Super competent PC's

[The Viper NZ]

Hey all,

I've recently started running a series and am having some troubles with the PC's.

I gave the players three free advancements to start the series with, to make them a little more competent, but they are way over the top!

With three advancements, I have a pilot who is better than Kirk, a Starship commander with better Tactics than Picard, and a Ferengi who routinely gets 26+ on his Business rolls.

These are not broken characters; if you wanted to be a good pilot, wouldn't you increase your Systems Operation (Flight Control) by 2 levels every advancement?

I was wondering why the printed characters in the books have skills which are so low? Surely Picard has more than 8 levels of Tactics?

This makes starship combat pretty much a non-issue for the Crew. When the pilot has +18 (12 levels, +2 Int, +2 Flight Control, +2 from Astrogation professional ability), he can make every single Helm maneuver in the book with a roll of two ones! Was this the intent of the designers?

Also, the Psionic skill "Telepathy" says : Extended Test: Yes, 3 actions maximum per encounter. Does this mean the Betazoid can roll up to three Telepathy rolls added together to try to overcome a targets single Willpower roll? Does the target get three willpower rolls added together? This doesn't make much sense to us.

Cheers,

The Viper

[KillerWhale]

We played so much (80 eps) that the senior officers of our campaign are pretty much in the same situation.

The solution? As always with RPGs: rise the stakes. Starship combat is a non-issue? Give them 5 opponents. Their renown is higher than Kirk's? Pester them with reporters, have them being taken as models by clueless cadets, or being criticized publicly. Trek has a great advantage: there are always mysteries bigger than them, bigger than the galaxy. Or powerful organizations to annoy and fight.

Just my two cents

[Tobian]

Welcome to the boards Viper

Well I think that's probably why you don't start players like that!

Actually, they shouldn't have been able to get so high. For example, you can only raise a skill by one or two points per advancement - (don't have the book handy, not sure) so they should not have been able to take any skill all the way up to 12 in just 3 advancements, the same goes for professional skills.

Actually, the easiest way to get round this is to have them switch roles. I.e. - The ferengi - have him try something OTHER than business - the Pilot, have him away from the ships controlls - they will suddenly discover their characters can't function, because by the sounds of it they have min maxed only a couple of stats and do not have well rounded abilities.

It's like the Barbarian in D&D - you can really max him out with making him a half ork, rolling well and getting a superb strength maximum - but even in later levels he is hopeless at any skills based thing, or trying to persuade someone to do something.

NB: - Just because the players are fantastic at their jobs doesn't make them smart.. The pilot can fly with deftness and skill - right into a trap - and the Ferengi can get those self stealing stem bolts at a phenomenally low price, and still get stung when it turns out he bought a box of pillows.

With regards to the oposed extended test, I would say the oposer would get exactly the same rolls in oposition - the only difference is that by making them make an extended test you are implying it's a long and exhaustive process.

[C5]

Welcome aboard Viper!

I agree 100% with Tobian here. People in Trek are very eclectic and don't spend their time doing the same thing they're best at.
Send the players on a planet for a diplomatic mission and let's see how the Captain and the pilot fare.
Have them inspect an empty ship with lots of Search and Science rolls.
Have the ennemy manage to board the ship during an fight and get on the bridge.
In essence, take them out of their elements. Picard wasn't always commanding his ship and Paris did not spend his time piloting Voyager.

Also, as KillerWhale said, you can compensate their skills by increasing the difficulty. Quark was a skilled smuggler, but he was kept on his toes by Odo, who was equally as skilled as a policeman (if not more...).
And anyway, it makes sense : if they're experts, they'll be assigned the most difficult missions. That's what being an expert means.

And IIRC, one can't raise a professional skill by more than two points per advancement (which anyway allows a player to have +6 in two professional skill with 3 adv).

[Tobian]

Probably another house rule you could use (I do) is if a person rolls a double 1 - they fail no matter what, then, especially given their unrealistically high skills, it still introduces an element of realism - they can't succeed every time!

The thing about the skills listed for the characters (of the shows) is that they are a snapshot. The skill for Pickard is him as a captain, but is that at the Encounter at Farpoint, or the end of Nemisis? - NPC's grow and change and get more skilled an experience just like PC's - which is another point - Ok so they can hit every time - Ok - put them up against a bigger ship with more powerfull weapons, that can also .. hit every time! They will soon be running with their tail between their legs!

I realised what I was saying when I wrote that but I didn't have my rulebook handy, yes it was possible to get them all up to 12, but ONLY in one skill - which means they've probably pulled allot of skills from elsewhere to do that (Evil laugh!)

KW is right about multiple ships, because for every additional ship they face, they have an additional penalty to their roll. Throw in a cloak and you create a deadly game. Yes you can fly away at high speeds (lots of bonuses to your break away manouver) but are you just flying with impending doom towards a pair of cloaked ships!

And if that doesn't stop them there's always the Borg, Breen (with the energy drain weapon) or Species 8472, which means they only need to get ONE decent hit in and that ship is nailed!

[qerlin]

Starting players aren't supposed to have skills above a +6 in the skill level, no matter the level of advancements you gave them. It's in the book.

[Erias]

It may be a tough issue indeed. The CODA system gives you maximum scores, it implies that possibly your PCs can turn out to be the best people ever. You cannot, for instance, state “Well, then finally Picard has a +24 skill mod” because rule wise it’s not possible. I find this system very interesting because it rightly assumes that each race has limits and thus prevents XP hyper inflation that plagues many campaigns. Nonetheless it has to be handled.

I would point out different ways to handle it:

1. Having PCs that have the maximum score possible in their professional areas is not fitted to all series. For instance, I made clear to my players that their characters could be good, very good (top experts) but not as good as the major players (NPCs) around. So I decided to limit their max scores to skill mod +10: once they reach this level they will easily beat any good professional and equate all top ranked specialists but they will be less competent than the few super skilled NPCs (such as Kirk, Spock, Mc Coy …). Now, in some series having “kirk-like” characters might make sense.

2. Avoid the “everlasting campaign syndrome”. Traditionally a campaign means keep playing on and on until all PCs die or all players get tired and want to start out another game. Everlasting campaigns have many flaws most notably the fact you play them until everybody’s is bored (so the end is usually in the middle of something that does not interest your players anymore) and that PCs accumulate XPs growing and growing until you’re having real troubles managing a bunch of supermen. In any case such campaigns are usually doom to failure. The big trouble being XPs and development. It’s fun to have PCs that change over the course of the campaign, who are more and more proficient and who evolve (gaining new friends, enemies, changing their mind …) but traditionally RPGs XP system is more about raising scores than handling PCs evolution (which encompasses much more than raising skills and attributes). And this is the point: PCs inflate their scores until they become ridiculously high at which point there’s no fun anymore. I first broke from everlasting campaign when I run my first Vampire game and learnt how the authors defined a Chronicle as opposed to a Campaign. A chronicle has an end and this simple fact changes many things. You won’t stop your game when things get boring or out of control, you will stop it when it’s finished (which is way more rewarding). Moreover PCs won’t accumulate XPs perpetually since it will come to an end (you’ll just have to manage the pace at which they grow). I think that Series can be (imo should be) played like “chronicles”: a hook, story arcs and an epilogue.

3. Rule mechanics support the story it’s not independent from it. That means that first you have an in-game explanation and second you use the system to resolve the action: not the contrary. This approach does not only concerns XPs but is a regular way to run a game (ok the regular way I do run my games). For XPs that means players won’t just go shopping around to see what they will increase: they’ll have to provide an in-game explanation for their character’s development. Maybe Roger would like to spend all his picks in sysops and that’s fine if he does it now and then but you shouldn’t allow this on regular basis. His character doesn’t spend all his time only using his sysops skill and the way he spends his XPs should also reflects this. And this goes for psionic powers too: did he train ? with whom ? does his training allow him to increase his score to any level or will he have to find a master or some higher stimulant to raise it passed an average level ?

I won’t be misunderstood on this. This method is not a Machiavellian scheme based on roleplaying arguments as a devious way to frustrate the players, its sole purpose is to ensure your PCs developments are balanced, logical and make sense. I explain it to my players that way : just imagine our series is a TV show and you’re watching it. Any character development should make sense based on what the audience sees. If your Vulcan suddenly develop psionic powers the audience won’t understand and thus the development is to be rejected. Whereas if the audience saw your Vulcan regularly practicing it’s acceptable.

Thus, most of the time the players will be able to develop their character the way they want but they’ll have to feature these developments first and not only buy them when they have enough picks. Sometimes however this method can prove an effective and simple way to discard unfounded developments and avoid some unbalances in your game.

To be continued ...

[Erias]

Now, if you characters already have the highest scores possible what can you possibly do ?

1. They are what they are. If your characters are the best around they shouldn’t constantly meet people able to best them (which doesn’t mean episodes will begin to be dull and uninteresting but I shall speak of that later on). I handle this using some kind of “frequency system”: i.e. how regularly will they stumble across people as good or better as they are ? The higher their scores, the lower the frequency. But first off you must have a clear vision of what scores mean and the rules will help us envision this.

Here is my method:

There are several kinds of TN each corresponding to increasingly difficult situations. Let’s define TNs that way:

5: Easy, everybody’s able to achieve the task

10: Standard, someone who’s not skilled is very likely to fail. Thus reaching this TN necessitates a skilled character. I tend to consider 10 TN as a regular difficulty for something technical. No big deal for a seasoned professional but impossible or very tricky for laymen and dabblers.

15: even professionals can possibly have troubles with this. Thus I consider this TN concerns tricky technical problems. The action demands to overcome a technical problem with some complications. Standard professionals are likely to overlook the complication and fail but experts won’t get fooled and will easily resolve it.

20: this TN concerns tasks that are a match even to very good professionals (i.e. experts as I call them). The complication is a major one: you can’t overlook it. To overcome this TN an expert as to be lucky or to achieve an outstanding result. Only the best (prominent scientists, one of the best pilot in the Federation …) can beat that on regular basis because they have such a command of their area of expertise they can successfully improvise when facing non standard situations.

25: this TN concerns tasks supposedly impossible. Any professional will explain you how impossible it is. Now, the top very bests might succeed but even them will find the task exceedingly difficulty and likely to fail.

30: why rolling dice ?

Based on this you can define archetypical scores, scores needed to overcome these various TN. Since we have defined these TN we’ve also defined people able to beat them on a regular basis. I define being able to beat them on regular basis as having only to roll 5 or better (i.e. you’re likely to succeed). Thus we end up with:

0 : unskilled
5 : common professional
10: Expert
15: One of the best in the known world
20: The best

Note that these are aggregated score (skill mod + Attribute mod + misc mod + specialty).

Now, depending on your PCs’ scores you can rate them (and possibly limit them if you deem they’re reaching a score too high for you to challenge them during the series).

Until they reach 10 they will regularly meet people able to best them. At 10 only experts can be their equal but they still can meet one or two experts each episode (it will be a major NPC, extras are no match for the PC).

15 is interesting since they will rarely encounter people as able as they are (maybe 1 episode out of 5 or 7).

20: Maybe the major villain of your series is their equal, maybe there’s also another couple of people in your series at this level. Not more.

It’s very rewarding for players to have their characters treated the way they should. If their characters are very skilled they’re likely to be annoyed if constantly meeting NPCs able to best them. Having a good grasp on skill ranks, what they mean and how frequent people mastering these different ranks are is a good way to achieve this.

2. Easy doesn’t mean boring. Many things can make a scene memorable: an original location and good descriptions as a general rule. Let’s say a PC of yours is an astonishing pilot, describing a vivid chasing scene, detailing his enemies maneuvers in an interesting location offering various tactical opportunities can be a great scene even if your PC beats his enemies without a single scratch. Even more, the mere fact the PC was able to prevail despite his enemies did the best to get him will make him glad and likely to enjoy the scene, trying to describe tactics of his own enabling him to defeat his foes for instance. This scene won’t be boring and, even better will let the player feels his character is actually an outstanding pilot. If your PCs are very good you should regularly design easy scenes to make them understand how good they are. These scenes won’t be enjoyable because of the difficulty, they will be enjoyable because they are colorful and feature the good abilities of yours PCs instead of trying ways to circumvent their high scores.

3. Winning is not always the point. When you watch some ST episodes you’ll see the crew command tremendous power. An intrepid-class ship could easily wreck havoc on a moderately advanced world. But is it acceptable ? For Starfleet officers it is not. Ethical issues can considerably complicate matters so that players’ PCs will have to follow a more dangerous course of action despite they could had easily win were they to overlook ethical issues. There are things you don’t do because there are evil and you oppose some methods.
4. Another way to challenge your players is to have them face situations requiring skills in which they are much proficient. Maybe Bill is the biggest soldier ever but his crewmates are maybe not and if he start off a fight his companions might get hurt or killed. It would be wiser to negotiate his way out but he is not as good at fast-talking people as he is to kick their asses. Maybe the whole party has to be stealthy to avoid detection but not everyone is an accomplished spy etc.

5. Also don’t forget circumstances are very important. Your PCs might have to exercise their skills in a hostile environment or otherwise unfavorable circumstances. Roger is a good pilot but he can be engaged in a difficult terrain (for instance a meteoric field) whereas his enemy perfectly know the terrain and has studied Roger’s techniques way ahead in order to defeat him. In such occurrences Roger would suffer tremendous penalties and his foe, even if he is less skilled than he is, could prevail. Many penalties examples are covered the Narrator’s Guide and could give you some ideas. Such situations are exciting because the player cannot just rely on his scores he has to find ideas, tactics smart enough to earn him bonuses susceptible to lower his penalties and make him win. Other ideas would be dealing with a former enemy, understanding an alien technology, jury-rigging the vessels when replicators are out and there’s no spared components etc.

6. Outgun them ! The traditional answer and the reason why some Narrators feel hindered with a system that limits scores. Technically what prevents you from creating a new edge called “superskilled: grants a +6 modifier, cost 85 picks” ? And say hypocritically with your most innocent tone, “well it’s not a special NPC edge: you could buy it”. It’s technically legal isn’t it ? It’s silly and totally ludicrous ? Sure it is ! Okay, more seriously, technically you can find ways to increase NPCs scores new edges, super technology, whatever BUT it is much better if you limit yourself by following these two restrictions:

. In-game explanations first rules mechanics second. Why does your NPC exceed human abilities. Is he some genetic experiment ? Did he experience some alien encounter that changed him and allowed him to transcend some human limitations ? Why ? Ideally the explanation should be detailed, original so you’ll end up with an exciting NPC who will not only be a umber powerful villain but someone whose history and experience play a major role in your series. Also don’t forget that we admire heroes for their strengths but we love them for their weaknesses. The same holds true for villains: villains should have weaknesses to make them more interesting but also more human (even if they are aliens). Weaknesses may have various faces: arrogance, biological flaw whatever. Ideally the weakness should reflect an important side of your NPC’s mentality and then being translated into game stats (typically a special flaw). It may demand the whole series for your players to finally pinpoint this weakness and find a way to use it against the villain in order to defeat him.

. Use the outgunning method sparingly. It’s the easiest way to challenge your PCs but it’s also the dullest. Your series will suffer inconsistencies if you constantly feature ridiculously powerful beings who are supposed to be rare and almost never encountered. If you want to feature such powerful beings limit yourself: one NPC in your whole series (maybe two if you want two opposing super villains). This NPC should only appear rarely over the course of the series, only at key points (possibly during the hook and at some series arcs) even if the whole series is about defeating him.

7. Another variant of the outgun answer but dealing with dangerous life forms. Because CODA makes sure humans (for e.g.) have scores limited within human boundaries this means a human won’t ever be able to grow stronger then an elephant. By the same token it means some species could have modifiers enabling them to be more efficient than any Human (Klingon, Vulcan, whatever) no matter how competent. For instance, I remember when I watched this very old movie (the Forbidden Planet – a classics), Doctor Mobius, trying to uncover the technology of a formidable advanced race explained that according to their standards he would be considered mentally deficient. If we consider that Doctor Mobius (a supposedly great scientist) as an Intelligence of 12 and that a mentally deficient has 1 in INT, that would mean that for this race 1 equates 12 or, to put it in other worlds that they have a +11 INT adjustment ! An average member of this race would thus have a 7+11= 18 INT whereas their top scientists would be at 12 + 11 or 23 ! Such a race would overshadow any human scientist. Now, you should be cautious when designing such races (which, obviously are not designed to be PCs races): they have to be rare, very rare. Maybe you’ll use them once or twice in your series.

One thing which is important, imo, to remember is that the outgunning method is the easiest but the less interesting and rewarding way to handle high skilled PCs. There are many different ways to handle that.

[KillerWhale]

Wow, what a contribution, I think you pretty much said it all

I'd just like to add something about the TNs: you can vary the scale. For the record, my own TN scale goes like this:

5 - Routine, anybody who's not a simpleton will easily manage it.
10 - There we have a little more effort needed.
15 - Hm, you have to keep your eyes opened on this. This is the level of the challenges a professional faces.
20 - Okay, now we enter the difficult classes - the toughest challenges a professional faces are here, no more than one like that a year.
25 - Heroic. James Bond, Kirk often pull off tasks like this.
30 - A challenge for James Bond.
35 - Amazing success, miraculous even for Kirk or James Bond.

[CorpBoy]

Originally posted by Tobian
Actually, they shouldn't have been able to get so high. For example, you can only raise a skill by one or two points per advancement - (don't have the book handy, not sure) so they should not have been able to take any skill all the way up to 12 in just 3 advancements, the same goes for professional skills.

If I make a zero advancement character and give him System Operation at +6, then increase the skill by +2 for each of 3 advancements, that's a total of +12. It's possible.

[CorpBoy]

Originally posted by qerlin
Starting players aren't supposed to have skills above a +6 in the skill level, no matter the level of advancements you gave them. It's in the book.

This just applies to characters at the time of character generation. Technically, when the players started adding advancements they were past that point (advancements are not a part of chargen).

[IceGiant]

Another option (which is sort of a house rule) is let them carry over picks but award picks instead of xp. So you might give them 2-3 picks for an adventure instead of the standard 5 if they accumalated their 1000 xp. Just a thought. It's what I do in my game.

[KillerWhale]

Nice idea. I'm thinking along the same lines: IMO, the XP rules allow for far too quick advancement. You could award 1 pick per session or episode. That slows things down, that's what we do.

[The Viper NZ]

WOW! 12 replies in eight hours!

I'll give you a little bit of background on the Crew and Series:

I have seven players, each playing a different race: A Human Flight Control Officer, Vulcan Command Officer, Betazoid Rogue, Cardassian Engineer, Trill Scientist, Ferengi Merchant, and a Klingon Soldier. They are working for StarFleet in a "behind enemy lines" type campaign, where they are supplying the Cardassian faction opposing the Dominion-led Detapa council. Only the Human and the Vulcan are actually in StarFleet, and of the rest only the Ferengi and the Betazoid know the crew are working for StarFleet; the rest think they are smugglers.

You guys have raised some excellent points! The players are having fun in the campaign, which is of course the objective of the whole game (or half of it, anyway), but I'm wondering whether or not it will be possible to challenge them at all.

Next week they will be involved in a ground battle, which the pilot is dreading as his combat skills aren't wonderful, but as far as space combat and business management are concerned, unless I also max out the opposition (which I don't want to do this early in the season) they will simply be able to waltz over the enemy.

Thanks for the comments!

The Viper

[JonA]

This has been kind of covered by everyone else but I can never resist a good thread (nor the opportunity to raise my post count)

Originally posted by Tobian
Probably another house rule you could use (I do) is if a person rolls a double 1 - they fail no matter what, then, especially given their unrealistically high skills, it still introduces an element of realism - they can't succeed every time!

For more about fumbles in CODA Star Trek (and presumably they'd be converted over to LOTR too)

http://forum.trek-rpg.net/showthread...hlight=Fumbles

I think my rules are the best but self-praise is no praise.

As for your problem with the super, major, take on all comers without breaking sweat players:

Well. This has been an issue within RPGs since the dawn of D&D when you had the Dwarf of the party wandering around with a 100 HPs and getting hit by a sword doing D6 damage. What do you do as a GM? It's not specific to CODA and it's rare, but not impossible to find a system that does not have this problem. Our group uses Warhammer FRP and Basic Level players don't cut it. Advanced Level (2nd Career and on) can be invincible (just check out a Dwarf with Very Strong, Very Resilient, Barrel Chested who's a Giant Slayer...)

What do you do?

The advice given above I agree with. And here's my two pence.

Having seemingly powerful characters is not a hurdle you think it is. You just need to rely on your intelligence a bit more when designing your game and it's events/NPC etc. CODA is a Narrator heavy game and a lot of planning is needed before any episode/adventure to make sure that the players don't walk it. It's not a system and setting where you can just pick up an idea and run it off the cuff. It's easier to do this with basic characters but the character creation rules do mean that it's quite easy to become quite adept in certain areas very quickly. Get nasty (not personally nasty but make the players work hard - they'll appreciate it more and get more satisfaction out of the game ultimately). Make them work for their experience. Make them play in character, make sure they play like experienced officers and deduct experience if they don't. To use a computer game analogy: run the game at level 5, not level 1. If they're really experienced run it at level 10!

Here's a tip for your NPCs. Take all your players sheets, photocopy them and add on some more skills and points, some new traits and a bit better equipment. Kills any inevitable munchkinism because the NPCs will always have the edge no matter how good your players think you are.

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http://tundra-sales-org.com/Merchant...egory_Code=CP2

The description on the above site doesn't do the book justice. It's not just a Cyberpunk supplement but an excellent book for advising on Roleplaying as GM in general.