, and are more likely to find someone they know.
Benefit: Starting age -4. Pick one occupation skill; this skill is considered a permanent class skill. Add a +2 Competence bonus to any interaction with people of the same profession - the character is well known and established in his chosen profession.

What do you guys think?
 
There are certain professions that this will not work with, military service being key. So I would add that this feat does not work if the character is taking one of the military classes, Army, Navy, Marines, etc. This does NOT apply to Merc however.

Hmmm... Early start military career? I know there are a lot of guys who started young, lied about their age, etc. That put them at risk of discovery, so I might assess an increased risk of discharge after the term, (faking enlistment documents is almost an automatic discharge) But not sure how that would work...

I like it. May need a bit of tweeking...but not much.
 
You know, that's a good point. I'd say for a military character you'd have to start at 16, and probably twice on the survival table for that first term.

On the other hand, if IYTU the Imp Navy is anything like the British Navy from the 19th century... There'll probably be kids on the ship. In the navy they were called 'powder monkeys', since it was their job to get the powder to the guns. And go read an O'Brien novel if you want to know more.
 
Mr. Farstrider,

May I offer my most sincere thanks sir? The materials you and your GM chose to share with us are awe inspiring. I hope you pass along my thanks to your GM also. You both cannot be congratulated enough for this work.

This series of posts just begs to be crafted into an article. All of the restructured classes could then be found in a single document. You could also add comments concerning the 'whys' and 'hows' of the changes you made. I strongly believe that any site dealing with Traveller in general and T20 in particular would jump at a chance to host such a article.

I asked about 'primitive' equating 'stupid' because it is a pet peeve of mine. Primitive people are most definitely not stupid. As Jared Diamond points out, neolithic New Guinea highlanders are far more aware of their suuroundings and their abilities than the average First World city dweller. Your 'trick' of off-setting 'technophobia' with 'techno-savvy' where appropriate neatly handles the issue. Primitive NPCs can be unaware of technical devices while primitive PCs can work around that handicap with the 'techno-savvy' feat.

Again, my many thanks to both you and your GM for this work. It was selfless of you to share it with Our Olde Hobby.


Sincerely,
Larsen
 
Well, gee, I didn't think it was that fantastic. Thanks for your support, binky and Larsen.

But wait! There's more! I had completely forgotten something when writing up the backgrounds earlier... What happens if you start your career by going to a university?

University
Requirements: EDU 12, must pass entrance exam.

Starting Feats: Research, Skill Focus(Major-related skill)
Bonus Feats: AP/Vac, Acrobatic, Carousing, Educated, Gearhead, Hacker, Hobby, Naval Architect, Run, Studious, V/Ground, V/Grav, WP/Swordsman
Skills: Climb, C/any, E/any, Gather Information, Jump, K/any, P/Any but Hunter, Research, Swim, T/any, Tumble
 
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