Creating Elite Characters

[Eric R.]

Boy I decided to bring up this topic just to put some life in the old ICON section here.

What are your thoughts on using 72 DPs on building elite style charcter overlays. My thought is that since 36 DPs are used to build enlisted and civilian characters and 54 DPs on regular Starfleet characters that using 72 DP to build very elite charaters would not be too out of the ordinary.

Thoughts?

[Owen E Oulton]

Why? I can see no benefit to it, other than to pander to powergaming. So-called "elite" professions are one of the big probelms with D20 and its clones (yes, I'm talking about CODA).

The Overlay in ICON represents a character fresh out of Starfleet Academy. If you want a character with more experience (and more skills), have him attend some of the Advanced Training Schools from the TNG Players' Guide.

[Phoenix]

Agreed, "Advanced Training Schools" would represent the Elite, Specilized, or Unusual job types in Stafleet.

[Dan Gurden]

I agree. The concept of 'Elite' characters is for CODA. In ICON the rule of creation allows for these upper point bands with the addition of Tours of Duty and Additional training. This also has the advantage of allowing to tailor the Starfleet Academy Graduate (or whoever else it might be) to develop a personal set of skills beyond that provided by their Graduation speciality.

If you wish to host a high-powered game, I would recommend that instead of adding 18DP to the initial character you could instead;

- Allow 10DP for the Cadet Cruise
- Allow 10DP for ALL Tours of Duty (rather than just the first)
- And/Or reduce the length of time for each tour (1-3 years perhaps? 1D6/2)

In this case you should have an upper limit that you wish to go to. However its worth noting that many of us go beyond the 18DP you suggest with our players simply by applying age and experience to our players characters. And in some cases, when I had a 100+ year old Vulcan, I have even reduced the ploints that the rules would have applied...