Firing First

An interesting scenario came up in our session last week. We were playing through a story of my design, but for a chunk of it I used materials from the adventure "Safe Passage" (found in an issue of Beyond the Final Frontier), changing a few details to fit our campaign.

So the Captain, Security Chief (my PC, even though I'm the GM), the Ship's Doctor, the hotshot Ensign pilot (a new character played by my son, who was jokingly told by the Captain to "throw on a red shirt first"), and two Security personnel ("red shirts") make up the Away Team.

I don't know if any of you have played (or even read) that adventure, but the Crew is evacuating some personnel from the Federation Embassy, and some native rioters break through the stone wall of the compound and attack. The PCs have four rounds to hold them off before they're able to safely beam out. Mostly these unruly citizens are not much of a threat (throwing rocks that do 1d6 damage), but two of them carry Romulan disruptors (set to 'kill').

Based on the Away Team instructions (that we'd just reviewed before beaming down), the PCs all hold their fire as the rioters throw rocks. When they had busted through, both red shirts were right by the hole in the wall. When one of my PC's security guys was about to get smoked (the alien firing was at Point Blank range), my character fired his phaser (set to stun) and dropped him. The Captain chastised him and told him we can't fire first, but the same thing happened a turn or so later, with another one nearly frying one of the red shirts. Again my PC "disobeyed" and dropped the enemy.

I really expected the Captain to rip my PC a new one when it was over, but he merely said "good work on taking care of those threats" or something along those lines.

I suppose my character could have been reprimanded, but - being an experienced Vulcan Commander - he would have logically explained that he waited until they had a weapon leveled and were just beginning to pull the trigger before he fired. Technically he fired first, but he waited until an aggressively hostile act before doing so.

It reminds me of some of the stupid rules that have happened in the Middle East with American troops, where they are told that they can't fire until they're fired upon. That seems heroic and noble, but it can end up resulting in well-meaning and well-intentioned soldiers going home in a body bag.

Levok (my Vulcan Security Chief) just wasn't willing to watch one of his men die first. Did he do the right thing? Did he violate Starfleet's "Never fire first" mandate?

If they were set to stun? They're fine. Kill? Yes, they violated Starfleet ethics. The very existence of the stun setting drastically readjusts what is appropriate force in defending oneself. It makes real-world comparisons pointless, unless these soldiers we're talking about also have tasers.

Good point, TK. Yeah, all phasers were set to stun, and still everyone held off on counter-attacking.

I'll bring this up at our next session, as I think it's a realistic way of viewing things.

I think they did fine, Doug. The enemy doesn't necessarily have to fire first; sometimes the threat of fire is sufficient to justify your character firing. Nolmir's character Garav did much the same thing in the second episode of our online game, when an Iotian thug was about to shoot my character with a rather impressive looking primitive handgun.

If someone tries to reprimand the character, you should protest it, IMO.

I'm with TK on this one; "stun" means you can shoot first and ask questions later.

Even Riker said in Power Play (from memory) "We go in with phasers on wide-beam stun. Drop everyone, and sort it out later."

And the only objection was that the stun setting might not affect Data.

Coolness! Thanks, all, I feel much better! :)

Like I said, I expected at the very least a scathing reprimand from the Captain (after the first shot, he sternly said "Levok, I had told you we're not firing first!").

But once it was said and done, he simply said "nice job with the phaser." (So I think he realized it was the wisest course of action). [It didn't hurt that I rolled a "What If?" roll to show what would have likely happened to the red shirt had the rioter been allowed to fire his Romulan disruptor on 'Kill'.] ;)