Yeah, I think that’s the only thing remaining from the Player’s Guide that hasn’t been added in yet. I keep meaning to sit down to figure out what I should do about the “other” options on the Academy page (like “University Alumni” – I think I just hide them), and that’s kept me from finishing that up.
I’ll almost-certainly add it to the drop-down near the beginning of the character creation process (alongside “Allied Military” and so forth).
BC
Although Cadet Roles are also unclear to me. There isn’t a cadet “role”. I would have imagined that cadets become junior members of, say, a security team or science team (Tilly was, presumably, a junior Engineer in Season 1; the Discovery S1 book simply describes her as “Cadet”). But those roles have never really been defined in STA (do such roles grant characters particular abilities?)
I mean, it looks like cadets can become bodyguards or experts (or even Ship’s Doctor). But that doesn’t quite seem right.
BC
As far as I understand cadets, from Divisions Books, and older books, cadets are all Starfleet University students in training. The Starfleet University diploma ends with the cadet cruise where they end ensign or lt jg more rarely.
Yeah. I think that’s consistent with my understanding.
I mean, I think it’s possible to be a cadet of an allied military, but that’s an option that’s only obliquely referenced in the Guide.
BC
And now I would suggest that Wesley’s Role in early TNG would be Expert (notwithstanding that he would of course have had to pick the Child role).
I concur that the rules are a bit bleak on this and that a Cadet Role is missing. I have not had the opportunity to look into the DIS campaign guide; I could imagine the occasional paragraph about cadets, there.
Since Lower Decks appears to be within the license now (not sure on that, though!) and with a possible series focussing on the Academy, there’s plenty of space they could fit in the roles of Cadet and/or Junior Officer.
Edit: Rules as written, you could interpret that Cadet Characters do not have any Role, at all. Cf. p. 197 of the Player’s Guide: “A cadet character does not follow (…) Step Seven of the lifepath in the normal way. Rather, they follow the modified procedure set out below to represent their limited experience.” If not for the “in the normal way” part, this could mean that Step Seven (picking a Role) is completely ruled out. As the modification set out in the PG remains silent on Role, cadet characters may not even have any. Yet, it seems to “just” a modification rather than a full replacement of rules, so cadets may still be able to pick any role their Group & GM approves.
Maybe @Modiphius-Jim and/or @Modiphius-Nathan are able to help out?
My reading of the Player’s Guide is that cadet is not a “role” per se, because it does not grant the abilities like a role does (also, it’s not an item under the “New Character Roles” section). They do get the ‘Untapped Potential’ talent, which is as close to an ability as you can get for them.
They essentially get their character creation cut off after step 5 (or 6 for higher-level cadets), and then as the game progresses, gain advancements more quickly than other characters to become a full character, as if that character had been rolled as a “Young Officer.”
As for role, given that they are intended to be doing stuff on cadet cruises, or are brought on board a regular ship as part of the crew, I would say that they could get the abilities of most roles. A cadet at the helm would still have the role of “Flight Controller” for that scene. If they’re on a ship with an officer flight controller, I don’t see any reason they wouldn’t both be able to have the role. The GM may need to rename cadet roles to fit in some cases. but I think it would be fine.
(Renaming in the case of, say ‘Chief Medical Officer’ to ‘Junior Medical Officer’, since there’s not a lot of other medical roles that would fit a cadet, and having the ‘Medical Department’ advantage on board makes sense for all medical personnel).
Edit: Giving a cadet a role would be GM fiat, because as BCHolmes notes, most of them on a regular (non-cadet-cruise) ship would just be “junior team members,” which aren’t really given full “role” abilities in the books.
Cadet and junior officer aren’t roles, though. They’re ranks or a representation of where a character is in their Academy life or service career. It’d be like calling Lieutenant a role.
Cadets don’t have a role, but could. There’s nothing stopping a cadet from taking any of the roles presented in the core rulebook, as long as they’re in the right department (and as long as the other players and gamemaster agree). WOULD a cadet likely be assigned CMO or XO? Probably not.
But, the crew of the DS9 era Valiant made it happen. Your cadet characters could too, given the right game circumstances.
Thanks for weighing in on this @MisterX, @Felderburg and @Modiphius-Jim. I think this conversation helped me tease out where I was misapprehending things.
At the moment, when people create characters, they usually select a role and that role usually gets written in to the “Assignment” field of a character sheet. So, for me, it’s tempting to conflate the idea of the “role” with the idea of “assignment”. Lots of people get assigned to starships with lost of different postings: junior engineers, assistant chief medical officer, security guard, and so forth. But only special assignments constitute roles (Science Officer, Chief Engineer, etc.).
Here’s the part that’s kinda wonky. In today’s world, when creating a main character, when you get to the final screen, the character creator tries to guess what role best fits your character and pre-selects the best fit. There isn’t really a way to not select a role. That’s really the root of the problem. (And that’s an implementation detail that predates my involvement with the character creator, so I haven’t really opened that code up and looked at the assumptions behind it.)
Making things more awkward, the section on the screen that lists the “roles” has the heading “Assignment”.
For the most part, that works okay, so long as you’re creating a character whose assignment is also a role (as most of the original shows had: characters Quark and Seven of Nine were among those who didn’t quite “fit” but the Player’s Guide has given them roles). Choose a role, and that becomes your assignment. So now my issue is that cadets don’t fit that pattern. And that’s fixable, but I just need to take a moment to figure out the best way to change the way that final screen behaves. I’ve sometimes used the character creator to make major NPCs who’ve not been in those command roles (my Captain character calls for the Master-at-Arms a lot, for example, and my GM eventually insisted that the master-at-arm get a character sheet 'cause she kept showing up in scenes), and I’ve had a tickle in the back of my brain that’s always been a bit bothered by that. Now I understand that tickle a lot better.
(Aside: I’ve totally stolen a Scott Glenn line from The Hunt for Red October, and my character periodically hits her communicator and says, “Master-at-arms, please report to the Mess Hall… With. Your. Sidearm.” when we have a non-serious discipline issue. In my mind, the Master-at-arms is a senior non-comm from the security department who deals with crew – and guest – policing matters. Master-at-arms is totally an assignment, but not a role. It’s also something I’d never expect to see in the any of the books, 'cause it’s totally not canon)
One last thought: the fact that most cadets don’t have a role is one more way in which they’re less powerful than “standard” characters. I can see how some folks might eschew, say, being the only cadet in a ship assignment because of being less powerful than non-cadet characters. *shrug*
BC
Cadets are here to learn, Wesley Crusher had a ridiculous all divisions uniform. For me it’s a sign that at the start of each mission you give cadets a role power that depends on what they were assigned to do this time. A good way for players. unfamiliar to Star Trek to discover the séries. And use a support character as an helping supervisor (like Tilly in Discovery when she became an instructor).
I think the big quirk of things is that the character sheet uses “assignment,” but the rules for character creation say “role”. “Assignment” has a section in the core book, chapter 3.40, that makes the term seem very narrative-based (e.g. assignment: command division, helm officer, uss thunderchild), whereas Role is mechanics.
So your Master-at-Arms might have the narrative Assignment “MA”, but their mechanic Role would be Armory Officer, or perhaps Expert? Regardless, that may be the hangup. So separating the two items is what I think would work best.
And given that a character can have no roles (cadets) or multiple roles (per ops division), reworking that final screen makes sense.
Wasn’t that just a sweater? And then as acting ensign he got a grey starfleet-ish uniform?
It has 3 bands red,golden, blue-green for me it’s an all division uniform. There’s no way somebody can put this on if it wasn’t mandatory.
It says on Memory alpha “acting ensign” (so a cadet with a grade temporary ensign)
LIEUTENANT JOHN KEARNEY, ARMORY OFFICER [NOTABLE NPC]
These are the voyages Vol 1 p 11
Weapon-improvisation and/or Sure Shot can serve as role powers
As a side note he was rescue by my players and serves in their ship now.
If we’re taking about this, do we really know it was a sanctioned Starfleet uniform as opposed to just an ugly civilian sweater? Maybe the red, yellow and blue stripes are just a coincidence.
Besides, if this was a Starfleet cadet uniform, where is the the rank insignia? Even (acting) cadets would have an insignia of some sort.
Yep that one.
What do you think of thé 3 department colors stripes as an insignia ?
I see this as a direct homage to TOS uniform produced by the sponsor of the show a pajama manufacturer
Why Westley doesnt have some sort of Combadge:
@betatester @sutehp This thread is about the STA Online Character Generator. While the discussion of Wesley as an example for Roles could be argued to be adequate – a discussion on his uniform, in my humble opinion, is not. Let’s don’t derail this topic, shall we?
To sum this up:
Well I love the changes! Cadets are added and sourcebooks are grouped. Fantastic stuff.
So, I know this may not be a high priority for the Character Creator…
Starbase creation options so you can pick out the talents and get the stats for it when building it?
Ooh, a starbase creator instead of a starship creator? That’s something I’d very much like to see. I’m wondering if the upcoming Utopia Planitia book will have updated rules for starbase creation as well as starship creation.
I wonder. I wonder indeed.
you devil!