As you'll know if you followed the spring season of Dan's Olde Time Minis Show, I've been playing the classic Star Frontiers game all this year, and enjoying it immensely. To me, running a roll-low percentile system seems like a breath of fresh air. My players have called out as highlight the interesting intelligent races and cultures for both PCs, and in the standard Volturnus campaign, the alien NPCs.
Those Volturnus alien species seem smartly and loving crafted, with dense one-or-two page briefings on each of their cultures. However, one thing was overlooked: as important as they are to the ongoing campaign, no ability score modifiers are presented for them, as they are for the PC races. How strong is the average Ul-Mor, anyway?
Fortunately, we can deduce what they should be, because in the climactic "Battle of Volturnus" in the final module (SF 2: Starspawn of Volturnus, Zeta Section), stats for collective mass units of each race are presented, which presumably match the "Typical NPC" profile for each type. This assumption is solidified by the opposition Sathar unit stats indeed being a copy of their Typical NPC stats from the core rulebook (p. 59). Note that up until that climax, variable stats are given for every individual that appears, which is not so helpful. Let's compute.
Sathar
First, let's discuss the Sathar. This investigation actually uncovers an error in the core rules. Here's the typical Sathar stat block, as it appears in module SF 2. This is repeated identically in each of four encounters (on p. 26, 27, 28, and 29), and it also matches the Typical NPC table in the Expanded rules p. 59, as well as the Referee's Screen:
Now, despite that agreement across multiple pages and products, it actually contradicts the Sathar ability modifiers in the core rules (p. 10). Given that the average base ability score starts at 45, the p. 10 text says that Sathar STR/STA should be +0, while the INT/LOG should be –5 (so, respectively, an average of 45 and 40). But that's flipped-flopped compared to what's in the Typical NPC stat blocks.
Apparently this must have been a design edit that didn't fully matriculate everywhere in the rulebook (DRY violation). Thinking about it, I prefer what we see in the Typical NPC stat blocks. While Sathar are long wormy creatures, they're less massive than most other types (arguing for low STR/STA), but are infamous as ingenious spacefaring technologists, warmongers, and cunning saboteurs (so probably not low INT/LOG). In my book, I've scratched out the p. 10 modifiers and made them match the typical stat blocks -- and hence don't have to edit all those stat blocks the many other places they appear.
So the duly-corrected Sathar ability modifiers are: STR/STA –5, DEX/RS –5, INT/LOG +0, PER/LDR +10 (and then a required 10-point shift from PER to LDR).
Ul-Mor
The Zeta-section stats for the Ul-Mor cavalry look like this (SF 2, p. 29):
From this we can deduce these ability modifiers: STR/STA –5, DEX/RS +5, INT/LOG +15, PER/LDR +5 (and then like the Sathar, with a required 10-point shift from PER to LDR).
Kurabanda
A squadron of Kurabanda are given these common stats (SF 2, p. 23):
So their ability modifiers should be: STR/STA +0, DEX/RS +5, INT/LOG +0, PER/LDR +5 (with a standard shift of 5-points from STR to STA, and another 5-point shift from RS to DEX).
Edestakai
The Edestakai infantry get these stats (SF 2, p. 27; and repeated in SF 1, p. 12):
These resolve to the following modifiers: STR/STA +5, DEX/RS +25, INT/LOG +15, PER/LDR –5 (with a required 5-point shift from RS to DEX, and a 10-point shift from LOG to INT).
Eorna
A group of Eorna skirmishers get these stats (SF 2, p. 28):
Now, there's a glitch here because the odd 5-point difference between STR and STA can't be recreated by the standard character generation rules. Also, the PS (punching score) is in error; for a STR of 80, it should only be 4 (although any STR higher than that would indeed produce a 5). A similar error pops in a number of the various Eorna stats in SF 1, p. 29. To resolve these, I'd suggest that the STR really should be 85 -- matching the STA score, and making the PS value then correct.
Conclusion
It's nice to finally have those visible for convenience and comparison.
One thing that we immediately notice is that whereas for the Star Frontiers PC races, the ability modifiers are all perfectly balanced (sum to zero for each race) -- for the Volturnus races, that is definitely not the case, and they trend increasingly beefy as the campaign evolves, with generally big bonuses and few to no penalties. I think that's fine for exotic aliens that don't need to be balanced as player character options, and can present as powerful and dangerous friends and/or enemies.
A related detail that's still missing is, as far as I can tell, no movement profiles are ever given for any of these races. That would be nice to have.
And another question one might ask is: What about stats for the Mechanon collective? Well, unfortunately, they're never given character-type ability stats at any point in the campaign -- not even a single one, as far as I can tell. Oddly, they appear as a PC race in the Zebulon's Guide supplement, and get a line in the expanded "Typical NPCs" table (p. 5), but are still missing from the racial ability modifier table (same page). Overall, I think that book is highly suspect and don't trust it for anything.
Finally, here's a consolidated table of Typical NPC stats (of which we know) for the Volturnus races:
Until next time, don't forget to take your vitasalt pills, kids.
