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.
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….