Blood and Space 2: High Flyers and Ground Pounders
The original Blood
& Space
was a sourcebook for regular d20, and was sort of a
"toolkit" for science fiction roleplaying games.
Basically add-on stuff, like more classes, gear, a starship
combat section. While I didn't use all of the original, I did use
several of the classes and various other bits from it.
With the release of d20
Future, Blood
& Space was dusted off and revised and rewritten for d20
Modern and broken up into several smaller PDFs. The first of
which is High
Flyers and Ground Pounders. Like the original, it's written
by Charles Rice and
published by RPGObjects
About half the book is dedicated to new character options. That
is, classes, feats and such. While the 2nd is more options for
Star Ship combat.
Characters
There are 4 new Advanced Classes introduced. The Operations
Expert, the Starship Gunner, the Starship Marine, and the
Starship Chekov, er Navigator.
The names are pretty much what you expect, with the exception of
the Operations Expert. They would be called a Starship Engineer
in some settings (like Star Trek)
They all seem pretty sound mechanically, with the possible
exception of the Starship Marine, which seems a bit more
complicated than it needs to be.
It seems to me, a class with "Marine" in the title
should have the best base attack bonus (BAB) progression. I mean,
fighting is what Marines do - they should be the best at it.
While it's true, classes with the best BAB are sort of a rarity
in the original d20 Modern, there are several in d20 Future.
The Starship Marine does in essence have one, since they get a
bonus while they are on the "attack" which basically
works out to be the same as the best BAB.
Similarly, they also have an ability, "Tough as Nails",
which gives them an extra hit point per marine level. Which is
pretty much the same result as simply giving the class a d12 for
hit dice instead of d10. (The average roll on a d10 is a 5.5,
plus one would be a 6.5. Which is the average for a d12.
Okay, nit-picky, but for the same basic results, you could have a
much simpler class. Simpler is better, I think. I mean, having to
ask yourself (or the player) whether or not a character is
"on the attack" all the time seems like a big pain. You
lose a little bit of flavor, but gain a lot in playability.
Also, historically at least, Marines tend to be less armored than
regular troops, in both personal armor and support vehicles/gear.
Because being able to move quicker is more important for
shipboard troops than land ones.
While this perhaps mostly true for water ships, I think it's true
for starships as well. While obviously armor would be useful when
boarding a starship, they would also want to get to the key areas
of an opposing starship quickly. Anyway, enough nitpicking about
the "Starship Marine" (when I was a teenager, one of my
favorite computer games was "Breach",
about Starship Marines).
Still, somewhat contrary to the name of the book, all of the
classes seem to be starship based. The original B&S had a
"Colonial Marine" prestige class which was essentially
the sort of marine from Aliens. I would have liked to have seen
that one updated for d20 Future, but I guess the author felt it
was redundant with the "Bughunter" advanced class in
d20 Future. A few other classes from the original B&S seem
suitable for a product like this: The Marine Commander, the
Contact Specialist, the Mercenary, even maybe the Doctor (though
the latter is probably covered by the ones in d20 Modern).
There's about 20 new feats. Many are piloting related. Some are
leadership related, tied into the unit rules in the book. The
description of the "Drill Instructor" feat seemed odd
until I realized it was sarcasm.
One very useful thing is a listing of ranks for a space based
military. Including rules for promotion and requisitioning stuff.
Ship
Combat
The rest of the book is enhancements for the d20 Future
starship combat. Basically 2 things: Crew Quality and Ship
Boarding/Crew Combat and "Terrain" for space battles.
Essentially, it handles crew in an abstract manner, somewhat
similar to a wargame. They are rated as either Untrained, Trained
(ie, normal), Experienced, Ace, or Legendary. The quality
modifies various combat statistics. There are several different
crew types (helm, science, medical, etc).
The combat system, called "BUCS" ("Battlefield
Unit Combat System") is very simple, basically, whichever
unit that rolls higher + modifiers on a d20 wins. For every 5
over the other side, 1 hit of damage is given to the losing unit.
Each "hit" degrades the quality level of the unit by
one.
The terrain is pretty useful. While it's true that most of space
is empty, a lot of fictional space battles have happened around
"Terrain". The great
"Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahn!" space battle in Star Trek
II which happened in a Nebula. Or in Empire Strikes Back, the
fight in the Asteroid Field.
Pretty much all the "terrain" in space that I can think
of is addressed, both real and fictional. Accretion disks, black
holes, asteroid fields, gravity wells, various sorts of stellar
objects that explode. All are described accurately, too. As I
mentioned in my previous reviews, it gets the difference between
a "Nova" and a "Supernova" correct. (Which is
more than just about any television show writer.)
Actually, one of my comments about the original B&S was
addressed. In the real world, "Asteroid Fields" are not
exactly dense. They are only slightly more hazardous than normal
space. Which isn't very. So on this there are two options, one
representing the real world versions, and one representing the
ones you see in movies like The Empire Strikes Back and Space
Balls.
Final Thoughts
The PDF itself is pretty good. Most individual items are
bookmarked and such (which makes it real easy to count the number
of them, handy for reviewers). The art (by V Shane) and flavor
text is pretty much the same as the old Blood & Space. Which
was pretty good. There are a couple of editing problems, for
instance, the crew quality names were changed from the original
Blood & Space to this one, but in some cases, it still refers
to the old name.
All in all, it's a pretty useful PDF. I really would have liked
to have seen more advanced classes, especially ones that are
actually "ground pounders". And maybe some of the gear
from the old B&S converted, like the Orbital Insertion Armor.
But that's my only real complaint (other than maybe that the new
allegiances seem odd), and really you do get your money's worth. B+
