Further Beyond RPG Dev Diary #6 Classes: The Scientist
The complexities of an unknown galaxy stretch out before you, too vast for anyone to know in its entirety, but that won’t stop you. When the pathway twists and confuses others, you have the razor of rationality to cut through vines of obscurity and uncover the route to success for you and your fellow explorers.
As a scientist, you will be the keen intellect at the heart of the group. It is you who can uncover the perfect strategies to defeat any foe or the safest path to take through an uncertain land. If you like solving complex puzzles and having lots of options at your disposal, the scientist is the class for you.
Core Features
Let’s have a look at how a scientist works.
Spark of Inspiration Whenever you or an ally attempt a check, you can use this to increase it by your intellect score after you’ve seen the roll. However, you won’t be able to do this again until you have received an opportunity.
Gadgeteer Once per turn, you’ll be able to use one of your class items without it using up any of your action economy.
Efficient Intuition When you use your stress to gain advantage on a roll, you’ll instead be able to do so as a reroll after you roll to ensure you spend your stress only when necessary.
These abilities grant a scientist unparalleled abilities to stay one step ahead of any foe. Efficient Intuition allows you to only gain stress when absolutely necessary while Gadgeteer means that you’ll always be able to make use of your key scientist subclass features, even if you just can’t resist pulling out your trusty boom stick in the middle of a firefight.
Finally, spark of inspiration interacts with the opportunities mechanic. This is part of the core rules that tells us that when someone succeeds on a check, the players or the game master can suggest some unexpected benefit resulting from the check that the explorer could attempt to get. If they do so, they will suffer a consequence but don’t need to roll any dice – they simply get what is offered but must pay a price. The spark of inspiration feature is very helpful for making sure you succeed on a very important check and afterwards, has you on the lookout for these high stakes devil’s bargain moments to ask of your game master.
The scientist is a complex class that will be immensely rewarding for those who wish to delve into its secrets and really engage in roleplay in both a playful and tactical way.
Soon, we will be dropping in with the final class in our core class roster for Further Beyond: the Soldier.
