Enlisted Characters

[KentLaptop]

I've converted my character with no problem with the conversion rules, looked good ,everything was fine. Now I went back and redid him from scratch by going through his background, tours and such.

The problem lies is that he started off as an elistee instead of an officer. According to the PG on pg65 Enlisted get 15 skill picks from the starship officer professional skill list on pg66 and assign five skill picks among Engineering, Science, or System ops. Would he also be able to get the starship officer abilities and if he did Im guessing he would get Starship Duty- Enlisted automatically.

If thats right then he could pick up Starship Duty again as part of Officer Canidate School ( Law(Starfleet Regs)+1, Starship duty) so he could goto the Academy to become a Starfleet Officer in one of the sections. meaning 4 or so advancements to pick up the skills he would need in that section to have the core skills equal to a graduating cadet.

Also would those five skill picks he picked as an Enlisted considered professional?

[Erik Filean]

Originally posted by KentLaptop
I've converted my character with no problem with the conversion rules, looked good ,everything was fine. Now I went back and redid him from scratch by going through his background, tours and such.

The problem lies is that he started off as an elistee instead of an officer. According to the PG on pg65 Enlisted get 15 skill picks from the starship officer professional skill list on pg66 and assign five skill picks among Engineering, Science, or System ops. Would he also be able to get the starship officer abilities and if he did Im guessing he would get Starship Duty- Enlisted automatically.

If thats right then he could pick up Starship Duty again as part of Officer Canidate School ( Law(Starfleet Regs)+1, Starship duty) so he could goto the Academy to become a Starfleet Officer in one of the sections. meaning 4 or so advancements to pick up the skills he would need in that section to have the core skills equal to a graduating cadet.

Also would those five skill picks he picked as an Enlisted considered professional?

As I read the rules on enlisted personnel, they DO NOT take the starship officer profession, nor do they receive any starting professional abilities.

I would treat the five specialist skill picks as professional skills, representing a highly restricted range of specialist skills that may correspond to the starship officer elite professional lists, but are not part of one of the elite professions.

If starting an enlisted character with advancements, I would allow those advancement picks to be spent to enter starship officer elite professions. (This is how, for example, I would handle O'Brien's serving as tactical officer on the Rutledge and chief of operations on DS9.) However, the character must either meet the prerequisites for the elite profession or use the Innovative edge to obtain the Starship Duty professional ability the "hard way."

Put another way: the 15 Starship Officer list picks and the 5 specialist picks are the equivalent of a professional development package for a character without a 'profession' as the rules define it. The abilities of any profession must be purchased by such a character as "out of profession" abilities.

[Almos]

Am I correct in assuming that a character of any profession can spend his professional development skill picks according to the square on page 65 to become an enlisted crewman?

[Doug Burke]

Erik: You are dead on. I, myself have asked this question and got the very same reply from Ross.

Almos: As a Narrator, I could see the utility of having "enlisted" characters for the other basic classes, but for simplicity's sake, I would limit enlisted-type characters to Starship Officers and Soldiers. Unless, of course, you have a lot of enlisted PCs running around. Then it's a whole new ball game.

[KentLaptop]

I would figure that being Enlisted is a basic profession with the professional abilities of starship officer. if you dont your really making it rough on the enlisted ex: A rogue and enlisted both get four advancement in their proffession. The rogue could pick a professional ability and two other picks each advancement so he'll end up with a total of five professional abilities. While Mr enlisted would have to pick inovative every advancement just to get a professional ability granted he would be able to choose an ability from any one of the profession but the rogue could still also if he also picked up innovative each time.

So you'd end up with a rogue with five professional abilities in his profession w/ 8 picks in skills or other picks. Or you'd have a rogue with one professional ability in his profession and four in of the profession. Or evn any other mix

While the Enlisted ends up with four professional abilities in any basic profession or a few profession with a mix of skills.

Also if you dont consider the enlisted a profession then you could have your character join up with starfleet as an enlisted for a few years then join anyone of the basic professions. Then he would be able to go through the professional development part of character creation choose his skills so you could end up with a former enlisted character you then became a professional merchant, soldier or whatever

[Erik Filean]

Originally posted by KentLaptop
I would figure that being Enlisted is a basic profession with the professional abilities of starship officer. if you dont your really making it rough on the enlisted ex: A rogue and enlisted both get four advancement in their proffession. The rogue could pick a professional ability and two other picks each advancement so he'll end up with a total of five professional abilities. While Mr enlisted would have to pick inovative every advancement just to get a professional ability granted he would be able to choose an ability from any one of the profession but the rogue could still also if he also picked up innovative each time.

Yes, in a sense the rules are "rough" on enlisted personnel. That's because they are written to favor the commissioned officers or highly competent civilians who are lead characters in the various TV series. With a couple of notable exceptions, we don't see highly versatile, broadly-trained enlisted personnel on Star Trek. Instead, we see them as the "slobs with jobs" whose basic purpose is to create the illusion of a functioning ship or station surrounding the seven or eight series regulars.

In game terms, the option exists to create an O'Brien if you choose, and I see several ways to do that. One is to buy Innovative several times for an enlisted person created by the book. The easier option, I think, is to buy skill levels so the character can qualify for one or more of the starship officer elite professions. None of these have prerequisites so onerous that a character with even just a couple of advancements shouldn't be able to qualify. A third choice is to allow enlisted personnel to take the Starship Officer profession and just call them "enlisted" anyway. Any of these is valid, but I don't favor the third because it really doesn't fit with the presentation of most enlisted personnel on the air...they just don't have the broad skill set or the versatility and depth of training of a Starfleet Academy graduate.

So you'd end up with a rogue with five professional abilities in his profession w/ 8 picks in skills or other picks. Or you'd have a rogue with one professional ability in his profession and four in of the profession. Or evn any other mix

While the Enlisted ends up with four professional abilities in any basic profession or a few profession with a mix of skills.

Also if you dont consider the enlisted a profession then you could have your character join up with starfleet as an enlisted for a few years then join anyone of the basic professions. Then he would be able to go through the professional development part of character creation choose his skills so you could end up with a former enlisted character you then became a professional merchant, soldier or whatever

The trouble here is that the rules don't really provide for a character to enter a basic profession except as an initial character creation option; there are no "multiclassing" rules, and what you describe is essentially a variation on that theme. What an enlisted person can do is take several advancements and join an elite profession, or use Innovative to obtain basic professional abilities.

Yes, this favors officers over enlisted personnel. No, I don't find it in any way "unfair," because the goal of the rules is not necessarily for all characters to be created equal (this is why one suggested option for advanced characters is based on career length rather than a fixed number of advancements for all player characters!). The goal is to simulate the Star Trek universe as seen on film and video, and in that universe enlisted personnel are not the equal of officers in the great majority of cases. The rather artificial consideration of play balance, as mentioned in the PG, is maintained wherever doing so does not conflict with the primary goal of simulation.

[Chris Landmark]

Having given the subject some thought, the way I would treat enlisted personel would be to classify them as having the Starfleet Officer profession (with its attendant list of professional skills), but deny them the ability to take the Starship Duty professional ability (they can have it when they decide to go to officer canditate school, or recieve a field promotion into the Officer ranks, etc.).

I would also make a few slight changes in the published rules for picking skills. As the enlisted character is no doubt assigned to a particular department, I would allow the five picks allowed for Engineering, Science, and System Operations skills to also be spent on the skills listed under the Elite Profession corresponding to the department (basically so you could build an enlisted security guard with Observe and Investigate or an orderly with some First Aid and Medicine if you felt so inclined; the other professions can be pretty well covered with just Engineering, Science, and System Operations). Only the listed Starfleet Officer skills and those additional skills acquired with these five picks at character generation would be considered professional skills for purposes of advancement (if you want to cross-train, pick up Rounded). I would encourage favored Abilities and Reactions to be chosen from the appropriate Elite Profession.

This sound like a reasonable set of house rules to anyone else?

-Chris