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Using D20 Modern for T20: The Feats

tjoneslo

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Like the skills, T20M uses 89 feats from D20 Modern and D20 Future as a base list, making as few additions and modifications as necessary. The largest change is replacing 21 feats with a single skill focus feat, which makes the list a little more manageable.

T20M allows using the feats from D&D, for the low tech approach to handling things: Deflect Arrows, Diehard, Greater Weapon Specialization, Improved Critical, Improved Grapple, Improved Overrun, Improved Precise Shot, Improved Shield bash, Improved Sunder, Manyshot, Mounted Archery, Mounted Combat, Rapid Reload, Rapid Shot, Ride By Attack, Shield Proficiency, Simple weapon proficiency, Snatch Arrows, Spirited Charge, Tower Shield Proficient, Trample, Two-Weapon Defense, Weapon Specialization.

T20M adds the following feats: Assassin, Connections, Hostile Environment Operations, Sniper, Skill Focus, Vehicle Operations,

From T20, the following feats have been changed or modified.

Changed Feats: Ambidexterity (See Two Weapon fighting), Brawling (see Brawl, Combat Martial Arts), Credit Line (See Windfall), Enhanced Immune system (See Ultra Immune system), Grapple Defense (see), Improved Unarmed Strike (see Combat Martial Arts), Improved Zero-G or Low Gravity Adaptation (See Zero-G Training), Mounted Accuracy (See Drive By Attack), Ride By Attack (See Drive By Attack), Run (See Run), Surgery (See Surgery), Toughness (see Toughness), Tracker (See Track, Urban Tracking), Two Weapon Fighting (See same), Two gun kid (See Improved Two Weapon fighting), Vessel (See Aircraft operation, surface vehicle operation, starship operation), Weapon Proficiency (See XXX weapon Proficiency), Xeno-Medicine (See Xenomedic), Zero-G Adaptation (see Zero-g Training).

Removed Feats: Ambidexterity, Armorer, Crewmember, Dumb Luck, First Aid (See JOT), Fleet Tactics, Heavy Metal, Martial Training, Naval Architect, Savage Fighting, Ship Tactics

Changed Feats
Vehicle Operation (Type).
This feat replaces the Aircraft operation and Surface vehicle operation from D20M and Starship Operation (from D20F), and the Vessel feat from T20.

Pick one type of vehicle to operate: general purpose ground vehicles, general purpose aircraft, heavy aircraft, helicopters, jet fighters, heavy wheeled vehicles, power boats, ships, tracked, mecha, spaceship (ultralight, light, medium, heavy, ultraheavy). T20 adds grav vehicle, submarine craft and hovercraft
Characters without this feat take a –4 penalty on Drive or Pilot checks made to operate a vehicle that falls under any of these classes, and to attacks made with vehicle weapons. There is no penalty when you operate a general-purpose surface vehicle.

New Feats
Assassin
Melee attack a flat footed opponent at -4 for an automatic critical hit.

Connections
Get a +4 circumstance bonus to Gather Information from a specific group of people.

Hostile Environment Operations (Type)
Character gains a +2 bonus for operating in a given hostile environment. You must select an environment at the time the feat is selected: Vacuum, underwater, hostile atmosphere, radiation.

Sniper
Range attack a flat footed opponent at -4 for an automatic critical hit

Skill Focus
This feat allows the character a skill focus bonus to of +2 to two skills, or a +3 skill focus bonus to one skill. This feat may be taken multiple times, but the skill focus bonus granted for each skill does not stack.
 
Is your idea to replace T20 with D20 Modern essentially? And merely apply the chrome required to make this workable?

If so, can you tell me (I own both but don't have much experience with either yet) why one would choose to want to do this?

Also, what about all the advanced weapons, etc. from T20? D20M probably doesn't have them.
 
One obvious reason why one might want to do it is because the D20M class system is much more versatile and straightforward. You don't have any of this mucking around with all the different careers and terms and being booted out and whathaveyou.

Instead you just have 'classes' built around the six attributes (with appropriate skills and feats) and then the careers would be a separate layer on top of that. Much more straightforward IMO, plus you make the character you want to make.

Of course, some people like being at the mercy of the dice when it comes to creating their character, so D20M wouldn't be an attractive option for them.

But the feats do make more sense in D20M than in T20 IMO.
 
Ah, so it is an excercise of the 'constructionists'. Well, as an 'evolver', I have to say the metagame of CT and MT character creation (always use the expanded generation with per-year resolution!) is very important to my thinking. I find that a game within a game and an interesting source of character backstory. Yes, you *could* write it yourself, but when people do that, it almost always comes off too pat and cohesive, unlike real life which tends to be full of bumps, idiosyncracies, and non-sequiturs.

I thought maybe it was an attempt to open up different feats, combat mechanics, or the plethora of TL 7-9 weapons available through D20M.
 
Well, the start of this project was the 43rd post by a new person to these boards on the topic of why doesn't T20 use the D20 Modern and Future rules. The reason is, of course, that T20 was written before D20 Future, D20 Modern, and even D&D 3.5.

I don't actually have a good reason to select the D20M/F rules over the T20 rules. I don't know the play style of the D20M/F rules well enough to make a comparison. So I'm writing up a set of traveller like rules for D20 Modern. Then I'm planning on playtesting them to see if they work OK for Traveller.

Next step is putting some details behind an updated set of classes.
 
Well, Spycraft is the other set of rules most frequently mentioned for an update to the T20 rules. I don't have that book either so I can't say much about it.
 
Spycraft's problem is that some chapters emphasize the "team" concept, while others (the feats section being a prime example) go over the top in the James Bond direction: One man against the darkness.

Nice theory, but as applied to typical games it suffers the Cyberpunk problem in that the game you play isn't the genre feel you bought the book for...

That said, some of the specific *rules* ( I don't consider specific skills or feats to be rules, mind you; I'm talking about operational mechanics) may be worth a look.

All in all, I'm not sure T20 needs "updating" in this fashion, as SpyCraft, D20M, and T20 are all adaptions of the original D20 engine towards specific genres. SpyCraft and D20M both have "vision" issues, IMO, so while adopting specific mechanics might be feasible, I don't consider either to be superior to T20.

Carry on, however. I might be wrong...
 
I a general sense I agree that T20 does not need an upgrade. On the other hand I've gotten the feeling we may be a minority. The general reaction I've experienced has been that D20 games either need to "toe the line" or be completely innovative. T20 does neither, adapting the rules to fit the genere. Which was the point, but is also serves to annoy the D20 people.

And like any gamer, I feel there are places where the T20 rules fall short. So I must "fix" them. And rather than debate the changes in the abstract, I'm trying to write them down. So they can be criticised in the concrete.
 
I might humbly introduce a note of discord to these good gentles.

I think T20 needs an upgrade, but mostly to revise certain sections. I think Starship combat needs much help, and T&C could use a little tweaking for cross-edition compatibility. I think some of the wording changes (Deletions, really) in the Ship design chapter texts are problematic. (They have engendered flamewars. To wit: the deleting the reference that an airfraame includes some form of aerodynamic lift, either in body form or in wings, or both. The use of the term Contragravity in a context not in-line with useage in TNE/T4, wherein it is NOT a sysnonym for gravitic thrust systems. Y'know, nitpicky stuff.)

I don't think that a revision now to the fundamental corpus of the game (IE, ship and character design) would be of any real value. It would alienate the T20 playing public, even if it would draw more in to play it.

No, revisions need to focus on functional aspects rather than design/development aspects.
 
I think T20 needs an upgrade too... when it came out I don't recall there being much in the way of other scifi d20 games around. I think over the years everyone's got better at making more elegant d20 mechanics and a new version of T20 could show this.

I was hoping that the Players Guidebook would be this upgrade, but I have no clue as to its status. IIRC from the playtest files it just looked like a rehash of the old T20 rules, rather than a streamlining or updating of them.
 
My stated opinion above was in the context of character creation (per this thread). I agree that starship design/combat could use a bit of work.

As for other SF iterations of D20 "improving", Malenfant, could you provide examples? I've looked at D20Future and at "Blood and Space". Neither struck me as "better", and both are aimed *far* to the Science Fantasy end of the SF spectrum that Traveller is nominally at the center of.
 
I for one don't really see a reason/need to use d20 modern in the traveller environment. There are not any problems with the T20 character system.
 
Originally posted by GypsyComet:
As for other SF iterations of D20 "improving", Malenfant, could you provide examples? I've looked at D20Future and at "Blood and Space". Neither struck me as "better", and both are aimed *far* to the Science Fantasy end of the SF spectrum that Traveller is nominally at the center of.
I've seen many D20 SF and SF like games. D20 seems to be aimed at the far Fantasy (science or magic) end of the scale. Star Wars started this, Dragonstar, BullDogs, and a number of others continue the tradition.

There are some attempts to drag D20 back to a more realistic edge, Farscape was one, Stargate SG1 is another. Babylon 5 is a third. But you will note, these are all based upon well regarded SF licences. I've not seen an original SF setting that didn't drop into the D20 everything goes in a long time.

In any case, I think there is enough clunkyness in the T20 character designs that I'm willing to waste^Wspend my time doing an update.

I'm not sure that I'm quite up to doing a rewrite of the starship combat rules. At least not yet.
 
The T20 ship combat system does need a little work. But other than that T20 is good, incoperating enough realism (ie Sta/LB)without having to roll up characters every 15 minutes, the prior history gives depth to the charatcter. D20M/F characters histories don't take prior history into account at all(hi I'm the PC)and D20F/M are superhuman at 7th-10th lvl, and the AC bonus per lvl why? and don't get me started on the wealth system. Yes T20 has some problems but it dosen't suffer from the "super" character syndrome in D20 systems. MHO. :)
 
CG wise, anythng hunter would have done would have been similar in end result to the current process for CG.

Gypsy, TJL: Remember the early drafts? Those had some major issues....

Interesting to note that three credited playtesters all feel ship combat broken...

But I don't feel the core rules broken at all. CG works. (I did like the lower levels during the playtest drafts, tho.)
 
Originally posted by Sephrim:
The T20 ship combat system does need a little work. But other than that T20 is good, incoperating enough realism (ie Sta/LB)without having to roll up characters every 15 minutes, the prior history gives depth to the charatcter. D20M/F characters histories don't take prior history into account at all(hi I'm the PC)and D20F/M are superhuman at 7th-10th lvl, and the AC bonus per lvl why? and don't get me started on the wealth system. Yes T20 has some problems but it dosen't suffer from the "super" character syndrome in D20 systems. MHO. :)
I suspect that most of us would agree with your statements. D20 as written is intended for a fantasy/high fantasy/superhero kind of style of gaming. It tends to break down fairly quickly when the intended style become more realistic. Someone already refered to Spycraft, which is an excellent examble of what I'm refering to.
 
Originally posted by Aramis:
CG wise, anythng hunter would have done would have been similar in end result to the current process for CG.

Gypsy, TJL: Remember the early drafts? Those had some major issues....

Interesting to note that three credited playtesters all feel ship combat broken...

But I don't feel the core rules broken at all. CG works.
I think CG could benefit from two things: expansion (people prefer "more" to "done over" most of the time), and clearer layout and instructions. The Players book will supposedly have better instructions and more options, but I don't know if the THB's ties to the Core Rulebook chapter structure is going to be improved on. Making the book a "pleasant read" is one thing; making it an efficiently working rules and reference book is a whole 'nother kettle o fish.

Starship combat, sadly, didn't get as much attention as it should have in playtest. I was concentrating on other parts of the book that needed attention, and trusted the "it's just like HG" assertions to carry that section. The basics are functional, but IMO are calibrated to the wrong standards.
Could they stand a ground-up rewrite? Sure. Do they need it? Only to the point of having *every* underlying assumption examined and accepted or adjusted...
 
Perhaps one modification that could be made is to change Stamina into Hit Points and Life Blood into the Massive Damage Threshold They are the same thing anyway, Massive Damage Threshold is equal to the Constitution score which lifeblood is as well.
 
If there was an update to T20, I believe that the d20 Modern core book be used rather than the D&D PHB.
D&D is set in a fantasy middle ages sort of deal and starts people out as bards and wizards.
The d20 Modern approach tries to replicate the complexities of the world around us. In the future, things will be more dependent on tehnology and therefore more complex.

Of course I'm not saying there needs to be an update. I've noticed some overlap in skills, feats and occupation/class structure so really its more a matter of just deciding which version of a particular one you think fits best in your game.

By the way I like what you've done with the feats.
 
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