The "Red Shirt" Rule

[Tom Kalbfus]

Unlike Star Trek, the players have to allot funds to care and feed Red Shirts and even then it doesn't guarantee the enemy will exclusively shoot them. Grow a spine and do your own fighting!

Or get a robot.

To get more detailed, a house rule would be set up, if a character kills 16 NPCs, or creatures with physical attribute scores 2-15 and no redshirts, then the PC advances a level and gets a red shirt.

Opponents defeated - Level - red shirts
16 - 2nd level - 1 red shirt
50 - 3rd level - 2 red shirts
100 - 4th level - 3 red shirts
150 - 5th level - 4 red shirts

How to use red shirts.
Red shirts follow you around where ever you go, usually their armor is the same or inferior. Your opponents can shoot at you or the red shirts, the red shirts can also fire back, or they (the opponents) can shoot at you, when shooting at you and a hit is scored, there is a 50% chance at second level that the damage will be inflicted on your 1 red shirt instead of your primary PC, at 3rd level there is a 66% chance (33% chance for each one) that the damage on the PC will be absorbed by one of two red shirts you receive at third level. Basically you are substituting a number of red shirts for the additional hit points you would otherwise receive in a game of D&D. the downside is these red shirts still take up space, eat food, breath oxygen, and so forth. A 1st level character can hire a red shirt, but the damage transference ability does not apply until 2nd level is reached. basically the level of the character equals the number or red shirts minus one, he can transfer damage to. This rule should make the primary PC more survivable, though it does get a bit crowded at higher levels.

What do you think?

Never keen on attempts to introduce XP into Trav, and this one seems particularly forced device to "power up" the characters. As other posters have pointed out, just hire extra support, or, if possible in the campaign, use combat robots, though the proviso remains that it may become more expensive to hire human shields if many of them don't come back.

Egil

One can introduce the concept of Wealth Levels instead, substitute credits for experience points.
Basically one's fighting ability is augmented by what one can buy or who one can hire. After a while, the characters become remote command figures who direct the movement of troops and ships in mass combat, but rarely engage in personal combat themselves. Admittedly, this is the way things work in the real world as well. The wealth levels continue beyond 20th level, there are people who rule planets, subsectors etc. Probably beyond 20th level, the character should retire.

Wealth
Level
1st Cr. 50,000 Cr. 400/month Very Poor
2nd Cr. 100,000 Cr. 800/month Poor
3rd Cr. 200,000 Cr. 1500/month Good
4th Cr. 600,000 Cr. 5000/month Rich
5th Cr. 1,440,000 Cr. 12,000/month Very Rich
6th MCr. 2.4 Cr. 20,000/month Ludicrously Rich
7th MCr. 5 Cr. 41,000/month
8th MCr. 10 Cr. 83,000/month
9th MCr. 24 Cr. 200,000/month
10th MCr. 50 Cr. 410,000/month
11th MCr. 100 Cr. 830,000/month
12th MCr. 256 MCr. 2.13/month
13th MCr. 500 MCr 4.16/month
14th MCr. 1,000 MCr 8.33/month
15th MCr. 2,400 MCr 20/month
16th MCr. 5,000 MCr 41.6/month
17th MCr. 10,000 MCr 83.3/month
18th MCr. 25,600 MCr 213.3/month
19th MCr. 50,000 MCr 416.6/month
20th MCr. 100,000 MCr 833.3/month

You can use this table to determine what kind of opponents the PCs will have, that is, their opponents will be of similar wealth levels to the PCs. At high levels you end up with space battles between the forces of the PCs and their enemies.

How does that sound as the basis of a Traveller campaign? Probably at around 20th level, the PCs become planetary governors in some frontier districts.