If you were to merge SWN's primary assumptions with 5e's mechanics for broader appeal, what choices would you make?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;822457If you were to merge SWN's primary assumptions with 5e's mechanics for broader appeal, what choices would you make?

Do you mean broader appeal as in "on the market", like you're going to sell it?

Or do you mean broader as in "among your local players"?

If it's the latter, then you need to first find out what your local players like about 5E.

Do they like Advantage/Disadvantage? (That could be used as is)
Do they like the "Lower Attack Bonus - More Hit Points" paradigm?
The idea of tool proficiencies?
The more generous stat mods as in "18 = +4 not +3"?
Do they want backgrounds? (these are already there though)
Do they want feats?

What do they like about it?

Yeah...an interesting question but mostly because I'm not sure how the two would relate, as they are both "lite" systems that handle their genres well as-is.

Quote from: Enlightened;822468Do you mean broader appeal as in "on the market", like you're going to sell it?

Or do you mean broader as in "among your local players"?

If it's the latter, then you need to first find out what your local players like about 5E.

No, not to sell, but not just local players either. Just maximum appeal in as many contexts as possible (kind of the way 5e was playtested).

What would you do?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;822475What would you do?

Me personally? The only thing I would take is the idea of Advantage/Disadvantage. (For skill rolls, roll 3d6 and take the best two)

Backgrounds are cool, but they're already there.

There is nothing else about 5E that I personally would take. But if there were aspects of 5E that my players were specifically asking for or clearly seemed to want, I would have no problem porting them over.

It all comes down to what specifically the people locally are seeming to want.

What do you see your local players as wanting?

I would build out a set of classes that combined aspects of what SWN is doing and DnD is doing. I would also build out appropriate races I wanted in my post-scream setting.

I would use DnD HD, bounded accuracy, saves, injury. I would probably use SWN psionics with a class for them. Maybe a "sorcerer" limited powers class.

I would add any skills for sci-fi to the existing 5e set, using the 5e proficiency system.

I like how 5e plays. I love how SWN does everything else. To be fair, I have not played SWN yet, but I have played many hours of older editions of D&D to have some idea. DnD5e tickles my fancy where older editions didn't, so I would lean heavily in that direction for the core mechanics.

Sorry to have let this thread slip without properly expanding on it.

I find the factors that most hampered my attempts to promote SWN in my circles were its lack of class features, extremely flat math, and descending AC. Merging it with 5e has the potential to fix these issues. It's one of many options I'm considering for an eventual sci fi campaign.

I like the core three classes of SWN. They are very elegant. If I needed to add features to them I would imagine leaning on 5e's archetype approach.

I was poking at porting classes over to 5e, warriors are easy, psions aren't particularly difficult. That said, I am completely lost as a good selection of archetypes for experts. That said, three archetypes isn't going to cover it, so there's a lot of work to be done.

Part of what I was considering was splitting archetypes off of classes and you gain the features based on a class specific progression. But then you're writing three archetypes for each one you do. But it would allow for some real flexibility in character concepts while still setting up roles.

For the most part the classes themselves are real easy, you can lean on fighter for warrior, break out some of the thief specific things from rogue and replace them with general competence, and then take the spell caster of your choice and replace their casting with spell points for psion.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;828980I find the factors that most hampered my attempts to promote SWN in my circles were its lack of class features, extremely flat math, and descending AC. Merging it with 5e has the potential to fix these issues. It's one of many options I'm considering for an eventual sci fi campaign.

I like the core three classes of SWN. They are very elegant. If I needed to add features to them I would imagine leaning on 5e's archetype approach.

Descending to Ascending AC is trivial, since it only changes how you present the same equation - actual probabilities are left unchanged.

I'm not sure what you mean by "class features". Each class already has a class-specific ability. If you mean a larger number of class-specific special abilities that other classes are barred from - well, that sort of goes against not only SWN's design ideas, but sci-fi RPG assumptions as well.

In fantasy, it's okay to say that "wizards can't wear armour because magic energy is blocked by metal or whatever". But sci-fi is supposed to be rational: there's no magic involved in piloting a spaceship, you just need to pull levers and push buttons - and anyone can do that. Sure, some people will be much better than others, but ANYONE can, at the very least, point a gun roughly in the enemy's direction and pull the trigger, pull on the control column, or write a program (heck, even I remember some BASIC). If you want to make specific characters feel more exclusive, I guess you could institute a houserule where certain technological skills (computers, postech, pretech, bunch of others) can only be rolled if you have at least a rank of 0 - so completely untrained characters can't even try it. That would achieve a similar effect.

Flat math - not sure what you mean. Is it that modifiers that you add up or subtract stay at low values? Because if so, you pretty much MUST have that as long as you retain the 2d6 skill system. 2d6 rolls produce a bell distribution curve, which in turn means that bonuses and maluses of more than just a few points will become VERY deterministic; in other words, if you make it easier to rack up bonuses of +4 or more on a roll, you will hardly ever fail. For example, suppose you make it relatively easy to have a +3 attribute modifier, and your relevant skill level is 2 - that's a +5 bonus on your roll. You will have a 97.23% chance of succeeding at a "standard" difficulty 8 task. Difficulty 13 - "Sprinting up a greased inclined tightrope on your hands. Fixing a computer with a native cheese spread. Demolishing a concrete building with your hands. Turning a corroded alien bath attachment into a weapon." becomes possible 72.24% of the time. And that's not even the highest attribute modifier or training level you can get.

QuoteThat said, I am completely lost as a good selection of archetypes for experts.

Yeah, that one's rough. You can sort of take elements from the D&D rogue and make an infiltrator archetype, elements from the bard to make a leader-ish archetype, chop up and stitch together some feats to make a medic (but careful not to step on the psion's toes), steal ideas from D20 Modern/future to flesh out pilots and techies and such. The key is that the archetypes don't need to be very substantial, just a layer of three or four features on top of the base expert, whatever that is.

Quote from: MrHurst;828983... and then take the spell caster of your choice and replace their casting with spell points for psion.

I'm kind of tempted to leave the psion mostly as-is except for the obvious upgrades to 5e standards and perhaps some extra non-psionic stuff to make up for the limited power selection.

Quote from: Premier;828986I'm not sure what you mean by "class features". Each class already has a class-specific ability. If you mean a larger number of class-specific special abilities that other classes are barred from - well, that sort of goes against not only SWN's design ideas, but sci-fi RPG assumptions as well.

Be that as it may, 5e (and 4th) hit the nail on the head with its market research: Most players like leveling up, and most players want a new whizz-bang feature at each level. WotC's conclusions match my own experience. You might not like it, and I might not like it, but there is no denying my SWN pitches failed on those grounds.

Quote from: Premier;828986Flat math - not sure what you mean. Is it that modifiers that you add up or subtract stay at low values?

Sadly yes. It's idiotic in a Spinal Tap "This goes to eleven" way, but my local player base likes to see big and rising numbers. 5e's flatter math made them wary, but not as much as SWN's, and compensated for that by having lots of class features and running faster.

SWN PCs are aimed toward old-school fragility and very much mere-mortalness. If you wanted to give them more mechanical muscle, it wouldn't be hard to just slap on a 5e-esque ability progression. I've even toyed with it for my Tudor England game that I'll be working on later this year.

I'd do it like this.

Level 1: Pick a class archetype. Get the intro ability of that archetype.
Level 2: Pick a class perk which anyone of that class can choose.
Level 3: Get a universal class ability that everone of this class gets.
Level 4: Pick one of the remaining three special abilities of your archetype or add a new archetype and their intro ability.
Level 5: Pick another class perk.
Level 6: Get a universal class ability.
Level 7: Archetype pick...

Rinse and repeat. Assuming you take it through level 12 or so, you'd need 4 universal class abilities, about 12 small class perks to have a decent pool to pick from, and X number of archetypes, each with an intro ability they all get and about 3 additional abilities they can pick in any order.

It's not exactly an answer to the OP, but I'm currently running a campaign based on Other Dust (post apocalyptic SWN) with 5e D&D rules with very little house rules*. Me and my player are loving it so far. I know that does not say a lot about mixing and matching the systems, but at least it's a little sign that D&D 5& could support the same style of play of Sine Nomine System (which I love, but it's a little too crunch lite for my player tastes).

(*By the way, I thank BedrockBrendan for posting a 5th edition spell-less renger class in this forum. It's one of the few aforementioned house rules).