What extra ships should she give Ferrik?

[JMISBEST]

A GM I know is more then Half-Way through Drinax, but she has foolishly done No Honour Among Thieves as her groups 7th adventure and she wants to know what extra ships should she give Ferrik for him to have a chance of at least escaping and this assumes that her Pcs only send the 4 ships that they own that are guaranteed to be available?. Here are those 4 ships

They are all 200 ton Drinaxi Class Commerce Raiders

Other then all 4 of them being fully repaired, all furnishings and fittings replaced and all having A 4-ton medical Room and 25.75 tons of Cargo Space they’re standard

They all have a total of 11 crew that are made up of 3 Marines, 2 Gunners, 1 Medic, 1 back-up engineer, 1 back-up pilot, 1 engineering officer, 1 piloting officer and 1 1st officer and 3 of the 4 also have 1 Captain

All 12 crew on 3 of their ships and 11 crew on their 4th ship all have A +3 DM in their 5 key-skills and A +2 DM in their 3 none-key skills

And

Cost wise including maintenance, upkeep and crew wages it costs Cr 137,940 +another Cr 2,000 each cos of how good they are or Cr 181,940x4 or Cr 727,760 per month and 56% of her Pcs illegal earnings

 

[Garran]

The NPCs shouldn't get to artificially scale up with the PCs or there isn't much point in the PCs actually gaining/improving anything.

Ferrik has what he has. If the PCs have four ships to his one, he doesn't get to escape. He knows this, and so will everyone else. That means there's a better-than-average chance that Ferrik's allies (and crew) will be willing to cut a deal with the PCs. How much they can take advantage of that is up to them.

 

[Juums]

The NPCs shouldn't get to artificially scale up with the PCs or there isn't much point in the PCs actually gaining/improving anything.

Ferrik has what he has. If the PCs have four ships to his one, he doesn't get to escape. He knows this, and so will everyone else. That means there's a better-than-average chance that Ferrik's allies (and crew) will be willing to cut a deal with the PCs. How much they can take advantage of that is up to them.

I think this is a rather foolish way of looking at things. The resources of the antagonists should always correlate and scale with those of the PCs, because the purpose of those NPCs is to provide an appropriately challenging obstacle for the PCs to overcome. The "Honor Among Thieves" adventure makes some assumptions about the PCs' capabilities in how it sets up its challenges, one of which is that it will occur fairly early in the campaign, if not being the introductory adventure and shakedown cruise for the Harrier. If run later in the campaign, when the PCs have accrued more swag and capabilities, it's entirely appropriate to give Redthane's outfit more dakka so that they make a bigger impact on the PCs. To look at it another way: Is it a terribly satisfying ending to an adventure that's stretched across a half-dozen systems for a four-ship task force to run down a lone Far Trader that, with the capabilities of said task force, could easily be caught on the ground? I'd argue that it's not.

Now, this isn't to say that there isn't narrative fodder to be had from keeping things as they are. But, if you want to keep the spirit of the adventure's original ending, with a potential punch-up that could be a threat to the PCs, there's also absolutely nothing wrong with increasing Redthane's resources to keep-up with the PCs so that he can pose that potential threat.

 

[Garran]

We have very different views about level-scaling in games, so leaving that argument aside, there are two specific problems with doing so in the adventure in question:


If Redthane has a battle-capable squadron that can take on multiple high-tech raiders then he probably wouldn't be there in the first place since the plot hinges on his situation being far more precarious than that.

More importantly, Redthane isn't MEANT to be a meaningful threat or to have a reasonable chance to escape. Once the PCs find him, he's done. The adventure itself acknowledges this, noting that his ship is heavily outgunned by the Harrier alone and that the PCs may have brought more ships than that (although it assumes they'd be from Theev, rather than their own fleet). The 'challenge' that he represents isn't one of being a boss battle, it's the choice and politics of whether to kill, capture, or take his last-ditch offer - and how that might play out with people they struck deals with along the way.