How many Advancements?

[dataweaver]

one of the (few) problems that I have with the Player's Guide is that it doesn't give a very clear indication as to how many advancements are needed to achieve a certain degree of competence - as a first-time Coda GM, I find that I don't have a clear idea of what it will take to create characters comparable to (say) the crew of DS9. Suggestions, anyone?

[C5]

Well from the stats in the NG (and hoping I'm not breaking any law about copyright), the major characters of the series usually rank between 30 and 60 advancements.

But it really depends on how the players spend their advancements picks. After all, you can have an engineer with 15 advancements who'll know more than O'Brien about transporters, but won't have as wide an area expertise as him.

[Joe Dizzy]

The series character write-ups in the NG have helped me there.

When I started creating characters for my new campaign, I had a look at the write-ups and how many advancements they were created with. It gives you a rough guideline.

Tuvok was created with 18 advancements, if I remember correctly while Kira had 43. It should give you an idea how much "competence" can be wrung out of one advancement.

[dataweaver]

Not much, apparently. Thanks for the advice!

[Lancer]

I don't think the number of advancements itself says much about the competence of a character.
For one, starting attributes play a major role. If a character has a high Intellect he will get a good skill test bonus, even with only a few advancements spent on the actual skill levels, while someone with average attributes will have to spent more picks to achieve the same level.
Another thing to keep in mind are edges and especially professional abilities. Abilities that give an affinity bonus (e.g. half skill X to skill Y) can increase the competence for a characters key skills a lot for only a few picks.

IMHO the best way to judge how competent a character is would be to have a look at a characters most important skills and compare them to the standard difficulties. If a character can make a TN15 check with an average roll (7) I would consider him competent - with a result of 15 you can accomplish quite a lot and have a chance at beating TN20 (at least with Courage Points).
If a character has no problems of beating TN20 with an average roll I'd say he is very competent in his field.

So just spend enough advancements to achieve the level of competence you are aiming at and don't forget to spend a few points here and there on reactions and maybe some "hobby" skills and you should do fine. Or at least that is how I see it. As always YMMV.

[Darth Sarcastic]

I personally use a very random method. Roll 6d6 for the number of advancements. The least you could get is 6 (Wesley Crusher?) and the most is 36 (Janeway?). It seems to work out in my games.

[CmdrBluejeans]

Remember also that most of these Advancement examples for canonical NPCs /seem/ to reflect them towards the end of their respective series. I'd expect that after 7 years of play, the PCs in my game should have 40+ advancements, too, but that doesn't help us in 'starting out'.



BJ

[Sea Tyger]

The PG has a page on advanced characters (at the end of Chapter 6, I believe...I don't have the book out at the moment...find the big picture of Gowron and you're on the right page ) that gives a general guideline for time-in-service-based "pre-show" advancements.

I would have the PCs develop their character concepts, then assign them a number of advancements based on where the characters were stationed and what was going on at the time (i.e., stationed on a starship in the middle of, say, the Tholian-Federation War).

From there, the players develop their characters, with minimum requirements (like, when they get their promotions and Command edges) to ensure that the characters look like they have a legitimate history when you look at their advancements.

[qerlin]

Originally posted by Sea Tyger
The PG has a page on advanced characters (at the end of Chapter 6, I believe...I don't have the book out at the moment...find the big picture of Gowron and you're on the right page ) that gives a general guideline for time-in-service-based "pre-show" advancements.

I would have the PCs develop their character concepts, then assign them a number of advancements based on where the characters were stationed and what was going on at the time (i.e., stationed on a starship in the middle of, say, the Tholian-Federation War).

What tyger said... In general, I assume 1 advancement for each 2 years in service post-academy for new characters. In general, I figure 1-4 advancements for lower officer, fresh dept. heads; 5-10 for experienced dept head through new commanding officers. Above that, I usually reserve for NPC's. I've never had to go above 22 advancements to get a GOOD NPC.


From there, the players develop their characters, with minimum requirements (like, when they get their promotions and Command edges) to ensure that the characters look like they have a legitimate history when you look at their advancements.

[Champions Guru]

one of the (few) problems that I have with the Player's Guide is that it doesn't give a very clear indication as to how many advancements are needed to achieve a certain degree of competence - as a first-time Coda GM, I find that I don't have a clear idea of what it will take to create characters comparable to (say) the crew of DS9

Other than the starship combat system this is one of the other things with CODA that don't sit well with me. With almost every other game system I've played its pretty well detailed how more experienced characters should look.

There are either rules for what a character gets as it goes up in experience or there are sample characters that show what the limits should be.

There are almost no rules for this in CODA and the example characters are all of different levels themselves.

I hope that in future CODA products that they give us some idea of how a group of characters that start out at the same level should go up in level. A Narrator should be able to use or ignore these the guidelines as he/she sees fit.

This being said in my campaign I'm creating all the characters for my players, cause they don't want to take time out of playing to make the characters and I have the only rule books. My players will include the First Officer (Captain is an NPC) and the other department heads on a Nebula Class starship.

For the First Officer I'm giving him 10 advancements and the rest of the PC crew gets 5. Since there are no CODA adventures as of yet and I'm going to have to do all the work of creating the bad guys it doesn't matter how tough I make the PC's because I have to create their opposition anyway.

That's it so far,

da Guru

[Cmdr Powers]

While I tend to agree that CODA could use some more definitions about advancements, I've found that 1 advancement per tour, per special class, per cadet cruise, per Academy, per special event, seems to work okay. This means (shudder, gasp) that the player/narrator actually has to do some work and write up a detailed character history. It also means that characters in my games will probably have at least 1 or 2 advancements even if they just became Ensign. Most of my players don't have a problem with that and it allows them to put a little personality into their skills and other traits.

[MoNeart]

I based things loosely along the following guidelines:

6 Advancements for a lower ranking position character...
7 for a position holding character
9 for Chief Engineer & Ship's Doctor
9 for Captain
8 for 1st Officer

I found that the degree of competence seems to be balanced, but the extra advancements make it possible for the higher ranking characters to buy promotions and position requisites without sacrificing skill competence.

Regards,

MoNeart

[Champions Guru]

6 Advancements for a lower ranking position character...
7 for a position holding character
9 for Chief Engineer & Ship's Doctor
9 for Captain
8 for 1st Officer


I like this idea, not to much difference between experience for higher ranked characters.

something to think about,

da Guru

[Doug Burke]

::takes off Net Rep hat::

Okay, here's what I've come up with for my game tro try to reflect the idea that you don't have to have a boatload of advancements to get promoted. Mind you I've just used this for the NPCs in my game, and not the PCS (most of my PCs are conversions from Icon), and that's the way Iwill continue to use it. PCs should be a special case and should have more or less than the normal advancements as necessary for the character concept. Some NPCs (including, but not limited to, those ranked Captain and above) would be in the same boat.

Officer Advancements by Rank
Ensign: 0-5 (1d6-1), average 3
Lieutenant JG: 1-6 (1d6), average 4
Lieutenant: 2-7 (1d6+1), average 5
Lt. Commander: 3-8 (1d6+2), average 6
Commander: 4-9 (1d6+3), average 7
Captain: 5-10 (1d6+4), average 8
Rear Admiral (Lower Half): 6-11 (1d6+5), average 9
Rear Admiral (Upper Half): 7-12 (1d6+6), average 10
Vice Admiral: 8-13 (1d6+7), average 11
Admiral: 9-14 (1d6+8), average 12
Fleet Admiral: 10-15 (1d6+9), average 13

:: puts net Rep hat back on::

[Dave Biggins]

Man, y'all are generous! Here's the advancements I offer by rank:

O1/E1-E4: 0 Advancements
O2/E5: 1 Advancement
O3/E6: 2 Advancements
O4/E7: 3 Advancements
O5/E8: 4 Advancements
O6/E9: 5 Advancements

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.