Missing Captain Actions?


General Discussion


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

I've been rewatching clips from Star Trek TNG and I have to say... captains in Starfinder do not live up.

Why is there no Sense Motive based Captain action that lets you out-maneuver the enemy?

It could be a difficult check that makes the enemy re-roll their piloting check to determine initiative.
It could be a check that allows the players' ship to move one hex in any direction immediately after the piloting phase.
It could grant the players' ship some sort of AC bonus against one arc of the enemy's ship, declared before the piloting phase.

I don't know, but the captain being a cheer leader is sorely unfulfilling.


Starfinder Charter Superscriber
WatersLethe wrote:

I've been rewatching clips from Star Trek TNG and I have to say... captains in Starfinder do not live up.

Why is there no Sense Motive based Captain action that lets you out-maneuver the enemy?

It could be a difficult check that makes the enemy re-roll their piloting check to determine initiative.
It could be a check that allows the players' ship to move one hex in any direction immediately after the piloting phase.
It could grant the players' ship some sort of AC bonus against one arc of the enemy's ship, declared before the piloting phase.

I don't know, but the captain being a cheer leader is sorely unfulfilling.

You can definetly throw these out as suggestions, or house rule them for now. We can be certain at one point, there will be a Starfinder book of spaceships with more expansions for ships, more energy weapons, torpedo launchers, death rays, gamma radiation weapons, cosmic environments with gas clouds making shields go offline and possibly more actions for the pilots, captains, gunners, engineers and science officers.


Because the activity to out maneuver an enemy is the pilot action to perform stunts of various kinds.

As you say, the captain is basically a cheerleader.

I really wish the ship's captain was renamed as ship's Councilor and that the captain was a separate non-combat role that determined the overall course of action the ship and its crew would take, separate from any mechanical concerns for space combat.


Claxon wrote:

Because the activity to out maneuver an enemy is the pilot action to perform stunts of various kinds.

As you say, the captain is basically a cheerleader.

I really wish the ship's captain was renamed as ship's Councilor and that the captain was a separate non-combat role that determined the overall course of action the ship and its crew would take, separate from any mechanical concerns for space combat.

The overall course of action the ship and its crew take is simply coordination and action choices as determined by the players. If you want an actual hierarchical structure, have the player whose character is captain simply actually give orders for the turn, (i.e. science officer, report on which side of the cruiser's shield is weakest; pilot, bring us around to the cruiser's port side, facing towards them; gunner, fire all front weapons at that cruiser), and expect the other players to execute the orders to the best of their ability.

If you want some mechanical effect, have the GM provide a +1 or +2 circumstance bonus to rolls if the other players actually do what the captain says (on top of the usual encourage action), representing the fact the ship is executing a coordinated plan as opposed to everyone just doing whatever they want randomly.

I've also seen suggestions that the captain controls who gets the computer bonuses, as he's assigning priorities to tasks.

My guess is they wouldn't want to put something like that in officially, since some players are not going to like being told what to do by another player. Adventuring parties I feel tended to not have a central commander.

Sovereign Court

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Hiruma Kai wrote:
I've also seen suggestions that the captain controls who gets the computer bonuses, as he's assigning priorities to tasks.

We do this yeah. And our captain-envoy is actually pretty decent at OOC leadership and we're comfy with that, so we're actually doing it kinda as envisaged.


Heeeh ... Giving a player an actual position of authority will always be problematic. Even if everyone behaves, the simple fact that one has that kind of power will never sit well with some. Overreacting as it may be.
Entirely a people problem, mind you, but I'd rather leave that kind of stuff to the tables than hard-code it into the rules.

To the topic : I've said elsewhere I have no interest in an all ship-stuff book, but, that said : more, varied actions, better ways to do stuff ... would be great. I'd rather have to make choices between useful, interesting actions than defaulting to say, gunnery because there's nothing else to do now.
Also, hopefully opening new role niches for less standardized builds.
I expect it'll come, sooner or later. Hopefully.

There just isn't much fantasy in those science-fantasy space battles.


Ascalaphus wrote:
Hiruma Kai wrote:
I've also seen suggestions that the captain controls who gets the computer bonuses, as he's assigning priorities to tasks.
We do this yeah. And our captain-envoy is actually pretty decent at OOC leadership and we're comfy with that, so we're actually doing it kinda as envisaged.

Ditto. Partially because I'm captain envoy of my team and the only one who remembers we have computer bonuses most of the time.

We also have "crew formations". As a crew of 5 we have just enough to fill each role, but the Engineer and Science Officer due to their Dex are also really good Gunners. So if we're doing alright in one field we rotate seats for multiple Gunners, or else we take advantage of my captain having Sky Jockey for extra speed (took Sky Jockey for Jump Jets, so convenient extra function).

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