Alternity 2nd Edition

Alternity 2nd Edition
RPG published by Sasquatch Game Studio
Authors	Richard Baker David Noonan Stephen Schubert
First Publication	1998 (1st Edition) 2018 (2nd Edition)

Alternity with the serial numbers filed off.

In 2004, the Alternity trademark was invalidated under section 8 (failure to prove ongoing use), basically meaning that WotC abandoned it. Because of this, Richard Baker was able to relaunch the Alternity name without attracting retaliation from WotC but all the legacy races were dumped; presumably parts of the material are still copywritten to WotC. A few parts were ported almost unchanged such as the situation die system (which was merely reversed +/-). But most of the changes did not improve the system.

Skill rolling has been reversed so that your roll target is to be greater or equal to 20-(ability score+skill rank) for an average (ordinary) success. The target is +5 for excellent (good) success and +10 for stellar (amazing) success. This necessarily means that skills are limited to 10 ranks and ability scores are limited to 10 so that your target roll can't go negative. Compared to first edition, for a max rank skill test with no situation die the stellar success is a bit more likely than it was.

The damage system of ordinary/good/amazing + stun/wound/mortal damage that conveniently scaled from individuals up to starships for armor degradation of damage is gone, as is the distinction between Low and High impact physical damage. In its place, players have just a wound pool and armor has fixed values. Old Alternity was very much a rock-paper-scissors affair of correctly guessing whether the enemies would have knives, ballistic guns, or lazorbeamz, and picking armor accordingly.

The perks and flaws system of 1st edition is gone, although these were pretty tangential even in the original system so it's no great loss. But so are the rank benefits of skills, and in their place is a talents system. In place of the VERY loose professions are archetypes which have mandatory and discretionary talents and skills. While this system isn't as bad as it COULD be (it's not as bad as Starfinder where every class needs a chapter to explain its specific flavor of hit-with-stick), it's still not as clean as the old system.

Mutations are gone, suggesting they weren't part of Baker's vision for the game and just shoehorned in for Gamma World. Psionics are still around; the psi skills are fundamentally the same as the old broad skills but like regular skills they've got some talents tacked on.

Archetypes

• Brawler: Tanky murderhobo. Equivalent to the old combat spec leaning towards defense.
• Expert: Nerdy murderhobo. Just like the 1st-ed tech op, the expert pulls double duty as both skillmonkey and medic.
• Leader: Bossy murderhobo. This is where the archetypes begin to diverge from the previous professions. The leader is a fight & inspire type, essentially a diplomat-combat spec.
• Striker: Unsubtle DPS murderhobo. Combat spec with an offense slant.
• Survivor: Subtle DPS murderhobo. Basically the free agent, a sneaky rogue type.
• Freeform: Build your own murderhobo.

Races

• Human:
• Elaphromorph: Low gravity humans
• Baromorph: High gravity humans
• Android: Originally built to be companions and workers, they are robots with human appearaces.
• Briith: Hardy folk from a high gravity enviroment. Some consider them short tempered, but they are just very direct. Don't like risk, but once commited to an action they will complete it.
• Nesh: Gaunt humanoids the live symbotically with the sentient trees of their planet. Hold Mystical beliefs.
• Xayon: "Creepy and twisted" looking humanoids with a centaur-like appearance. The result of an unknown aliens species bioengineering themselves with human explorers, though traces of neither remain.