Sixteen Tons (Warforged Version)

Some people say a man is made outta mud
A warforged's got oil for blood
Metal and wood and steel and bronze
A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day's orders and ya ain't free yet
Sweet Maker don't you scrap me 'cause I don't know....
What happens to a warforged when he ain't no mo'

If you see me coming
Better step aside
Lotta men didn't, lotta men died
Got one fist of iron, the other of steel
If the left one don't get you
Then the right one will

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day's orders and ya ain't free yet
Sweet Maker don't you scrap me 'cause I don't know....
What happens to a warforged when he ain't no mo'

I was made by the Cannith, I was rune-forged
Given a sword and sent to the wars
I was raised by a sergeant on the front line
Though it's made of stone, got a heart like a lion

You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day's orders and ya ain't free yet
Sweet Maker don't you scrap me 'cause I don't know....
What happens to a warforged when he ain't no mo'

Krynnish Minotaurs in Star Wars [d6 Star Wars]

Krynnish Minotaurs in Star Wars d6

Pirate Minotaur
Dexterity 1D/3D+1
Knowledge 1D/3D
Mechanical 2D/4D+1
Perception 2D/4D+1
Strength 3D/5D+1
Technical 2D/3D+2

Special Abilities:
*Senses: Minotaurs have very sensitive senses of hearing and scent, and receive +1D to Search checks when those senses are involved.
*Horns: Minotaurs can use their horned heads as a brawling attack; doing so is Easy difficulty, and inflicts STR+2D damage. A minotaur may also charge, which requires 3 meters of running room, and increases the difficulty to Moderate, but inflicts STR+4D damage.
*Large: Minotaurs are larger than most species of the galaxy. While this doesn't matter for a lot of things, in some cases, it can be a big problem. Vacuum Suits, space suits, and armor are frequently inadequate to minotaur physiques. Many standard starships aren't well suited to minotaur physiology, meaning they receive a -1D penalty to vehicle operation, shield, and vehicle weapon skills if the vehicle isn't designed to adjust to their size. This is, to an extent, a matter of GM fiat, but Imperial craft are noted for the relatively narrow range of sizes they will accommodate. Refitting a craft to accommodate minotaur crew members is usually an Easy to Moderate task requiring an hour's worth of work for each station to be converted.
Likewise, minotaurs find many standard-built weapons to be awkward; Heavy Blasters, Blaster Carbines, Blaster Rifles, and larger weapons are quite comfortable, but blaster pistols, sporting blasters, and hold-out blasters will require modification to fit minotaur-sized fingers. While most melee weapons pose little problem for a minotaur, they do find that human-scale weapons are often inadequate to take advantage of their size; the fist of a minotaur can crush a man’s skull easier than a strong man can with a club.

Story Factors:
*Honor: Minotaurs live by a complex code of honor that involves their personal reputation, the reputation of their clan, and their standing within the clan and their clan’s standing within the Imperium. Impugning a minotaur’s honor can drive them to rash acts, and a minotaur’s assessment of another’s honor can influence their reaction to them.

Move: 11-15
Size: 2m-2.8m tall

Imperial Minotaur
Dexterity 1D/3D+2
Knowledge 1D/3D+2
Mechanical 2D/4D
Perception 2D/4D
Strength 3D/4D+2
Technical 2D/4D

Special Abilities: *Senses: Imperial Minotaurs have very sensitive senses of hearing and scent, and receive +1D to Search checks when those senses are involved.
*Horns: Imperial Minotaurs have bred for smaller horns than the Pirates prefer, and are more prone to trim them, resulting in a somewhat less effective weapon. They can use their horned heads as a brawling attack; doing so is Easy difficulty, and inflicts STR+1D damage. A minotaur may also charge, which requires 3 meters of running room, and increases the difficulty to Moderate, but inflicts STR+3D damage.
*Large: Minotaurs are larger than most species of the galaxy. While this doesn't matter for a lot of things, in some cases, it can be a big problem. Vacuum Suits, space suits, and armor are frequently inadequate to minotaur physiques. Many standard starships aren't well suited to minotaur physiology, meaning they receive a -1D penalty to vehicle operation, shield, and vehicle weapon skills if the vehicle isn't designed to adjust to their size. This is, to an extent, a matter of GM fiat, but Imperial craft are noted for the relatively narrow range of sizes they will accommodate. Refitting a craft to accommodate minotaur crew members is usually an Easy to Moderate task requiring an hour's worth of work for each station to be converted.
Likewise, minotaurs find many standard-built weapons to be awkward; Heavy Blasters, Blaster Carbines, Blaster Rifles, and larger weapons are quite comfortable, but blaster pistols, sporting blasters, and hold-out blasters will require modification to fit minotaur-sized fingers. While most melee weapons pose little problem for a minotaur, they do find that human-scale weapons are often inadequate to take advantage of their size; the fist of a minotaur can crush a man’s skull easier than a strong man can with a club.

Story Factors:
Honor: Minotaurs live by a complex code of honor that involves their personal reputation, the reputation of their clan, and their standing within the clan and their clan’s standing within the Imperium. Impugning a minotaur’s honor can drive them to rash acts, and a minotaur’s assessment of another’s honor can influence their reaction to them.

Move: 11-15
Size: 2m-2.5m tall

Athasian Psionic Bard (2e)

The Psionic Bard is a variation on the standard Athasian Bard, which replaces the standard bard's facility with poisons with some improved psionic powers. While not a true psionicist, a Psionic bard is more akin to his non-Athasian counterpart... a dabbler in many fields, not simply an assassin who dances prettily.

All aspects of the Psionic Bard are as the Athasian bard; they have access to all thief skills, with 20 points per level to improve them, they may influence reactions, inspire, and countersong as an Athasian bard, and "learn a little bit of everything." Their NWPs are Rogue, Warrior, General and Psionic. The sole difference is a lack of facility with poisons, and the advancement of psionic powers. Bards are not true psionicists, but expand their abilities slightly as time goes on.

At 1st level, a Bard is a wild talent, as with all other Athasian characters, with the same number of powers and PSPs as any other Athasian character. At levels 2, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, and 19, the Bard learns one devotion for which they meet the prerequisites, from any discipline. Certain disciplines are more difficult for bards to explore, due to the ubiquity of certain sciences as prerequisites; these remain closed to the Bard unless their wild talent provides the necessary powers. As they do not properly study psionics, they have no primary discipline, and so no restrictions on numbers of powers from a discipline based on that. Most Bards lack the ability to engage in psionic combat (since they do not have access to Mindlink, save through wild talents, and that forms the backbone of the discipline), but most will acquire a psionic defense as soon as they are able.

At each level beyond the first, Bards gain PSPs. However, they only gain 1d6 plus their ability modifier for Wisdom (per the Inherent Potential Table on page 38 of the Dark Sun book; Wisdoms of 15 or less result in only a 1d6 roll of PSPs).

This version works well for both S&P and CompPsi psionics, whichever you prefer; the only difference would be in psionic combat, where Psionic Bards would be counted as other wild talents, able to learn up to 3 defense and 3 attack modes as proficiencies.

Why a psionic bard kit? Because the standard bard in Athas is an assassin, to the point where one questions why anyone would accept bards that have been sent to them... if bards show up, someone is going to die. This version allows there to be a LOT of different bards, and they're less "scary assassins" and more the dabbler that other bards are.

Magic Bloodline for Sorcerers

Magic Bloodline
Some sorcerers can trace their powers to a singular ancestor or event. A draconic great-grandparent, a nursery in the Elemental Chaos, or mama was struck by lightning just before you were born. Others... don't. Their power comes from some connection to the Weave, a merging of several different magical bloodlines, or some other source of simple magic that links to the Prime Material plane through them, and them alone. Unique and idiosyncratic, the Magic Bloodline represents an individual whose magic is truly their own.

1st level
The fingers of magic spread throughout your life, and in odd ways. At 1st level, someone with the Magic Bloodline chooses two additional cantrips from any spell list, and one first level spell from any spell list. These are additional spells known for the sorcerer, and are considered sorcerer spells for this character.

6th Level
Magic, sorcery, is in your blood. At 6th level, you learn one additional metamagic. Additionally, you have additional sorcery points equal to your proficiency bonus.

14th Level
A Magic-blooded sorcerer can reach deep into magic, creating the effects that they need. They may cast a spell from any spell list, at a cost of that spell's level in sorcery points and the appropriate spell slot. The spell may be no higher than 5th level.


18th level
At 18th level, you are able to smother magic that might harm you with your own. When the sole target of a spell (not merely within the area of effect) you are aware of, you may use your reaction to spend sorcery points equal to the level of the spell to simply cancel the spell. You may only do so once per turn, and must announce that you are doing so before the result is known (i.e. before damage is announced).

Pantheist Cleric Domain

My first rules foray into 5e; I'm going to be running a campaign at the library in March, and wanted to dip my toe in. Since Pantheist Clerics are a thing I've been writing about for 20 years or so, this seemed a good place to start, and aligned with a conversation folks were having on the Playground.

Pantheist Domain
Some priests do not choose a particular deity to worship, and instead embrace the full pantheon of their people. Unlike more specialized priests, these clerics can perform ceremonies for the entire pantheon; they may pray to Kelemvor at a funeral, invoke Lathander upon a birth, bless soldiers in the name of Tempus, and open a harvest festival in the name of Chauntea (or Waukeen, or Llirra, or all three).

Being a Pantheist cleric can be a difficult balancing act, especially for an adventurer. Depending upon their alignment and personality, a pantheist cleric will undoubtedly have certain deities whose philosophies they favor, and others whom they are less sympathetic to. However, pantheist clerics serve an important role in the worship of many deities; while it may be somewhat illegal to worship deities such as Mask, Chemosh, or Iuz, a pantheist cleric can invoke them as needed, often serving as a link between worshipers and their deity in out of the way places, or serving an isolated community's varied religious needs.

Southern Cross Battloids [d6 Star Wars, Robotech]

Another piece of my "Tirolian Space" setting, which is found under the Robotech tag. There's more I could do with this, but I kinda ran out of steam.

****
After the Aeolian-Zentraedi war, Robotechnology began to flourish on Aeolis III. Much of its surface had been damaged by a Zentraedi orbital bombardment late in the war, so the reconstruction relied heavily on technology contained in the repurposed battle fortress. During the war, a series of non-transformable battloids, termed "Destroids", were produced for military purposes. Early examples of Aeolian Robotechnology, and designed as combat units against the 10 meter tall Zentraedi, these early destroids were massive, slow, and heavily armored.

Post-war, the technology was refined, and a new series of non-transformable battloids was produced. Smaller, taking advantages in advances in design and a mission not centered on fighting 10 meter tall humanoids, they were also built without the expense of basic space maneuverability units. The older destroids were designed to be operated on the hulls of capital ships, serving as supplemental anti-fighter weapons. As such, they had basic zero-gravity maneuvering thrusters, allowing them to return to their ship should other safeguards fail. The civil defense-oriented Southern Cross battloids largely disposed of these, decreasing cost. Renegade Zentraedi, a problem on post-war Aeolis III, would be engaged with other units (including the VHT-1 and remaining VF-1s)

Heartbreaker

Found this while searching through my RPG folder on Google Docs. Looks to be from December of 2013... or, at least, that's when I last updated the file. I named it "Heartbreaker" since it was pretty much "Let's mash together a few ideas from different cyberpunk settings", and I knew full well what it was.


The year is 2097, and the last eighty-five years have not been kind to the world... but, then, when were they? To keep this brief, I'm going to pick up world history at the turn of the century.

The terror attacks, and responses, of the first decade of the 21st century lead to a very unstable world. Massive public debts were contrasted to increased corporate autonomy. Improved medical technology meant that people lived longer, but the slow collapse of the financial infrastructure meant that they were working longer, keeping jobs longer... and keeping the young from advancing, if they could even get employed in the first place. The problems in first world economies meant that third world economies received less constructive investment; investment tended to be corporate and task-oriented. Rather than build a new port facility to support their natural resource extraction, corporations would erect short-term, pre-fab facilities that could be dismantled when they left. Governments, crippled with debt and increased factionalism, were unable to regulate corporate actions effectively, and corporations responded by taking on more governmental duties, building corporate enclaves where their employees could live and work in relative peace, but leaving much of the rest of the world to rot. The result is extreme balkanization among many major nation-states; the old United States is divided into no less than eight nations, a process which ended about 2073 with the secession of Texas from the rest of the Southern Confederacy.

The Republic of California is most of California south of the central valley, as well as parts of western Arizona and southern Nevada, and has an economy largely based on information technology and, of course, entertainment.

The Pacific West, including Washington, Oregon, and the rest of California and much of Nevada is more agricultural, using their access to the rest of the continent as a selling point for Asian business and their vast parklands for managed natural resource extraction.

Utah grabbed the rest of Nevada, plus parts of surrounding states (about to the Continental Divide) to create Deseret; it's not illegal to be non-Mormon in Deseret, but it's certainly not any easier, and Deseret has been moving towards a second-world, managed-economy, theocracy in the last couple generations.

Texas gobbled up those parts of New Mexico that weren't in Deseret, but lost some them in the '60s to the Oklahoma Council of First Peoples, a confederacy of sovereign tribes that took most of Oklahoma, parts of the Texas Panhandle, and a chunk of northern New Mexico for their own.

The Great State of Texas (it's official name) now has about everything south of the Red River, but everything north of Amarillo is now part of the Council lands. They gained eastern New Mexico, however, from Clovis southwest to Las Cruces, so it wasn't a total loss. Along it's southern border is a number of narco-states, run primarily by drug cartels who can promise access to the northern lands; Texas's border fence is pretty porous (and hole-owners are well-paid to keep it so), but it does look pretty.

North of the Council lands, the plains states (including everything east of the Continental Divide and north of Oklahoma, but west of the Great Lakes) are making the most of their wind and farmland to run wind farms, but their real issue is water; many river heads are in Deseret, or close enough to it that water has become an increasing issue; there's been talk of creating an artificial watershed that would drain from the Great Lakes westward, even past the Mississippi, but the scale of the project is pretty daunting.

The already-mentioned Southern Confederacy (Confederated States of America, if you're formal) includes pretty much Kentucky, Virginia, and points south. They've got a lot of agricultural land, but are pretty well in the pockets of major corporations... the Congress in Atlanta is pretty much a puppet for whichever corporation has their hand up the governmental fundament on a given subject, and the port in Mandeville, Louisiana is the drug trafficking capitol of the CSA, now that the Gulf has reclaimed enough of southern Louisiana to make Pontchartrain a bay instead of a lake... the old Causeway is truly a bridge to nowhere.

That leaves the rest, still called the United States of America, but now comprising just Indiana, Ohio, the lower peninsula of Michigan, and the East Coast from Maryland on north. They muddle on, having more or less the same system of government as they did three hundred years ago. They shed a lot of debt by blaming it on seceding parts of the country, which likewise refused to claim it, but they've made up for that in the past few decades.

Added to this balkanization was the energy crisis; peak oil was about 2020, and demand meant that there was little left by 2030. Natural gas gave out soon after, leaving power a valuable resource. Companies with heavy investment in alternate power generation became quite rich. Most ground-based power generation is, these days, done with nuclear power, though every home has solar and many places have wind turbines to eke out every available erg of their available space. Also popular are space-based microwave transmission stations; huge solar arrays in geosynchronous orbit, beaming power down to the surface. The power crisis is no longer acute in the former first world, and is improving in the third, but it's a fine enough thing that power stations going down can cause a lot of havoc. More exotic experiments in power generation, however, led to new avenues of humanity.

Humans generate a certain amount of energy; waste heat, small degrees of electrical energy and the like. This isn't a real source of power, but in investigating it, it was realized that some people had quite a degree of fine control over their own energy output, and others put out a fair amount of energy on their own. On it's own, it's not much; with concentration, a person might be able to power a lightbulb, or go without food for a long time by efficiently controlling their calorie burn, and most would burn out a watch in a few days. However, when hooked to certain implanted amplifiers, these natural abilities can be much more dramatic, including many traditionally "psychic" powers... pyrokinetics, electrical explusion, rough telepathy and extreme somatic control. Very few have these abilities, and fewer still get the necessary implants to make practical use of the powers, but the powers have been around and in the public mind for a decade and a half. A lot of "agents" (as they're called) are a bit mystical in bent; the powers themselves require concentration, and many agents use mental or physical tricks to put themselves in the right frame of mind. For some, it's quasi-religious, and there's an undercurrent (especially where agents are persecuted for their "unnaturalness") that agents are the "next step in humanity". It's not widespread, persecution isn't widespread, but that's partially because the most famous agents tend towards flamboyance... the degree to which agents can read thoughts, see the future, and other such privacy-invading things isn't widely talked about, and those particular skills are hard to find reliable teachers for. It's worth noting that agents don't tend to have much other augmentation; the fields they generate tend to mess with any but the most shielded of electronics... they have lousy cell reception, and most of their electronics are 50% more expensive due to the degree of shielding necessary to even function near them.

Human improvement is possible, but expensive. The bench-built cyber-monsters of the 50s have mostly given way to more subtle and realistic prosthetics, but outright augmentation has gotten a lot more common. Limbs can be replaced or enhanced, and implanted equipment is common in the upper 10% of humanity. Most common is an interface port in the temple, allowing direct mental control of computers and other devices; other people will have implanted computers and wireless transponders in their torsos, usually with any wired ports next to the clavicle. They're not quite to the point where a human mind can be transplanted to another biological body... that's still science fiction... but the cyberengineers are saying it's only about twenty years before they're able to build a computer capable of handling the totality of a human mind and writing it into a blank. Likewise, humans haven't created a true AI yet, though SI's (simulated intelligences) are increasing in complexity... the Turing test is no longer a measure of complexity, as computer search and parsing capabilities are such that a reasonable conversation can be carried on, and SIs will run some facilities with only minimal input from humans... and given that an SI can fit into something the size of a 20th century suitcase, they're pretty portable... even moreso when connected to the Net, where they're almost indistinguishable from other users.

The Internet of the early 21st century is gone. Instead of wired connections, most wireless devices now form part of a vast ad hoc network, supplemented by ground transponders and satellite access. The amount of data available on any given subject is immense, leading to a large business in information indexing and search. A lot of this can be done by SIs, but humans also handle a lot of the load, answering requests for data. This means that some things are very convenient, but it's also very hard to drop off the grid... even if you turn off your pocket computer, chances are you've got something on your, from credit stick to your sidearm that will communicate with the net.

Weapons. There's a lot of them. With the collapse of traditional nation-states, there was a lot of violence and unrest, so most of the United States has a limited, but regulated, gun culture. Most weapons sold commercially, however, are designed to be non-lethal (the descendants of tasers and stun-guns), and even then contain "squealers"... they alert local authorities when they've been fired, and many localities will then gather local surveillance to determine what happened. Squealers can also be pinged by anyone with a mind to (and an RFID reader... but pretty much everyone has one of those in their computer); if they have access to certain databases, the pinger can learn who is supposed to own the weapon, and if it's been used in any untoward circumstances. Of course, there's a sizable black market in disabling squealers so they give off a fake response to a ping, or in just taking them out altogether, and there's also a fair degree of variation in local enforcement... Texas's gun laws are non-existent by the standards of the USA, and a little lax by the standards of the CSA.