d20 Future Crew Quality RAW

[Kaodi]

Is it me, or are the numbers for crew quality so horribly out of whack as to not even be funny?

I mean... look at Ace Pilot... How the hell do you manage to have the defense bonus of an 8th level fast hero, the attack bonus of an 8th level strong hero, the dexterity of an 16th level character, and the skill ranks of a 9th level character?

I generally have a lot of respect for the people working at Wizards R&D, but were they on crack when they added that stuff up?

 

[Kaodi]

To add a little to my rather hasty and... uhhh... bitter sounding diatribe, I came up with a little comparison.

I took the skill check modifier to be actual skill ranks, so untrained and trained are both level 1, expert is level 5 and ace is level 9. I assume every category to be as a fast hero or ordinary, since they perform the best in every area except some skills, which would have someone with the relative skills and ability score for the task, so there is really no difference.

So, d20 Future RAW:

...............Skill Mod...Pilot Def...Pilot Dex...Gunner Atk
Untrained..........+0...........+1...........+0..............-4
Trained.............+4...........+3...........+2.............+2
Expert..............+8...........+5...........+4..............+4
Ace................+12...........+7...........+6..........+8/+3

However, what is so messed up is that everything except for of course Pilot Dex (which is the most ridiculous number as is) completely ignores ability bonus, and ignores that just because a crew is untrained, doesn't mean their not going to stick the best person for the job in each hot seat.

So, I came up with this:

...............Skill Mod...Pilot Def...Pilot Dex...Gunner Atk
Untrained..........+2...........+1...........+2..............-2
Trained.............+6...........+3...........+2..............+4
Expert.............+11...........+5...........+3..............+6
Ace................+15...........+7...........+3..........+9/+4

By comparison, this at least seems to make some sense, and is completely ready to go. The only feat taken into account here is Starship Operation, so these values could conceivably be higher depending on if crew members should be taking skill focus, or weapon focus.

So, what kind of mental acrobatics did they do to justify the set of values included in the RAW?

(Damnit, I still haven't figured out how to make tables correctly on the boards...)

 

[Arkhandus]

I dunno, it seems pretty odd to me too.

The table would, on the boards, be made (code) within (/code) tags; just replace the parentheses with square brackets. Make it in a word processing document so you can use the Tab key between columns. Like so.

D20 Future Crew Quality
[b]Crew		Skill Check	Class	Pilot's Dex.	Gunner's	Mod. To Starship's
Quality		Modifier *	Def.	Modifier	Attack Bonus	Base Purchase DC[/b]
Untrained	+0		+1	+0		-4		-4
Trained		+4		+3	+2		+2		+0
Expert		+8		+5	+4		+4		+4
Ace		+12		+7	+6		+8/+3		+8
[i]* This includes Pilot checks.[/i]

Also: D20 Modern has no Skill Focus.

These stats above are, apparently, for different kinds of crewmembers (the pilot mods probably aren't meant to be used in combination with the gunner mods, for a single NPC crewmember; they probably represent differently-trained crew).


What do I have to add? Well, it's strictly impossible to get the NPC starship pilots and gunners to have the stats shown above, as it is in D20 Future. They can't possibly increase their Dexterity bonus from +0 to +6, unless you're also assuming they're receiving serious cybernetic or genetic augmentations, at least 6 points of Dexterity worth (more if they're not assuming Ace pilots to be 20th-level).

Now if this list was described as representing pilots of different degrees of talent, rather than Untrained pilots developing over time until they're Ace pilots, then it could be done. But for a pilot to progress along these values? Impossible. (I just spent about 10 or 20 minutes at least, trying to work it out as I made this post, but found that it is impossible.)

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

You need to make your own values; it's the only one way to get characters that make sense.