Science Fiction For Fantasy GMs II – Waiter, There’s A Magic Sword In My Space Soup

To say that the posting on this blog has been infrequent lately is akin to saying that Palin for vice president wasn’t a particularly good idea. In both cases, those responsible would prefer to just move on with their lives and forget the whole thing. With that said, posting frequency will continue to be low for a while, due to real life stuff.

In my first post on this subject, I looked at the staying power of fantasy campaigns in order to find the reasons why my D&D games can run on low fuel for months without people losing interest, while my SF ventures need a constant flow of fresh ideas to stay alive. I identified some areas where a fantasy campaign stands out from its SF counterpart and I got some more tips in the comments. In this post, I will look at some ideas on how to incorporate common fantasy themes in SF campaigns while keeping the SF flavor an not delving too much into midichlorians and light sabres.  Read on for more tips on how to make your SF campaign successful by taking a page from the fantasy book.

The Gunmage IV – Daily Powers, lvl 1

I received a fair amount of criticism for my last post about encounter powers (and also for the at-wills). According to my critics (I’m looking at you PrecociousApprentice) the powers were overpowered and the Gunmage was a better controller than a wizard and a better striker than the ranger. The critics were, of course, right and I have since edited the powers to make the Gunmage more on par with other strikers. Even if the balance was a bit off on the first take, it seems like the flavor of the class is generally appreciated and I take that as an incentive to continue on the same path.

This time I hope I’ve done a better job at balancing as I give you the 1st level daily powers of the gunmage:

The Gunmage III – Encounter Powers, lvl 1

Since I created the At-will powers for the gunmage, I received some well thought-out comments and decided to revise them a bit, go to the original post to see the results! In this post, I continue with the encounter powers for lvl 1, focusing more on singling out one target and making him feel all alone. Next up are the daily powers in the next installment. Read on after the break!