This week I am laying down the design goals for Galaxy Pirates.

Start with the Pathfinder SRD, basically the Core rules and;

Substitute; Assimar/Elves, Katar/Dwarves, Eldred/Elves, Kopek/Half-Elves, Terrans/Humans, Kaldir/Half-Elves, Slavern/Dwarves, Trogon/Half-Orcs, Voltura

Substitute; Bounty Hunter/Ranger, Engineer/?, Field Medic/Cleric, Hacker/Rogue, Marine/Fighter,Smuggler/Rogue, Marauder/Pathfinder Unchained Barbarian, Mercenary/?, Guardian/Pathfinder Unchained Monk,

Some of the power of Pathfinder Character classes is tied up in Domain, Bloodline and School abilities as long as we stick to converting Talented Classes a certain level of Power Parity should exist.

While removing Druids, Rangers and Spellcasters with Familiars; Drones and Robot companions will be a part of the game and will likely be based in some part off of the Animal Companions in Pathfinder.

Remove; Barbarian abilities vs Magic, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Ranger Spells, Sorcerer, Wizard

Remove; Knowledge Arcana/Planes/Religion, Spellcraft, Use Magic Device

• In the Draft I replace Magic in Use Magic Device with Use Alien Device. We could remove that minigame altogether, but there needs to be some way to work alien artifacts.
• Add Skills from D20 Modern and Future, consider Pathfinder Unchained optional Skill variants to prevent Skill bloat.
• I want to collapse Climb and Swim like 5th Edition, but Pathfinder Unchained has some optional Skill variants we could try.

Remove; Arcane Feats, Channeling Feats, Extra Class Feature for classes that have been removed, Item Creation Feats, Metamagic Feats, Magic Feats,

• In 4th Edition WotC removed all the Pick 2 Skills and get a +2 bonus on them Feats as underpowered. Pathfinder makes them scale at level, but they might not work with optional Skill variants from Pathfinder Unchained.
• I really don’t like having a dozen kinds of apply a Condition to your opponent on Critical feats.
• I don’t like the Dodge feat or any of the Feat Tree that it enables, Mobility won’t matter when Attacks of Opportunity are winnowed down and what Spring Attack/Flyby/Rideby/ShotontheRun all grant will be the default movement type in the game similar to 5th Edition. Dodge should become an available Action type similar to the 5th Edition one.
• I don’t like some of the existing Martial Style feats, we need different ones including Military styles for the Bounty Hunters, Marines, Medics, Mercs.
• Add D20 Modern Feats as necessary, resolve Improved Unarmed Strike and its Tree to D20 Modern Combat Styles dependencies.
• Explore alternatives to the Leadership feat as Ship and Pirate crews become important to the core game they should be a more refined minigame than what currently exists. Look at Ultimate Campaign and Pathfinder Unchained.
• I want to remove all the mounted combat feats, except for Sword and Planet stuff people won’t be riding many Giant Space lizards and when they do, they won’t be devoting whole Characters to the concept. Speeders and Gravity Bikes should replace horses, but without melee carryovers. Some of the feats still make sense on a speeder, some don’t.
• Replace Rapid Reload feats with D20 Modern Equivalents.

Replace standard Equipment with D20 Modern and Future items while retaining currency based costs and not Wealth mechanics. Add equipment from Technology Guide and Iron Gods as necessary.

Use kits to make gear selection easier, add the original d6 Star Wars Utility Belt.

• Power of the Jedi Version – 3 day supply of Ration Cubes, MedPac, Toolkit, Powerpack, Powercell, Glowrod, Commlink, Breather, 4kg, 600 credits. (What no Rope?)

• Revised Expanded Updated Standard Utility Belt version – 3 day supply of Ration Cubes, MedPac, Toolkit, Powerpack, Powercell, Glowrod, Commlink, a liquid cable dispenser with a small grappling hook. 500 cr.
• Revised Expanded Updated Royal Guard/Clone Trooper/Storm Trooper version – High-tension wire, grappling hooks, spare blaster power packs, ion flares, concentrated rations, spare comlink, water packs, 2 medpacs. Scouts and Snowtroopers add Thermal Tent and Water Pruifier.
• Revised Expanded Updated Armored Flight Suit version – Ion flares, one week concentrated rations, spare comlink,
• So the work here is going to be issuing a standard light source and deciding what our rope is made of, but otherwise we’re going with food, water, medicine, tools, batteries, and a radio. We’re not including Tents, Water filters, Water Breathers, Snowshoes that downed pilots and specialized environment gear. The utility belt is something you wouldn’t feel too weird wearing on ship or around the spaceport.

Rebalance Firearms so your 1st level characters don’t shoot too many holes in their starships. D20 Modern was written with D&D 3.0 standards and assumptions which means equipment sizes are not derived the same way 3.5 and Pathfinder Equipment is.

Replace Alignment with something like White Wolf’s Nature and Demeanor plus personal Honor Codes for Katar.

Replace light sources from Vision and Light with modern values.

Replace Hit Point and Break DC values from Breaking and Entering with modern materials.

Remove Attack of Opportunity Triggers/Provocations that slow down people deciding where to move, basically moving between Threatened squares is fine, moving out of the threatened area still provokes. This allows duelists to circle each other without tons of AoOs, but entering/leaving combat provides windows of opportunity. I don’t care that allowing people to run right by their opponent nerfs Acrobatics, you still need to roll to move through an Opponent’s space. No we will not have Feats or Abilities that add the rules back in like 5th Edition does, if it is a bad rule and wastes time, cut it. However you can still take a Readied Action to attack anyone trying to get by you.

Revise the Actions in Combat table, remove spellcasting references, figure out what you’re going to call Spell-like abilities, the ones that provoke AoOs. Ensure all the Action types are covered Swift, Immediate, Reactions?

Change the Temporary hit points rule on short term Constitution bonuses, they are temporary, they do go away first, you don’t die when the Stim patch is over.

Change Flanking to adjacent characters no opposite sides of a character, multiple opponents ganging up on a guy is still distracting enough, Fessik didn’t say fighting people on different sides of you was hard, only multiple opponents.

Remove; Magic and Spells, but keep the Line of Effect, Cones and Blast radius stuff for Flamethrowers and Grenades.

Remove Prestige Classes from the Starter/Basic book, remove the beyond level 20 stuff.

Revise the Environment section with different Doors and info.

• Traps need to scale Smoothly, the DC for a Fireball based trap (now Incendiary Grenade or Explosive) should not always be the same as a 3rd level spell Reflex save.
• Add Space stuff to Wilderness types.
• Revise Urban Adventures. Remove the Planes though some planets will be similar to Planes.

Replace NPC classes with Modern/Future equivalents, possibly revise NPC generation with some quick NPC builder stuff. Add writeup on scaling NPCs similar to those in the NPC Codex.

Magic Items the crafting rules stay because so many technology effects are similar to Magic and there needs to be a way of baselining them into the cost of the game and creating them, crafting needs fixing though so PCs aren’t using months of downtime to create suits of armor.

• There is some math in my Grenades spreadsheet for typing effects to cost.
• Kopek spare parts should be like Intelligent Items, Diseases or Cursed Artifacts.
• Due to the distributed nature of Kopek consciousness, replacing a part of yourself with a part of someone else can make the recipient question their identity. Using pre-Awakening parts without scrubbing them first is outright dangerous.

I want to rework D20 Modern’s Starship and Robot construction rules, harmonize all Equipment Modifications/Gadgets and ensure that Robots and Starships all get tech from the same source.

• Ideally Robots could be built with something similar to the Monster building rules from Pathfinder Unchained.
• Reworking Starship combat to make it more party freindly.

Reworking Star System and Planet generating tables and charts with current star and planet population numbers not known when most of this stuff was written for Traveller in the 1980s.

Other projects;

Warship Builder’s Guide for ships from the age of sail, will borrow some from Buildings and Organizations from the Ultimate Campaign, Corsairs, Fire as She Bears, vehicles from Ultimate Combat, the hundreds of actual ships in my Excel spreadsheet. Goal is the ability to create a custom ship based on known realistic ships, crew numbers and other real world data.

Starship Builder’s Guide same as the above but for spaceships, spacestations, and starports.

Katar Racebook, covers history, homeworld, racial traits, weapons, power armor, starships, military academy, home star system with maps and planetary information. Lots of this is done.

Eldred Racebook, Eldred Cruisers with ship renderings and floorplans, add in history of the Eldred and Slavern war as well as the Colonial Fleet, the battle for the homeworld and the Eldred’s unexpected allies as well as compulsory military service following the war. The Academy doesn’t have a floorplan or year by year progression that the Katar academy does.

Kopek Racebook, basically what it means to be a sentient robot that was designed to kill all living things, the Awakening where the Kopek rejected their programming. How Kopek procreate, salvaging parts from other machines.

Adversary Voidborn, a detailed and playtested 28 days after style Zombie for use in Modern and Futuristic settings, contains rules for iconic zombie fighting weapons and some new weapons from the future. Would love to have this available before October. May want to have the images recolored or just leave them as is. Draft still requires a Fireman’s Axe image to be created.

If you have any feedback about this post or our books please feel free to contact us.

Paul

Evilrobotgames at Gmail.com