A player wants to splice a bunch of different species traits into other characters, like wookie strength and nexu agility. His entire character is a mad scientist and they're at about 800 experience at this point in the campaign so it seems boring to just say no. He's got lots of corpses to get dna from and is getting a lab. My only question is what a realistic time to develop all of this out would be. He says a few weeks but that's too ridiculous. I'm trying to figure out if it would be 6-12 months or 2-5 years. Wanted to get some other opinions on this to help out.

Well, at the very least he should use proper, intact DNA from live donors.

But he essentially asking "can I please break the game?"

At this point we've moved past most personal scale conflicts. They have conquered 1/3 of Rattatak and have a decent sized army with multiple capital ships. So while it would break personal combat it would effectively just be a new unit type in the scale they're playing at. And I can still glass whatever he makes with one good orbital bombardment. Done it before.

13 minutes ago, Rozial said:

He says a few weeks but that's too ridiculous.

THAT is what's too ridiculous?

2 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

THAT is what's too ridiculous?

With all the insanity that exists within Star Wars I feel that the concept itself isn't too crazy. I mean, looking at all the crazy cloning stuff in both the Clone Wars and the EU it wouldn't surprise me.

Well, I'd say a couple of years just hashing out the science behind it, and another couple of yaers on top of that to get a working protoype. And another few years before you have something mass-produceable that can be applied on a military scale.

And you want to work a couple of years of testing for long-term side effects inthere before you start dosing your elite troops.

It's certainly possible; but it would require a fair amount of experimentation and resources set aside for that particular purpose. Kamino was able to produce the demands for an entire war because their entire culture was orientated around cloning, thus were running the clones through programs I imagined to be pretty similar to their own, minus the focus on killing. Even they only really replicated a human with fairly unaltered DNA, though that might be considered more a restriction placed on them so that the Republic army would at least on surface level seem legit. Plus you also have to consider several factors about raising the being; how will they learn basic skills? Where is the food they will eat, how will they train and so fourth. In principle creating the ultimate warrior baby is just the first step in developing the most elite fighting force in the galaxy, you have to have a training program to accommodate that and time for them to grow to a stage where they would be able to fight effectively; make the growing period too short and the army will only have a prime time of around 10 years before they drastically degrade.

Adding DNA to existing beings? Don't know; genetics really doesn't work when you are throwing random muscle cells into other organisms, the most likely outcome is the rejection of foreign anti-bodies. Even in the case's of successful organ donation meds need to be prescribed to prevent the risk of organ rejection. Needless to say, it's a pretty complicated subject to introduce into otherwise intact organisms but then that stems from my only understanding of the subject. I would probably have to say at least a couple of years, and that assumes the absolute best conditions for it to be tested in a manner that would work with some consistency, but in principle it's much more complicated then cloning.

Wanna go nuts with the pseudo science? Sure. ^^ Just the issue is just having crazy stuff happens diminishes the weight of the universe. It just becomes much less real.

1 minute ago, LordBritish said:

It's certainly possible; but it would require a fair amount of experimentation and resources set aside for that particular purpose. Kamino was able to produce the demands for an entire war because their entire culture was orientated around cloning, thus were running the clones through programs I imagined to be pretty similar to their own, minus the focus on killing. Even they only really replicated a human with fairly unaltered DNA, though that might be considered more a restriction placed on them so that the Republic army would at least on surface level seem legit. Plus you also have to consider several factors about raising the being; how will they learn basic skills? Where is the food they will eat, how will they train and so fourth. In principle creating the ultimate warrior baby is just the first step in developing the most elite fighting force in the galaxy, you have to have a training program to accommodate that and time for them to grow to a stage where they would be able to fight effectively; make the growing period too short and the army will only have a prime time of around 10 years before they drastically degrade.

Adding DNA to existing beings? Don't know; genetics really doesn't work when you are throwing random muscle cells into other organisms, the most likely outcome is the rejection of foreign anti-bodies. Even in the case's of successful organ donation meds need to be prescribed to prevent the risk of organ rejection. Needless to say, it's a pretty complicated subject to introduce into otherwise intact organisms but then that stems from my only understanding of the subject. I would probably have to say at least a couple of years, and that assumes the absolute best conditions for it to be tested in a manner that would work with some consistency, but in principle it's much more complicated then cloning.

Wanna go nuts with the pseudo science? Sure. ^^ Just the issue is just having crazy stuff happens diminishes the weight of the universe. It just becomes much less real.

I like to look at it like the Spartan II program where there were a whole bunch of genetic modifications made to the children at a certain age and even then most of them didn't survive it. But all those alterations made them essentially non-human and sterile. Something like that but with splicing specific DNA protein generations from other organisms. Kind of like the idea of splicing starfish regeneration into humans. The player character is a shapeshifter so they're trying to use their own flexible DNA as a bonding agent to allow the different genes to work together. Also they have a good amount of resources and a blood-for-the-blood god culture instilled on the planet now. They also don't really care about sacrificing 1,000,000 soldiers to get 100,000 great ones out of it.

I do agree about the years thing. I think I'm going to make it 2 years to develop the right process and then another two years before the first functioning ones come out but with only a 5%-10% success rate. It will take another 3 years to get that success rate to over 70%.

Use the dice.

Start with a base of 2 years, and difficulty of 5 red, with succeses reducing the time by 1 month each, think of some consequences for advantage, threat, Triumph, and Despair. Like bringing down the heat from the Empire, or Jedi, or whoever's gonna disapprove and want to stop him.

But do this for each stage!!!

So stage 1 could be learning to use his DNA to splice, the stage 2 could be splicing in the wookie, then the nexu, and so on.

He wants to play The Planet Of Dr Moreau? Make him **** well earn it.

2 hours ago, Stethemessiah said:

Use the dice.

Start with a base of 2 years, and difficulty of 5 red, with succeses reducing the time by 1 month each, think of some consequences for advantage, threat, Triumph, and Despair. Like bringing down the heat from the Empire, or Jedi, or whoever's gonna disapprove and want to stop him.

But do this for each stage!!!

So stage 1 could be learning to use his DNA to splice, the stage 2 could be splicing in the wookie, then the nexu, and so on.

He wants to play The Planet Of Dr Moreau? Make him **** well earn it.

Thanks. I like that idea a lot.

5 hours ago, Rozial said:

Thanks. I like that idea a lot.

You're welcome dude.

May I suggest adding Wampa strength to ewoks? 🤣

... or seriously, hunting down Sith Alchemy texts?

splice Force sensitivity into space slugs

It takes as long in game as it takes to open a new Specialization tree and reach it's Dedication talent.

Congratulations; you've successfully spliced in Wookiee strength factor; now to work on nexu agility

Also, if you rush things, you're going to splice other things into the mix as well. Fur, voice box incompatible with basic...

Er. Eh.

I actually know a thing or two about genetics and have had a "pretty close seat" to the front row of what is currently possible. (but I'm still no expert).

If you have the genetic material then you'll be able to "splice" it in a couple of weeks . . . but that's just the "splice." As others have alluded to, then you need to get the spliced organism to "grow up." And a splice would be done in batches of thousands, so that you could yield a handful of "successful" results. "Failure" rates are in the neighborhood of 1,000 to 1 or 10,000 to 1 (depending on the difficulty).

On 10/27/2019 at 5:47 PM, micheldebruyn said:

Well, at the very least he should use proper, intact DNA from live donors.

I concur with Micheldebruyn. DNA doesn't 'work' in dead subjects.

Let me take a step back for a moment and discuss what "splicing" entails. First you have to have a genetic trait that you recognize and you're trying to remove it from a host zygote, and then trying to inject a replacement string in its place. If you've done your research well, the replacement strand yields a better result than the replaced strands.

To use the example above, if you take a Wookiee muscle structure building gene sequence and place that in a human, will that human actually be stronger? Or will then just "taste" like a Wookiee if you eat them? Either result could bear out, but the important point is that you need to swap out compatible genetic material. (EG: If you remove a gene sequence dealing with intelligence quotients and replace it with Wookiee muscle development, that zygote won't survive the process).

IRL examples are: Mice who have an immune system that acts just like a human (obviously human immunity spliced into a rodent), Vegetable oil that has the health benefits of fish oil (Fish oil production genes spliced into vegetable oil producing plants).

In short, this just adds to the complexity of tailoring "clones." But you're still ending up with "clones."

The other part of the equation to keep in mind is that the MORE traits that you are genetically isolating, the time needed starts to expand exponentially. So if you have the tech to do a splice in 4 weeks, integrating 2 traits will take 16 week, and getting a third desired trait should take 64 weeks, and four traits would take 256 weeks . . . (It may not be THAT dramatic, but you'll quickly run into programs that will take decades if you start isolating too many desired traits).

4 minutes ago, Mark Caliber said:

Er. Eh.

I actually know a thing or two about genetics and have had a "pretty close seat" to the front row of what is currently possible. (but I'm still no expert).

If you have the genetic material then you'll be able to "splice" it in a couple of weeks . . . but that's just the "splice." As others have alluded to, then you need to get the spliced organism to "grow up." And a splice would be done in batches of thousands, so that you could yield a handful of "successful" results. "Failure" rates are in the neighborhood of 1,000 to 1 or 10,000 to 1 (depending on the difficulty).

I concur with Micheldebruyn. DNA doesn't 'work' in dead subjects.

Let me take a step back for a moment and discuss what "splicing" entails. First you have to have a genetic trait that you recognize and you're trying to remove it from a host zygote, and then trying to inject a replacement string in its place. If you've done your research well, the replacement strand yields a better result than the replaced strands.

To use the example above, if you take a Wookiee muscle structure building gene sequence and place that in a human, will that human actually be stronger? Or will then just "taste" like a Wookiee if you eat them? Either result could bear out, but the important point is that you need to swap out compatible genetic material. (EG: If you remove a gene sequence dealing with intelligence quotients and replace it with Wookiee muscle development, that zygote won't survive the process).

IRL examples are: Mice who have an immune system that acts just like a human (obviously human immunity spliced into a rodent), Vegetable oil that has the health benefits of fish oil (Fish oil production genes spliced into vegetable oil producing plants).

In short, this just adds to the complexity of tailoring "clones." But you're still ending up with "clones."

The other part of the equation to keep in mind is that the MORE traits that you are genetically isolating, the time needed starts to expand exponentially. So if you have the tech to do a splice in 4 weeks, integrating 2 traits will take 16 week, and getting a third desired trait should take 64 weeks, and four traits would take 256 weeks . . . (It may not be THAT dramatic, but you'll quickly run into programs that will take decades if you start isolating too many desired traits).

Good thing Star Wars doesn't work off science and just does whatever it likes Because Awesome!

OT: As to how long it would take to grow a viable being with the spliced in traits, which I assume is the actual, ultimate question. I would say it depends on how much infrastructure is available. If they have access to stuff on scale with the Kamodians, namely an entire planetary economy built around cloning technology, then I would say they could grow a full host in a few years. Being careful to make sure all the different stages of development are done properly. I'd say it's possible to rush things, with some added Magic Science Chemicals, but I'd introduce the risk of serious mutations in the host when it finally develops. Mental or physical mutations, depending on your inclination.

If the PC has got like, a garage-scale lab, in the cargo bay of the party's ship or something, it would be WAAAAY more janky. Would take MUCH longer to grow, and would be highly likely to develop mutations and problems long term.

Back to the OT.

If I understand correctly the PC's have about 1,000,000 deceased "volunteers."

In that case all you can do is wish you were a necromancer in a Fantasy Role Playing game . . .

On 10/27/2019 at 10:42 PM, Rozial said:

My only question is what a realistic time to develop all of this out would be.

There is no realistic time line for this, 'cause that's not how the Force biology works... in our world. In the SW universe, however, it works whatever way you need it to work, but "realistic" is probably not one of those ways.

If _I_ were forced to consider a this in the campaigns I run, I would assume this insane project to be AT LEAST as difficult, expensive, time consuming, & science heavy as designing, developing, and building the first Death Star, meaning that a galactic faction with unlimited means could possibly pull it off within a couple of decades; a group of player characters, though? Not a chance!

That said, SW doesn't play by any kind of rules and if you want superhero move pseudoscientific sorcery in your SW, than why wouldn't your PC be able to cook this together in the course of an afternoon? Although, if your character can do this, why doesn't every little faction out there do it? In fact, with this god-like handle on biology, why is there even conflict in the galaxy?

Sounds like an awesome idea tbh. Sith alchemy and all that Jazz.

Ignore the nay sayers or those trying to use real life examples. This is Star Wars. And most things in it aren't possible anyway. Don't feel the need to have to explain why something works the way it does. It just does!

6 hours ago, CloudyLemonade92 said:

Sounds like an awesome idea tbh. Sith alchemy and all that Jazz.

Ignore the nay sayers or those trying to use real life examples. This is Star Wars. And most things in it aren't possible anyway. Don't feel the need to have to explain why something works the way it does. It just does!

Well, yeah. These things have been done in the Star Wars universe before, but they have been depicted as corrupt and loterally magical abilities. This guy wants to do it with non-evil science what always has been done with evil space magic. That's kinda breaking the way the universe works.

Now that I think about it, didn't Hellsing do something similar to this? Only replace super soldiers with vampires who are Nazi's. Took them 50 years to do it, but then they were vampires and thus effectively immortal anyway. XD

As said, I've already made my opinion on this; it could work it would just take a fair amount of resources and time to do this. It's these pseudo impossible tasks that min-maxers in medicine and xenology were designed to tackle head on!

6 hours ago, micheldebruyn said:

That's kinda breaking the way the universe works.

I feel that's a reach.

If something like this happened in the movies nobody would bat an eyelid, and those that might probably take it too seriously. There are endless examples of universe breaking happenings in the movies that defy logic.

If he is really set on this, have him try it on another test subject, a nerf perhaps. Make him roll on this, it should be a formidable roll, 5 difficulty dice.with plenty of setback for a first time experiment. and if you are feeling particularly cruel, upgrade to a few challenge dice. If/when he gets despair and threat, lots of bad and unforeseen side effects crop up. The procedure would take months or years of dedicated work to perfect. Not something suited for someone that is actively adventuring.

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