The Expanding Frontier

Creating Sci-fi RPG Resources

  • Home
  • Order a Map
  • Order Miniatures
  • Supporters
  • About
  • Bio

A Module Based Campaign – characters

  • Adventures
  • NPCs

As part of the “Module-based Campaign” posts, I thought it would be a good idea to have a set of characters to go along with the series to demonstrate the skill progression as they go through the adventures. It would also help me gauge the amount of additional XP needed between the modules to prepare them for the next ones.

To that end, I’m presenting a party of six PCs that will travel along on the adventures with us through this campaign. In this post I’ll present their starting stats and the updated ones after the Volturnus series, with XP added for Starmist but not spent. Going forward, I’ll post updates to the characters at the end of each installment in this series of posts.

Guidelines for skill increases

Each of these characters is progressing towards getting a spaceship skill per the standard Knight Hawks skill rules. They’ll need those skills to play in the modules starting with SFKH0: Warriors of White Light. As such, I’ll be developing the prerequisite skills needed.

In addition, I assume that the characters are not laser focused on that goal and will add branching skills to diversify their skill sets. They may not be as good as one of the other players in this other skills but if separated and in a bind, they might be able to pull something off. It’s been my experience that players will typically drive hard on their main skill but also pick up a variety of others along the way and I’ll represent that in the skill lists of these PCs.

Finally, in the standard rules, ability scores don’t really play into the skill chances except with military skills. As such, for Technological and Bio-social skills, there is little to no incentive to increase ability scores to get skill improvements. In the military skills, since the skill computation is one half the ability score plus 10x the skill level, and ability scores are increased at one point per XP, it doesn’t really make sense to start increasing DEX or STR until it costs more than 20 XP to increase the skill. Which means level 6 (the max) for military PSA characters and level 3 for non military characters.

Now this dynamic changes a bit if you have a lot of weapon skills as each point into a characteristic increase all your skills so you might shift a little sooner if you’re a military PSA character. Regardless, I’m going to focus more on the skill levels than the characteristics while improving these PCs. You might do it differently but that’s the fun of the game.

With the preliminaries out of the way, let’s meet our band of heros.

Starting Characters

These are our starting characters as initially rolled up (and yes, I did roll them up randomly).

Name: Yanni

Race: Yazirian, F

STR/STA: 40/40

DEX/RS: 55/55

INT/LOG: 55/55

PER/LDR: 45/45

Racial Abilities: Battle Rage 5%

XP: 0

PSA – Technological

Skills: Technician 1, Beam 1

Notes:

Born on Hentz, Araks. Yanni likes to tinker with gadgets and vehicles.  She’d love to be able to tinker on starships as well.

 

Name: Mekar

Race: Yazirian, M

STR/STA: 45/45

DEX/RS: 70/70

INT/LOG: 55/55

PER/LDR: 55/55

Racial Abilities: Battle Rage 5%

XP: 0

PSA – Bio-social

Skills: Medic 1, Environmental 1

Notes:

Born on Pale, Truane’s Star.  As Mekar will tell anyone who asks, his job is to understand the local critters and keep everyone else in one piece. [Mekar will eventually have a Rocket Weapons spaceship skill but getting a bio-social PSA character there takes a bit of work.]

 

Name: Dolnab

Race: Dralasite

STR/STA: 55/55

DEX/RS: 65/65

INT/LOG: 70/70

PER/LDR: 50/50

Racial Abilities: Lie Detection 5%

XP: 0

PSA -Techological

Skills: Computer 1, Projectile 1

Notes:

Born on Inner Reach, Dramune.  Dolnab loves to tinker with computers and also play flight simulator games. 

 

Name:  Michaella

Race: Human, F

STR/STA: 55/55

DEX/RS: 64/61

INT/LOG: 50/50

PER/LDR: 40/40

XP: 0 

PSA – Military

Skills: Beam 1, Melee 1

Notes:

Born on Minotaur, Theseus. Michaella grew up as the youngest of seven with six older brothers.  She learned to shoot and hold her own with her brothers’ rough-housing at a young age.

 

Name: K’sta’n

Race: Vrusk, F

STR/STA: 50/50

DEX/RS: 75/75

INT/LOG: 50/50

PER/LDR: 35/35

Racial Abilities: Comprehension 15%

XP: 0

PSA – Military

Skills: Gyrojet 1, Martial Arts 1

Notes:

Born on Terldrom, Fromeltar.  K’sta’n has always had an interest in weapons, but also in the forms of the various martial arts.

 

Name: T’vor

Race: Vrusk, M

STR/STA: 40/40

DEX/RS: 55/55

INT/LOG: 65/65

PER/LDR: 40/40

Racial Abilities: Comprehension 15%

XP: 0

PSA – Technological

Skills: Computer 1, Robotics 1

Notes:

Born on Gran Quivera, Prenglar.  T’vor used to hang aout at the University of Prenglar as a kid and chat up the tech professors.  He loves to hack computers and robots and can usually get anything working, eventually.  He also has a deep interest in astronomy.

So that’s our team – two yazirians, two vrusk, a dralasite, and a human. They somehow all ended up on Pale and were recuited to go on the Second Voltrunus Expedition.

After Volturnus

They all managed to survive the adventure (I said I was a nice Referee) and made it back to the Frontier with a sizable chunk of change and a bunch of XP points (I awarded them 70 for that bit of adventure). Spending their XP along the way, learning new skills from each other and out of necessity and practice, they have all increased their skills as follows.

Note that on the XP line I’m recording it as NN/MM where NN is the XP spent and MM is the total XP earned. The total earned includes the 13 XP for the Sundown on Starmist module.

Name: Yanni

Race: Yazirian, F

STR/STA: 40/40

DEX/RS: 55/55

INT/LOG: 55/55

PER/LDR: 45/45

Racial Abilities: Battle Rage 5%

XP: 70/83

PSA – Technological

Skills: Technician 4, Robotics 2, Computer 1, Beam 2, Melee 1

Notes:

Born on Hentz, Araks. Yanni likes to tinker with gadgets and vehicles.  She’d love to be able to tinker on starships as well.

 

Name: Mekar

Race: Yazirian, M

STR/STA: 45/45

DEX/RS: 70/70

INT/LOG: 55/55

PER/LDR: 55/55

Racial Abilities: Battle Rage 5%

XP: 70/83

PSA – Bio-social

Skills: Medic 3, Environmental 3, Projectile 2, Psycho-social 1, Melee 1, Gyrojet 1

Notes:

Born on Pale, Truane’s Star.  As Mekar will tell anyone who asks, his job is to understand the local critters and keep everyone else in one piece. [Mekar will eventually have a Rocket Weapons spaceship skill but getting a bio-social PSA character there takes a bit of work.]

 

Name: Dolnab

Race: Dralasite

STR/STA: 55/55

DEX/RS: 65/65

INT/LOG: 70/70

PER/LDR: 50/50

Racial Abilities: Lie Detection 5%

XP: 60/83

PSA – Techological

Skills: Technician 3, Computer 2, Robotics 1, Projectile 2, Melee 1, Demolitions 1

Notes:

Born on Inner Reach, Dramune.  Dolnab loves to tinker with computers and also play flight simulator games. 

 

Name:  Michaella

Race: Human, F

STR/STA: 55/55

DEX/RS: 64/61

INT/LOG: 50/50

PER/LDR: 40/40

XP: 68/83

PSA – Military

Skills: Beam 4, Melee 3, Environmental 1, Thrown 1, Martial Arts 1, Medic 1

Notes:

Born on Minotaur, Theseus. Michaella grew up as the youngest of seven with six older brothers.  She learned to shoot and hold her own with her brothers’ rough-housing at a young age.

 

Name: K’sta’n

Race: Vrusk, F

STR/STA: 50/50

DEX/RS: 75/75

INT/LOG: 50/50

PER/LDR: 35/35

Racial Abilities: Comprehension 15%

XP: 68/83

PSA – Military

Skills: Gyrojet 4, Martial Arts 3, Projectile 3, Technician 1

Notes:

Born on Terldrom, Fromeltar.  K’sta’n has always had an interest in weapons, but also in the forms of the various martial arts.

 

Name: T’vor

Race: Vrusk, M

STR/STA: 40/40

DEX/RS: 55/55

INT/LOG: 65/65

PER/LDR: 40/40

Racial Abilities: Comprehension 15%

XP: 68/83

PSA – Technological

Skills: Computer 4, Robotics 2, Beam 2, Melee 1

Notes:

Born on Gran Quivera, Prenglar.  T’vor used to hang aout at the University of Prenglar as a kid and chat up the tech professors.  He loves to hack computers and robots and can usually get anything working, eventually.  He also has a deep interest in astronomy.

Whether they had them before or not, the team picked up some weapons skills just to survive on Volturnus. They also diversified their skill areas a bit and significantly improved their primary skill.

Going Forward

Now that we’ve met the team. I’ll update their stats and skills at the end of each of module campaign posts in the future.

Do you have thoughts on how you’d develop the skills differently? How have your players advanced their skills across a long campaign? Have they been laser focused on a single skill or broadly diversified? Let me know in the comments.

campaign Star Frontiers
May 23, 2019 Tom

Post navigation

Expanded Frontier Map – update 2 → ← A Module Based Campaign – part 2

One thought on “A Module Based Campaign – characters”

  1. Paul says:
    May 23, 2019 at 9:29 am

    I had realized that STR/DEX increases would not be cost effective until later skill levels, but I hadn’t considered that having lots of weapon skills changes that.

    I realize that an analysis like this needs to stay simple. It seems to me, though that XP expenditures would depend a lot on the referee’s approach to challenges. You mention characters being separated and so needing broader skill sets, though I don’t think all referees arrange (or like to allow) situations like that. Also, a referee might focus a great deal on ability checks; a party that adventures a lot on rugged planets might want to boost STR for climbing. A game with a lot of vehicle combat would call for boosting ones RS.

    I would also think real players would often want to boost STA and alien abilities.

    But, I realize that these characters are also focused on Knight Hawks play, which seems like it would make such things much less useful. No one needs Yazirian battle rage on a ship. But, if Yazirian battle rage helps one survive long enough to join a ship crew….

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Become a Patron!

Recent Posts

  • Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY62.069 to FY62.99
  • State of the Frontier – August 2022
  • Battle of Hargut (Gruna Garu) – FY62.098
  • Archived Arcane Game Lore Posts – May 2013 to Dec 2014
  • A Look at Yachts and Privateers
  • Homeworld Bound – A Campaign Concept
  • Second Battle of Fromeltar (Terledrom) – FY62.083
  • Sample Star System Data
  • Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY62.038 to FY62.068
  • State of the Frontier – July 2022

Categories

  • 3D Models
  • Adventures
  • Background
  • Creatures/Races
  • Deck Plans
  • Equipment
  • Game Design
  • General
  • Locations
  • Maps
  • NPCs
  • Optional Rules
  • Patreon-only
  • Project Overviews
  • Reviews
  • Setting Material
  • Starships
  • System Brief
  • Vehicles
  • Writing

Recent Comments

  • Loguar on Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY62.069 to FY62.99
  • Loguar on Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY62.069 to FY62.99
  • Tom on Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY62.069 to FY62.99
  • Rook on Maps and Counters
  • Loguar on Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY62.069 to FY62.99
  • Tom on Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY62.069 to FY62.99
  • Tom on Second Battle of Fromeltar (Terledrom) – FY62.083
  • Loguar on Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY62.069 to FY62.99
  • Loguar on Second Battle of Fromeltar (Terledrom) – FY62.083
  • Aemon Aylward on Sample Star System Data

Archives

  • September 2022 (1)
  • August 2022 (9)
  • July 2022 (3)
  • June 2022 (3)
  • May 2022 (3)
  • June 2021 (1)
  • April 2021 (1)
  • February 2021 (4)
  • January 2021 (6)
  • December 2020 (5)
  • November 2020 (11)
  • October 2020 (4)
  • September 2020 (5)
  • August 2020 (4)
  • July 2020 (6)
  • June 2020 (5)
  • May 2020 (8)
  • April 2020 (5)
  • March 2020 (5)
  • February 2020 (5)
  • January 2020 (5)
  • December 2019 (7)
  • November 2019 (4)
  • October 2019 (6)
  • September 2019 (5)
  • August 2019 (6)
  • July 2019 (7)
  • June 2019 (5)
  • May 2019 (6)
  • April 2019 (7)
  • March 2019 (4)
  • February 2019 (5)
  • January 2019 (7)
  • December 2018 (5)
  • November 2018 (10)
  • October 2018 (4)
  • September 2018 (4)
  • August 2018 (5)
  • July 2018 (4)
  • June 2018 (4)
  • May 2018 (12)
  • December 2015 (1)
  • November 2015 (2)
  • December 2014 (4)
  • November 2014 (3)
  • June 2014 (1)
  • January 2014 (1)
  • July 2013 (1)
  • June 2013 (2)
  • May 2013 (3)

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
Powered by WordPress | theme Layout Builder