chacadwa.com

Technical blog and writings by Micah Webner.

Blogrimage 2014 Day 27: I AM KROGAN

I am Nakmor Kryyg. I was there at the Urdnot Camp with the others from the Kraddack Wastes who came to form an alliance between Clan Nakmor and Clan Urdnot. We were there at the camp when Urdnot Grunt, tank-born, fought with his alien krannt in the Rite of Passage and slayed the thresher maw. I know how Shepherd and Urdnot Grunt went with the salarian to stop Weyrloc Guld from his madness. It was then that I knew I must leave Tuchanka and make a new life among the stars. I must leave behind the fools who accompanied me during my Rite, and find a new krannt among the aliens. But above all, I must find enemies worthy of destruction. I must fight, for I am krogan.

This blogrimage has been all about learning how to become a Pathfinder RPG game master. Many of the people who've been reading these posts are fans of the Mass Effect Trilogy and are probably wondering why I've suddenly switched to first-person krogan in my narrative.

The answer is simple. I'm looking forward to a chance to sit on the other side of the GM screen now that we've discovered d20 Mass Effect and my wife has agreed to GM that game.

I found d20 Mass Effect in the d20 System fan creations section of the EN World forum. If Mass Effect isn't your style of play, there are several other variants there, including d20 Ghostbusters, d20 Terminator, and d20 Matrix, just to name a few.

I spent the evening rolling up my first level krogan battlemaster, and I can tell you, it was a lot tougher than any of the Pathfinder RPG character builds I've done to date. If you know anything about tabletop RPG play, you'll understand my pain when I tell you that the krogan racial modifiers include -4 for wisdom and -2 to charisma and dexterity, but biotics (Mass Effect's equivalent to magic) depends on strong wisdom and charisma scores, and what's a krogan battlemaster without his biotic attacks to go with his assault rifle and shotgun blasts? The +4 to strength and +2 constitution make him a great melee fighter, and (as far as I can tell) you still apply the strength bonus damage on ranged attacks from rifles and shotguns, but Kryyg's biotic abilities will be very limited until he levels up.

Considering that it was Mass Effect that got me thinking about tabletop RPGs again, you can bet that I'm really looking forward to playing this.