D&D: Five Ways to Put Sci-Fi Into Your High-Fantasy Game
Sometimes you just want to play a robot or wear a suit of powered armor while playing D&D. Here’s how to do that.
Call it human nature, if you will, but there’s just something about seeing a party of elves, dwarves, half-orcs, and probably three tieflings hoping to adopt a goblin and open an inn, that makes you just want to sow a little chaos and play a robot.
Or a little weirdo in powered armor. Don’t worry. You’re not alone. There are dozens of us. Even the designers of D&D understand this, which is why there are plenty of ways to play a sci-fi character in a fantasy game. Here’s how.
Play a Robot
The easiest way to do it is by playing a robot. There are a number of robot options to pick from when creating a character. You could play a Warforged, who can be found in Eberron: Rising from the Last War, or an Autognome from Spelljammer: Adventures in Space.
You could even create your own Custom Lineage out of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and play a robot of your own creation, who comes with a built-in feat for free, something like Crossbow Expert or Sharpshooter to reflect a targeting computer, for instance. Or one of the magic initiate feats that grant you the ability to cast free spells off of a list, and just flavor them as technological abilities built into your systems. A misty step is a teleportation matrix by another name.
Play an Alien
If being a robot is too far afield for you, why not play an alien instead? There are plenty of ways to represent this in-game, with little, if any flavoring needed.
First off, you could play one of D&D’s inherently alien species, the Githyanki or Githzerai. The Githyanki are marauders who make their home on the Astral Plane, which as we all know is basically outer space. And the Githzerai live in the Everchanging Chaos of Limbo. Both come from other worlds, master psionic powers and are perfect examples of aliens.
Or just play a Giff. They’re hippos from space.
Or you could play a Kalashtar, and be someone who is host to an alien symbiote from the plane of dreams, aka the Far Realm, which is beyond the stars where all the eldritch stuff lives. Speaking of which…
Contact an Alien Entity
Why not communicate with a being beyond the stars? There are, as ever, plenty of ways to do exactly that. You could play a Warlock who has made a pact with a Great Old One, an alien being that lives in “the space beyond reality.” These are the names of the thirteen baleful stars that hunger for the warmth and succor of reality.
Or you could play an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer, whose magic comes from space. Because literally:
“An alien influence has wrapped its tendrils around your mind, giving you psionic power.”
And you get telepathy and psionic powers for your trouble. We all know the rules: magic is fantasy, psionics is sci-fi.
John W. Campbell Jr. didn’t wield wayyyyyy too much influence over what we call science-fiction to just let that not be the case. No really, the whole reason mind powers aren’t just the realm of fantasy is all because of one dude.
Be an Inventor
If you can’t be the sci-fi you wish to see in the world, perhaps you can bring it about. And the Artificer is the biggest way to do exactly that. Their whole deal is replicating the effects of magic powers through gizmos and gadgets instead.
A hastily assembled focusing lens and energy crystal might produce a Scorching Ray. And once Artificers get their subclass, they can create a robot friend, be in a suit of powered armor of their own design, or create magical autoturrets that blast your foes with lasers.
Be an Alien Hunter
There is, surprisingly, more than one subclass in D&D devoted to hunting down aliens. There’s the Oath of the Watchers for Paladins, which is all about abjuring beings from beyond the earthly realm. Whether they come from another world, like a fiend, or come from the stars, like an aberration, a Watcher Paladin can abjure them just the same.
Whereas the Horizon Walker Ranger is all about journeying to the places beyond the stars to stalk and kill any creature therefrom which threatens the prime material plane.
Happy (sci-fi) adventuring!
