Hammer, what are your combat skills?  Any weapon you prefer?

Looks like we have:
Weapons:
1 laser rifle
1 heavy auto pistol
1 vibroknife
1 gauss rifle
1 gyrojet pistol
1 rocket launcher
1 auto rifle
3 laser pistols
3 tangler grenades
6 frag grenades
3 doze grenades
4 smoke grenades

Suits/Screens:
2 Albedo Suits (40 pts, 20 pts)
5 Military Skiensuits (35, 35, 40, 40, 40 pts)
1 Inertia Screen

Other Gear:
2 backpacks of climbing gear
1 magnigoggles

Plenty of ammo and power clips to go around as well.

Hammer has a built in laser as part of his construction and his fit into the caste society, though his specialty is psychosocial and computer skills.  He would take a higher end laser if available and grenades, but haven't given it much thought otherwise. mechanons are ambidextrous

He has level 3 beam weapons, but nothing else weapon-wise.  interestingly, he doesn't even have a robotics skill, but I guess the crystalline technology of mechanons isn't really the same as the human robotics.  Mechanons can also use their metallic tails as melee weapons.

I will have to roleplay this better, but mechanons have no sense of public or private property.  Things are just used as needed.

A new player brought to my attention an article in the Starfrontiersman called "A Skilled Frontier."  It posits a different way of doing skills that makes more sense, is better balanced, and is not so combat heavy as the original rules.  I have to admit that I read and like the new rules.  Please read through the article and give me feedback.  We may want to change over to that system, which will allow you to retool your characters some-- a "respec" for all you MMORPG guys.  And that might be a fun intermission since game time takes so long here.

The article is in Issue #9, on page 1: go to www.starfrontiersman.com and access the magazines to view it.

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Also, as for the Mechanon issue, the character description of Mechanon in Zebulon's Guide is woefully underwritten and unhelpful.  It also does not give very clear stats or other information.  If Hammer approves, I would like to model the Mechanon character class after the article "Mechanon 2.0," which can be found on page 62 of Issue #8 of the Starfrontiersman.  This also means he would not have a built in laser weapon, but instead a gauntlet-like electrostunner built in.  There are other structural changes too (not to mention the problems with healing and doctors), which means Hammer would get a "respec" of his character to conform it to the new rules too.

I'm feeling this.  I like the concept and I think it would open some of our characters up more to the cross-training I was talking about in earlier sessions.  Count me in and yes, I think this would be the perfect time for a fun intermission.

We would have to go back and figure out all of our previous Xp to transition to this new skill sets correct?

I was thinking we would just take the XP put into your current "skills" and do a respec with those.  (In other words, you would not use any XP that was put into your ability scores or anything.)  That should be an easy calculation taking only a minute or two.

That's what I was hoping...

Hammer's all in

Before we assign the much needed rifles to the group, let's do the restructuring of skills and then go from there.  Desiraye is much better with laser weapons but might be the best choice for the gauss rifle, right now.

Thoughts???

Hammer will respec for other than beam weapons if he does not have the built in laser.  Then he can take a different weapon.

You all see what we have available to us now.  Pick your skill set(s) to suit your PC's...

I added the rules.  Honestly, though, I'm not real ecstatic about the PSA categories the author drew up.  We may need to develop ones that are more realistic and utilitarian.  Let me give that some thought.

For example, I am thinking of adding diplomatic and intuitive skills to "artist," as well as a bonus to anything using dexterity (assuming an artist tends to have well developed hand eye coordination)-- something along those lines.

Congratulations on 8,000 posts!

What about using some skills from the Zebulon's Guide?

My thoughts are the following. This is a first run through.  The overlap is intentional to allow PSA skill cost for some items:

Military:
-Small Arms
-Large/Mounted Arms
-Thrown weapons
-Martial Arts
-Military strategy and leadership (including morale of subordinates)

Piloting:
-Pilot and repair vehicles (land/sea)
-Astrogation (air/space)
-Navigation (scouting/exploring)
-Large/Mounted/Guided Weapons

Tech:
-Robotics
-Technician (including vehicle repair)
-Computers
-Engineering (civil, electrical, etc.) for building things

Science:
-Medical
-Scholar (chemistry, zoology, history, law, literature, art etc.)
-Engineering (see above)
-Linguistics
-Psycho-social
-Environmental
-Space science (including astrogation and starship engineering)

Agent/Diplomat:
-Stealth/thievery (shadowing, hiding, following, tracking)
-Persuasion
-Investigation (listening, searching, surveillance, clues, etc.)
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:29, Tue 21 Apr 2015.

I am the new player that brought all this up. I didn't mean to cause trouble. I was asking an experienced GM his opinion.
GM Heath, I think I would be remiss if I did not make mention of another skills option. There's an article in Star Frontiersman #16 called the PSA Skill System. It combines the original system with the Skilled Frontier system.

As for your concern about the Skilled Frontier system, I think the diplomatic stuff is handled under Agent and Scientist (Psycho-Social). It's not all under one skill area, which I like.

Also, if you're going to meddle with the system, I would rather not make any changes until you're done.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:42, Wed 22 Apr 2015.

This could be good.  I'm partial to the original Alpha Dawn system, because for most games of exploration of planets and battling Sathar like I played in the old days, it was enough.  But for a more political/investigative game like our current adventure, it's a little lacking.

And this way, Porter could more easily improve his scouting abilities without needing to be a planetary ecology scientist as well, and maybe refigure and refocus his combat skills (I maybe took too broad a base).

No problem on my end.  I think it may add to people's characters and expanding the game like was just mentioned.

I agree. Don't do anything just yet until we nail this down.  In the meantime, keep the ideas coming.  Also, you could go ahead and figure out how many XP you'll get from backward engineering your current skills.

Also, if anyone prefers the old system, I would allow them to continue to use it, I think.

Having now read the next article proposed by Orvo, that's exactly what I was trying to move toward.  Glad I didn't have to reinvent the wheel there.  I was even thinking of the 5% bonus discussed on page 76.  I like his PSA categories, though I might do a slight tweak on them.

Hammer can go ahead and start making changes.  I noticed the new Mechanon portraits make Mechanons more of a crystalline robot structure instead of the traditional metal.

I just made my character and I kept track of XP. I have 41.

I came up with 149 XP.  She wound up with the same skills, [1] skill level less in Beam Weapons (5 INSTEAD OF 6) and bumped up my Thrown Weapons score too.  Plus I took the Agent & Tech PSA's as secondary and got a bunch of different skills that does round her out to her background that I made.  I also took form one of the comments the author made about not having a level six skill.  It got me a bunch of other little skills to round her out some and make her a more believable UPF Agent/Investigator.


Are we using another article besides the first one we mentioned?

Looks like 51xp spent on skills, plus 3 in the bank.  I'll refigure my skills over the weekend.

Yes, we will be merging two articles.  No need to make the final character choices just yet.

I think this is going to bring your game to another level Heath.

Well, until the decision on a new skill system is made, I'll increase Orvo's Beam Weapons skill to 2.

Any of you watch that new Yahoo! series "Other Space"?  It's a comedy science fiction show--pretty funny, actually.  In episode 6 or 7, they comment on the captain who first made contact with alien life, and his name was "LeGrange." I couldn't help but wonder if, given the similarity in genre, that perhaps it could have been a nod to this adventure.  Pretty obscure reference, but "LeGrange" is a very rare name...