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Cool/unique science fiction classes

Falksi

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Rate Pissed Rapist - A really drunk rapist who's powers can exceed an average PC many times over, but who has to constantly feed his lust for drink & rape in order to do so, with any hours without drink or rape imposing significant penalties to stats, making him extremely weak.

Rate Hard Retard - A really hard & tough retard.
 

Alphons

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Nov 20, 2019
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Surgeon- while still bearing an Old Earth name, their profession has way less to do with actual surgery and more with it's planning.

These rather strange individuals spend majority of their time researching the effects of various organs (and their mutations) on different races and trying to harvest their positive effects (while mitigating negatives).
While the normal population is rather scared of them (some Surgeons are prone to experiment on themselves, others use less ethical ways to acquire needed organs), governments, various agencies and wealthy individuals seek them out to acquire their services.

Gameplay wise they'd be initially a bit weak melee fighters, that could harvest various organs from their foes and use them similarly to implants. Organs could be also upgraded with higher skill levels and spare parts or used to make temporary boosts or weapons (stomach acid grenades against some xenos?).
 

DraQ

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ITT:
  • Most of the posters hopelessly confuse Sci-Fi with fantasy with blasters.
  • Most of the posters fap over limiting and usually shit idea of class that actually makes much less sense in a futuristic game than fantasy.
I remember codex being much better and smarter (if still edgy as fuck). :decline:

Anyway:
  • Any classes that can be ported between Sci-Fi and fantasy more or less 1:1 definitely not unique and arguably not cool, so only Sci-Fi specific character concepts are relevant.
  • Vehicle pilot (insert specific vehicle type as needed) would make an interesting Sci-Fi specific class, but the main problem is that in situation involving, say spaceship combat, other characters tend to be inert baggage. A situation can be alleviated by splitting roles in a vehicle (pilot, gunner, engineering, sensors, EW specialist, missile/drone pilot, etc). Another way would be to put more emphasis on boarding or other on foot situations with vehicular support - having one or more of characters not being physically present with party duking it out and being challenged with providing fire support without accidentally splashing party or anything you need intact dead, possibly dealing with different challenged in this kind of multi-level scenarion could be interesting. Of course having on-board roles and on-foot roles plus variety of scenarios (on foot, vehicular, mixed - think Expanse) meshes exceptionally poorly with class system especially if you also have typically sized party - you'd like to combine roles.
  • Augmentation system makes for a powerful character development mechanics in Sci-Fi, but it's hardly class specific and thus meshes poorly with classes.
  • Hacker or techy types make for interesting Sci-Fi unique types.
  • Riggers are approximately fantasy summoner archetype - cool, yes, unique, nope, sorry.
 

Peachcurl

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Anyway:
  • Any classes that can be ported between Sci-Fi and fantasy more or less 1:1 definitely not unique and arguably not cool, so only Sci-Fi specific character concepts are relevant.

I get your point, but with some hand-waving, nearly every class can be translated from Sci-Fi to fantasy. Looking at your examples:
  • Translation of vehicle pilots is straight forward. For example: mounted knights (a bit of hand-waving required), or a chariot driver (less hand-waving required).
  • Augmentations can be magical instead of technical
  • Hackers/Techies are a bit more difficult to translate, but essentially, they might be translated to certain types of magicians. Especially those whose spells rely on logic / manipulation of symbols rather than some form of raw willpower.
So where do we draw the line?

Anyways, I like the idea of Dreadnoughts from Warhammer 40k: space marines permanently entombed into what can be described as a mix of power armor and mech. (Although, again, translation to fantasy is possible. Why not transfer a knights soul into the body of a Golem? ;))
 

Old Hans

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cyber assassain: a cybernetic assassin who uses vibro daggers. he can hide in shadows and do backstabs.

this is my totally unique idea. dont steal it
 

DraQ

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Translation of vehicle pilots is straight forward. For example: mounted knights (a bit of hand-waving required), or a chariot driver (less hand-waving required).
Apart from some very specific cases that's not really an applicable translation:
  • Knight doesn't typically carry the entire party on their mount.
  • When the vehicle pilot applies their skills, the entire party is either inert (baggage), performs other onboard roles (gunner, etc.), or performs boots on the ground kind of actions with vehicle serving as fire support, recon, extraction, etc.
There is no straight analogy except maybe the first case (baggage) when the pilot is doing the fighting (so some sort of fighting class), and the rest of the party is idling, but it's the least interesting case making for worst gameplay anyway.

Augmentations can be magical instead of technical
Technical (or biological) augs provide much better framework of how they work and what they can or cannot do.
What bad authors see as a cage, good ones see as a scaffold.
Hackers/Techies are a bit more difficult to translate, but essentially, they might be translated to certain types of magicians. Especially those whose spells rely on logic / manipulation of symbols rather than some form of raw willpower.
Magicians are not infrastructure dependent.
 

Peachcurl

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Apart from some very specific cases that's not really an applicable translation:
  • Knight doesn't typically carry the entire party on their mount.
  • When the vehicle pilot applies their skills, the entire party is either inert (baggage), performs other onboard roles (gunner, etc.), or performs boots on the ground kind of actions with vehicle serving as fire support, recon, extraction, etc.
I'll give you the knight, but there are vehicles in fantasy settings. Chariots, coaches, ships/boats of different sizes, or even airships. In all those case, nearly the same concepts can be applied both to the sci-fi and fantasy settings.

Magicians are not infrastructure dependent.

That depends entirely on the magic system used in the corresponding setting.
 

DraQ

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I'll give you the knight, but there are vehicles in fantasy settings. Chariots, coaches, ships/boats of different sizes, or even airships. In all those case, nearly the same concepts can be applied both to the sci-fi and fantasy settings.
(Air)ship captain would be much more analogous, but vehicles in Sci-Fi tends to be more versatile and less crew intensive. Depending on hardness they can have some quirky additional mechanics as well.
 

V_K

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I'll give you the knight, but there are vehicles in fantasy settings. Chariots, coaches, ships/boats of different sizes, or even airships. In all those case, nearly the same concepts can be applied both to the sci-fi and fantasy settings.
(Air)ship captain would be much more analogous, but vehicles in Sci-Fi tends to be more versatile and less crew intensive. Depending on hardness they can have some quirky additional mechanics as well.
How's about a dragon rider?
 

DraQ

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I'll give you the knight, but there are vehicles in fantasy settings. Chariots, coaches, ships/boats of different sizes, or even airships. In all those case, nearly the same concepts can be applied both to the sci-fi and fantasy settings.
(Air)ship captain would be much more analogous, but vehicles in Sci-Fi tends to be more versatile and less crew intensive. Depending on hardness they can have some quirky additional mechanics as well.
How's about a dragon rider?
Or just a dragon. :P

That's actually very close to the level of fire support, recon and transportation available to Sci-Fi parties with a spaceship, though I would say there are still some notable differences to autonomy, transportation aspects and hazards involved (vehicle being both typically inert on its own, possibly prone to technical issues, and a possible gameplay arena in itself).
 

J1M

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I'll give you the knight, but there are vehicles in fantasy settings. Chariots, coaches, ships/boats of different sizes, or even airships. In all those case, nearly the same concepts can be applied both to the sci-fi and fantasy settings.
(Air)ship captain would be much more analogous, but vehicles in Sci-Fi tends to be more versatile and less crew intensive. Depending on hardness they can have some quirky additional mechanics as well.
He cornered you pretty well on this one. He's got you arguing that magical mounts don't require enough crew in one post and that airships require too many crew in the next.
 

DraQ

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He cornered you pretty well on this one. He's got you arguing that magical mounts don't require enough crew in one post and that airships require too many crew in the next.
He didn't. First, dragon rider is not really your typical mounted knight. Second, I effectively admitted that a dragon actually offers possibilities that very close to what you can expect of your cool spaceship(TM), then highlighted a few remaining differences that I still think relevant.
That's how discussion works, you see.
 

DraQ

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And dragons can be prone to indigestion and other dragony diseases.
True, but I would argue that character health and technical issues still offer a bit different flavour, at least, even though both amount to maintenance and even though Sci-Fi can actually muddle the waters significantly with the cyborg, robot, bioengineered and infomorph characters.

One of the levels in 7 Mages is the insides of a dragon (though a dead one).
Haven't seen this one, but it's hard to see this working with a live, potentially party aligned one (feel free to change my mind).
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
a class where you're a knight in a scifi setting and instead of a regular sword you use a plasma sword that's really hot and cuts through everything
also, you're a psionic who can use your powers to throw people around, see briefly into the future, etc.,
it has heavy alignment restrictions and your class automatically changes if your alignment does
 

DraQ

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And dragons can be prone to indigestion and other dragony diseases.
True, but I would argue that character health and technical issues still offer a bit different flavour, at least, even though both amount to maintenance and even though Sci-Fi can actually muddle the waters significantly with the cyborg, robot, bioengineered and infomorph characters.

*BRACE FOR IMPACT*
*BOOM*
- we are falling, do we have dragon vet on board?
Temeraire: Abridged edition.
 

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