Okay so I have a frequent pet peeve when it comes to technological classes. Introducing one isn't really enough to bring a setting in the future and often feels weird as a result of high technology becoming exclusive to them which isn't exactly how constructed items really work. What makes this worse is that a lot of third party books with a few exceptions feel scant on technological items that everyone can use. Luckily Paizo's Technology Guide introduces nearly everything you could ever want out of technological items including a familiar and easy way to make them, but it leaves some things out that are truly needed. Namely;
Space ships,
Futurey melee weapons,(I know it's possible I've seen em in Iron Gods)
Vehicles,
Non artifact power suits,
Giant Robots
So are there any third party products that I'm missing that covers these subjects? I did a bit of digging a while ago and so far I've found Space ships, and have to port in giant robots and power suits from d20 products but not much else.
Even if you don't have a solution to my problem feel free to post your favorite future or space support or ask questions about future, space or tech support you may be looking for.
My go-to list.
Pure Steam and Thunderscape for when you don't want to go too far into the future. Thunderscape has better classes and lore while Pure Steam goes into technology crunch way deeper.
It came from the Stars has good space advice and some alien races and other character options. It doesn't interact with technology much though.
Dragons in Space is probably the best list of space ships and space ship rules you can find. Its the best I could find. With the Technology Guide out I generally assume that each ship has a generator and run from there in terms of rules for them exploding and whatnot. Powered suits need way to much energy to run realistically so in my games they wound up limited to space fights so that they are in proximity to a generator via a reciever.
Honestly, I didn't like Veil of Truth. It gave directions on how to make your own crunch and how to change rules but doesn't have much substance. I'll put up a full review of it later but if anything about it is worth the price its the long list of alien races. If you want your space tavern to look less like a D&D tavern and more like the Cantina scene in Star Wars you can get a bunch of weird aliens at once in one book.
The Mecha Compendium is the only d20 book on my shelf because it ranges from magical mecha and power suits to super alien scifi mecha and power suits. Its taking more work than I'd like to convert it but in test runs it works out pretty well.
The Machinesmith is a great tech class but The Technician from Age of Electrotech has a little class feature that makes it less of it's own class with it's own brand of technology and a part of the Technology Guide. He gets a pool of battery points that can fuel gadgets. My issue with Gadgets was that other classes have a very limited capacity to them, needing a feat to get a battery point to deal with them, making them feel like personal technological items for the Technician. So I gave gadgets the ability to be fueled with batteries from the Technology Guide and the Technitian the ability to use his personal battery points with technological items. Suddenly the Technician was a more integrated part of the technology guide and technological items for everyone increased in number and became upgradable. Also now the Technician get significant discounts since his gadget crafting carried over to technological items. Plus the book Age of Electrotech has a lot of neat technology stuff in it either way.
There's a new technological item and hybrid item as a web enhancement for Book of Heroic Races: Advanced Catfolk over at JonBrazer.com
To some extent, technology being an exclusive domain makes perfect sense.
Consider, if you have a peasant, you can take his scythe, reangle the blade to make it into a partisan, and then teach him how to use it poorly in a few hours of instruction. If you gave this same man a suit of steam-powered armor and gave him a few hours of instruction in its use, he'd probably find a way to kill himself in short order.
To this end, I am a strong believer in making technology hard to get into: you need a four-year degree to be as good with tech as that peasant is with his partisan in only a few hours! Remember, as long as something is called "technology", that means it is bleeding edge and breaks a lot. How long was the computer a pain in the butt before it became mass market? (How many would STILL say that a computer is a pain in the butt?) Many tech classes assume that they are the bleeding edge of technology, and that they carry about the sort of things that the aforementioned peasant could confuse to be magic. You can restrict this tech to academies and the like and it makes perfect sense from an integration standpoint.
Granted, this is not what everyone wants to do, and some people want to "build your own Eberron" with Pathfinder-compatible pieces. I get that. In my case, the tinker never went down that path because it's a ton of work and my base classes tend to "test the water" to see if a huge version would be economically feasible in the future. We all know the tinker sells well, so this is the sort of thing that will get addressed in its upcoming hardcover expanded compilation.
Going forward, I make the following promises for Ultimate Tinkering, in addition to the standard promise of MOAR CRUNCH.
1: Extensive archetype support to bring the gadgeteer and tinker systems into the base Paizo classes.
1a: NPC class archetypes for people who want to get tech to the root of society.
2: Sets of feats corresponding to different tech levels. You can choose how integrated your tech is!
3: Consumer technological goods, including possible servitor constructs that follow directive rules.
Keep an eye on future releases from Gun Metal Games. The Pathfinder version of their Interface Zero 2.0 cyberpunk setting is due out for open playtest soon, and there's talk of doing a more general future setting manual.
To some extent, technology being an exclusive domain makes perfect sense.
Consider, if you have a peasant, you can take his scythe, reangle the blade to make it into a partisan, and then teach him how to use it poorly in a few hours of instruction. If you gave this same man a suit of steam-powered armor and gave him a few hours of instruction in its use, he'd probably find a way to kill himself in short order.
To this end, I am a strong believer in making technology hard to get into: you need a four-year degree to be as good with tech as that peasant is with his partisan in only a few hours! Remember, as long as something is called "technology", that means it is bleeding edge and breaks a lot. How long was the computer a pain in the butt before it became mass market? (How many would STILL say that a computer is a pain in the butt?) Many tech classes assume that they are the bleeding edge of technology, and that they carry about the sort of things that the aforementioned peasant could confuse to be magic. You can restrict this tech to academies and the like and it makes perfect sense from an integration standpoint.
Granted, this is not what everyone wants to do, and some people want to "build your own Eberron" with Pathfinder-compatible pieces. I get that. In my case, the tinker never went down that path because it's a ton of work and my base classes tend to "test the water" to see if a huge version would be economically feasible in the future. We all know the tinker sells well, so this is the sort of thing that will get addressed in its upcoming hardcover expanded compilation.
I do understand why there are technology classes with exclusive technology. If technology is what a class is about it kind of needs to be exclusive despite functioning around a manufactured item, much like the alchemist has bombs and extract, both being manufactured items, but mechanically they function exclusively for class balance purposes. I tend to prefer situations where technology is the means to enhance the world and comes with a class that interacts with it and may be the best at using and making it but isn't the exclusive holder of said technology, much like the relationship between the Gunslinger and firearms. This does come with it's own problems as high technology can be a fine class feature but in the hands of other classes, especially at earlier levels, becomes incredibly unbalanced since it is an addition to power rather than a power itself. I think the Technology Guide had the technology part right, at least for me, by making it a feat tax making it a matter of proficiency. That way you can adjust the technology level of the campaign by removing or keeping the feat tax, so you don't have the issue of village farmer capable of using a mech suit, or the village robot farmer who doesn't have the stats to milk his robot cows for their oil.
In the end I don't mind tech classes having technology exclusive to them but not technology in general being exclusive to them. Also the issue that nobody can use feats and skill ranks to do something as simple as wield a laser pistol because it's a class feature.
Although I haven't had the chance to try the Gadgeteer I was curious as to whether or not it would make it to Ultimate Tinkering since the Tinker is more of a pet class than I expected. But I'm most excited about the prospect of a tech NPC class, tech level feats, (I already noted how preferable this method was to me) and consumer technology. I was kinda 'eh...' about Ultimate Tinkering but I think I'm sold on that post alone.
To some extent, technology being an exclusive domain makes perfect sense.
Consider, if you have a peasant, you can take his scythe, reangle the blade to make it into a partisan, and then teach him how to use it poorly in a few hours of instruction. If you gave this same man a suit of steam-powered armor and gave him a few hours of instruction in its use, he'd probably find a way to kill himself in short order.
Bleeding edge technology, sure it is hard to get into, but mature technologies are quickly innovated to be highly user friendly. If you really need an example turn to your smartphone. Your smartphone is one of the most advanced pieces of technology any human being has ever possessed for outstripping the capabilities of even top military tech from only a decade ago, yet everyone has them, and children that aren't even in school yet seem to have them mastered.
It's not just the smartphone either, all sorts of technology is easy and user friendly with little training. Automatic cars are super easy to drive. Semi-automatic guns are super easy to aim and fire. You don't need to understand electricity to use your lights or listen to music. Modern commercial air planes are fully capable of flying themselves.
It's one of the signs of technological advance, technology becomes idiot proofed. You still need really smart people to build technology and advance it, but technology is easy for the common person to use.
I have it on good authority that Fat Goblin Games is going to release a book, soon, that will help with incorporating advanced technology into campaigns.
Apparently, Dreamscarred Press will be doing something Technology Guide related soon as well.
To some extent, technology being an exclusive domain makes perfect sense.
Consider, if you have a peasant, you can take his scythe, reangle the blade to make it into a partisan, and then teach him how to use it poorly in a few hours of instruction. If you gave this same man a suit of steam-powered armor and gave him a few hours of instruction in its use, he'd probably find a way to kill himself in short order.
Bleeding edge technology, sure it is hard to get into, but mature technologies are quickly innovated to be highly user friendly. If you really need an example turn to your smartphone. Your smartphone is one of the most advanced pieces of technology any human being has ever possessed for outstripping the capabilities of even top military tech from only a decade ago, yet everyone has them, and children that aren't even in school yet seem to have them mastered.
It's not just the smartphone either, all sorts of technology is easy and user friendly with little training. Automatic cars are super easy to drive. Semi-automatic guns are super easy to aim and fire. You don't need to understand electricity to use your lights or listen to music. Modern commercial air planes are fully capable of flying themselves.
It's one of the signs of technological advance, technology becomes idiot proofed. You still need really smart people to build technology and advance it, but technology is easy for the common person to use.
At which point, it just becomes a part of the world and the word "technology" tends to quit getting thrown around. Granted, that doesn't work well in electronics because there's money to be made in using the word, but look elsewhere in our scientific canon. Once it's sufficiently idiot-proofed and we don't need to think about it, the label falls off.
Also bear in mind that our pattern of innovation and obsolescence is much, much faster now than it has ever been. For centuries, you had individual geniuses who would build things centuries ahead of their time. Even in the modern era, these fellows keep popping up. I'm waiting for the more dramatic bits of Tesla's work to become mainstream somewhere around the year 2200. Ya know, after somebody sneaks into the warehouse containing the stuff the US took after Tesla died.
That's the chief problem here. I want people to play a great mind like Tesla, but I also want people to play somebody who just uses the tech, like Bond, or somebody who makes money off of the great minds, like Edison. That requires levels of integration. Hell, the levels of integration could even be a toggle for each settlement. A high-level tinker or gadgeteer could slowly rank up a town and steampunk it up!
I have some prototypical systems in place to do this right now, a way to dial the tech level back and forth. Presently, it's... clunky, but that clunk is actually a good thing. It feels like popping open a lathe and manually changing to the next speed. This sort of design simply must be quantized. A nice analog curve would be a nightmare.
I do understand why there are technology classes with exclusive technology. If technology is what a class is about it kind of needs to be exclusive despite functioning around a manufactured item, much like the alchemist has bombs and extract, both being manufactured items, but mechanically they function exclusively for class balance purposes. I tend to prefer situations where technology...To some extent, technology being an exclusive domain makes perfect sense.
Consider, if you have a peasant, you can take his scythe, reangle the blade to make it into a partisan, and then teach him how to use it poorly in a few hours of instruction. If you gave this same man a suit of steam-powered armor and gave him a few hours of instruction in its use, he'd probably find a way to kill himself in short order.
To this end, I am a strong believer in making technology hard to get into: you need a four-year degree to be as good with tech as that peasant is with his partisan in only a few hours! Remember, as long as something is called "technology", that means it is bleeding edge and breaks a lot. How long was the computer a pain in the butt before it became mass market? (How many would STILL say that a computer is a pain in the butt?) Many tech classes assume that they are the bleeding edge of technology, and that they carry about the sort of things that the aforementioned peasant could confuse to be magic. You can restrict this tech to academies and the like and it makes perfect sense from an integration standpoint.
Granted, this is not what everyone wants to do, and some people want to "build your own Eberron" with Pathfinder-compatible pieces. I get that. In my case, the tinker never went down that path because it's a ton of work and my base classes tend to "test the water" to see if a huge version would be economically feasible in the future. We all know the tinker sells well, so this is the sort of thing that will get addressed in its upcoming hardcover expanded compilation.
The gadgeteer is a "toys" class. You tinker with your weapons to customize them, and you build fancy accessories that do everything from "spy cigar with emergency parachute and sneezing gas capsule" to "whale oil flamethrower" to "parrot cloning device" to "injection system for fancy, unstable chemicals".
At which point, it just becomes a part of the world and the word "technology" tends to quit getting thrown around. Granted, that doesn't work well in electronics because there's money to be made in using the word, but look elsewhere in our scientific canon. Once it's sufficiently idiot-proofed and we don't need to think about it, the label falls off.
Also bear in mind that our pattern of innovation and obsolescence is much, much faster now than it has ever been. For centuries, you had individual geniuses who would build things...
My point is that any technology rules need to be written such that they can be applied to a setting where the technology being discussed is mature technology. Also in the case of a setting like Golarion mature technology needs to be able to come from Alien Worlds and still be user friendly up until it breaks.