I have a few questions/feedbacks about the Klingon book, especially given some changes from the Starfleet book.
Number of talents per character? The overview of lifepath creation notes that choosing a species gives access to species-specific talents. However, the actual written-out step one (page 96) says that a character gets a talent when choosing a species. With that wording, characters have 5 talents, instead of the 4 that I assume is intended, because all the other steps still include their talents as normal. Or do Klingons get an extra talent, because they’re required to take brak’lul?
Gaining threat for lethal attacks? In the Starfleet book, in the step-by-step of combat, the step that says “choose lethal or non-lethal” explicitly says choosing a lethal attack awards the GM threat. This is conspicuously left out of the Klingon book. I assumed that was intended, since Klingons are just going be killing things more often, and that the loss of threat was made up for in the escalation costs of “basic” Klingon weapons like the bat’leth. However, the “Killer’s Instinct” talent is explicitly worded as an exception to the “threat awarded when making a lethal attack” rule, implying that Klingons still award threat when they make a lethal attack.
The section on attributes in chapter 4, page 91 claims that attributes are described in chapter 3. Unless I missed something, they are not.
There are a LOT of bookmarks in the pdf version. Which is fine, because it makes finding specific parts easier. But I don’t think that every “flavor text” piece of writing needs a bookmark, since the bookmarks should be focused on making rules easier to find. Additionally, the House Status and House Legacy have a few bookmark oddities (Iconoclasts and Warriors have a sub-bookmark that shouldn’t exist).
This is consistent from the Core Rules (p. 101; p. 102, p. 113 ff., p. 116, p. 117 f.; p. 132). In the Klingon book, the Lifepath Summary (p. 97) lists this number, as does the summary of the Creation in Play method (p. 123). The latter even takes into account the brak’lul talent klingons receive. While the overview on p. 97 misses the talent in step one, it has it included in step seven. I think this is an error, as is the write-up of step seven itself on p. 113 (saying that, in this step, the character would get a talent).
Indeed ambiguous.
The rule that every use of deadly force generates Threat is mentioned in the Core Rules not only within the description of combat tasks but also in the description how to generate threat (p. 86). In the corresponding section of the Klingon Core Book (p. 82) the reference on deadly attacks is, again, left out. Thus, I tend to say that lethal attacks no longer generates Threat.
However, the Killer Instincts talent was introduced especially with the Klingon rules, the abovementioned omissions might again be mistakes. I’d say to debate it within the group and conclude a house rule. I will most certainly stick with the “deadly force = threat” pattern for my Starfleet group. With Klingons? Not so sure.
I figured it was 4 talents, it’s just that a person walking through the longer step-by-step descriptions would end up with 5, since both steps 1 and 7 say a talent is granted. Given that Klingons have to take brak’lul, I would say make that the step 1 talent, with the exception of half- or non-Klingon characters, and then put their final talent in step 7.
Regarding bookmarks, the PDF bookmarks for talents are directing to the beginning of the talents section, not the specific spot they should, and there are bookmarks for the beginning of the chapter located in the talents bookmarks section.
It would behoove Modiphius to go over the career events as well: I found that #13, Challenged a Superior, still has a reference to the character gaining “a greater insight into Starfleet protocol.” I’m not sure if there are other items like that, but it’s worth a check. (I also think that “lauded by an alien culture” should have the option of “hated by an alien culture”, but that’s something a player/GM could “edit” for a character.)
This way, you end up with five talents, instead of four. Adding a talent in Step 7 is, as of my opinion, a mistake that should not be in the book. brak’lul is a regular talent, it’s just that it has to be taken, mandatory, by Klingons in Step 1.
I meant klingons take brak’lul in step 1, and nothing in step 7, and non-klingons take nothing in step 1, and their last in step 7. 4 either way. Although I suppose that could be confusing. Either way, ensuring that the full written-out steps and the summary agree on 4 total is necessary.
Four talents per PC; you get 1 talent at each step (#3, 4, 5, and 7). Klingons have to have brak’lul as one of their four talents. I seem to recall discussing with Nathan why Brak’lul would need to take up one of the four talent slots rather than be part of the Klingon trait, but I honestly don’t remember the details. Gamemasters are free to houserule as they see fit, of course.
So the Core rules (where talents came at #1, #3, #4, #5) have been refined? Not that it really matters, but I’d be curious on why one talent was shifted from step 1 to step 7. It made perfectly sense to me to choose a species talent at step 1 (or not choose one, for that matter).
The refinement was just to emphasize that picking the species gives you access to talents, but you don’t have to pick one yet. Some species require specific talents to be selected, such as Klingons or Betazoids, but they don’t have to be picked at step 1.
Well that answers that. I’m not sure why that was removed from the section about combat, though, since it implies that Klingons don’t reward threat for lethal attacks — which makes sense, because my assumption is that every attack a Klingon makes will be lethal, which is going to award the GM a lot of threat. So I thought it was removed, and made up for with bat’leths requiring threat to carry.
The wording on page 96 is copied from the Starfleet core, and explicitly says “The character gains a single talent.” I am in favor of the final talent being given at step 7, but the copy/paste from Starfleet and the addition of the step 7 talent (absent from Starfleet) make it seem like Klingons might get 5, even though it contradicts the summary on page 97.
The preview PDF was a draft–I had one more edit pass to go on it before it went final. The lethal bit was added in, and I’m pretty sure the clarification on talents made it in too. If not, I know the flowchart for chargen is right since that specifies what steps characters receive talents. That being said, it doesn’t really matter when in chargen the character gets the talents, just that they do.
Is there a way to tell which version I’m looking at? The one I’m reading was pdf pre-ordered in… June? Probably more recently? I assume it’s not the final version since it doesn’t say lethal=threat, and still has that Starfleet reference in career events.
There’s only one version available at the moment, and that’s the pre-order preview. The final will be 404 pages, so you’ll pretty readily be able to tell it apart from the 380 page preview.
Could Modiphius thinking about putting proper version numbers in your books? I know with the core rules you started putting “third printing” and “fourth printing”, but that took a while to get to, and there are multiple versions of each printing, it seems?
(Plus, I recently bought the Humble Bundle pdfs and then the physical + pdf of Getting Started Bundle. The Getting Started Bundle comes with an old version from 29-5-18! Thankfully the humble bundle came with the third printing pdf, and my physical copy is fourth, which gives me a great variety of sources to be confused by )
On page 185 of the Klingon book, it talks about weapon range, noting that the stated range is the optimal range, not the only range it can be fired at. The Starfleet book (page 231) goes on to note that there is a difficulty increase for firing a weapon at non-optimal ranges, but this is left out of the Klingon book. Is it somewhere else? I assume that this rule is still in effect.
Is there a reason the ship system stats (in the spaceframes section) are presented in a different order than they are on the actual stat sheet? This happened in the Starfleet core book too, so I assume that there’s some reason for it.
Edit: Is cloaking a tactical or engineering task? In the description of cloaking, in all books, it says the ship’s eng + security assists, because “this is a task from the tactical position.” But page 189 says the cloaking devices are “controlled by the engineering station.”
Yeah, it was an error in the original core book that carried over to the Klingon draft and was fixed in the final. The order of presentation in the stat blocks is correct–I updated the ship sheet to match.
Cloaking is a task performed at the Klingon’s engineering station, usually by engineers (also noted in the Haynes Klingon BOP manual). Someone else could take over the console and do the job, I imagine.
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