Enhanced Basic Characters

[Sir Brad]

OK some GM's only allow "Basic" characters like those drawn from Book 1, Citizens (or Spinward Marches Campaign) and Contact articles believing that Advanced Character Generation leaves the characters Over Skilled and overshadowing latter added Careers. To me that's a fair enough assessment, But your left with Scouts that are just Vagabonds that can pilot a ship but can't make First Contact or Survey a Star System, Army and Marine Veterans that lack Fieldcraft and Merchants that cant cut a deal to save their lives.

What I suggest is drawing a leaf from the MegaTravller book and allowing a "Special Duty" Roll each Term, if the character makes the roll they receive an additional skill and can take any number of their Skill rolls for that term from the "Special Duty" Skill table, alternately if the GM doesn't like the idea of increasing the number of skills the characters will have by about 50% (I repeated William G. Stoddards experiment from JTAS #23 to test it out) they may just allow the characters to take Rolls on the Special Duty table that term without receiving additional Skills. the Skills on the Table are either skills taken from books 4-7 or book 1 skills that would be unusual for that Service.

At the moment I have Tables ready for the Core Characters and am working on Finalising the first batch of Citizens Careers

the Tables are as follows

Navy: 5+

1. Streetwise
2. Brawling
3. Gravitics
4. Communications
5. Liaison
6. Leader/Ship Tactics/Fleet Tactics

Event Roll #6 allows the choice of any of the three skills, but the character must have Ship Tactics before they can select Fleet Tactics.


Marines: 4+

1. Battledress*
2. 0g Combat
3. Recon
4. Survival
5. Demolitions
6. Gunnery/ Ships Boat

* on first receipt of this skill convert the characters Vacc-Suit skill to Battledress and add one level to the skill, any further recepts of the Vacc-suit Skill are instead taken as levels of Battledress.

Event roll #6 allows the choice of either the Gunnery or Ships Boat skills.

Army: 6+

1. Recon
2. Survival
3. Combat Engineer
4. Demolitions
5. Streetwise
6. Vacc-Suit/Battledress*

* First receipt of this skill must be taken as Vacc-Suit, further receipt of this skill may be taken as additional levels of Vacc-Suit or to convert the current level of Vacc-Suit Skill to Battledress, from that point on further recipts of this result are taken as levels of Battledress.


Scouts: 3+

1. Survey
2. Liaison
3. Streetwise
4. Communications
5. Admin/Leader
6. Survival/Hunting/Recon

Receipt of results 5 or 6 allow for choice of any skill listed for that result.


Merchants: 4+

1. Broker
2. Trader
3. Legal
4. Liaison
5. Brawling
6. Forgery/Bribery

Receipt of result 6 allow for choice of either skill listed for that result.
Receipt of Special Duty for a Merchant Character may be taken as an additional Benefit Roll, such additional Benefit rolls can be used to exceed the normal limit placed on receipt of Cash table Rolls.


Others:

1. Carousing
2. Liaison
3. Admin
4. Legal
5. Vacc-Suit
6. Leader/Jack-O-T

Receipt of result 6 allow for choice of either skill listed for that result.

 

[ShapeShifter]

Pangalactic Politics

Posted in wrong thread.
Oops.

 

[Supplement Four]

What's wrong with Basic characters?

And, if you enforce the hard Survival Rule (miss survival throw, character dead, start over), then mixing advanced and basic characters is easy.

Remember, in CT, a character doesn't need too many skills. He can be a hero without them--easily.

 

[far-trader]

A belated welcome aboard Sir Brad

At a quick scan, not that you're asking for input

...

Navy: 5+

1. Streetwise
2. Brawling
3. Gravenetics
4. Communications
5. Liaison
6. Leader/Ship Tactics/Fleet Tactics

Event Roll #6 allows the choice of any of the three skills, but the character must have Ship Tactics before they can select Fleet Tactics.

I believe the standard term for #3 is Gravitics. Minor point, and perhaps this is a YTU issue

I wouldn't agree with the Event Rule #6 note, seems to me one could be a master fleet tactician and not have clue one how to operate a single ship in ship vs ship combat.

Marines: 4+

1. Battledress*
2. 0g Combat
3. Recon
4. Survival
5. Demelisions
6. Gunnery/ Ships Boat

* on first receipt of this skill convert the characters Vacc-Suit skill to Battledress and add one level to the skill, any further receipts of the Vacc-suit Skill are instead taken as levels of Battledress.

Event roll #6 allows the choice of either the Gunnery or Ships Boat skills.

I must point out the spelling error of #5, it should be Demolitions. Though I'd probably go with Combat Engineering.

I'd disagree with the #1 * ruling of a bonus to BattleDress for prior VaccSuit skill. Them's the breaks imo. See also the note below for Army.

I like the thinking on the rest. My Marines are also small craft operators in MTU. I think you should consider fitting Forward Observer in there too.

Army: 6+

1. Recon
2. Survival
3. Combat Engeiner
4. Demelisions
5. Streetwise
6. Vacc-Suit/Battledress*

* First receipt of this skill must be taken as Vacc-Suit, further receipt of this skill may be taken as additional levels of Vacc-Suit or to convert the current level of Vacc-Suit Skill to Battledress, from that point on further recipts of this result are taken as levels of Battledress.

Like the Marines above I'd keep these as separate skills and allow the choice. VaccSuit skill allows use of BattleDress, just not the High Energy Weapons designed for use with BattleDress per the rules in Book 4. It is very much like the Ship's Boat vs Pilot skill. Pilot (or BD) works as Ship's Boat (or VaccSuit) at minus 1 (no minus) but Ship's Boat (or VaccSuit) does not work as Pilot (or BD). It's how I'd do it.

Merchants: 4+

1. Broker
2. Trader
3. Legal
4. Liaison
5. Brawling
6. Forgery/Bribery

Receipt of result 6 allow for choice of either skill listed for that result.
Receipt of Special Duty for a Merchant Character may be taken as an additional Benefit Roll, such additional Benefit rolls can be used to exceed the normal limit placed on receipt of Cash table Rolls.

I kind of like the Benefits option. But I can't stand the Broker skill. It's not something that should work for anyone who is not a long time resident of the place in question. To me it's about knowing the markets and people. It's all about contacts and local knowledge. No Free-Trader should be able to jump into a system he's never visited and start doing Broker-4 (or even Broker-0) work fresh off their ship, and then repeat that on another new world every other week. Nope, just makes no sense to this old trader. Never has. Make them hire the locals or do without.

Anyway, just some thoughts on the matter.

 

[Sir Brad]

Sup 4, Nothing wroung with Basic Characters as far as they go, but why should they hog all the book 4-7 skills, Don't worry the Careers from Citizens are getting some love to, I'm just being careful with them.

Far Trader Thanks for catching the spelling, It's currently a work in progress.

I kind of see Broker as the Art of the Deal. Free Trader Joss blows in to a port he has never or hardly ever visited before, he can still cut a deal at a penalty, Purser Page tries to do business on a world on her rout no penalty , Ezbet the Local Broker gets hired by the PC's well he gets a bonus (Local Knowledge and Contacts) on both his Broker and Trader rolls.

On Battledress I'm trying to make it a Big thing (and a Marine thing). on the Demo Vs. Combat Engineer thing for Marines Well Jar-heads are your Ultimate Bad Asses, when they come it's to [Censored] your [Censored] up! not Hide in a Hole (where Army turns out a more rounded Solider, with the good scene to Make Cover if they can't find it), I'm also trying to keep a reason to make a more rounded (Service wise) party.


Edit: also to show up on my tables it had to be as a possibility in their Service Book.

 

[Sir Brad]

And it's harder than I thought to expand the Sup-4 Careers without raiding other Editions for skills, I've got Spec duty for Pirates, Belters and Diplomat, But Sailors, Doctors and Flyers (the Balance of the First batch) are giving me curry

of the 2nd batch I've got Hunters and Rogues down and a line on Scientists using JTAS #22.

 

[atpollard]

I like a different modification to the classic Basic Character Generation:

For each successful roll (survival, promotion, skill, re-enlistment) I grant one roll on an appropriate table. For example, I tend to link the Survival Roll with the Military Life tables and the Skill Roll with the more Technical Tables (like the MOS tables in Advanced Chargen).

Since this results in far too many skills per term, I trim back the character’s skill list to 2 skill levels per term (like the Scout) and convert the surplus skills to Skill-0. This allows the player some choices in crafting his character towards an area of specialization and grants a list of skills that the character was exposed to but did not master.

[EDIT: I deal with the potential for unbalancing Rifle-6 type skills by setting the number of terms as the upper limit on a skill. So a 3 term character can have up to skill-3.]

 

[rancke]

Since this results in far too many skills per term, I trim back the character’s skill list to 2 skill levels per term (like the Scout) and convert the surplus skills to Skill-0.

To match an Advanced character, it should be 3 skills per term maximum, surely?

I have a useful house rule of my own: I divided skills into physical, practical, and mental (Practical are skills where you don't feel they really fit either physical or mental, such as Mechanical). The limit for physical skill levels is Str+Dex, the limit for mental skill levels is Int+Edu, and the limit for total skill levels is Str+Dex+Int+Edu. This gives characters 'room' for greater diversity, and it enables a type who isn't possible under the existing systems, the not-too-bright combat monster (and similar types). I mean, why would someone with Int 2, Edu 2 be unable to learn how to be good at opening locks?


Hans

 

[PathfinderAP]

far-trader, why are you nit picking the spelling?, you know what he means,
and this isn't an english test :nonono:

Sir Brad, I like some of those ideas, the chance to choose your skill from the choices given (if you make the roll) is very usefull in filling in those blanks,


An idea I had, also for basic characters only,
"Term Points"
You get one point per term,
You can spend this point to reroll any dice check at anytime (skills, promotion, survival, mustering etc) But once spent it is gone,
Any Term points you have after mustering can be turned in to a single 0 (zero) level skills of your choice, (2 Term points = 2 skills at 0 level etc)

 

[Sir Brad]

Mostly I started it bacause I was starting a new Campaign, one of the Players is a Trav Novice(but Vetran Gamer), an other has played TNE, T2K, DC and C&D and the last is a Trav GM from back in the Day.

Anyway I took the Novice and TNE player through Basic Characters from the Traveler Book as an Intro, we then did Advanced Gen Characters for the players not taking Sup-4 Careers, the Advanced Gen Characters had twice (or more) the skills levels of the Sup-4 character and the Demo characters built using the Trav Book. So I struck upon this.

Now to work out enhanced Sup-4 Characters before moving on to the Alien Modules.

 

[PathfinderAP]

Well, yeah (this was an issue in character gen for the PBP game I'm playing in here) When you can have an "Other" character who only gets one skill per 4 year term, and an advanced character that can easly get 4 skills per term its not s surprise that you will get more skills, the advanced character gen is the proper character, and basic is the abbreviated version

 

[far-trader]

far-trader, why are you nit picking the spelling?, you know what he means,
and this isn't an english test :nonono:

Because it bugged me. Some might not know what he meant, especially if not fluent in English. And life is an English test. Or any other language you care to communicate in. Getting ideas across requires a good command of the language and that includes proper spelling and grammar.

Sir Brad seemed appreciative of the note, allowing him the opportunity to correct it. I'd say it was all good.

 

[PathfinderAP]

Because it bugged me. Some might not know what he meant, especially if not fluent in English. And life is an English test. Or any other language you care to communicate in. Getting ideas across requires a good command of the language and that includes proper spelling and grammar.

Sir Brad seemed appreciative of the note, allowing him the opportunity to correct it. I'd say it was all good.

Maybe it bugged you because you think life is an English test,
It-is-not, up to 80% is unspoken in fact,

http://articles.smashits.com/articles/other/141573/what-is-body-language-.html

And check out this version of "Word Nazi" lol
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=word Nazi


Lighten up dude, there are more important things in life,

 

[far-trader]

...

Lighten up dude, there are more important things in life,

Says the one harping, tossing links, and advising me on a closed subject that no one else had complained about, not even the OP. I'm sorry that bugs you.

If I got any lighter I'd float away (and if I wasn't taking this as well as I am I'd take that word nazi definition as an insult, should I? and you are spoiling my mood, so while I'm on it, just how is one supposed to communicate body language on an internet text forum smarty?)

Take this to PM if you want to keep pushing my buttons so we can spare the community and let the thread get back to topic.

 

[PathfinderAP]

Says the one harping, tossing links, and advising me on a closed subject that no one else had complained about, not even the OP. I'm sorry that bugs you.

If I got any lighter I'd float away

Your assumption is very wrong, it does not bug me at all, although I do think it is petty to pull people up about spelling when they are trying to make a point on something other than spelling,

Not harping (but maybe that is meant to be a play on words?, me playing a character called Harper maybe?..lol)

Gave you the links for the benefit of your education, maybe if you knew the facts you may not be so anal retentive,

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=anal+retentive

 

[far-trader]

Drop it PathfinderAP. Is that clear enough?

(giving the benefit of the doubt that my edit of the previous was while you were replying)

 

[PathfinderAP]

Drop it PathfinderAP. Is that clear enough?

(giving the benefit of the doubt that my edit of the previous was while you were replying)

You are the only one ranting, you drop it

Sir Brad, there was an houserule point based character gen system by Andy Slack (if you can find it) if you are worried about character imbalance

 

[Supplement Four]

Sup 4, Nothing wroung with Basic Characters as far as they go, but why should they hog all the book 4-7 skills, Don't worry the Careers from Citizens are getting some love to, I'm just being careful with them.

Too many people, imo, use the Book 1/Supp 4 Basic careers "as is". These should be used as default and as examples. But, there are plenty of examples in CT where the basic careers are "customized" to reflect a more specific career (instead of the generalized one).

Plenty of CT supplements and magazine articles show skills and chargen tables altered from the original Book 1/Supp 4 defaults.

The point being: Just because Book 1 says a single Gun Combat skill should be chosen when a Gun Combat result occurs when a character receives a skill does not mean that a GM couldn't allow Combat Rifleman (the skill from Book 4) to be used instead. There is plenty of precedent for this.

If you've determined that a character is from a water world, there's no reason why a skill like Swimming shouldn't replace, or be an alternate choice, for a skilll when thrown.

If you've got a special military force on a planet called "Murphy's Rangers", you're prolly better off taking the Army or Marine default chargen tables and tweaking them to better reflect a Murphy Ranger.

So...if you're not using the default chargen careers 100% of the time, then the skills in Book 4-7 aren't being "hogged" only by Advanced Chargen characters. There's no reason why those skills can't be incorporated into Basic Chargen tables.

For examples, look at some of the alternate chargen tables created in some of the CT supplements.





EDIT: A CT GM, when preparing his campaign, could (not "should") make custom chargen tables for the specific homeworlds he's chosen. For example, let's say a campaign is about it kick off in the Aramis subsector of the Spinward Marches, and the GM has decided that all PCs will come from either Aramis itself, or Aramanx.

Aramis is the subsector capital and high tech for the region. But, it is also a frozen ball of ice--the planet's only city being carved out of a mining cave deep under the world's crust.

Aramanx, otoh, is more earth-like. But, it's balkanized and stuck at TL 6.

If a player wanted his character to join the Army, then Aramis might not be a good choice. Although it's high tech, the world wouldn't logically have much of an army. It would probably have more of a security/policing force since 99% of the world's population lives in a giant underground cave.

The GM could make Basic chargen tables for the Aramis Army by using the Book 1 version as a base, but tweaking the tables to reflect the more security oriented/policing type Army that Aramis has. For example, there are probably few vehicle choices to a character who served in Aramis' Army. There's probably few opportunities to be trained on long-distance weapons, too. So, if a player wanted to try to edge his character towards being a sniper, for example, he'd have little chance of achieving that on Aramis--his training being with more "indoor" shortrange weapons like the shotgun. There should be little opportunity to learn flying vehicles (except maybe things like the gravbelt that can be used inside the Leedor City-cave).

OTOH, the GM might make several (or just one) Army choices for a character that enlisted in the Army on Aramanx--one Army choice for each country (I bet one or two would suffice for all the countries, though). The GM should temper these Army chargen tables by the close eye on the world's Viet-Nam era tech level. For example, a character in the Army on Aramanx shouldn't be trained with a Laser Rifle. He'd have an opportunity to learn vehicle skills, but all of those would be limited to TL 6--he's more likely to learn tracked and wheeled vehicles rather than Air/Rafts, speeders, or gravbelts.



Creating specific chargen tables can be quite fun for a GM. I enjoy it, the same way I enjoy using Book 6 and Grand Census/Survey to detail a world. Plus, I love what this effort does for my game. Instead of getting generic Army characters, I get PCs with a real sense of where they come from and what they know.

Plus, I've found that going through the exercise of putting these chargen tables together makes him really consider life on these planets. This helps the GM govern the game later, with respect to the characters who hail from these places. If the players encounter a helocopter, for example, the characters from Aramis would know little about it and might be facinated by it.

If adventure is also set on these worlds--that's even better.

For the GM that's too busy to put this kind of detail into his game, there's the old standby default career tables that everyone else uses.

 

[Sir Brad]

OK for the record I'm Dyslexic, and due to my work requirements tend to post at my Body Clocks equivalent to 03:00 hours, or actually at around 03:00 hours after a long night at work, so I will make mistakes, Unless I'm intentionally making them for IC or Satire reasons I'd like to fix them.

I'm happy with most of the feedback so far, this is being don by me as an exercise in frustration and hopefully as a time save at some later date. If I stay stuck I may post unfinished Tables and ask for recommendation on how to fill them in.

 

[far-trader]

I think we'll be able to tell the difference between the intentional and unintentional Sir Brad. And I daresay you'll have no shortage of recommendations if you ask for them (and probably even if you don't )