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FirebirdFlying
2014-03-20, 09:52 PM
Are there any systems that allow (or could be easily made to allow) someone to play as a brainship (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainship)?

(If someone's done good homebrew for this, that works too.)

BWR
2014-03-21, 03:05 AM
You could probably tweak Dragonstar easily enough. They have soulmechs, which are basically living creatures who've put their lifeforce into robots, so they are living robots. Putting your soul into some other robotic thing like a ship should be possible. You could easily just say "ship x has a living soul guiding it" and be done with it.

Edit: if this is meant to be playable, it will need more work. Soulmechs are designed as ECL 0 things, and put any sort of ship instead of a body will mess this up royally. You'd have to work out some sort of level equivalence based on how powerful the ship is. A small ship with even a minor set of armaments will be a beast in combat and be the equivalent of a high-level fighter type. OTOH, there are serious issues with cost of upkeep, lack of mobility in tight situations (they won't be able to come along for the dungeon crawl), problems of rasiing/ressurrecting, etc.

erikun
2014-03-21, 12:13 PM
Brainships are an extablished thing in Eclipse Phase. Not only is it possible to upload a brain to a computer and run the ship that way, but I believe there is at least one canon organic-created space station floating around.

Segev
2014-03-21, 12:39 PM
BESM or GURPS could let you do it fairly trivially; just pick your attributes to represent the physical and mental capabilities you want.

Ravens_cry
2014-03-21, 12:50 PM
You could also do this in Mutants and Masterminds. Not specifically, but you could model the idea quite closely.

Saidoro
2014-03-21, 03:53 PM
Brainships are an extablished thing in Eclipse Phase. Not only is it possible to upload a brain to a computer and run the ship that way, but I believe there is at least one canon organic-created space station floating around.
It's called MeatHab (http://www.poeland.com/eclipsePhase/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Meathab). And to get even closer to the original request, the Transhuman sourcebook has both the Nautiloid Morph(A smallish spaceship that you can use as your body and/or home base) and the Brain Box augment which lets you use a biological brain to control a robotic morph. An augmented Nautiloid with a Brain Box and a cheap puppet socked secondary body for when you need to "leave" the ship are all pretty easily purchasable by a starting character.

lightningcat
2014-03-21, 04:23 PM
I've done it in Revised d20 Starwars with no rules tweaks. Between cybernetic rules and pilot rules, you should be able to do it in most sci fi games. YMMV on effectiveness of the character.

FirebirdFlying
2014-03-21, 06:44 PM
Thanks, guys! I'll take a look at everything…

(I'm aware that the actual play of it may be a very difficult thing, especially if there are other PCs who don't have the same scope/limitations, but I wanted to see how it might look mechanically first.)

Prime32
2014-03-21, 07:07 PM
I've seen someone pull it off in D&D 3.5 by haunt shifting themselves into an airship they bought through the Landlord feat.

erikun
2014-03-21, 07:14 PM
On that note, I feel compelled to make note of the D&D3e Psionic Sandwich trick. Yes, it's quite silly, but it also involves the psion placing their mind into an inanimate object. So if you wanted to stick your mind into some sort of flying ship in D&D3e, that's probably quite possible...

Xerlith
2014-03-31, 01:35 PM
In D&D Eberron theoretically mind-switching someone and an elemental and then stuffing them into a Khyber Shard and then an airship should work as well...