T20 for non-fantasy?

[Yldarr]

Hello again Nisarg...
2 quick thoughts:
1 - YES. Although you'd have to rethink the underpinnings of the roles.
You've got "The Brains (Expert), the Brawn (Warrior), and the Guy Who Has Some Kinda Edge Niether Brains nor Brawn (Adept).
You see the basic problem.
You only really need two roles, unless the genre has magic, psionics, weird tech, super powers ,etc., in which case the third role would come into play.

and

2 - OR...expand the roles to fill slighlty more specific functions. Maybe 6, like d20 Modern, or maybe 4 (Mental, Physical, Spiritual and Other?)
I saw on the BR forums something about a Social Role, so maybe Brains, Brawn, Charm and Resources.
Resources could fit the bill for any PC that relies on something outside his own natural abilities, normal or not.

d20 is a bad dream, the Truth is out there...True20.

[Jeremy757]

Hello again Nisarg...
2 quick thoughts:
1 - YES. Although you'd have to rethink the underpinnings of the roles.
You've got "The Brains (Expert), the Brawn (Warrior), and the Guy Who Has Some Kinda Edge Niether Brains nor Brawn (Adept).
You see the basic problem.
You only really need two roles, unless the genre has magic, psionics, weird tech, super powers ,etc., in which case the third role would come into play.

and

2 - OR...expand the roles to fill slighlty more specific functions. Maybe 6, like d20 Modern, or maybe 4 (Mental, Physical, Spiritual and Other?)
I saw on the BR forums something about a Social Role, so maybe Brains, Brawn, Charm and Resources.
Resources could fit the bill for any PC that relies on something outside his own natural abilities, normal or not.

d20 is a bad dream, the Truth is out there...True20.

Yeah there was a thread in the Blue Rose forums where this exact topic was discussed and this same conclusion was reached. The roles have to be customised to fit the setting so it really depends on what type of setting your going to run, pulp adventure, space opera, hard sci-fi, etc.

[Jeremy757]

I think it wouldn't be to hard to convert D20 Modern to True 20. You take each of the basic classes give them Defense and Toughness scores. You eliminate all of their level dependent benifits and give each its own list of unique feats, converting there special abilities into feats. You would also have to turn each class into a 20 level character too.

You would have to deconstruct all of the Advance classes into a list of feats which can then be incorporated in to the 6 basic classes, eliminating the need for advanced classes.

It might be interesting.

[Stareyes]

Personally, I would stick to the Basic classes of True20 (possibly breaking the Expert into Brains and Charm), but mine the feats and talents of some of the Basic/Advanced classes for ideas for new feats.

[Jeremy757]

I don't know, that sounds more complicated than designing "True20 modern" from the ground up.

Really? I don't think it would be that hard. The hardest thing about it would be to convert each basic classes talents to feats. The bonus feat list and talents converted to feats will become the classes new exclusive feat list. Many of the D20 modern feats would port over to Tru20 as is without any conversion. The ones that don't you can just find an equivilent feat in Mutants and Masterminds and us it. If that doesn't work then youll have to resort to writing from scratch, which I don't think will happen that often. The other stats and numbers would be real easy to come up with.

Although having just three classes deffinatly works especially in the Blue Rose and fantasy setting. I can see in certain campaigns where more specialized classes would be needed, like in a modern or sci-fi campaign and I have always liked D20 Moderns take on having six classes based on each of the 6 ability scores. Revolving your classes around this method has its merits and I think in some campaigns it could work with the True20 system.

The concepts behind the character systems in True20 and D20 Modern aren't to far removed from each other in my opinion. True20 just takes it one step further then D20 Modern.

So those are just some of my random thoughts at 2:30 in the morning after working a ten hour day, so take them for what they are worth.

[Stareyes]

A concern is that a lot of the d20 Modern talents depend on the level of the character in the class in question. Most of the True20 abilities (Arcana being the big exception) depend only on character level or skill ranks.

[Yldarr]

A concern is that a lot of the d20 Modern talents depend on the level of the character in the class in question. Most of the True20 abilities (Arcana being the big exception) depend only on character level or skill ranks.

I agree with Jeremy757.
To address the above concern, simply convert the talents in to feat chains rather than straight feats.
The mechanic of "level in class" can be replaced with "base feat + sub feats" with possible level requirements to impose a steady advance.

d20 is a bad dream, the Truth is out there...True20.
Yldarr

[Stareyes]

I'm afraid I don't follow you. Take, for example, the talent Linguist. All emphasis mine.

[quote text=From the Modern SRD]
Linguist: With this talent, the Smart hero becomes a master linguist. Whenever the hero encounters a new language, either spoken or written, that he or she does not know the Smart hero can make an Intelligence check to determine if he or she can understand it. The check is made with a bonus equal to the hero’s Smart level. For a written language, the bonus applies to a Decipher Script check instead.
[/quote]

Would one just substitute one's total character level there or would one keep this the way it's written?

[Twiggly the Gnome]

I'm afraid I don't follow you. Take, for example, the talent Linguist. All emphasis mine.

*SNIP*

Would one just substitute one's total character level there or would one keep this the way it's written?

I came across that problem in my True20 Star Trek port. I included the Linguist talent as a class feat for the Scientist role. My solution was to make the feat change the Language skill into a INT based skill with ranks.
Without the feat you either know a language, or you don't.

[Jeremy757]

I'm afraid I don't follow you. Take, for example, the talent Linguist. All emphasis mine.

Linguist: With this talent, the Smart hero becomes a master linguist. Whenever the hero encounters a new language, either spoken or written, that he or she does not know the Smart hero can make an Intelligence check to determine if he or she can understand it. The check is made with a bonus equal to the hero’s Smart level. For a written language, the bonus applies to a Decipher Script check instead.

Would one just substitute one's total character level there or would one keep this the way it's written?

It would work pretty much as is. Remember in a True20 verson of Modern you would still have all six Hero classes so the Smart Hero would still be one of your classes. The Linguist talent would now be the Linguist feat which would be on the Smart hero's exclusive feat list.

Now if you take my original suggestion of expanding each of the Six roles to cover all 20 levels then you would have to change a talent like this in some way so the character doesn't end up with a +20 to Intelligence checks to recognize languages.

[timemrick]

Take, for example, the talent Linguist. All emphasis mine. [..snip..] Would one just substitute one's total character level there or would one keep this the way it's written?

You'd probably want to create "favored feat" lists for each d20 Modern class, consisting of the existing bonus feat list plus all talents converted into feats. That way, you'd follow the General feat/role feat model of True20, and wouldn't have to change the class level references, because only that class could take those talents. Only if you make those talents available to other characters (perhaps as favored feats for a new background?) would you have to decide how to change the formula.

[Jeremy757]

So here is what I think the Smart Hero would look like through True 20 glasses

The Smart Hero True20

Abilities: Intelligence is the ability associated with this class.

Favored Skills: Choose any 12, plus Knowledge (any)

Known Skills: Choose 6 + Intelligence

Favored Feats: Arcane, Smart, General

Starting Feats: Choose 4.

The Smart Hero levels 1 - 20

Attack: 0 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 10

Defense: 2 3 3 3 4 4 4 5 5 5 6 6 6 7 7 7 8 8 8 9

Toughness: 0 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 10

Fort and Ref: 0 0 1 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 4 5 5 5 6 6 6

Will: 1 2 2 2 3 3 4 4 4 5 5 6 6 6 7 7 8 8 8 9

Reputation: 1 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 4 5 5 5 6 6 6 7 7

FAVORED FEATS
Then here is how I would do the favored feat lists that the Smart hero would pick from. Note I would keep the Arcane feats in its own list so other classes, like the Dedicated Hero, could share this list. The Arcane list would be very similar to the one in blue rose.

SMART FAVORED FEATS
Build Robot, Exploit Weakness, Extreme Machine, Jury-Rig, Linguist, Major Breakthrough, Minor Breakthrough, Plan, Savant, Skill Mastery, Scientific Improvisation, Smart Defense, Smart Survival, Smart Weapon, Trick


Obviously the hard part of the conversion is going through each of the feats and making sure they still work with the game.

[Yldarr]

I think you're on the right track with this as far as a direct d20 Modern conversion goes.

For other non-fantasy True20, it's simply a matter of defining the roles, skills and effects (like magic) for what you want.

[Garnfellow]

You would have to deconstruct all of the Advance classes into a list of feats which can then be incorporated in to the 6 basic classes, eliminating the need for advanced classes.

It might be interesting.

I don't know, that sounds more complicated than designing "True20 modern" from the ground up.

Bad Axe Games's Grim Tales has already done all the hard work for us. I am pretty enamoured by the thought of a True d20 Grim Tales engine.

[critter80]

I think it's easier to do than you think. The group I play in is getting ready to run a True20 campaign set in Venice in the 1890s (Victorian with bits of steam punk thrown in). At this point we only used the things in the Blue Rose book, except for the Personal Firearms feat from Modern (since Blue Rose has no firearms), and some equipment from a few Modern books (d20 Modern, d20 Past, and the Modern Players Companion). All of this requires minimal adaptation.
Most of the feats from d20 Modern can be used without altering anything. The equipment requires only converting damage, which is rather quick and painless. Even the talents could stand as feats. You retain their prerequisites, assign them to the feat-type that makes the most sense, and use character level instead of class level (or if that's really uncomfortable, substitute role level for whichever role is most closely connected).
As for adapting classes and such, all you really need to do is decide whether or not you need the adept. If there are no supernatural abilities (magic, psionics, etc), then just scrap it. Everything else can be done with some feats and the warrior or expert. Don't go converting classes back into the system; it's a step in the wrong direction.