Any HERO writeups for Star Trek ships

[Gary Miles]

Does anyone have any writeups of Star Trek ships? I'm starting a Trek HERO one of these days, and I'd rather not have to start off totally from scratch.

 

I've got the Trek HERO pdfs, but they don't have much in the way of ships.

[Outsider]

What kind of write ups?  Do you need deck plans, a list of what ship systems are available and what they do in HERO terms, or are you interested in ship vs ship combat?

 

 

If you need to do ship to ship combat, and just saying that the Enterprise (or what have you) can beat a Klingon Bird of Prey, has a chance against two if the players roll well or come up with a clever plan, and will almost certainly lose to three in a straight fight, is not enough, then I might consider adopting a side-game that was designed specifically to do ship to ship combat and use it as needed.

 

Otherwise, ships are more of a plot device to get your characters from one adventure to another, I'd think.

[Greywind]

Or a location for an adventure.

If you want combat for starships, I'd look at a game dedicated to it, like Starfleet Battles.

[Outsider]

SFB, while I love it, might be a tad much to ask (both as an investment and as a set of rules to learn) to be an adjunct for ship combat for one's RPG.    While I haven't played it, "
Full Trek", the star trek variant of Full Thrust might be an easier sell to the players.   Full Thrust also has the advantage of being available as a free PDF download, I think.

[Gary Miles]

I'm talking about regular Star Hero-style vehicle writeups- STR, DEX, BOD, SPD, equipment builds, etc. I want to use Hero, not some other game.

[Peter Gabancho]

I found this years ago.  I have some more Star Trek stuff for Hero if you are interested but I think these are the only ship write ups.

Pete

TNGBook_part05.pdf

[Gary Miles]

Thanks for the PDF. I think I had that at some point on another laptop, and didn't know where to find it again. It will at least give me some ideas where to start with the builds.

I'm trying to write-up a TOS-era Miranda, a RomBOP, a D-7, and a few others.

 

I've got the TOS-era HERO Trek PDF. If you have other stuff, I'd love to see what you have. THANKS!

[NuSoardGraphite]

Or a location for an adventure.

 

If you want combat for starships, I'd look at a game dedicated to it, like Starfleet Battles.

Not even necessary. HERO does starship battles just fine. You just have to know how to build the vehicles in Hero to get the feel you want from them.

[massey]

I would suggest the following:

 

--Build ships as a character, not a vehicle.  Let them have a Stun characteristic.  That represents a ship getting knocked around, control panels exploding, the lights flickering, things like that.

--When ships are "knocked out", their shields go down.  This is a pretty normal occurrence for starships and doesn't necessarily have any lasting impact on them.

--Keep ship attacks as Energy Blasts.  The Body rolls are more predictable that way.

--Ships would have 3 levels of defenses.  "Unconscious" ships have their base hull defense.  Ships that are Stunned would have perhaps 1/2 of their Force Fields available (instead of none of it, which a normal stunned character would have).  Ships that are conscious and not stunned have full defense.

--Ships have a base level of ability, but that can be exceeded by a skilled crew.  The Enterprise might have a 15 Int that represents the normal abilities of the computer, left on its own.  But Commander Spock has a 30, and so for science-related tasks, the Enterprise can use his higher value when he is at his station.

--Ships could also have their weapons, shields, sensors, transporters, or warp drive increased if a crew member makes his skill roll, once per game.  Perhaps they get one level for every point they make the roll by.  So when Montgomery Scott makes his Science skill: Phasers (15-) roll, and rolls a 7, then he made it by 8.  This adds 8D6 to the ship's phasers for this turn.  You could build it with an Aid if you want to, but meh.  Crew members are always REALLY important in Star Trek.  They seem to boost the ability of the ship a lot.  Perhaps certain crew have a Talent that lets them do that.

--Scale the ships however you want them.  Personally, I think modern military tech (and Dr Destroyer) is tremendously overstated.  I don't think the Enterprise has to be given stats to account for an 8D6 RKA tank cannon.  I'd give them guns in the range of 30D6 EBs and be liberal with the "blowing holes in walls" rules.  That would let them blow apart asteroids and small moons and the like.

--When a ship is "unconscious", they can still be revived by their crew.  Scotty can sit there making his engineering rolls, moving the ship one step up the time chart (from GM's discretion to once a minute, or whatever the next step is).  I'd put a floor on exactly how far negative Stun a starship can go -- they always seem to be not too far from getting full power back.  With 30D6 attacks, especially if you hit a few times, it isn't that hard to knock a ship down to like negative 500 Stun, where they'll never recover.  I'd set an arbitrary limit so that a standard ship can get some functionality back within a few minutes if the crew makes their rolls.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Thats a pretty good method.

 

I have my own methodology which represents all of those things (many of which are handled via Hit Locations) but that sounds like it would work perfectly.

[Starwolf]

Don't forget red shirts! They should have vulnerable to all attacks when on a landing party...

[L. Marcus]

... Or do the heroes have a power which makes attacks aimed at them hit the Red Shirts?

[Spence]

The "Build Ship as Characters" works really well in some instances.  For me it has never really worked. 

 

For Star Trek type games I treat them more as plot devices.  I use "Spacedock" (written by Steve Long for the LUGTrek RPG back in 1998) to make the ships.

 

This gives me a general sense (plus cool system names and technobabble), then I apply results based on the PC's actions and rolls.  I ignore the crunchy rule aspect and it tends to work out well.

[dmjalund]

... Or do the heroes have a power which makes attacks aimed at them hit the Red Shirts?

no - it;s the red shirt's power to "take one for the team"