Venture-Agent, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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Is it allowed for a hireling to take a role in Starship Combat?
For reference:
Basic Hireling Access (Ally Boon)
You can requisition basic assistance from the Starfinder Society.
Prerequisites: All Factions Tier 0
Cost: 1 Fame
Benefit: You bring on a non-combat ally that can assist with a certain set of skill checks. This ally can perform the listed skills with a total bonus equal to your level. You must expend any necessary actions and be in range to perform the action yourself. The ally's result cannot be modified by class abilities or spells, but can be improved by a successful aid another action. The ally does not participate in combat, cannot be killed outside of combat, and has no effect other than providing the ability to attempt skill checks. The ally can attempt a given skill check only once, cannot retry a check, and cannot take 10 or 20 on a check.
When you select this boon, you must select one of the following sets of skills.
Set 1: Computers, Engineering, Physical Science
Set 2: Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate
Set 3: Culture, Medicine,
Survival Set 4: Life Science, Mysticism, Physical Science
Special: You can purchase this boon multiple times. Each time you purchase this boon, you can select a different set of skills from the list above. When slotting this boon, you can select only one of the skill lists you have available from the above list, even if you have purchased multiple lists.
The higher tier Ally boons just allow you to get an Ally with a higher skill bonus.
There are three positions that could be filled by a hireling purchased with fame: Captain (Set 2), Engineer (Set 1) or Science Officer (Set 1). In most cases, the skills of a hireling is going to be lower than a player character would have. The exception can be when you combine hirelings with the Efficient Administrator ally from the Second Seekers (Luwazi Elsebo) faction.
Allowing it would allow characters that don’t see themselves as being experts at a Starship role to still bring something to the group for use in Starship Combat. Note that it would not allow a single person plus ally to fill two positions because the ally uses your actions. Instead of expending skill ranks, they would be expending fame.
On the other hand, it does say “The ally does not participate in combat” and although a completely different system than Tactical Combat, the Starship Combat is called combat.
If it is supposed to be allowed, I would suggest the Guide be updated to specify that they do not participate in Tactical Combat.
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Venture-Agent, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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Not really, it could be an oversight.
When most people talk of combat in Starfinder, they are talking about the Tactical Combat. Starship Combat is a completely different subsystem. I know that I find myself keeping the two mentally separate. With the exception of Gunner (which an Ally couldn’t even perform), there isn’t much in common between the two.
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Venture-Agent, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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The Allies do not participate in Starship Combat. NOTHING skill based really interacts with Starship Combat unless specifically called out or as part of a Starship boon.
Thanks for the reply. That closes the topic for me.
Back to reviewing other options to help make various classes more flexible in Starship Combat.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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The Allies do not participate in Starship Combat. NOTHING skill based really interacts with Starship Combat unless specifically called out or as part of a Starship boon.
That's pretty clear.
That said, "emergency officer training" could make for a good boon actually. Letting you choose a starship role after the briefing ("what, we're all engineers and nobody is a pilot?") and getting a minimum viable score for it (based on your ship's tier) for that session.
If put into the next Guide so that it's available to all characters, that could make it both easier for weird musterings with too many people with the same role, and for classes that have a hard time doing any role (i.e. strength/wisdom classes). And because the score is on the lower end of the scale, you're never going to outshine someone actually dedicated to the role.