Help with Gutretee force powers and Isis rewrite

[vanir]

I've been rewriting the Isis Coordinates for our campaign with a mid level, large adventuring party (about 9 PCs with some 6-7d skills, with some tough aliens and two Force users and with a small starship fleet of a modded transport and a couple of starfighters), naturally it started off with a need to beef up the adventure but has developed into a more fleshed out rewrite.

The Imperial protagonists involve some ISB agents with special equipment and a beefy veteran Stormtrooper guard in a tougher ship, to ensure they survive quick opening encounters with the PCs until they can get into the Hadree Gunship and begin that section of the adventure (I don't want to give away too many details in case my players visit this site as we haven't started it yet). It also helps stick to more canon in the Gunship requiring a skeleton crew of at least 10 to operate (essentially the Imperials will capture the Rebel skeleton crew already on board during its refuelling and cargo loading, and force them to fly the ship to their chosen destination, which in turn requires at least half a dozen pretty tough Imperials to keep the PCs on their toes during the flight so that's roughly what I've got planned, plus spread throughout the ship a couple can be downed in exciting mini-climaxes and still keep control of the ship/crew and keep the adventure on track). When I say ISB agents I mean pretty special guys, the kind who investigate possible Rebel bases and expect to exit without a scratch.

That's just to describe the atmosphere and scene for you, I've got something fun and interesting in mind for that part.

What I'm working on at the moment is something I'd like some help and feedback on. The Gutretees, which I'm developing further and fleshing this part of the adventure to a full sidequest, with a longer distance for the Imperials to make the Starport from their crashed ship, so there is time for the PCs to have a mini-adventure among the Gutretee tribes, and I'm expanding them so there are several tribes with politics between them, some are warlike darksiders that are xenophobic, others are benevolent pacifists that throw parties and make crystal art and are interested in galactic affairs, though have had little contact with offworlders. They're constantly at war, although a Gutretee war is a ceremonial affair where a tribe is declared winner after only a handful of heroes are defeated, the loser must give up the field and then they go back home and start plotting or throwing parties again.

Essentially the most powerful tribes are the ones which absorb the memories of the most rivals, thus skills averages (CP averages) among the tribe are higher than a tribe which loses their memories in contests frequently. I'm using the memory transfer special ability as a species CP catalyst here, defeat a rival and absorb his memories: you get some of his CPs to represent the memory transfer (only works between Gutretees). Obviously this special ability has some similarities to certain dark side powers, so it is not uncommon for Gutretee tribes to be darksiders, the unusual tribes are those which make laws prohibiting memory absorption except as trial by combat for serious crimes, or in wartime, thus limiting the DSP accumulation within that tribe. The PCs are lucky because they find a good tribe, but are caught in the middle of politics against the bad tribes. The sidequest hook here could be something like the PCs are overwhelmed and captured, but it's a good tribe that doesn't want to hurt them but wants their help against a bad tribe before they'll agree to release them and even speed their way to the Starport, chasing after the Imperials using the phenomenal speed of the Crystal Wave mode of travel. Just tossing that in the air.

The Force user system of Gutretee shamans I've decided to do more like the Dathomir witches spell system, whereby individual Force powers are selected without prerequisite and learned as skills with a dice allocation for that power, doing away with control/sense/alter skills. Gutretee shaman teach each other using a Scholar: Gutretee Shamanism skill.
This limits the number of powers within realistic CP awards (costs more CP to have lots of powers this way), but increases the skill potential of specific powers (relatively low cost to be very good at just a few powers).

This feels more shamanistic to me, and keeps Gutretee Force users under control if individuals become involved in galactic affairs, such as if a shaman is invited to join the PC party. He might be very good at telekinesis, as good as any Jedi, but he's still nothing on a Jedi in terms of the number of powers, so he doesn't unbalance the game and allows the freedom of this option. I like players to be free to direct the course of gameplay for good immersion.

So in this vein I've come up with a new Force power (actually a Gutretee shaman skill), called Crystal Shaping. Just raw brainstorming I've come up with something like this:

New Shaman skill/Force power: Crystal Shaping
This power maybe maintained under certain conditions, reshaped crystals retain their new shape when the power is dropped.

Gutretee Shaman use this power to manipulate crystalline structures at a molecular level, reshaping them to form new objects or animating them as a liquid whilst the power is maintained. Like other Gutretee shaman abilities this power is a skill allocation which requires CP to improve.

easy - reshaping a crystalline object to form simple melee weapons, such as javelins and swords
moderate - reshaping crystals to form complex shapes, such as artwork or a particularly fine ceremonial sword of exceptional melee qualities
difficult - causing a crystalline structure to act as a liquid, such as the Crystal Wave form of travel, during which the power must be maintained
very difficult - creating a complex crystalline structure which acts as machinery, such as a mining golem whilst the power is maintained
heroic - creating an animated humanoid golem from crystals, under the control of the shaman whilst the power is maintained


Since some of you have more experience creating new force powers and the like, I'd like some feedback and ideas if you have any. At this stage I'm just raw brainstorming and penning it all out on the fly.


Some other ideas I'm toying with: crystalline melee weapons reshaped using this power are capable of turning a lightsabre as per Sith Swords.

Gutretees themselves are crystalline humanoids which have certain generic features, they are individually identified largely by a coloured hue glowing deep within their structure, such as a cobolt blue glow or an emerald green glow, representing the lifeforce and sentient/skill memories contained within and animating them. They are a unique lifeform, quite powerful within their element.
Revised special abilities are that their crystalline structure turns energy weapons but not lightsabres because it is an energy weapon which is inherently tied to and symbiotic with the Force, thus damages the very lifeforce of Gutretee as per normal damage rules.
Due to the hardness of Gutretee crystalline structure it acts as normal armour with properties of +1D strength against normal physical damage. Fire, plasma, sonic and particle or concussion weapons damage Gutretee normally.
This makes them quite powerful with immunity to normal energy weapons and Str+1D versus normal physical weapons/strikes.
In addition their hard crystalline fingers and random protrusions effectively function as claws in melee combat for Str+1D damage.
Species Attribute ranges are as in the Aliens Stats compilation by Thago Aranha.
Memory transfer ability is already roughly described, this might be worth more thought and fleshing out.

Appreciate your thoughts and any additions or modifications and general feedback, cheers.

[garhkal]

Nice rundown. As a q though if one o the tribes is pasifistic in nature, how will they fight in challenges?
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[vanir]

Knock you down and give you a beer and have a laugh instead of trying to steal your character points?

[vanir]

I'm brainstorming away with various changes to expand the Isis adventure. The gaming session is coming up in a little over a week.

The hook I think I'll use is a mission to extract some defecting TIE pilots from an Imperial Starfighter Academy at Bestine. The local Rebel cell has been wiped out recently and the Party must travel to the system incognito to extract some defecting Imperials that have been feeding the Alliance Intell for months. There is a double agent in the Imperial heirarchy at Bestine that will be providing some forged documentation for the characters to get by customs inspections.

A Rebel agent will be travelling with the party who has secret coordinates to the Safeworld of Isis, which is where they will be taking the defectors to after exiting Bestine (the TIE pilots will be incarcerated once there pending security clearance by investigators in the system).

Once at Isis the Party will be offered another mission to escort a cargo fleet transporting new build X-Wings from the Isis production facility to Yavin base, along with some additional equipment. They will be loaned a Gunship from a local Rebel fleet detachment as heavy fire support for the escort mission.

However, their flight from Bestine has been tracked by ISB agents...enter the Isis adventure.


I'm being so elaborate because I'm trying to tie in the party to several greater galactic events, such as the forthcoming Battle of Yavin which I want to start tying the group into now (it's about 1 BBY currently), so we're a part of that when it happens. I want our ships in the fight against the Death Star as a Rebel force attachment.

Part of that is introducing the Party to some key figures from the Battle of Yavin who were Imperial defectors, Biggs Darklighter and Hobby both came from TIE Academies to join the Rebel Alliance, so they're a couple of the pilots we're extracting from Bestine. Plausible enough, given Biggs signed up at the Imperial Naval Academy at Arkanis and left Tattooine for there, so I'm just having him transferred after his basic training from Arkanis to Bestine where I've placed a TIE Starfighter Academy amongst the Imperial Naval base there.

To get the characters tied into Bigg's backstory I'm having the Imperial double agent the Rebels are working through to get the defectors out, is actually Bigg's girlfriend. They met at Arkanis Academy and are now at Bestine together, he's at the TIE Academy and she's a COMPNOR officer with the Coalition for Improvements that are subjugating the island colonies on Bestine for Imperial control.

So a little sidequest whilst at Bestine could be to involve ourselves in helping recreate the local Rebel cell that used to be among those island colonies, using the Imperial double agent and Bigg's help with their local knowledge of the system and Imperial authority. The sidequest will be difficult however, because it can't threaten the party's ability to extract the TIE defectors, they can't afford to get the Rebel agent with the group captured and interrogated because he has the Isis coordinates on an encrypted disk. And the party can't afford to expose the double agent because she has an extremely rare and useful position to help the Alliance more in the future. The double agent is Rivoche Tarkin by the way, the Grand Moff's niece.

And there are internal politics between the Imperials at Bestine. The system falls smack in the middle of both the Colonies regional fleet, and Rim Territories regional fleet jurisdiction, I've got Grand Moff Zsinji in charge of the Colonies fleet (flag at Fondor) and Grand Moff Tarkin in charge of the Rim Territories fleet (flag at Eriadu), and they're both rivals, they don't like each other, and they act to interfere with each other's political careers as much as possible.
Technically Bestine is in Tarkin's jurisdiction, but its physical location and the fact Tarkin's fleet is spread thinly across a vast territory and Zsinji has much less ground to cover, has meant orders from Coruscant actually put Zsinji's fleet in charge of naval patrols in Bestine. But Rivoche Tarkin is a Tarkin, and the local naval forces are Zsinji's, so there's political tension there. She firstly quite loves Biggs Darklighter, he's like her badboy crush (she's only 24 since her career was fast tracked by her family), secondly she hates Zsinji anyway and is perfectly fine with him falling afoul of Rebels and losing favour with Coruscant...that can only improve the standing of Eriadu, Tarkin and the Rim Territories fleet authority in the region. For her it's all win-win.

But can the characters really trust her once they find out who she is...



c'mon, what do you guys think?

[cheshire]

Just for clarification, are there Force/shaman powers provided in the Isis Coordinates, or is this all from your own brain?
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[vanir]

They give them the power to do a "crystal wave" mode of travel whereby during the adventure the shaman can simply call upon the crystal terrain to start transporting the party like a river you stand on. But they don't define it as a force power so I made up the "crystal shaping" shaman power. They just write into the adventure script as something the shaman does with no game stats to it.

They have an NPC written up with low dice force skills and call him a shaman, but the adventure is old 1e so powers weren't even defined back then. Only in later 1e supplements like the rules companion did force powers start being defined and they were much heavier handed than 2e, such as the power equivalent to Force of Will to defend against force attacks just let you double your control dice against attacks, things like that.

So the module is in need of an update/rewrite anyway in pretty much every aspect.

[Raven Redstar]

I've been having a fun time reading your adventure ideas, Vanir. I had a bit of input for the memory absorption. There is another race which shares memories with other members of its species, the Caamasi. You may wish to consider taking their ability and perhaps adding in an offensive use for absorbing or stripping memories from others.

The Caamasi ability is as follows:

[vanir]

Hey that helps a lot Raven, thanks. I didn't even think of opposed Perception/willpower for memory absorption and it's so obvious! And the possibility of it being used on Force Sensitives adds a nice threat value.

Rather than reducing an attribute and absorbing specific skills the sort of thing I had in mind was a simpler stealing of surplus character points. I suppose I would define this special ability then: the Gutretee opponent or Force Sensitive must be defeated in combat, then the victorious Gutretee makes an opposed Perception roll versus the victim's Perception/Willpower (whichever is higher), or a Control roll maybe used by characters with Force skills (powers such as Force of Will apply). A higher roll means 1d6 character points are lost and these are gained by the victor. A new attempt must be made for each 1d6 of CP stolen (usually invoking another contest), these character points represent the memories of the loser being absorbed by the victor. If the loser doesn't have enough character points for the transfer, they suffer a wound instead. A character can be killed in this fashion.
Using this ability on an unwilling participant gains one dark side point, if a character is killed by this ability the user gains two dark side points.

That's just raw ideas at the moment, but was the kind of thing I had in mind. It could be over the top. I guess I was thinking about that dark side power in the Dark Empire Sourcebook that Palpatine uses on Byss to absorb CP and FP from his subjects. Plus the fact ultimately, in game mechanics the way you write character memories on a PC sheet is with CP, same way you write heroic/antiheroic reputation with FP/DSP. Given my intention was to add an element to this memory sharing ability which could be used in a darkside manner to create some politics between Gutretee tribes...

I totally agree the Camaasi memory sharing description sounds like the same basis that was used in the Isis Coordinates originally so I'll definitely follow your advice and simply add whichever offensive element works out best, to this description. Thanks for pointing that out, I do have most of the WEG and fan-sourcebooks but I still haven't gone through them all and don't know all the aliens, all the creatures, all the ships and equipment etc.

IIRC the Verpine also loosely have some sort of similar collective intelligence or hive communication in their description, don't they? I think theirs is more like a communication networking, but the basic idea seems linked as there was some inferrence that Verpine become more effective in large groups.
Verpine are over the other side of the galaxy from us though, we're going to be around the Trailing Sectors and southern arm for a time.

I've been rewriting the Twin Stars of Kira adventure book as a full Harrin Sector sourcebook, some of the local monarchy ruled worlds I've added some of the atmosphere of the Tapani Sector style court intrigue since they're neighbours, and thrown in lightfoils among the royal guards on some of the planets to interest PCs when we travel through those regions. At first glance the royal court looks like it's half filled with Jedi Knights, but they're not actually force users and their lightsabres are actually lightfoils, but it looks impressive and I've some adventures planned with an Imperial crackdown on the Sector. There are some old Jedi Temple ruins on some of those planets though, and I've sprinkled in some royal nobles that did receive limited Jedi training prior to the Purge and I'll introduce an interesting Darksider (an Arkanian Witch trained in Sith Lore) as a protagonist, a kind of local Darth Vader type but more of a wizard in the old Sith use of the Force (with some of those cool powers that shoot flames and blow up people's souls, scary scary).

That will follow from the Isis adventure, so I'm really pulling out the stops for the whole Isis thing so the Party can gain as many CP awards as possible with a lot of added sections. They'll need them to face the Arkanian Witch and her entourage later.

Just contacting the double agent (Rivoche Tarkin) at Bestine will be a sidequest in itself. Naturally the party can't just rush off to the system and has to make contact with Rivoche at a neutral location first, which will require a bit of secret agent style clandestine activities. After getting their mission description and organising their equipment, the Party will have to travel to Elshandru Pica (along the Five Veils Route from Vergasso), and stop in at the 27th Hour Social Club to ensure they aren't being followed (Vergasso is a known Shadow Port and may have Imperial spies).
From there they will board a luxury spaceliner that takes the Five Veils Route, travelling incognito under cover identities.
Whilst aboard the luxury liner they will be checked out by Rivoche's personal agents to again ensure they aren't being followed.
When the liner stops at Vohai the Party will board the Monorail and attend a special meeting of the Guild of Armourers by invitation, which the Rebels have organised for them. The Guild has hired out several cars to hold one of their periodic and renowned auctions (an opportunity for the PCs to buy some special and unusual equipment such as a suit of Mandalorian armour and the like).
Rivoche's people will contact the PCs on the Vohai monorail and give them the credentials they will require to enter the Bestine system without being locked up in the brig of a Star Destroyer as spies/rebels.

So I've got a few things prepared for that little introductory section before even getting to Bestine. Worth a small CP award. Then the opportunity to do sidequests at Bestine itself. The mission to extract the TIE defectors and bring them to Isis. Then the Isis adventure itself, including a Gutretee sidequest.
Should be worth a few CP awards all up if the PCs play it out well.

[Raven Redstar]

The Caamasi are in Gry's alien book, page 22 I think.
I never really thought about Character points that way, but it makes sense to me. It also makes the power a little less dangerous than actual attribute drain. Although, now that I think of it, there is a creature in the galaxy which can do attribute drains and tends to go for mental and force attributes first, the Derriphan. The Derriphan is on page 36/37 of Gry's aliens book.

It has specific things that it gets when it absorbs attributes from possessed sentients.

Just another angle that you may want to look at before settling on character point drain. You could also theoretically make a Derriphan cult in the Gutratee that specializes in the absorption of memories, skills, force abilities, or whatever. These cultists use the knowledge they gain to get a better foothold in all of the tribes on Isis. Or, perhaps you could even make it where it is a puppet master sort of situation where a few are being possessed at first, then large scale possession, including the various chieftains.

Anyway, just brainstorming, I'm sure whatever you decide to do will make for a fun game.
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[vanir]

Another terrific idea, a cult! I'll have to look up the Derriphin (the books are scanned onto another computer), but this is a great idea. It also gives the Party some long term goals they can aim for in removing or minimalising the cult activities among the natives of Isis, to make a more permanent and sustainable Rebel base there. I also like the loose similarity with the Rancor cultism on Dathomir, so in future adventures if the PCs ever go to Dathomir they can be sort of like, "Oh yeah we've done this before, we can handle it."

With the cultism idea too I think the Gutretee tribes which are against this sort of behaviour will increasingly become more involved with the Rebel activities and industrial facility, which is one of the things I wanted to happen with the natives. Sort of making Isis a permanent Rebel Safeworld that may become important in the future campaign. I could eventually locate the E-Wing production there for example. It's also close to Bespin so it is simply a good location.