Review: D20 Modern; or: Be a Fast Hero

[Angry_Pessimist]

d20 Modern is what happens when you apply the d20 system mostly whole-sale to a pseudo-modern world: D&D with guns and some gimped classes, peppered with a couple of good ideas.
Chapter One
We all have the six ability scores and the classes. To spare you multiple paragraphs, be a Fast Hero. They gain the same Hit Dice as a Strong Hero, can be good in either melee or ranged combat, have the best Defense bonus of all the classes, and gain not to shabby skill points. Then, they have Evasion, which rocks your socks compared to Melee Smash, which gets +1 damage to melee, or Improved Aid Another, where you give +3 instead of +2 to Aid Another attempts! Wowzers!

Oh, and occupations aren't too bad; they give what would otherwise be one-dimensional characters some versatility; but a Smart Hero is almost always going to be a better professor than a Strong Hero with the Academic occupation.

Oh, and Action Points. They look like a good idea at first, but they are a finite resource, and they don't make that much of a difference (+1-+6 on one roll). That, and somebody with zero action points and talents that can only be activated with action points is gimped until he gains a level. Hope you're not level 20!

Chapter Two has skills. Some are going to be more useful than others. Listen and Spot are useful in any situation, but Swim set in the Sahara desert will rarely, if ever, see use. Oh, and Craft (Pharmaceutical) isn't worth the cost in skill points. It gives +2 Fortitude save bonus on the next check only for one poison/disease! Forget Craft (Chemical) and making poisons and pipe bombs, I want to be good at making mediocre antidotes! That, and Research should've been combined with Search or not used: instead of rolling a Research check to find a good job, one of my characters just looked up in the phone book and craigslist. In short, Research is not needed if the player knows what he's doing, and he has an Internet connection and knows what Google is. It should be used in pre-Information Age campaigns where vast stores of knowledge are limited to famous libraries, and nobody has a search engine.

Chapter Three has feats.

Once again, some feats are just clearly better than others. For example, Windfall gives a Wealth bonus that can be spent away, while Power Attack can be used forever. Oh, and unless your game is set in a deserted tribal village that has never seen the so-called "modern civilization," take Personal Firearms Proficiency.

Chapter Four has equipment, and guns rock. Seriously, a goon with Advanced Firearms Proficiency and Burst Fire can do 4d10 damage with the right gun. Sure, it gives a -4 penalty, but get a bunch of mooks with this feat, train them all on a single target, and you may just have a chance to hit. And a successful hit does about 23 damage on average, which can kill anybody who isn't a Tough Hero with a good Massive Damage Threshold and a decent Fortitude Save.

Oh, I didn't mention Massive Damage. You see, it's equal to your Con, and if one attack does an equal or greater amount, you roll a Fortitude save or your drop to -1 hit point.

Uh oh, that High Level Smart Hero with a Consitution of 8 can get owned by a Minigun!

Obviously, it may not be suitable for "Get shot at and keep going" type of games, unless you play as a Fast Hero!

Chapter Five is combat, and has adopted the D&D approach in most respects, and any number-crunching rules lawyer will know the ins and outs already; except that he may have to look at the new rules for vehicle combat and guns.

Chapter Six has Advanced Classes, and once again, some are better than others; the Investigator gets "Class Features" that can be duplicated with some clever role-playing and regular use of skills. Gunslinger is just plain awesome, and the Soldier is just good with weapons. Unless you're playing House d20 and are a bunch of doctors, you should be one of the two previous classes. And face, most people who play d20 games want to fight and get rich. So I can assume that a large portion of people that bought this game are going to play something like "Call of Duty" or "Halo," not "Seinfield d20."

Chapter Seven is "Gamemastering," and as such, tells you how to run a game. As this forum is not full of n00bs that have never touched an adventure module, I'll just say that it is mostly a tool for those new to being a GM. It is actually quite good at it's job.

Chapter Eight is chock full of NPCs and monsters, and my favorite part was that it gave ways to create your own monsters. The archetypes can do justice for about any NPC archetype that is not "Mr. Badass/God."

Chapter Nine gives three campaign settings. The first is where the PCs are government agents with psychic powers that investigate psychic stuff. It's actually a good idea. Shadow Chasers is a paranormal horror setting where the PCs fight against "things man was not meant to know." The Shadow Slayer just rocks, and is the best idea for monster-hunters, which the PCs most definitely are. Urban Arcana is what happens when D&D gets into the Modern World: Basically, Mages are just plain better than Scientists as character options, you can get away with murder as only a few people can see the monsters and mages for what they really are, so even government agents are clueless if they don't have that special "See Monsters" ability. Elves are just viewed as humans, Fireballs are viewed as gas leaks, etc.

Chapter Ten is FX Abilities, and imports the d20 Magic and Psionic system. All I can say is that if you're allowing Psions and Mages, the players will want some of these abilities. Who needs a murder mystery when you can just speak with the dead. No need to worry about carrying around a rocket launcher without a permit when you can just use a Fireball, which is more concealable!

In short, this book had some potential (d20 in the modern world), but it could have been so much more. It cannot seem to capture any genre well enough that an existing RPG game can do better.

The Good: The Fast Hero, the Gunslinger, the firearms section, and the initial idea, rules for making monster NPCs.

The Bad: It can't seem to make up it's mind on what to be, and some options are just so clearly better than others that it doesn't take an obsessive-compulsive rules lawyer to find what's good and what's not.

The Ugly: The campaign settings came off as D&D with guns.

Two out of five stars, if you cannot make an informed decision by yourself and have to use an arbitrary rating system.

[Talisman]

I ran a D20 Modern one-shot for my game crew...we had heard good things about it, but couldn't quite believe them. How could a modern-era game using, essentially, D&D rules, actually work?

Turns out we were right.

The quick version: I made 5th-level pregen characters. Simple drug trade/gang violence mystery scenario. Roleplaying was great, of course. Skills were...d20 skills. You like 'em or you hate 'em.

Combat was something of a mess. 3 5th-level PCs went up against around 6-ish 2nd-level, non-elite gang members and ran like pussycats. The Strong/Tough hero clobbered one of them, the Charismatic shot one (didn't drop him) and the Fast ran two down with his car.

The players decalred that their characters felt underpowered...and compared to D&D PCs, they certainly were. 2d6 damage is not terribley impressive at 5th level. It was rather amusing that the Strong/Tough did more damage with his bare fists than with a baseball bat.

[Angry_Pessimist]

It would be worth it for a reduced price, and it does have some good ideas.