Well, I am planning a Babylon 5 game using the FFG rule-set. I have a few thoughts as to changes I want to make and I thought I would put them to the community.

• Species: One thing that sort-of annoys me is the min-max of "I want to play a vibrosword swinging loony so I will play a Brawn high species". My feeling is that Species should be a role-playing thing rather than a stat thing. As a result I am planning to have all characters using the same base, if you want your chosen race to be a major part of your character then it is up to you to roleplay him/her that way and to build your character in such a way as to model that.
• Attributes: I am thinking of adding an additional attribute - Xenorelation. This attribute will start at 1 and will act as a limiting attribute when dealing with individuals not of your own species; i.e. you use the supporting attribute for the skill you are attempting or Xenorelation whichever is lower.
• Classes: Largely the class/specializations should work as written, all that should need doing is renaming a few skills and talents. There may be some talents which will need to be replaced.
• Psionics: I have note yet gone into it yet but I am thinking of modeling it on the Force powers (Sense, Influence and Move, Move being only for Telekinetics and therefore rare).
• Combat: Given that combat in the Babylon 5 universe seems quite dangerous (and is modeled that way in the official rpg's I have seen). I am thinking of the following alterations: When a character goes over their wound threshold the critical that they suffer is modified by any critical modifiers that would be included if the critical was triggered on purpose. Additionally, to model the lethality of the B5 universe I am also thinking of a base modifier for exceeding the wound threshold of +50. This would mean that even if the critical is the first critical there would be a reduced chance of the critical being one of the really pathetic ones. Also, maybe give PPG weapons vicious rating, I may reduce the above critical modifier to take the PPG vicious rating into account. I may also give the option to convert excess strain to wounds. Lastly, I am thinking of allowing a character to "burn" a Destiny Point to reducing a critical just below the level which would cause death. However, if the DP is "burnt" toward the end of the session the DP count is reduced from the following session.
• Starship combat: I am still thinking about this at the moment but so far my thoughts include making weapon traits of Pulse and Beam;, Pulse weapons may be used as Interceptors instead which can be used to counter Pulse weapons, Beam weapons cannot by intercepted however. Also ECM systems which increase/upgrade the difficulties (Minbari ECM is among the best).

Well these are my thoughts, let me know what you guys think.

• Species: One thing that sort-of annoys me is the min-max of "I want to play a vibrosword swinging loony so I will play a Brawn high species". My feeling is that Species should be a role-playing thing rather than a stat thing. As a result I am planning to have all characters using the same base, if you want your chosen race to be a major part of your character then it is up to you to roleplay him/her that way and to build your character in such a way as to model that.

To an extent though I think this won't be much of a deal simply because B5 seems to lack the more extreme biodiversity of Star Wars, and more specifically the "tall tales" of said diversity. The Pak'mara are kinda big beefy dudes, but you don't have offhanded "arms out of their sockets" comments about them, and subsequently becoming their defining characteristic, aside from those directed at their culinary choices of course. So there isn't the expectation they'll all be power lifters.

I think you'd be better off working the species in the book to meet your goals. I mean, as even humans have the starting XP to max out Brawn if they want. So perhaps all you need do is take existing species, make some mods to have them better match B5 ( I see Twi'lek and Centari being pretty close for example), and just make the starting Ability Cap 4 instead of 5. I suspect that would allow you to sill have a reason to play a non-human if you wanted, while reducing the min-maxing you're concerned about.

• Attributes: I am thinking of adding an additional attribute - Xenorelation. This attribute will start at 1 and will act as a limiting attribute when dealing with individuals not of your own species; i.e. you use the supporting attribute for the skill you are attempting or Xenorelation whichever is lower.

This sounds more like a skill instead of attribute... and I'm not 100% clear on how this differs from existing skills like Xenology, Charm, Leadership, ect...

Psionics: I have note yet gone into it yet but I am thinking of modeling it on the Force powers (Sense, Influence and Move, Move being only for Telekinetics and therefore rare).

This seems like one of the more challenging areas with Force using specs being a little more general purpose... though I suppose it's not a huge stretch....

• Combat: Given that combat in the Babylon 5 universe seems quite dangerous (and is modeled that way in the official rpg's I have seen). I am thinking of the following alterations: When a character goes over their wound threshold the critical that they suffer is modified by any critical modifiers that would be included if the critical was triggered on purpose. Additionally, to model the lethality of the B5 universe I am also thinking of a base modifier for exceeding the wound threshold of +50. This would mean that even if the critical is the first critical there would be a reduced chance of the critical being one of the really pathetic ones. Also, maybe give PPG weapons vicious rating, I may reduce the above critical modifier to take the PPG vicious rating into account. I may also give the option to convert excess strain to wounds. Lastly, I am thinking of allowing a character to "burn" a Destiny Point to reducing a critical just below the level which would cause death. However, if the DP is "burnt" toward the end of the session the DP count is reduced from the following session.

... erm... think this one over before you implement.

For starters, just because one game system did something some way doesn't mean it's good for all. It's like demanding your top hat be kinged after passing Go because that's how checkers works.

Furthermore, while B5 did bring people back from time to time, it was usually a big deal. Remember that a lot of RPGs are based on concepts from the Fantasy genre, so they assume character death is normal because resurrection is a thing when you're talking Wizards and gods of old. Sci-fi on the other hand makes death a bit more permanent most of the time. Some times designers forget that and cross the streams a bit.

Of course it's your call, but there's something to be said for a system that won't result in a bad roll or Dpoint shortage resulting in a player getting greased.

That said, PPGs are kinda represented as rather short range low penetration, but otherwise nasty weapons. So perhaps a fresh statting is what you want. Something that's Short range, and Crit 3 or possibly even 2, but also low damage with vicious 2 or 3? So an unarmored person will usually only take a wound or two, but be more likely to get a Crit that generates a noticeable result, where someone armored up and loaded for combat will be more survivable, but still feel the hit when the hit finally comes.

Like I said, work this one for a while as damage modeling is kinda a futzy thing that can be easily borked...

Starship combat: I am still thinking about this at the moment but so far my thoughts include making weapon traits of Pulse and Beam;, Pulse weapons may be used as Interceptors instead which can be used to counter Pulse weapons, Beam weapons cannot by intercepted however. Also ECM systems which increase/upgrade the difficulties (Minbari ECM is among the best).

I think you should try and make the existing mechanics generate desired results before you try and introduce new concepts. Since B5 doesn't have shields last I checked, you could leverage the defenses mechanic to meet your new criteria.

So like a ship armed with pulse weapons gets defenses from them, where a beam weapon ship won't, with the flip being beam weapons will typically have better crit numbers or something.

Likewise, in Star Wars ECM system grant the Tricky Target Talent, which is pretty nice, and does meet the needs...

So you'd end up with something like a Starfury that has defenses 1 and twin pulse cannons at 5 crit 4 linked 1, vs a Minbari fighter with Tricky Target 1 and beam cannons at 4 Crit 3 linked 3... I mean I pulled those numbers out of thin air, but you get the idea... With some refinement I bet you could get the results you're looking for.

Thank you for your feedback, I will be taking on your thoughts but would like to address some of your points.

Species: One thing that sort-of annoys me is the min-max of "I want to play a vibrosword swinging loony so I will play a Brawn high species". My feeling is that Species should be a role-playing thing rather than a stat thing. As a result I am planning to have all characters using the same base, if you want your chosen race to be a major part of your character then it is up to you to roleplay him/her that way and to build your character in such a way as to model that.

To an extent though I think this won't be much of a deal simply because B5 seems to lack the more extreme biodiversity of Star Wars, and more specifically the "tall tales" of said diversity. The Pak'mara are kinda big beefy dudes, but you don't have offhanded "arms out of their sockets" comments about them, and subsequently becoming their defining characteristic, aside from those directed at their culinary choices of course. So there isn't the expectation they'll all be power lifters.

Attributes: I am thinking of adding an additional attribute - Xenorelation. This attribute will start at 1 and will act as a limiting attribute when dealing with individuals not of your own species; i.e. you use the supporting attribute for the skill you are attempting or Xenorelation whichever is lower.

This sounds more like a skill instead of attribute... and I'm not 100% clear on how this differs from existing skills like Xenology, Charm, Leadership, ect...

I realize that Star Wars has the Xenology skill but I am planning to revamp the skill list to be more appropriate to B5. As I say though, I have not yet decided whether to do this or not.

Psionics: I have note yet gone into it yet but I am thinking of modeling it on the Force powers (Sense, Influence and Move, Move being only for Telekinetics and therefore rare).

This seems like one of the more challenging areas with Force using specs being a little more general purpose... though I suppose it's not a huge stretch....

Combat: Given that combat in the Babylon 5 universe seems quite dangerous (and is modeled that way in the official rpg's I have seen). I am thinking of the following alterations: When a character goes over their wound threshold the critical that they suffer is modified by any critical modifiers that would be included if the critical was triggered on purpose. Additionally, to model the lethality of the B5 universe I am also thinking of a base modifier for exceeding the wound threshold of +50. This would mean that even if the critical is the first critical there would be a reduced chance of the critical being one of the really pathetic ones. Also, maybe give PPG weapons vicious rating, I may reduce the above critical modifier to take the PPG vicious rating into account. I may also give the option to convert excess strain to wounds. Lastly, I am thinking of allowing a character to "burn" a Destiny Point to reducing a critical just below the level which would cause death. However, if the DP is "burnt" toward the end of the session the DP count is reduced from the following session.

... erm... think this one over before you implement.

For starters, just because one game system did something some way doesn't mean it's good for all. It's like demanding your top hat be kinged after passing Go because that's how checkers works.

Furthermore, while B5 did bring people back from time to time, it was usually a big deal. Remember that a lot of RPGs are based on concepts from the Fantasy genre, so they assume character death is normal because resurrection is a thing when you're talking Wizards and gods of old. Sci-fi on the other hand makes death a bit more permanent most of the time. Some times designers forget that and cross the streams a bit.

Of course it's your call, but there's something to be said for a system that won't result in a bad roll or Dpoint shortage resulting in a player getting greased.

That said, PPGs are kinda represented as rather short range low penetration, but otherwise nasty weapons. So perhaps a fresh statting is what you want. Something that's Short range, and Crit 3 or possibly even 2, but also low damage with vicious 2 or 3? So an unarmored person will usually only take a wound or two, but be more likely to get a Crit that generates a noticeable result, where someone armored up and loaded for combat will be more survivable, but still feel the hit when the hit finally comes.

Like I said, work this one for a while as damage modeling is kinda a futzy thing that can be easily borked...

Starship combat: I am still thinking about this at the moment but so far my thoughts include making weapon traits of Pulse and Beam;, Pulse weapons may be used as Interceptors instead which can be used to counter Pulse weapons, Beam weapons cannot by intercepted however. Also ECM systems which increase/upgrade the difficulties (Minbari ECM is among the best).

I think you should try and make the existing mechanics generate desired results before you try and introduce new concepts. Since B5 doesn't have shields last I checked, you could leverage the defenses mechanic to meet your new criteria.

So like a ship armed with pulse weapons gets defenses from them, where a beam weapon ship won't, with the flip being beam weapons will typically have better crit numbers or something.

Likewise, in Star Wars ECM system grant the Tricky Target Talent, which is pretty nice, and does meet the needs...

So you'd end up with something like a Starfury that has defenses 1 and twin pulse cannons at 5 crit 4 linked 1, vs a Minbari fighter with Tricky Target 1 and beam cannons at 4 Crit 3 linked 3... I mean I pulled those numbers out of thin air, but you get the idea... With some refinement I bet you could get the results you're looking for.

I should be clear that I strongly dislike the starship combat system as written. I think that they have tried far to hard to shoehorn the mechanics that work quite well in Personnel combat into starship combat. I don't think that these are the best mechanics. Again, I have not gone that far into the cogs but so far the majority of what I am thinking is to have weapons which are pulse weapons, the most common shipboard weapons, which can be used as interceptors instead that would give extra defense (probably setback dice like Star Wars shields) and are quick to fire but lower damage. Beam weapons are slower to fire and higher damage but cannot be prevented by Interceptors. Most of this is based on the larger ship combats, star fighters will likely work differently. I was thinking of using Handling as a defensive measure, like setback/boost dice to the attackers dice pool.

All that said I was thinking loosely along the lines of some of your suggestions I just hadn't gotten that far yet. :-)

Again, thanks very much for your thoughts. I do appreciate your reply.

Well, I am planning a Babylon 5 game using the FFG rule-set. I have a few thoughts as to changes I want to make and I thought I would put them to the community.

• Species: One thing that sort-of annoys me is the min-max of "I want to play a vibrosword swinging loony so I will play a Brawn high species". My feeling is that Species should be a role-playing thing rather than a stat thing. As a result I am planning to have all characters using the same base, if you want your chosen race to be a major part of your character then it is up to you to roleplay him/her that way and to build your character in such a way as to model that.

If you do the actually math you will notice that usually a human can reach the same heights as those "high brawn species", it just that those high brawn species are bad at maxing out other characteristics when they really would be fine with having just one point in brawn. So it is basically the opposite from what you criticize. And usually those species have a second strong side too and are quite cable of building well-rounded characters as well, Basically all, or nearly all species can reach a characteristic at 5 when they use the 10 extra starting xp, it just that their other characteristics will look different, sometimes drastical different. And that is the case because in general the starting xp is balanced for all species.

Perhaps I haven't explained myself properly. I don't actually mind anyone making a high-stat character. My issue is when a species is only chosen because of its best stat. I would prefer if the race was chosen because it fitted into the character concept. To me, species is which prosthetics you are wearing.

That, however, is not necessarily an issue with the species, it's more of a player/gm issue. The gm needs to emphasize what type of game he/she wishes to run and then needs players that are able to follow the guidelines the gm has set.

Perhaps I haven't explained myself properly. I don't actually mind anyone making a high-stat character. My issue is when a species is only chosen because of its best stat. I would prefer if the race was chosen because it fitted into the character concept. To me, species is which prosthetics you are wearing.

Perhaps I was not clear enough. A player who picks a species for his threes is not doing it right from a min/maxing point of view as those stats are already paid by the starting xp. You can take a species without those threes and just min/max even better based on the racial abilities. And I will not deny that people will still pick species for its characteristic stats lines, but in general this usually a poor choice from a powergaming AND roleplaying perspective.

Jareth Valar, on 03 Jun 2016 - 12:23 AM, said:

That, however, is not necessarily an issue with the species, it's more of a player/gm issue. The gm needs to emphasize what type of game he/she wishes to run and then needs players that are able to follow the guidelines the gm has set.

Not really, unless of course I tell my players "I want to run a game where you choose your species based only on the roleplay aspect of the race, don't pick it purely on what attributes it starts with". That would be fine if everyone was normally starting with combatants when I intended to run a social/political game or visa-versa, but not for my current point.

Perhaps I haven't explained myself properly. I don't actually mind anyone making a high-stat character. My issue is when a species is only chosen because of its best stat. I would prefer if the race was chosen because it fitted into the character concept. To me, species is which prosthetics you are wearing.

Perhaps I was not clear enough. A player who picks a species for his threes is not doing it right from a min/maxing point of view as those stats are already paid by the starting xp. You can take a species without those threes and just min/max even better based on the racial abilities. And I will not deny that people will still pick species for its characteristic stats lines, but in general this usually a poor choice from a powergaming AND roleplaying perspective.

Sticking with the Brawn option; starting with a Wookiee with brawn 3 it would cost the player 90xp to start with Brawn 5, if the same player chose a human it would cost him 120xp to achieve the same effect. While I can appreciate that players want to make the best character that they can and those extra 30xp (assuming that they can manage to start with 120xp) will make a huge difference allowing for talents and/or skills, if the only reason that the species was chosen was for that reason that doesn't work for me.

Attributes: I am thinking of adding an additional attribute - Xenorelation. This attribute will start at 1 and will act as a limiting attribute when dealing with individuals not of your own species; i.e. you use the supporting attribute for the skill you are attempting or Xenorelation whichever is lower.

I am still deciding whether/how to implement this, I suspect that if I do I may have to provide a slightly higher starting xp level to allow people to increase it. I liked the concept of it in as much as it modeled a characters ability to deal with those different to him and the mechanics of it would be fairly simple to use. The main issue I can see is that I have known players who would ignore it and play the character as a xenophobic moron so that they could boost their combat stats .

Starship combat: I am still thinking about this at the moment but so far my thoughts include making weapon traits of Pulse and Beam;, Pulse weapons may be used as Interceptors instead which can be used to counter Pulse weapons, Beam weapons cannot by intercepted however. Also ECM systems which increase/upgrade the difficulties (Minbari ECM is among the best).

I have been looking into this a bit more and have been playing with designing the Beam and Pulse Starship weapon traits, and also the Interceptor trait which is kind of part of the Pulse trait.

So far the Interceptor option appears to be working out that the player(s) can choose to use a pulse weapon as an interceptor and effectively gain defense one for each Interceptor that they use. The downsides to this are that Beam weapons would ignore the defense from Interceptors, and also the attacker can choose to spend two advantage to cause an Interceptor to overheat (as per the tv series).

Largely this is more about large-scale ship combat, but some small ships may be able to do the same thing.

I looked at the Ghostofman's suggestion about tricky target and to a small extent it achieves the effect I am looking for, however it is not ranked and only makes the ship count as one silhouette smaller. A ship has to be two silhouette smaller to make itself more difficult to hit so you would need to have double the effect for it to be of any use in a battle between two ships of the same size. The basic idea is sound but I may just go with making it work like Adversary, upgrading once per rating.

Jareth Valar, on 03 Jun 2016 - 12:23 AM, said:

That, however, is not necessarily an issue with the species, it's more of a player/gm issue. The gm needs to emphasize what type of game he/she wishes to run and then needs players that are able to follow the guidelines the gm has set.

Not really, unless of course I tell my players "I want to run a game where you choose your species based only on the roleplay aspect of the race, don't pick it purely on what attributes it starts with". That would be fine if everyone was normally starting with combatants when I intended to run a social/political game or visa-versa, but not for my current point.

This is more of your "hang up" than a real issue. Even in Bab5, Humans are the base line.

Centauri would have a innate higher cunning as their culture is much more Machiavellian then anyone other culture portrayed in that universe.

Mimbari would have higher base in most stats then humans, as they were genetically stronger, and faster then humans, their culture was more disciplined as well so they could have a higher Willpower and Intelligence as well.

Narn would also have brawn 3 and a lower presence

That is just the major 4 races. Forget about what ever race Voss was even being anything close to balanced.

SEApocalypse, on 03 Jun 2016 - 12:09 AM, said:

eldath, on 02 Jun 2016 - 10:30 AM, said:

Perhaps I haven't explained myself properly. I don't actually mind anyone making a high-stat character. My issue is when a species is only chosen because of its best stat. I would prefer if the race was chosen because it fitted into the character concept. To me, species is which prosthetics you are wearing.

Perhaps I was not clear enough. A player who picks a species for his threes is not doing it right from a min/maxing point of view as those stats are already paid by the starting xp. You can take a species without those threes and just min/max even better based on the racial abilities. And I will not deny that people will still pick species for its characteristic stats lines, but in general this usually a poor choice from a powergaming AND roleplaying perspective.

Sticking with the Brawn option; starting with a Wookiee with brawn 3 it would cost the player 90xp to start with Brawn 5, if the same player chose a human it would cost him 120xp to achieve the same effect. While I can appreciate that players want to make the best character that they can and those extra 30xp (assuming that they can manage to start with 120xp) will make a huge difference allowing for talents and/or skills, if the only reason that the species was chosen was for that reason that doesn't work for me.

In each of these cases they hypothetical Brawn 5 at start Human will have 0 starting XP (base 110 + 10 for obligations/ Duties) and the Wookie would have 10 XP to do stuff with which is not an awful lot to do anything meaningful with.

It is also your predisposition that said player is taking the wookie soley because he is making a marauder. This is akin to poo-pooing an elf wizard in a high fantasy setting. Yes, they may be sightly better then the human at the start but some people like playing elves over humans. Just out right denying or having a negative pre-dispostion to an elf wizard because they are "min/maxed" and being delighted to have say a halfling one because they are not "the best race for a wizard" is just wrong.

Also, in Bab5 this would be less of an issue as aside from the Minbar most of the races sensibly bring lasers to their space gun fights not swords.

Well, thank you all for your comments. I can see a lot of you believe that having separate species is important and I will bear that in mind when I make my final decision.

With regards to the Xenorelation attribute I have decided to follow a variation based on Ghostofmans initial post. A characters Knowledge (Xenology) or Knowledge (Specific race) acts as a limiting skill when dealing socially with a race not your own. For example, if you have 3 ranks in Xenology and 2 in charm you will roll your full charm ranks in your interactions with anyone of species other than your own, if you have 2 ranks in Xenology and 4 ranks in Negotiation you would only have 2 ranks in your dealings with other races. If you have 4 ranks in Knowledge (Narn Regime) for example you would be rolling a minimum of 4 ranks, dependent on the skill you wish to roll versus any Narn.