Yesterday I ran Star Trek Adventures for the first time and enjoyed it, it was fun and I will definitely play again.
The initiative order seemed okay, as did combat damage etc. The use of momentum, threat etc all seemed to be clear.
I just have one questions please.
If the number of PCs is larger than NPCs what happens in turn order.
The turn order has been going backwards and forwards in the normal way and all NPCs have activated this turn, there are three PCs yet to activate this turn.
Do the PC players just take it in turn to activate?
Do the NPC players get bonus activations in order to keep the initiative order switching between each side?
The second way, was how my DM ran it and it seemed weird as smaller groups of enemies seem to get more activations this way.
Thankyou in advance
Glad you enjoyed your game! Indeed, “bonus activations” do favour the smaller group. If this is consistently run, regardless whether PCs or NPCs are the smaller group, this is a valid style of play – it’s your group’s game, after all!
Yet, it is not as intended in the rules. The rules are pretty clear imho, on p. 163 of the Core Rulebook or p. 145 of the Tricorder Digest. Not too verbose on p. 162 of the Klingon Core Rulebook – maybe this is what you use?
In short: No bonus activations in the rules, only one turn per character, each round. The bigger group just keeps initiative (without having to pay for it!) until every character has had their one turn during the round.
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Thankyou, that is very helpful
Yeah, to be explicit, if you have Players 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and enemies a, b, c, the turn order will look something like this (I’m ignoring complexities like retaining initiative etc):
1, a, 2, b, 3, c, 4, 5, 6.
That’s just the advantage of having more people on your side. Of course, it works the same way when the shoe is on the other foot and enemies outnumber players (and something to be careful of when balancing encounters as GM - retaining initiative, especially without cost, can be a force multiplier).
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