Player's and Narrator's Guides Core Rules: What's broken?

[Ineti]

It is not much but more is comming.

You should send this stuff to GandalfofBorg for the Star Trek webzine.

[PGoodman13]

You should send this stuff to GandalfofBorg for the Star Trek webzine.

You know, you're right, Jim. I don't hype Beyond the Final Frontier nearly enough.

[Ergi]

What I always found a little bit annoying was the way the Psi attribute is handled. My PG is about 130 km away, but IIRC, if you take a species with psi potential you get Psi 4 and that is it. This way you make sure that almost every telepath you meet will have a Psi attribute rating of 4, since you would have to raise it 4 times until this would have any positive effect on your psi skill tests. Therefore your picks are usually better invested in psi skills, and since there is no official way to increase your psi attribute during character creation, you won't have really powerful telepaths.
What I suggest instead is to treat psi like any other attribute during character creation. If you use the roll method for determining attributes, simply roll one more time than for normal characters and then assign your highest results to the attributes, including psi.
Alternatively, if you are using the pick method, you get one additional starting value of 4, which you can assign to any of your attributes, just like with the other starting values. Then you distribute the remaining points among all attributes as you like.

I suppose changing the attribute modifiers table is out of the question. I would prefer a more linear solution, which penalizes lower attributes more than is currently the case. I would suggest something like this.

Attribute      Skill
  Score      Modifier
    1            -3
   2-3           -2
   4-5           -1
   6-7          +/-0
   8-9           +1
  10-11          +2
  12-13          +3
   ...          ...

[Liquidator Queeg]

My homebrewed variation is similar to what your proposing, Ergi. When a player picks the Psionic edge (or gets it from his species), he gets a base Psi of 4 +1d6. Advancement is as normal, like a favoured attribute. This helps give psionic characters a bit of a boost straight away, but not overly so.

LQ

[Ineti]

I suppose changing the attribute modifiers table is out of the question. I would prefer a more linear solution, which penalizes lower attributes more than is currently the case. I would suggest something like this.

Actually, that is one of the changes I suggested for the LOTR RPG. It didn't make any sense to me not to have negative mods for really low attributes, and it's a very minor fix; just changing the numbers on the table.

One other option with Psi is to make it effectively a seventh attribute. For the pick method, maybe give a starting player a 10, 9, 7, 7, 5, 5, 4 to add 8 points and racial modifiers to.

I'm not 100 percent conversant with the Psi score, but is there any reason a PC or NPC couldn't have a really high Psi score, like 12 or 13? Does that unbalance the game?

[Doug Burke]

What I always found a little bit annoying was the way the Psi attribute is handled. My PG is about 130 km away, but IIRC, if you take a species with psi potential you get Psi 4 and that is it. This way you make sure that almost every telepath you meet will have a Psi attribute rating of 4, since you would have to raise it 4 times until this would have any positive effect on your psi skill tests. Therefore your picks are usually better invested in psi skills, and since there is no official way to increase your psi attribute during character creation, you won't have really powerful telepaths.

Youc ould use Trait Upgrade to get Psi of 8. I know this doesn't fully address the issue, but it's a work around...

[Ergi]

I'm not 100 percent conversant with the Psi score, but is there any reason a PC or NPC couldn't have a really high Psi score, like 12 or 13? Does that unbalance the game?

I think that's the whole point when you want to confront your players with a Vulcan mind lord fresh out of the freezer.

You could use Trait Upgrade to get Psi of 8. I know this doesn't fully address the issue, but it's a work around...

Why work around a problem on a high level, when you can easiliy fix it at the foundation?

[PGoodman13]

What I always found a little bit annoying was the way the Psi attribute is handled.

You and me both. That's definitely on my list of things to address. Not quite sure how just yet, though your suggestions are gratefully accepted. But yeah, the way Psi was handled just wasn't done well, IMHO.

I suppose changing the attribute modifiers table is out of the question. I would prefer a more linear solution, which penalizes lower attributes more than is currently the case.

I would have probably said "Yes" if Jim hadn't chimed in that he was going to propose something similar for LOTR RPG. With that in mind, I'm just going to say, "I'll throw it out there for consideration and see how things go."

[PGoodman13]

System Operations should be a Skill Group, not a skill.

I'm inclined to agree with Doug, GoB. However, in the interests of science and making this a better game, show us how you'd do it.

[PGoodman13]

I'm not 100 percent conversant with the Psi score, but is there any reason a PC or NPC couldn't have a really high Psi score, like 12 or 13? Does that unbalance the game?

The only thing holding people back from a high Psi score at chargen is how it's implemented in the system, Ineti. I think it'll probably be an easy enough fix, but I'm going to have to look at wording after we pass it through committee.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Youc ould use Trait Upgrade to get Psi of 8. I know this doesn't fully address the issue, but it's a work around...

That is not a use of TU that i would've accepted, if it was brought to me...

[PGoodman13]

That is not a use of TU that i would've accepted, if it was brought to me...

Honestly? Why?

[Tobian]

System Operation can seem to be an unwieldly skill if used badly in the game. The point of the skill is it allows you to operate the machines. Having system operation: medicine, does not make you a doctor.. it just allows you to understand what the machines are teling you. I have come to relaised this as the players have played the game. Any fool can have a high system Ops Sensors, but to actually analyse the data and work with it to do something, you are using the computer use and Science skills, which are more role-specific, and soon sort the wheat from the chaff. Having System OPS as a skill group would make all characters pretty damn useless suddenly

I think PSi is fine the way it is, and I don't see the problem you people are having with it. Most of the characters as portrayed on the show have fairly average / poor PSI abilities as compared to other types of Scifi. The exceptions are character-of-the-week or evil bad guys with almost magic like powers of PSI. In almost all of those cases they are good examples of NPC's - as mentioned.. all you need to do is up their stat, and skills, and add some as neccessary. There is the Trait upgrade, in the Aliens book, Batazoid section to create characters like Tam Elbrum, as seen in the show. If you look at him objectivelly he is not a starting character, but instead a hugelly experienced character. If you were to build him as a character he has a hugelly built up PSI stat, to the detriment of his other stats (he was pretty weedy!) and he has a very high telepathy skill, to the detriment of all else, save skills like Diplomacy.

High powered zapping powers, where people fling bulkheads round on each other and and mentally rip open someone's mind are not in the domain of Startrek as our hero archetypes, but evil vilains! Using the Betazoid or Vulcan templates can make a perfectly functional telepath, who is about on equal footing with most other PC's / NPC's (as the oposing attribute is Willpower.. never higher than +3!!). as such it is ballanced. If they never want to advance it, then it's not a problem, if they do, they will advance much faster than most people in the reverse sense.. I.e. Telepathy is treated as a professional skill in Betazoids, so they get +1 per pick, as oposed to buying a favoured attribute of Willpower at +1 per 2 picks (yes there is the trait, but that is one off! )

I'm not sure why players should get freebie points to spend on a stat, over and above their peers, that to me seems terribly unballanced! and I know my players would bitch inscessantly about it if I allowed it

[Ergi]

Why freebie points? By treating it as any other attribute, the players will have to make a choice. Do I want my character to have a higher Agility or a higher Psi score? Since most PCs, especially those in Starfleet, will be restricted by ethics and regulations, I don't see the danger of having a lot of powerful mentalists walk around. There just aren't that many legal applications of psi skills in the Trek universe. Therefore I believe that some players will have a slightly above average Psi score, but I presume that for most PCs, Psi will be the lowest attribute.
You are afraid that the game will become unbalanced because players will use telekinetic abilities to perform all kinds of unwanted actions. Well, that's not going to happen, since telekinetics is a skill, it doesn't come naturally with a high Psi attribute. If a GM allows his telekinetics for PCs in his game, then things will probably become unbalanced, whether or not the PCs have a high or a low Psi.
One more point. 7 is supposed to be the average attribute score. So, why are most mentalists below average? All attributes follow the standard distribution, why not to Psi?

I'm not sure this thread was intended to be a place for discussion, so I'll restrain myself from now on, unless Patrick says otherwise.

[PGoodman13]

I'm not sure this thread was intended to be a place for discussion, so I'll restrain myself from now on, unless Patrick says otherwise.

It's an open dialog on Player's Guide and Narrator's Guide issues, of which this is definitely one. The only reason I asked IKI to take his combat stuff to a different thread was because it wasn't related to the current issue at hand (the PG and the NG).