ShadowFinder - New General Rules Preview (ShadowWalkers, Wealth Checks) (Patreon)

I have been working on ShadowFinder, a modern-urban-fantasy play mode for Starfinder 1st edition, for more than three years. It's been badly sidetracked by societal and personal health issues, but I have never given up on it. As I slowly recover from chemoradiation treatments, I'm trying to spend a few hours a week getting back to this project.

ShadowFinder adds some new general rules to Starfinder. Here's a preview of the introduction to the "New Things" section of Chapter One of the main ShadowFinder rulebook along with two of the rules in it - ShadowWalkers, and Wealth Checks.

NEW RULES YOU NEED TO KNOW

There are some things GMs and players running a ShadowFinder adventure should be aware of up front. Some of these things are changes in rules, others are just changes of terminology. And, yes, some of these things are straight-up benefits for player characters. It’s okay. The GM has a section on how things from the Shadowblast work, and why your PCs need these benefits.

ShadowWalkers: Not everything can move back-and-forth between the Material Plane and the Shadowblast. No magic, technology, power, or effect can allow reliable or controlled travel between the two (any such effort is always sporadic in its effectiveness, random in location and duration, and effects only inanimate objects). Basically, except by accident or luck, you can't use any of the normal planar travel options to enter or leave the Shadowblast. The sole exception to this are creatures who are ShadowWalkers.

All PCs are assumed to be ShadowWalkers, whether they know it or not. Any NPC or monstrous threat the GM wishes to be a ShadowWalker is one. Being a ShadowWalker doesn’t let you move to or from the Shadowblast with your own power. It just means you can use the spells, devices, and gates that would normally allow planar travel can take you both to and from the Shadowblast, if you happen to have access to such options. That said, sometimes the Shadowblast and the Material Plane do overlap enough that a ShadowWalker can just walk from one to the other… sometimes without even noticing.

No one knows what percentage of creatures are ShadowWalkers. It could be 1-in-10, 1-in-1,000, or even 1-in-10,000,000. That’s for each GM to decide, and for ShadowFinders in their games to find out over time. It could even be that ShadowWalkers native to the Material Plane are rare, and those native to the Shadowblast are common… or vice versa.

What is known is that the cleverest, most power, and most dangerous creatures of the Shadowblast generally aren’t ShadowWalkers, much to their annoyance. They are trapped in the Shadowblast, unable to move to any other plane of existence. Many such creatures were once freer entities, sailing Astral winds at a whim, and will do nearly anything to regain that freedom. Since the Shadowblast appears to be anchored by the Earth of Rasputin’s Legacy on one end, and Lost [FANTASY PLANET NAME REDACTED FOR THIS ARTICLE] on the other, the extraplanar lords and powers trapped in the Shadowblast often feel destroying one world, or both, is their best bet for escaping their gloomy prison. To do that, they craft complex plans that often involve sending minor ShadowWalker minions from the Shadowblast to one or the other world, perhaps to set up cults to perform rituals to find yet more ShadowWalkers among the denizens of the Material Plane, to turn those into more minions, to start more cults…

Wealth Checks: Most things on Earth and [REDACTED] are bought with credit cards, paper money, signature-guaranteed loans, or other mundane currencies and financial instruments that are both complex and boring for a ttRPG to keep track of. Finances in reality are annoying enough without having to figure out your player character's Credit Rating, Available Credit, Liquid Assets, Investments, Living Expenses, taxes, dentist bills, student loans, and so on. Instead, all of those complex aspects of buying power are boiled down to a single number, your Wealth Check. Whenever you want to buy a typical piece of mundane, public-available gear, from an alarm clock to a car, you just need to make a Wealth Check, based on either half your level + one ability score (depending on the type of work you wish to do), or a Profession skill check. Your Wealth Check also determines you baseline standard of living.

However, that mundane economy simply does not cover strange gizmos of weird science, magic items of any type, black-market occult goods, and other things most common citizens don’t need (and may not believe exist), but adventurers often do. These things are purchased with Coin of the Realm (or “cr.” for short), special metal money minted by various secret societies and that are ultimately backed by a complex web of magic, psychic links, rituals, promises, traditions, and reputations.

And by remarkable coincidence, the cr. cost of magic, gizmos, and so on in ShadowFinder, is exactly equal to the credit cost in a typical Starfinder game. See page xx in Chapter XXX: Equipment, for more information on Wealth Checks, and Coin of the Realm.

This also means that “looting the bodies” often just isn’t a big part of ShadowFinder. If someone has some mundane gear, it won’t have any impact on a character’s Wealth Bonus to grab their utility knife, cigarette lighter, hiking books, ball cap, or cell phone. A PC can certainly do this if they think they have use for such items—a cell phone can be used for a few calls that won’t be traced to you, a ball cap may make a quick and simple emergency disguise—but selling such things isn’t going to be enough of a windfall to change what a character can afford to buy. Only major influxes or outgoes of buying power can impact your Wealth Check.

(Art by Antonio)

Magic and hybrid items, and anything else with a listed cr. cost, are fair game to loot, but overall don’t expect to get anything valuable from taking the hockey sticks, cricket bats, and motorcycles of the sports-themed street gang that rules the Lost Stadium in a ShadowFinder adventure. (Unless, of course, one of the baseball bats happens to be a magic item, which is perfectly possible - lots of special items in ShadowFinder appear mundane and require Engineering or Mysticism checks to reveal their special nature, see 'Revealing the Extraordinary' in Chapter XX>)

Your base Wealth Check bonus is equal to your character level, or your greatest Profession skill bonus, whichever is higher.

Support 

Bills related to my fight with cancer still keep coming, even though I am currently in remission. Help is appreciated, but so is just spreading the word to folks you know that I don't.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-owen-kc-stephens-fight-cancer