X-Plorers Psychic Characters

X-Plorers just feels like it needs an psionic class. Maybe it's just that whenever I think science fiction I think Firefly, but I feel it could just be a fun addition to  the game. Here's a rough draft of what I came up with:

Psychic (optional class)

Psychics are gifted with extremely rare cognitive abilities, the ability to see the future, move matter around with their mind, and delve in memories of other sentient creatures. The cause of which is unknown, but the result is extreme dangerous. When uncontrolled, these gifts may manifest absolute genius or insanity, often both. Psychics are often hunted down and captured by both private and government research agencies.

The psychic is an optional class in the sense that it does not universally fit into all settings. There are three basic ways to use this class: Allow Psychic characters as one would allow scientists or soldiers; remove it entirely from the game; or allow Psychic skills to be only accessed via multi-classing.

Mind Blast (Pre): A Psychic can create a surge of electrical energy in the mind of an opponent.  The damage dealt is 1d6 points plus the Psychic’s Presence bonus and temporary stuns the opponent for 1 round. Any creature brought to 0 hit points by a Mind Blast falls comatose for 1d6 hours instead of rolling on critical hit table.

Precognition (Pre): This is a Psychic’s ability to predict the future based on a specific choice, such as what would happen if the Psychic injected himself with an unknown substance or whether or not a rope bridge would snap when crossed. The precognition skill cannot discern long term long term consequences or even what would happen further than a few minutes into the future.

Telekinesis (Pre): A Psychic can move matter around with the raw mental force. The speed, mass, and distance an object can be moved is dependent on the Psychic’s level. The exact details of which are left up to the referee. A rough guideline if 20 pounds of force per level is appropriate, however. 

Telepathy (Pre): The ability to read minds, communicate through a telepathic connection, and even suggest curtain course action to another sentient creature or cause him forget vital information are all lumped under the telepathy skill. If the psychic is actually attempting to command or otherwise tamper with the memories or thoughts of another sentiment’s mind, the creature is allow a Presence saving throw to resist the Psychic’s influence.

X-plorers: Recap and Reaction

I played X-Plorers yesterday via google+ yesterday. Despite even two of the players down print copies of the rules, none of us had played the game before.

As I expected it was a lot of fun, but in some need to major tweaking. The adventure I set up was pretty simple: the party was on a transport between worlds taken hostage by drug-smuggling pirates. I had some nearby planets for them to explore as well, but we never got that far.

It's three in the morning right now, so I'm just going to give a basic run down of things I noticed from the game:

- Weapons deal a hell of a lot of damage compared to character hit points. A 3rd level character has only a 50% chance to survive the damage of a single lazer blast. No character, PC or NPC survived a single shot. Now, I don't shy away form character death, but this is too much even for me. I felt like I had to pull some strings to make sure the character had a fighting chance, like giving the party surprise in just about every combat (although, I should give most of the credit to the players' cunning plans). Having a character die in the first ten minutes of the game was pretty exciting though, I have to say. Poor Anthony (also a player in my Vats of Mazarin game) doesn't have great luck with his character's surviving, even with the critical hit table.

- The scout feels more like a infiltrator/criminal than a scout. No survival skills, but lost of sneaking around pocketing credit cards. It's almost as if the class if trying too hard to cover two archtypes and failing at both.

- 1st level characters don't have very good odds with their skills. Poor Will (also a Vats of Mazarin player) failed five piloting rolls during a space combat with two fighters. Not a single success.

- Pilots and, especially, Navigators doesn't really don't feel like they affect the outcome of space combat much. Gunners blow things up; Navigators can heal the ship. Pilots and Navigators can only grant +1 bonuses to the ships defenses or other characters' rolls. I guess the Pilot gets to move the ships around the board and can try to escape entirely. The Navigator, while useful, just doesn't seem like a very fun position to fill. I had a pretty in-depth discussion after the game with Mark, who seemed to share my sentiments. However, we both agreed that both the narrative and teamwork the system creates is excellent. All the guns are pointing in the right direction, but there's still a little tweaking that needs to be done, I reckon.

- The miscellaneous Agility/Intelligence/Physique/Presence saving throws worked out great! One of my favorite things about the game. Simple, but very clever. I especially likes Anthony trying to convince a crowed of cowering civilians to save his ass from an old fashioned shoot out with a rifleman. He failed (although they joined in and battered the pirate around a little bit after Sargent Stiles, Anthony's character, took him down).

That isn't to say X-Plorers doesn't get a lot of things right. Overall, I thought it would pretty fun. This is pretty much a list of things for me to fix up and tweak.

Character Level / Dungeon Level Conflicts

In my Vats of Mazarin game, I've been beginning to discover that character level seems to progress much faster than dungeon level. Now, the first level of my megadungeon is quite large, about 80 rooms, but even after exploring only 50 of them (although they've found all but two areas of interest), the party has reached 2nd and/or 3rd level. Maybe it's because the party is quite small and thus splits the experience only a few ways, but they seem to be stocking up on hirelings and henchmen. There have even been five character deaths and everyone is still progressing so quickly compared to the level of the dungeon they are on.

Part of the problem, is that I've made the dungeon too interesting. That might be the wrong word, but seem like the players are apprehensive about missing anything - they want to explore everything that there is to be explored and gleam every bit of knowledge out of it they can find.

I'm starting to appreciate more the Arnesoian three level system: Flunky, Hero, and Superhero. Different parts of the dungeon could geared towards the three character levels with each level of the dungeon being more of a thematic change that an increase in difficulty.


On a completely different note, I've begun to think more about X-Plorers. The Fight On! Random Tables book has some really great gonzo science-fiction related tables within and I'm just itching to get some use out of them. I have some definite issues with the game, rules wise, but who knows, it might play great even if I don't really get it on paper. I want to get some experience with it under my belt before I start house-ruling the crap out of it.