So in this upcoming Starfinder game, I found out about Novians and immediately fell in love. Tiny little balls of anger with the personality of Joe Pesci in Goodfellas just tickle me pink, but... I have so many questions. So many.
Primarily... how do they wear armor? Like, I want to play a Soldier, which wears heavy armor so how does that work? Are they just... encased in a metal sphere with eyeslits? Normal shaped armor that they puppet with their tendrils?
How do augments work, if they even work at all? They've got such unconventional biology that most of them just don't make sense, and the ones that do don't seem like they'd be able to interface with them at all.
How about carrying stuff? The book mentions that _some_ Novians have random object orbiting around them, but does that apply to all PCs, or just some of them? There doesn't seem to be any ancestry feats that addresses that so I'm guessing that it's all PCs, but it's hard to be sure.
Since there isn't any rules on these questions, I'm just assuming that everything is available as if they were a normal ancestry, yet I'm finding it hard to get a grasp on the logistics of it all. Advice?
I'm playing a novian and a lot of fun has come from answering these questions in various ways.
Wrt armour/items I just imagine specialised armour they slot into, not unlike an eggcup, and belts with straps they wear like rings around planets.
Augments I have no idea how you'd even approach that. Perhaps it's somehow "bolted" to their exterior. Better be heatproof I suppose.
Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Novians "hold" things with gravity, like, even their "arms" are manifestations of that field instead of actual limbs.
I would guess their armour is more like a segmented shell that they "hold" themselves in by their (passive) gravity, rather than trying to puppet a "standard" humanoid set (air quotes because custom armour is extremely normal in space, because there's just so many different body plans)
As for the augments, novians would probably be using magitech? Like, they don't exactly have any biology. 1e had a suggestion that you could find alternate versions of the same augmentation but using a different subcategory, so you could get a biotech version of a cybernetic item, for example. Using that in 2e for novians would work well, I think.
You're 100% right that you work like any other ancestry mechanically, and they just silently say "don't sweat it too hard".
The "real" answer is that Starfinder is a super cosmopolitan, high tech, high magic setting. The fact that a nonzero amount of the population ARE sentient, miniature stars has probably resulted in "one size fits all" clothing tech. I just picture a full body version of the old Back To The Future 2 shoes.
Kateywumpus wrote: So in this upcoming Starfinder game, I found out about Novians and immediately fell in love. Tiny little balls of anger with the personality of Joe Pesci in Goodfellas just tickle me pink, but... I have so many questions. So many.
Primarily... how do they wear armor? Like, I want to play a Soldier, which wears heavy armor so how does that work? Are they just... encased in a metal sphere with eyeslits? Normal shaped armor that they puppet with their tendrils?
Either of those explanations would work, IMO. I also like the image someone suggested of them being encased in rings or orbits of armored plates that spin close to their cores and offer the same level of protection. I personally like the armored ball, dyson sphere look, myself, but I like my characters looking a little goofy sometimes. If their armor does follow a more conventional bodyplan you could instead frame it as the Novian acting as the core or power source for a very small mech or weapons platform; you can have whatever shape you'd like as long as it doesn't grant a mechanical advantage.
Kateywumpus wrote: How do augments work, if they even work at all? They've got such unconventional biology that most of them just don't make sense, and the ones that do don't seem like they'd be able to interface with them at all. I think it'd depend on the particular augment style you're looking at, but cybernetic and magitech augments seem fairly easy to flavor. I imagine they'd look something like nodes or "stations" inside the Novian's body, or as orbitals spinning around it, linked to and drawing from the Novian's core energy, which is why they can only handle so many. Actually the latter description could also work for biotech augments; just flavor them as astrophagic life forms but scaled way, way, way down, and grown into the desired shapes to get the desired effect.
Kateywumpus wrote: How about carrying stuff? The book mentions that _some_ Novians have random object orbiting around them, but does that apply to all PCs, or just some of them? There doesn't seem to be any ancestry feats that addresses that so I'm guessing that it's all PCs, but it's hard to be sure. That looks like it's mostly flavor to me to represent your carrying capacity and the like. As with the armor you don't need to worry about it too much as long as it's not presenting mechanical advantages, giving you effectively extra hands or anything.
|
