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Race Ideas

Cognisant

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It occurred to me while watching "Guardians of the Galaxy" that the different races and fighting styles could be adapted to a tabletop RPG, perhaps I'm only thinking it because I've been reading up on this stuff too much lately, anyway just for fun in this thread lets come up with some races for a hypothetical game set in space.

Aliens, robots, sentient clouds, anything and everything is possible, there can even be race modifiers with a mix of perks and disadvantages.
 

Cognisant

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Race: Humanoids
Humans are just one of the many unexceptional races, evolution favours what works and on most life supporting planets the primary intelligent species tends to be some medium sized creature of decent adaptability and few strengths or weaknesses. These species make up the vast majority of the interstellar community, most are omnivores, most breathe oxygen, most can see, smell, touch, taste and hear, so all in all the only exceptional trait humans posses is that they're exceptionally mundane. However the good thing about this is that humans blend in just about anywhere, they make friends with other species quite readily and can make use of most ships/weapons/technology interfaces with little difficulty.

The humanoid races don't come with any exceptional perks, indeed they're the standard by which other races are balanced, although being humanoid means you character can look like whatever you want them to as long as these cosmetic differences don't yield any practical benefit, for example mottled skin is okay but it doesn't count as natural camouflage and no matter how big your character's ears/eyes are it doesn't improve their senses.
 

Cognisant

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Unless explicitly stated otherwise a race can only have one racial modifier.

Racial Modifier: Cybernetic
Normal prosthetics can be grafted into the nervous system at any age but a direct cybernetic neural interface can only be implanted very early on as it involves making modifications to the actual neocortex itself which in an adult can cause mental instability, memory loss, even systemic failure of the body's internal regulatory systems leading to death or a comatose state.

Character's with the Cybernetic racial modifier begin with a neural interface and one prosthetic if they wish to deduct its cost from their starting wealth. The neural interface gives bonuses to hacking, electronics use and resistance to physic attack, however the character can now be attacked electronically and takes stun damage from an EMP like a robot or android would.

Racial Modifier: Energy Host
In the reproductive cycle of certain energy beings an unborn child of another race is implanted with an embryonic energy being and this host's lifespan serves as its gestation period. Once the host dies the energy being is born and there's much debate over whether the consciousness of this new energy being is derived from the host or is an entirely new entity in of itself. The fact that it's born with no memories of its host's life suggest the latter although they do tend to take an interest in their host's affairs, either by sentiment or because of the situation they're born into.

An energy host gains a limited number of abilities from the energy being race and limited susceptibility to energy being weaknesses, being a host also improves the diplomatic position with the parent race by one increment however it also decreases the diplomatic position with the opposing energy race type by one increment.
 

Cognisant

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Racial Modifier: Psychic Sensitivity
All races can develop their latent psychic abilities with years of appropriate training but for whatever reason this character is especially sensitive to psychic phenomena, this sensitivity gives bonuses to certain psychic abilities but also makes the character in question especially vulnerable to psychic attack and influence.

Racial Modifier: Android/Gynoid
Every race that builds robots at some point or other tries to build full artificial copies of themselves, perhaps for infiltration or impersonation but just as often as not it'll simply be a matter of hubris, I mean what engineer could resist the temptation to point at someone and brag "you see that person, I made that, I can make people". Of course being such perfect copies means they often have the same free will and self determinism as real people which inevitably leads to them escaping and trying to live out their natural lives in peace, despite not having any such natural lifespan.

An android/gynoid is effectively identical to the race it was designed to imitate, unless wounded in which case their blood will be some unnatural colour, not being biological means they're immune to disease, poisons and bleed effects (they do bleed but don't need the blood, it's purely cosmetic), they take half damage when exposed to a vacuum or damaging radiation and take stun damage from EMP.

All androids/gynoids begin with a bounty equal to 10x their starting wealth.
 

Jennywocky

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I wanna be a Kree.

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I was rather surprised the Skrulls didn't show up. They were a fan fave way back when. But maybe they'll merge the Shi'ar (and Lilandra's Imperial Guard) in here somewhere.
 
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