I Love playing ST: RPG but my friends and me are running into too many things in the system that we find broken, confusing, against the genre etc. For some of the players (and the GM) it is getting in the way of creating a fun playing experience. I looked to the Errata to cure some of the problems, but they did not answer a single one, so I am assuming that the games work for everyone else. I suppose if I post something here every one will say your not using that right, or we misinterpreted etc. So this may seem like a mean spirited post, it might just be exactly what I need to bring rule stability to my game.
1 Mixed Species
I have read that people are supposed to go into this with best intention, taking a racial weakness, however, most players will ALWAYS opt to have an amazing amount of high and broken stats aka Half Vulcan/Half Whatever Take the bonuses and lose the penalties. Why is it that mixed races are allowed to cash in on superior breeding? Why can’t you have two parents of a human and mixed them together to create a great stated person too? Instead Half Breeds will dominate over any pure race. This makes no sense. We have a Half Ocampa/Vulcan in our party. He rolled two pairs of stats, he rolled really well, his stats are such; 14 STR, 13 INT, 12 REF, 12 VIT, 12 PRE, 11 PER. We have other Half Breeds that are Vulcan, and of course they have 14 STR and 13 INT, and they never take the minus three to Presence. This Mixed Species rule imbalances the game.
2 System Overhaul
I play the Ships Engineer on the U.S.S. Endurance in our campaign. We were given two advancements before the game started; I took Jury Rig and System Overhaul with the two advancement levels (plus some skills). System Overhaul seems really cool. My only bit of confusion is that the Overhaul rolls are they permanent? There is nowhere in the entry (pg. 71) that says it is temporary or permanent. The GM figured that overhaul implied permanent. Which is fine, but this Ability is then just ridiculous. Not only is the TN really low (15), but also it is capable of making a Warp Drive (i.e. 5/7/6) into a 7.5/9/9.98. With one roll of a TN of fifteen. Is that change permanent? Or is it the Scotty power that makes the drive efficient for a short amount of time?
3 Target Numbers
The 5-25 system seems a little low. I say this because Virtually Impossible is not Virtually impossible. Now if the intent of the game is that these feats are virtually impossible to Joe Schmoe, then that’s fine. However, Officers on a ship are able to get “Virtually Impossible Rolls” Virtually most of the Time. I.e. Fresh out of the academy my engineer has 6 ranks in Engineering Propulsion (Warp Drives) (+8) and he has 12 intellect (+3). Along with that he had Eidetic Memory (+2), and Thinker (+1). So with zero enhancements he already has a =14 on a warp drives engineering check. He also has Engineering Expertise (Propulsion Warp Drive) and a physics of 5 ranks, giving a bonus of another +3, so now his bonus is 17. There may be an Affinity bonus in here for something, another +1. So a Level One Character Fresh out of Starfleet is capable of rolling a 25 about 50% of the time. If you say 7 is the average of 2d6 and the total Engineering Warp Drive Propulsion Bonus is +18. So your telling me that an Ensign/cadet out of Starfleet could “sling-shot around the sun to effect time travel?” And that’s without advancement. Eventually I can put another 6 ranks into my Engineering Propulsion. I guess all I am saying here is that Virtually Impossible feats happen way too often in this system. If that was the intent of the game, then more power to ya. Trek is a realm where bridge officers are just amazing. But don’t you think that this TN system could use a little revising (yes even if you take into account the critical success table). It just seems that the TNs are a little low, all things considering.
4 System Operations
This skill seems to be a little too much. It encompasses 10 different systems of a ship, where on the ship many people have specialties. What is my problem here? Here’s an example. The Helmsman, after three advancements have gotten his System Operations up to 12 ranks, and he has specialized everything into flight. This is great, he is an amazing pilot. However, he also has the ability to use every system on the bridge at an almost mastery level. He can solve many problems by multi tasking and covering other positions. What I am saying is this Helmsman has spent his whole life focusing on piloting, but apparently he is also good at command, deflector, beam weapons, flight control, operations, nav, sensors, tactical, and transporter. He has equal knowledge n using all of these, he may not have the specializations, but he still gets a +12. So why have a tactical officer is your helm can do both? It seems that the helm can do a lot of thing by him self that he would never actually involve himself in. In the show the Helm (early on in TNG an ensign) never worked the teleporter, or never targeted the beam weapons, although he might be able to do it better than the tactical officer. Why not do both, there is nothing in the rules that says he can’t? System Ops seems like too big of a skill. At least that is how it seems to me. There is no incentive to specialize in Ops, you should just get a lot of ops and then you are able to do almost every operation on the bridge. Was this the way Decipher intended this skill to be?
5 Advancement
When you advance you can only raise two professional skills at all? That’s not a gripe, more of a question, even the errata seemed vague there.
Well that’s all I have to say for now. It’s a little long, but I just want to see if I am even in the right galaxy in my arguements. If this is the way Decipher intended the game, then so be it, I won’t let it get in the way of having an enjoyable experience.
Jason Keen
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I'm sorry that for your first post, I will answer a bit harshly, but it's nothing personal, just heated discussion 
Hey my opinion 
