Notice

Information here is work in progress and not up to date at this moment. Don’t use for character creation, but feel free to use it to get an idea.

Subsystems and System Changes

Bright Future Downtime
Bright Future Healing
Bright Future Character Creation
Bright Future Additional Strategic Mechanics

Campaign Time Frames

Bright Future tends to play more of a slow drip style of adventure, with high doses of action occurring a day or two a week, with investigative, stealth, and social challenges between the dangerous high points. There are a few standard units of time used in the standard style of play. With combat being more dangerous and healing times extended to compensate for the change in timing.
Month: A month is the standard interval of time for character progression. Continued employment checks are made to determine if the player receives a raise or gets fired depending on their Performance Rating.
Week: Occupational Performance Rating checks, income, and downtime all trigger in week intervals.

Bright Future System Additions

The Bright Future setting adds some new systems into D&D 5th edition. They are designed to be light weight additions to the system to help cover finer details that are simplified in 5th edition. If you find a better way to simplify the new rules that better fits your style of play, adapt them to your game.

Stability

Stability is a sort of mental health for characters in the Bright Future setting. With life becoming more mundane through the advancement of science and magical studies, monsters and dragons are known and understood elements, but the world continues to amaze and horrify. New beings that defy understanding of both science and magic, acts of terror and torture wear on the mind, and situational choices are all forces that wear on characters and their beliefs.
Bright Future Stability

Weave

The Weave is a force of nature, it flows through ever living things and is the source of both life and magic.

Personal Weave Imprint

Every living being has a personal and unique weave ‘fingerprint’ called an imprint. While most can’t tap into the weave themselves to cast spells, they’re still connected to it, and as a result everyone has a unique weave imprint which flows through their blood. Those capable of casting spells leave a weave imprint at the location of the caster and on the effect itself.

Forensics

Forensic science is still developing, fingerprinting is in use but a fingerprint database or archive doesn’t exist anywhere in the world. Magi-Forensics has picked up where science has left off, tracing an individuals unique signature to determine who they are. Instead of using the DNA from blood, forensics will identify a person by their weave imprint they left behind. As a result, blood and casting leave traces.

Imprint Strength

Weave Imprints have a strength to them, blood maintains a weak imprint outside of the body, but a spell casters blood starts at a moderate imprint. For spell casting, the strength of the imprint is based on the level of the spell and how long it was held. An instant duration cantrip leaves an extremely weak imprint, while spells like Time Stop or casting Magic Missile using an 8th level slot will leave a strong and noticeable weave imprint.

Augmentations, and Attunement

A persons weave imprint is left on any item they attune with, and any augmentations that are connected to a person. The longer an augment is connected to an individual the stronger the weave imprint, and the longer it takes to fade. Attunement by nature leaves a strong imprint with the magical item, as the time it takes to attune includes a persons natural weave to mix with the magical item to access it’s powers.

Heat System

Heat

A value monitored by the DM/GM, but something to keep in mind while acting in civilized areas. Heat measures how much force people are willing to bring against you. It differs from renown in that Heat doesn’t imply how much is known about you, simply how badly they want to reach resolution of an issue immediately. Steal a persons wallet and they’ll chase you till you’re out of sight, maybe file a police report, but you steal a briefcase full of cash and it’ll take a week to a month before the initial search is called off. Heat dies over time, but events aren’t simply forgotten, people just call off manhunts and divert resources elsewhere.

Heat Dissipation

Heat tends to go down over time, depending on the group and the action done. It can take days of down time to lose a level of heat.

Gaining Heat

Gaining heat requires action, not always your action though. Heat comes from anything that draws attention to an action, and the value associated with it. Killing someone always draws heat, because it’s considered a high value action, how you kill them is where drawing attention comes in. Simple weapons and unarmed won’t draw much extra attention, but finding a tortured, mutilated, or otherwise dismembered body is going to bring some heavy heat.

Deflecting Heat

The other way to remove heat is to deflect it onto someone else. The problem being a good lie may convince people temporarily, but it tends to come back after they find out the lie you told was a lie. Heat could be deflected onto you as well, suddenly blamed for something you didn’t do.

Renown System

Renown

Be it fame or infamy, how well known you are impacts daily life significantly. Bright Future Classes will have a Renown bonus on their Class Table, letting you know what your base renown bonus is, this bonus can be enhanced by taking specific feats or through roleplaying. If an act is deemed press-worthy enough, involved character may see a boost to their Renown.

Renown Checks

Renown checks are made to see if other know you, usually made on first contact with a person it determines if they recognize you and what you’re known for. Roll a D20 and add your Renown bonus to the roll. Advantage and Disadvantage can be applied by the DM if the check if in a location the character may be well known or particularly unknown.
Renown Results:
7 and below: Unrecognized
8 – 13: Vaguely familiar (May recognize face and name, but not history)
14 – 17: Known (Recognition of person and what they’re known for)
18 and up: Well Known (Recognition and familiarity with history)

Additional Skill Usages

Computer Use and Magi-Tech

The rise of magi-electronics and the digital medium may have changed the landscape, but the same skills used before still apply. Everyone now a days is proficient in the basic use of an electronic or Magi-Tech device, however Tool Proficiency in Computers refers to a deeper understanding that just daily use.

Proficiency Computers

Any character who has Proficiency with Computers can use other skills in digital space with their normal proficiency bonus. Without Proficiency in Computers character may still make rolls using their attribute bonus, but they do not gain proficiency in the check even if they normally would have proficiency.

Computer Use Skill Examples

Some skills work exactly as expected, other skills have expanded options, here’s a list of a few examples:
Deception: Impersonating another persons avatar, tell a convincing lie that isn’t easily fact checked.
Investigate: Search for information, be it a general search or a focused research task. Investigate can also be used to look for signs of digital intrusion, and is used to counteract hacking attempts.
Insight: Reading into someones digital actions and interactions. Running a fact check, used to counter Deception.
Hacking: Hacking into an magi-electronic device requires Proficiency with Computers, your bonus for hacking is equal to Proficiency + Intelligence Modifier + Device Bonus.
Bright Future Hacking

Photography

Performance

Dexterity (Performance) check is used for photographs, and determines the quality of the image, difficulty of the shot determines the DC.

Investigate

Look over a photograph for extra information, or determine if a photograph has been forged or modified. Intelligence (Investigation) is used to make these checks.

Forgery Kit

You can alter photographs with an Intelligence Bonus + Forgery Kit Proficiency to alter an image. Larger changes have a higher DC, failure results in corruption of the image and clear signs of tampering.

Medicine

Surgery Checks

A creature proficient with a Surgery Kit can perform various Surgery Checks. Those without Surgery Kit proficiency can not attempt Surgery Checks, and deal 1d6 damage per attempt.
Restore Health: Surgery can be used to restore hit points, using a Wisdom (Medical) check DC 16 and spending half an hour, you can restore a character’s level worth of d6 in hit points. Surgery can only be used on a character once per long rest. Failure results in no health being restored and the character being unable to regain health from Surgery until their next long rest. So a 4th level character receives 4d6 hit points back.

Survival

Urban Survival, managing to forage for food and shelter in an urban environment.

Urban Tracking

Tracking in an urban environment uses Investigation and Persuasion to follow people. Investigation lets a character track physical clues, while Persuasion is asking people if they’ve seen a certain person.