Ship's NPC crew size and skill level?

[Spartikis]

Ok, so ive got a group for a new champaign, will be myself and two others.

Im planning on giving them all shared ownership of a yz-775 freighter, only with altered stats (5D hull, 3D shield isntead of 7Dhull, 6D shield). But it requires a crew of 8, plus it wouldnt hurt to have a captain/officer. Even if i play a character of my own were going to be like 6 crew short.

Would having 6+ NPCs take away from that "tight-knit" feel of the crew? I would normally just assign droid but this is a privateer vessel so they need a decent sized crew.

Also, how "powerful" should i make the NPC? I dont want them to be as strong as the PCs, as they are meant to be "hero-ish" but i also dont want to have the NPC crew die everytime then run into a squad of stormtroopers. I was thinking maybe 15 Dice instead of the 18 and individual skills no higher than 4D or 5D, such as blaster, gunnery, etc? They should be slightly stronger than basic soldiers but not powerful enough to take on major villan. That seem reasonable?

Also, do you advance the skills of the NPC crew over time or give them character points to spend? i feel like thats a lot of work, maybe i can just add a pip to one random skill after every adventure?

Thanks for the input!

[Guardian_A]

I wouldnt recommend adding a bunch of NPCs to the crew right away, you dont want to take the focus away from the player characters.

For starters, given the armament of the ship you chose, its likely that 3 of the crew would be gunners.

Also, you only need a skeleton crew to get by, and a skeleton crew is usually roughly 1/3 the size of a full crew. Just remember, if you are running on a skeleton crew, you suffer a +10 difficulty.

One way I have dealt with crew shortages in the past is to either modify the ship so it dosnt need as many crew members (I usually reflect this in a -1 maneuverability for every 10% you have reduced the crew by.) The other way I have dealt with this is by giving the players access to a small number of droids to operate some of the crew slots. Giving them a pair of R2 units and a modified 3P0 unit could go a long way towards solving the crew shortage problem without drawing any of the focus away from the player characters.

[TyCaine]

Rather than 1 character each plus a GM controlled NPC, leaving slots open for 5 or 6 others, have you considered getting the players to create 2 or even 3 characters each?

One of my own groups which was a small one we did something similar, using one character as the 'primary' with 1 or 2 others as secondaries, this allowed the player to switch between characters at certain points in the story, and at one point the 'primaries' went one way, the secondaries went the other, effectively giving us the possibility of two adventures stemming from the one story.

We managed that part by one session handling the primaries and what happened for them, getting them to a good 'pause' point, then next session used the other characters, and so on until the group reconnected, at which point the primaries take the spotlight and the secondaries become the lifters and the carriers once more, so to speak.

Is it more work? Obviously a least a little more, since each player will be handling multiple characters, the main point is to focus on their primary character most of the time, while still having the others for reactions and interactions. It also allows for the main character to become wounded and have to heal without having the player 'benched' for a time as they have another to fall back on.

We also had where some had 2 humanoids and a droid as their characters, giving a primary, secondary, and a droid as backup...

With this method the question of stats is moot as you would just have the players generate the additional stats.

Just a thought...


T.C.

[ZzaphodD]

Just use a ship with a smaller crew requirement and add a few (quirky) droids... Perhaps one NPC on top of that.. Dont forget to make the NPC a unique personality and not a 'robot' that does exactly what he/she is told.
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[garhkal]

Or use some generic pirate like npcs.. Most are in the 12-14d attributes, 10d skills with most 4d or 5d..
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[Bren]

[Whill]

Those are some ways to do it. I don't recommend players playing multiple main characters unless they are very good roleplayers (perhaps they are). If you absolutely must do this, then I recommend no more than 2 PCs per player. But I've had an overall bad experience with players running multiple PCs so I stopped doing that a long time ago.

[Spartikis]

[Bren]

[garhkal]

Well, adnd has things like henchmen and hirelings to help fill out needed numbers... perhaps the npcs they need are akin to henchmen for their pcs..
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Wisconsin Wookie]

[Praxian]

Definately echo the different ship comment.

Having players play multiple roles and chars on a ship is definately an advanced player move, and if your players are advanced like that, cool.

But if not, I highly reccomend not doing that.

I would suggest the Ghtroc 720 Frieghter.

Crew of 1, requires 1 gunner, and has room for 10 passengers and 135 metric tons of storage.

Also, if you don't mind the Droid NPC (or even just a droid brain for the guns), the YT-2400 ship.

Crew of 2, Gunner 1, 6 passengers, and room for 150 metric tons of cargo.

There's more, but those two would definately be my suggestion.

[Whill]

[Henrik.Balslev]

[garhkal]