Speed of Advancements

[Doug Taylor]

I don’t know how the rest of you figure out “experience” for characters, but the way we did it was roughly 1 Advancement = 1 year of service in Starfleet (or the KDF or Romulan Star Empire, etc.). During ‘war years’ (like the Dominion War 2373-2375), we give characters 2 Advancements per year. I don’t know if this is something that one of my players learned from some alternate rule, or if this is something official (I don’t remember reading it in any of the Core books), but it seems to be a good general rule of thumb.

My problem is – now that we’re actively adventuring – this formula is going to be extremely inaccurate. If each adventure is usually one “episode”, and if most adventures/episodes yield enough XP to give one Advancement (and our first one did, and my experience with LotR suggests that this is pretty normal), then our characters are suddenly going to skyrocket in Advancements, all in a short span of time. Let’s suppose that I make each adventure/episode occur every 3-4 months (with plenty of downtime between) – that’s still 3-4 Advancements per year, which is considerably more than one even gets during “war years”, during which one would assume they are getting tons of action and excitement.

Any ideas on how to handle this? I don’t think it’s a problem of giving out too much XP, as I go exactly by the formula given in the rulebook. Making a year pass between each adventure seems a bit counter-intuitive as well, as that’s not the way we saw things in the various Star Trek series.

Any thoughts and input would be greatly appreciated (as always).

[PGoodman13]

I don’t know how the rest of you figure out “experience” for characters, but the way we did it was roughly 1 Advancement = 1 year of service in Starfleet (or the KDF or Romulan Star Empire, etc.). During ‘war years’ (like the Dominion War 2373-2375), we give characters 2 Advancements per year. I don’t know if this is something that one of my players learned from some alternate rule, or if this is something official (I don’t remember reading it in any of the Core books), but it seems to be a good general rule of thumb.

It's actually in the Player's Guide, on or about page 96.

My problem is – now that we’re actively adventuring – this formula is going to be extremely inaccurate. If each adventure is usually one “episode”, and if most adventures/episodes yield enough XP to give one Advancement (and our first one did, and my experience with LotR suggests that this is pretty normal), then our characters are suddenly going to skyrocket in Advancements, all in a short span of time. Let’s suppose that I make each adventure/episode occur every 3-4 months (with plenty of downtime between) – that’s still 3-4 Advancements per year, which is considerably more than one even gets during “war years”, during which one would assume they are getting tons of action and excitement.

That rule, however, is only a guideline for getting the characters "up to speed" before active adventuring begins. And it's less a rule than it is a guideline (sort of like the pirate's code in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies).

Once active adventuring begins...all bets are off. Which, IMO, is how it should be. In our game (which we invite you all to come and listen in on), we've been actively adventuring for...oh, just guessing, about four or five months now. We just finished our first advancement (and my character suddenly found himself the commander of the ship instead of the CSO, but that's neither here nor there). We've had lots happen: Nearly got blasted by Klingons in the Mutara system, came close to getting eaten by a supernova, and nearly got greased by gangsters on Sigma Iotia II. I find myself about halfway to advancement number 2 in active adventuring, which feels about right to me.

The "one advancement a year, two in wartime" value is meant to show someone advancing at a "normal" rate, with "normal" amounts of excitement and action. Once they become the heroes of the show, however, they stop being "normal" in that sense, and become...well, heroes. They get better at things (if the show is well-written, as I'm sure yours will be ) as time goes on; sometimes they even get promoted (Harry Kim's player went for a lot of skill advancements and some Professional Abilities, it seems). Heroes are supposed to advance faster than the rank and file; they're better than most. That seems to me to be one of the conceits of the game (along with treating it like a series, not a campaign, with episodes and not adventures).

Any ideas on how to handle this? I don’t think it’s a problem of giving out too much XP, as I go exactly by the formula given in the rulebook. Making a year pass between each adventure seems a bit counter-intuitive as well, as that’s not the way we saw things in the various Star Trek series.

Any thoughts and input would be greatly appreciated (as always).

I don't see it as a problem. My advice would be to roll with it.

[Doug Taylor]

Sounds fantastic, Patrick. Thanks for taking the time to reply!

All of that totally makes sense. About the only one of our PCs who it might be a bit strange to see advance so quickly would be the Captain (Geoffrey Eagleheart) who was built as a high Renown, famous, advanced Starfleet Officer (42 Advancements). Even though all of this was done prior to our campaign, the character has been played before in other systems (we started from scratch and didn't convert when building him); he's even the main character in a novel a friend of ours has written (even though the writer of the fanfic novel is not the player of the character). So for Eagleheart it's a teeny bit odd that this famous Starfleet Captain, who has gone through so much and been involved in so many major events (like the Klingon Civil War and the Dominion War) would suddenly shoot to advancing at double to triple the rate he did before. One of the other main PCs (the First Officer) is a pretty high Renown Klingon who is somewhat similar (though not quite the Advancements or Renown as his Captain).

I guess we can look at it like you said, that they're now the stars of this series, and the heat is getting turned up even more (which fits the series' premise, that they are major players in the Beta quadrant, exploring the Romulan Neutral Zone).

It also seems like your PCs are advancing a bit slower than ours (perhaps not getting an Advancement every mission), but you might be doing shorter sessions and hitting Primary and Secondary goals less often (our first one we played for 7-8 hours and wrapped up the entire episode).

Thanks again for the input, Patrick; I really appreciate it immensely! It helps to hear that you're on the right track!

[PGoodman13]

If he's done that much, Eagleheart might not have enough advancements. With an established character, sometimes the answer isn't, "Here's X number of advancements; make it fit." The answer is sometimes, "Here's X number of advancements; once you get those dealt with, let's look at him and see if he looks 'right' based on his experiences in his previous incarnations. We might need a couple more thrown in to make him work."

I should really consider adding that to the FAQ.

Remember (and I know you know this, but I'm emphasizing it for those who are just looking in on this conversation): Advancements are a game mechanic, and as such aren't something that's actually being measured by the character or anyone around him. Some people are just going to have more than others; compare the write-ups for Kirk and Picard, and then explain to me again the 20-odd, nearly 30 if memory serves, difference in number of advancements. (NOTE: This is not an invitation to a Kirk-vs-Picard debate; it's merely an example.)

Incidentally, I'm guesstimating how long the series has been going on based on guesstimates about travel time, certain events in the canon universe, and the fact that somewhere in there my Denobulan character had his annual nap while the crew got a three-week R&R session. If you follow my link in my previous post, you'll see it's a play-by-post game and we're only getting started on our third episode; we got nearly a full advancement's worth of XP in episode 2 alone, so we're not going all that slowly, I don't think.

[Sea Tyger]

Just as a followup on PG's post, since I'm the Narrator of that series, we started the first episode a couple of weeks before the events of Star Trek III and are starting the third episode concurrent with the events of Star Trek IV.

I'd say about 3.5-4 months is accurate, with roughly 1,400 exp handed out to each player over the span of two episodes.

[Doug Taylor]

Cool, sounds like I'm doing things at about the same pace.

A few of the characters written up in the NG were a bit light on Advancements, by my reckoning. Tuvok especially, based on his age, the fact that he's served in Starfleet a couple of different times, used to be an Academy instructor, etc. only ends up with 18 Advancements? Dr. McCoy too didn't have very many, considering how much action he saw (back in the day he went on nearly every "Away Mission").

[Sea Tyger]

You can't really base advancement levels on the series regulars; those characters are created by converting their skills, talents and abilities as seen in the shows into game stats. They have as many "advancements" as their on-screen activities dictate.

[Doug Taylor]

You can't really base advancement levels on the series regulars; those characters are created by converting their skills, talents and abilities as seen in the shows into game stats. They have as many "advancements" as their on-screen activities dictate.

Fair enough. It still seems like they could have given a few more advancements to a few of them. Dr. McCoy, for example, went on a lot of "away missions" back in the day, as he played a fairly pivotal role in many/most of their adventures.

[Fugazi Grrl]

With an established character, sometimes the answer isn't, "Here's X number of advancements; make it fit." The answer is sometimes, "Here's X number of advancements; once you get those dealt with, let's look at him and see if he looks 'right' based on his experiences in his previous incarnations. We might need a couple more thrown in to make him work."

That's exactly how Tam & I converted my FASA characters to CODA, and so far it's played out great.

My flight control officer - Baxala - who is probably famous to some of you here: we started her with 26 advancements. And by the time her sheet was done we figured she needed a few more. She ended up with 36 - reasonable since she has over 10 years experience in very active duty, and flew over 200 rescue missions during her tenure aboard the Foxbat.

We also used the A Piece of the Action CharGen supplement for her background (a great little PDF, available on Patrick's site) - there's actually a development package for being in a Street Gang (which is how she grew up).

So, Baxala came out with about 30 fewer advancements that Kirk. But more than several of the canon characters. And it fit her just right.

Or Captain - Cpt. Northcote - got 41 advancements. Which puts him between the NG Kirk and Picard. Given his "Jack O'Neill" command style, that seemed to work well.

So, from experience, I'd say that Patrick has it bang on about bringing established characters into your CODA game.

A few of the characters written up in the NG were a bit light on Advancements, by my reckoning. Tuvok especially, based on his age, the fact that he's served in Starfleet a couple of different times, used to be an Academy instructor, etc. only ends up with 18 Advancements?

I definitely noticed that with Tuvok (since I'm an unashamed Voyager fanatic) - to paraphrase McCoy from STVI, I'd give real money to see stats on Torres & Paris !