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I was curious as to how many Advancements you gave your players when you guys started your varuious campaigns.
It seems that unless you really focus begining characters, that they are a bit weak.
As a general rule how many Advancements should a Captain of a Federation starship be? How about his core department heads, etc?
It feels like almost any Federation starshipsman would be at least in the 3-5 Advancement range, but then maybe that's just me.
:)
Are we talking player-character captain here?
I suppose it depends on the GM and what sort of adventures and opponents he has in mind. Interestlying, 3-5 advanced sounds to be just about rthe difference between a starting character in CODA and ICON. That is the older system made the Starfleet characters more skilled than the average folk.
IMO, I think that "beginning" Starfleet character in CODA are pretty much right out of the Academy, and that a "seasoned" character would probably have served a few tours or duty and something like an advancement every two years or so.
If most Starfleet Captains (at least the humans) are around 40-50 years old (at least on the big ships) that would sort of suggest about 10 advancements for a starship Captain. That7s just a "rough guideline" though. Still, I7d like to think those sensior officers learned something since they left Starfleet Academy.
I started my players off as new Ensigns, straight out of the academy with no advancements. Actually, come to think of it, the first time we played was their graduation and their assignment to the starship.
I haven't had an issue with the characters being too weak. Actually, they are pretty effective from the beginning. My concern was that the characters would become too strong too soon, given the generous advancement system. My players can advance their characters about every 3 time we play, given the game sessions were productive.
Of course, if your players have characters that have been established in their careers already, then the game has a system for that. It scales based on how much action they have seen in their duty assignments. I do not have my book in front of me, but I think it is 1 adv per year, then adjusts to an advancement for every few months of wartime starship duty. It really depends on your campaign and how seasoned you want your characters to be.
Again, during gameplay the advancements come much more quickly than you realize. I would suggest being careful not to give too much at the beginning, because customization during gameplay advancement is much of the fun for the players.
Anyway, hope that helps.
If I recall, as my books are at home, in the NG, Harry Kim was written up with 8 advancements. I'm not sure if that represents him 'newly assigned to Voyager', but i think it would, considering that even under restrictive advancement rules, he would have a good dozen or so (if not more) advancements by Season 7 end.
Though the writeups for the various Captains seem a bit light.
I do rather wish they had done stuff like:
What kinda build does Data have (or had).
What does Spock's build during TNG look like?
What the hell does Odo's build look like?