HG Character Creation Clarification

[FallingPhoenix]

So, I was rolling up a Navy character for High Guard and discovered a few things that could use some clarification due to the fact that the Navy careers are sort of separate careers but sort of not...

One: When rolling for promotion, if you roll less than the number of terms in the career you're in, you leave the career. Do you count being in the Navy as one career or each Naval career in High Guard as a separate career? I did the latter, as otherwise staying in any of the advanced careers for more than one term would be extremely difficult (unless you made a Kirk-like meteoric rise to Captain).

Two: Since you carry over your rank to each career, do you gain the skills listed next to lower ranks in the career you move into? On the one hand, they're usually very career appropriate skills that would seem likely or even necessary to have rank in that career, but on the other hand, this would seem to give you more skills than non-naval careers (although that may not be true if a lot of the basic careers have skills at Rank 0 and 1). I'm not sure which way I lean on this one.

Three: RAW states that you gain an extra benefit roll for Rank 1-2, then 3-4, then 5-6. As you carry over rank to each Naval career, does this mean you should get this for each career's mustering out? That seems like it would give you more benefits than the Core book careers. So should those extra benefits be spread out over your entire Naval career? On the other hand, you could treat it like the massive amounts of cash that Dilettantes can potentially start out with and just say that's the benefit of long Naval career.

Four: Since each two ranks gives you an extra benefit roll (up to Rank 6), would you extend this with another one for Rank 7-8 and 9-10? I'm inclined to say no myself, as one Imperial Consort is surely enough for any Admiral...

Last question is actually not High Guard specific, but where many(?) characters can gain a Ship's Boat or something similar which they could likely rather easily sell for cash, should they be able to use that cash to pitch in on Ship Shares? Keep it? If so, it seems only fair that characters who don't want a ship be able to sell their ship shares. This would make Dilettantes not always massively more 'in the money' than other characters, which might be an interesting change.

I'm inclined to say "Give 'em the cash" since this would allow for early starting of a business from Merchant or giving them the funds to do something else grand like a Merc unit or saving up for another starship (or just starting less ridiculously in debt for the first one)...

 

[Captain Jonah]

One. Promotion is the same as advancement so yes if you roll less than the total number of terms you are out. The upward or out school of thought.
Specialisations are not separate careers as far as I see it. You are in the navy and simply doing a specialised role. Yes it means by the time you are hitting 6+ navy terms you are looking at rolling less than navy terms and getting the boot. Thems the breaks.

Two. I would say no. You earn the skills at the point you get the rank. You add together your ranks for mustering out so if you have a mix of enlisted and officer ranks add them but if you switch to a new specialisation or career within the navy you would not get the rank bonus skills lower down that table.

For example you are commissioned an O1 in crew which gains you Melee 1. Next term you switch to pilot and over the next three terms are promoted twice to O3 gaining Naval tactics at O2. On your fifth term you switch to Flight Helm, you are O3 but do not gain the skills for the rank from your new chart. Over the next two terms you are promoted twice and reach O5 gaining Leadership1. Then on your next term you are kicked out of the navy when you roll under terms served. You are rank O5.
If you want to continue with another term, say the merchants, you would start your merchant career at rank 0.

Three. Again I would say no. This would be a cumulative effect as mentioned above. Within the navy your rank remains as is, switching from one navy career as an O3 to another career does not count as two separate ranks for benefits.

At the end of character creation total up the ranks and that is your total. This will get you to 5-6 if you add enlisted and officer ranks but I see this more as a reflection that you know where to get the best out of deals, retirement perks and items lost on the inventory rather than everyone brown-nosing the retiring commodore.

Four. In terms of rank in a single career, note that with the extended naval ranks 4 and 5 are treated as rank 4 outside the navy, ranks 6 and 7 are rank 5 and ranks 8 + are rank 6 for non naval purposes. So if you spend so much time in the navy that you retire as an O10 this is treated as rank 6 on the benefits giving you three and the +1 on rolls.

If you are running games with this length of character terms then I would say yes the bonus benefits build up. Terra/sol does it this way since they run to much longer lived people and ten minus stat bonus is the normal limit for them. Also as mentioned above I add the ranks for this to reflect how much and who you know and which bodies you know the locations of.

Still by this point you are getting silly since 9 promotions in the navy would be 12-15 terms depending on career. With anagathics you can avoid aging but are you really running games with 15 term characters ?

Final question. This has been covered before some time ago. If you allow the player to sell that ships boat or to sell ships shares you are massively distorting starting money. The ships boat should be a loaner much like the scout ship. It is still owned by some organisation, the character has use of it. Likewise ships shares cannot be cashed in or sold, they represent a deal, called in favours etc and not a multi million credit pile of cash.

 

[rust]

If so, it seems only fair that characters who don't want a ship be able to sell their ship shares.

Well, in most situations money equals power, and allowing the
characters to sell their ship shares for money would be the equi-
valent of giving them temporary superpowers - they would be-
come rich enough to have their problems solved by throwing a
lot of money or hirelings at them instead of adventuring. In my
view not necessarily a good idea. What I would find far more ac-
ceptable and less disrupting would be to allow the characters to
trade their ship shares in for other favours or investments.

For example, the Merchant Prince supplement rules include the
use of ship shares as investment in a company, in my settings I
allow characters to trade their ship shares in for "colony shares"
which represent property on a frontier colony, and so on. This
way the characters still are wealthy ones, with advantages and
responsibilities (= adventure hooks) coming with their wealth,
but they cannot dodge adventuring by paying others to do it for
them.

 

[CosmicGamer]

EDIT: I had to step away while writing this and notice other posts have now been contributed to this thread. Sorry for any duplication what others have already said.

One: Do you count being in the Navy as one career or each Naval career in High Guard as a separate career?

Separate careers. Most of the quals do specifically say "Per previous non–naval career". Crewman and Support do not. Indicating that each career path in the navy should be considered a separate career.

Two: Since you carry over your rank to each career, do you gain the skills listed

I'd say No. Whatever logical argument you may have for this, I see no support for this in the rules. As an argument against: If allowed it would be exploited with unrealistic job hopping every term just to gain skills.

Three: benefit roll

Folks need to be careful when they make changes. Changes have ripple effects. They did try to address the issue of benefits and rank on page 6 but didn't mention this issue. Of note is the fact that the core rules start people out at rank 0 but I don't believe any of the careers in high guard have a rank 0.

My method of keeping balance would be to subtract any previous benefits your rank granted. For example if you were a rank 2 and got one benefit as a Crewman then went into Engineering and left at rank 4 you would get one rank benefit when you muster out.

Four: Since each two ranks gives you an extra benefit roll (up to Rank 6), would you extend this with another one for Rank 7-8 and 9-10? I'm inclined to say no myself, as one Imperial Consort is surely enough for any Admiral...

Covered on page 6.

 

[FallingPhoenix]

Thanks, everyone! The naval ranks equivalent to normal ranks thing I found in the SRD after you mentioned it, but it doesn't seem to be in my copy of HG, so that's very good to know.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Last question is actually not High Guard specific, but where many(?) characters can gain a Ship's Boat or something similar which they could likely rather easily sell for cash, should they be able to use that cash to pitch in on Ship Shares? Keep it? If so, it seems only fair that characters who don't want a ship be able to sell their ship shares. This would make Dilettantes not always massively more 'in the money' than other characters, which might be an interesting change.

I'm inclined to say "Give 'em the cash" since this would allow for early starting of a business from Merchant or giving them the funds to do something else grand like a Merc unit or saving up for another starship (or just starting less ridiculously in debt for the first one)...

It makes no difference how much cash a player character has. Adventures will still come and find them. Adventures don't care how "rich" someone is.

 

[CosmicGamer]

It makes no difference how much cash a player character has.

Disagree. How much cash effects what gear characters can afford, perhaps what ship they have, how they role play their character, and more.

Adventures don't care how "rich" someone is.

Not all adventures are the same. Many adventures start with the premise that the group takes a job because they need the money.

Adventures will still come and find them.

They sure can.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

It makes no difference how much cash a player character has.

Disagree. How much cash effects what gear characters can afford, perhaps what ship they have, how they role play their character, and more.

What's wrong with that?

Adventures don't care how "rich" someone is.

Not all adventures are the same. Many adventures start with the premise that the group takes a job because they need the money.

And many more don't. You're talking about 5% of adventures. There's more to role-playing than visiting a tavern to find where dungeons near a town are. Or fetching things for an NPC.

 

[CosmicGamer]

I'm inclined to say "Give 'em the cash" since this would allow for early starting of a business from Merchant or giving them the funds to do something else grand like a Merc unit or saving up for another starship (or just starting less ridiculously in debt for the first one)...

Heck, if you want you can start the game saying a characters uncle dies and left a business with a fleet of ships and a pile of cash. Who killed your Uncle? Can you keep his business going? There is a bitter conflict with the union, a crime syndicate is disrupting business because your uncle stopped paying protection money, rivals have been sabotaging ships, the corrupt government in one system want's their payday, your cousin (uncle had two siblings and no children of his own) also owns half the company now and you hear he'd been arguing a lot with your uncle before he passed away.

Point is, run the game how you like but

should they be able to use that cash to pitch in on Ship Shares

I'd say no to "Ship Shares" based on what they are in the CRB. But i gather you mean use the cash to pitch in on purchasing the ship and increase your percentage of ownership - sure.

it seems only fair that characters who don't want a ship be able to sell their ship shares

Again, based only on the CRB, "Ship shares represent contacts, credit rating, savings and favours owed that a character can put towards ownership of a space vessel."

Even if you decide to allow it, what value would you put on the shares? 2 shares for a 2% discount on a 97,182,000cr Fat Trader would come to 1,943,640cr but a 2% discount on a 36,567,000cr Free Trader would be 731,340cr.

From a roll playing perspective, I find it hard to believe that the Navy lets you walk away with a fully functional 16MCr Ships boat. I let the player choose from either 1) it comes with strings attached and can't be sold, like a scout ship or 2) It was destined for decommission and you somehow managed to save it from being scrapped. It is going to be an adventure just to get it operational again or 3) You stole it. Perhaps your good and nobody knows it's gone but it certainly isn't properly registered to you or 4) Like most ships, it needs to be paid for and can be paid with monthly installment.

Actually, I just thought of #4 and added it to MTU document. I'm thinking of adding: Unlike a ship, there is no interest or financing fees.

It makes no difference how much cash a player character has.

Disagree. How much cash effects what gear characters can afford, perhaps what ship they have, how they role play their character, and more.

What's wrong with that?

Didn't say anything was wrong with that.

Adventures don't care how "rich" someone is.

Not all adventures are the same. Many adventures start with the premise that the group takes a job because they need the money.

And many more don't. You're talking about 5% of adventures.

While curious how you came up with it, I won't quibble over the percentage. I think your point is that a character being rich does not break the game. I agree with that however statements like "It makes no difference how much cash a player character has." and "Adventures don't care how "rich" someone is." made it sound like you believe there is no difference between a game with rich characters and one without.

There's more to role-playing than visiting a tavern to find where dungeons near a town are. Or fetching things for an NPC.

Of course. My point exactly. There is variety. A rich character does have an effect on the adventures run and how they are played.