Our Future in 2045 (part 1)

According to scientists at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), our future is going to look very different. If anyone has a good idea of what our future will look like, DARPA is an excellent choice for a fortune-teller. These are the same people that innovated and developed GPS (global-positioning systems), advanced robotics, and even the internet itself. It's already rather certain that artificial technology and robots are going to change a number of industries. It's also obvious that drone aircraft will continue to move into the civilian market, and we are likely to see self-driving cars as part of our future as well. Yet DARPA scientists see even bigger changes ahead for us in the next 30 years...

What are your talents? (part 5)

Vehicle talents in Solar Echoes are a bit unusual in that many of them are actually free! This means that you automatically get certain vehicle talents when you have invested the required amount of skill ranks in the pilot: terrestrial or pilot: air/space skills. We found that these talents add a lot of exciting options to car chases and starship battles for players, and that it made sense that when facing high level opponents with lots of skill piloting, they should be able to do more advanced maneuvers. The free maneuvers for terrestrial pilots include: 180 (degree turn), Drift, Sideswipe, and Swerve. The free pilot air/space talent maneuvers include: Fast Break, Immelman Turn, Barrel Roll Loop, Jinking, and Scissors Defense. However, if you really want to be an expert driver or pilot, you'll need to invest in some of the more advanced talents, such as Combat Pilot, Elusive Pilot, Maverick Pilot, or Hyperdrive Blink. These talents are more powerful and don't come free!

What are your talents? (part 4)

Where would a team be without some engineering knowledge? Considering that the Solar Echoes universe is full of vehicles, robots, and all sorts of other contraptions, engineering is often vital for success on a mission. Engineering talents allow for a character to make quick repairs to armor or vehicles, scrounge up necessary parts, jury-rig vehicle systems to work temporarily, understand material properties and gain armor piercing against objects, and even boost the performance of weapons or starship systems. There are explosives talents, where a character can learn to build a variety of explosives, chain them together, conceal and disguise them, identify and disarm them, and even have the ability to create explosives out of common items. Another logic-related talent involves robotics, where a character can identify weaknesses, hack into robots, confuse or deactivate them, and even create your his robot servants, avatars, or even a horde of robotic minions!

What are your talents? (part 3)

Other non-combat talents include the Discern-Motive and Disguise categories. Read-Between-the-Lines gives a bonus when making discern-motive checks to ascertain the truth during a dialogue encounter. Politician allows a player to re-roll a poor discern-motive check. Experienced Negotiator helps the user to avoid being surprised from an attack during a tense negotiation. Combat Opportunist, Study the Battlefield, and Warrior Sight enable the user to gain bonus dice for attacks, gain an extra Reaction per round, or gain a bonus to the Dodge roll in combat, all through the use of a sharply-honed Discern Motive skill. Disguise talents enable the user to give evasive answers, effectively mimic and impersonate a specific person, hide items or objects from view, and even play dead convincingly. Disguise is frequently useful during missions, allowing a character to hide one's true identity or intent. The longer a team can avoid combat and achieve mission objectives, the better chance there is for survival and mission success!

What are your talents? (part 2)

There are quite a number of talent categories to choose from. Solar Echoes of course involves combat, so there are a number of combat talents available, but being a Union Guard agent is not all about combat. There are talents tied to the Awareness skill which allow for a sharper eye, the ability to anticipate and avoid being surprised, the option to accurately target specific limbs when attacking, and even the ability to locate traps and see exploitable opportunities in patrol patterns. Biotech talents relate to protection and healing, availing options to shield the wounded and drag them to safety, or even the option to surgically install cyberware. Some biotech talents also relate to combat, with one allowing for the anatomical understanding of a particular race to yield better combat options when fighting that race, while another biotech talent enables the user to more effectively poison his weapons.

What are your talents? (part 1)

In Solar Echoes, there are special abilities that define your character and give him unique options, and these abilities are called talents. When you first build your character, you may select three talents. Every time your character gains a level, you may select one additional talent, and every four levels, your character also automatically gains a racially-specific talent. There are over 270 talents available to choose from in Solar Echoes, but most talents have prerequisites. Sometimes you need a certain number of ranks in a skill, other times you need to have previously selected a particular talent, and in some instances, you need a combination of skills and talent selections to qualify. The system is designed so you have to plan your character and really formulate, with each level, a vision for the type of character you want to play. The vast number of options and combinations that are possible guarantee that your character is going to be one-of-a-kind. But what types of talents are there?

Resourceful? (part 5)

This skill isn't magic—it doesn't solve all problems or enable players to do unreasonable things. Ultimately, it is up to the MC to decide if the player's suggested use of the skill will allow him to achieve what he intends. No amount of success in resourcefulness rolls will allow a player to figure out how to hack a military installation by fiddling with the wires of a guard's coffee maker, but perhaps those security cameras are on the same feed as the prison TV's? If a player has a great idea but doesn't have the resourcefulness skill to attempt a check, someone else on the team that does have it might bring that idea to fruition with a successful skill check. Basically, resourcefulness is putting the player's ideas into a skill check. There should be a chance for success and failure with most ideas in the game. Otherwise, the players will create the game-world as they go and argue with the MC about the way things “should be” if he disagrees. If you're an imaginative and creative player, I'd recommend dropping at least 1 point in resourcefulness for your character!