Tellarites!

[tonyg]

Rather than wait for the NG, I decided to write up Tellartites for CODA (I'm working on the other races too).

TELLARITES

SPECIES ADJUSTMENTS: +1 Strength, +1 Vitality, +1, -2 Presence. Tellarites are strong and resistant to injury, but their argumentative nature makes them somewhat difficult to get along with.

• ARGUMENTATIVE: Tellarites love to argue and debate. Whenever a Tellarite character is given the opportunity to engage in a debate or argument they will do so unless the character spends a courage point. Note that the degree of argument and opportunity to do so are somewhat subjective to outside circumstances (no Tellarite would stop to engage in a debate during combat or other dangerous situation).
• BONUS EDGE: NIGHT VISION: All Tellarites receive the Night Vision Edge (see page 136).
• BONUS SKILL: PERSUADE (ARGUE): All Tellarites learn how to argue. They gain the Persuade skill level 1, with the specialty of Argue. Tellarite characters can treat this skill as a professional skill for purposes of skill acquisition (see page 98) and advancement (see page 153).
• QUICK REACTIONS: Tellarites respond quickly to danger. All Tellarates receive a +2 bonus to Quickness reaction tests.

[Dan Stack]

Looks good. One suggestion I would make would be to drop the Argumentative characteristic. You'll notice, for example, that no rules prohibits a player from making a happy-go-lucky Vulcan. I believe it is better to leave such details to roleplaying. Your mileage may vary.

[METH]

How about changing the
PERSUADE (ARGUE) to
PERSUADE (DEBATE).
It would have a similar effect, but not as much negative connotation. As for being difficult to get along with, we could use a FLAW (Arrogant) to make up for that.

[tonyg]

I know what you mean with the Arrogant bit, but I also need to balance the species off in CODA terms. Klingons got Ferocity.
Maybe some other trait would be nice (Arrogant doesn't quite work, since I don't like the idea of Tellarites not being able to use courage in social tests, maybe Proud? ).

As for Persuade (Debate), that seems fine to me. In fact, I had difficulty choosing PErsuade rather than Influence or Negotiate.


Tellarites are a difficult race to write up, with only 3 appearance in the series, with teh only one with a speaking role being the ambassor in Journey to Babel. The whole "Argumentatruve" bit seems to be focused on that one appearance.

Maybe "gruff" or "direct" might be better.

[Doug Burke]

Originally posted by tonyg
Rather than wait for the NG, I decided to write up Tellartites for CODA

You know, this is very similar to the version I worked up for the lone Tellarite in my Trek game. Here's my version for consideration. I just ask that you forgive the obnoxious ability names. They attacked me and demanded to be included...

TELLARITES

SPECIES ADJUSTMENTS: +1 Agility, +1 Vitality, -1 Presence. Tellarites are resistant to injury and skilled at fine manipulation, but their argumentative nature makes them somewhat difficult to get along with.

• TUNNEL VISION: Tellarites have infrared vision, so they receive Night Vision as a Bonus Edge.
• DEBATE SOCIETY: Tellarites have raised arguing and debate to an art form. As a result, they receive Persuasion (Debate) 2 at no cost and can treat the skill as a professional skill for the purpose of skill selection and advancement.
• PIG-HEADED (I warned you!): Tellarites are stubborn and suspicious of the motives of those who are not. Add +2 to either Willpower or Savvy (player's choice). Conversely, this attitude is seen as a detriment by other species, and as a result, Tellarites suffer a -2 penalty on all Social tests with non-Tellarites.

[tonyg]

How about

HAM: Tellartites recieve a -1 to all acting skill tests.

[AllenS]

hey, two versions this game is starting to do what the Icon version did; generate fan material to fill in until the official stuff gets published . These versions are veey close together, although I do agree with Dan about the "Argumentative" thing in tonyg's version; that should be left up to roleplaying, mush as the Vulcans emotional suppression is.

Maybe I should post my version of the Zakdorn

Allen

[tonyg]

Allen,

Go ahead. Post it. It might be a while before DECTREK gets to the "minor" species.


One thing that I wish Decipher did was what WotC did when they released the 3E PHB. They put some info in the back of the book so people could play the game before waiting for the DMG.

[qerlin]

One of the reasons I started darking this board. The fan-swarned racial templates. Keep it up guys!

Once I get my friggin' book, I'll probably start working on some of the minor races, too...

[CrimsonHawk]

May I recommend the following additions?


*****
LANGUAGE: Tellarite, Federation Standard
FAVORED PROFESSION: Starship Engineer.
*****

Then again, that was probably pretty self-explanatory, eh?

=====O
Dale W. Robbins

[Doug Burke]

Actually, I listed their Favored Profession as either Starship Engineer or Diplomat.

[Erik Filean]

I plan to give my Tellarites a Pattern Recognition species ability that grants a +2 bonus to academic tests used to understand the layout of a complex system and diagnose systemic problems.

The idea comes from the long-time gamer's stereotype of Tellarites as engineers (which, for no canonical reason, has come to be associated with them since FASA). However, I didn't want to play completely to stereotype, so Pattern Recognition is designed to have use for Tellarite diplomats, ecologists, computer scientists, economists, doctors, etc. while still supporting the "traditional" Tellarite engineer. I also like the approach because it supports Tellarites in a number of specialist professions without making it any easier to fix a system problem per se.

[Sea Tyger]

I chose to have the Tellarites with +1 Str, +1 Vit and -2 Prs, Night Vision, Persuade (Debate), Pattern Recognition and Doug Burke's Pig-Headed ability.

Abilities balance out to 0 picks. Nightvision is worth 2 picks. Persuade (Debate) is worth 3 picks (1 for the specialty). Pattern Recognition is worth 2 picks. Pig-Headed is worth 4 picks (6 picks for the +2 reaction, and -2 points for the social flaw). This totals 11 picks. Again we're underpowering the race.

There are two ways to handle this. The first is to follow Doug's lead and reduce the Presence penalty to -1 (to bring the total to 16).

The other way is to leave the Presence penalty intact and add the Armor species/creature ability...this is just a personal thought, but I've always believed that Tellarites had thick hides to go along with their thick skulls. The armor value would be 3, and would be worth 3 picks by itself. That would bring the total to 14 picks. Each additional armor point, according to the NG rules, would be worth 1 more pick, so if you wanted to bump the armor bonus to 4 or even 5, you'd total out at 15 or 16 picks respectively (although an armor value above 3 would be excessive IMO).

Maybe I'll break out my FASA books at some point and work up the Edoans...

[AslanC]

Don't forget that once you have the NG you may want to remake them as the book has cool guides for making aliens species

[Sea Tyger]

And that's exactly what I was doing. I can't say enough how much I love the NG!