By Nathan Dowdell, 2d20 System Developer
Art by Marc Bell
This article takes a scene from the Star Trek franchise and uses it as an example for explaining the rules of Star Trek Adventures. If you’ve got a particular scene you’d like to see written up in this format, please let us know on our official Discord!!
This example is the first time ships clashed in the void: a climactic scene from the Star Trek episode “Balance of Terror.”
Participants
This classic episode depicts a tense encounter between Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise and a cloaked Romulan Bird-of-Prey.
The statistics for Kirk and his crew can be found in The Original Series Crew Pack, though with a few adjustments to bring it into second edition. The player characters active in this scene are Kirk, Spock, Sulu, and a supporting character, Lt. Stiles.
The statistics for the Bird-of-Prey can be found on page 365 of the Star Trek Adventures second edition core rulebook. Where separate stats for the Romulan Commander are needed, we’ll use the Romulan Centurion profile on page 357; if the Commander acts, he will replace one of the ship’s normal allotment of turns. Further, as an NPC ship, the Bird-of-Prey doesn’t track Reserve Power, but it is assumed to have used power whenever it takes the Warp action or activates its Cloaking Device.
There is one Directive in play: The Neutral Zone Treaty. The Enterprise’s standing orders prohibit crossing into the Neutral Zone or instigating war with the Romulans.
All Hands to Battle Stations!
Earth Station 4 has been destroyed, and due to a stray transmission, the Romulans have been revealed to be kin to Vulcans. The Enterprise has been able to determine the rough bearing of the Bird-of-Prey but cannot accurately target the ship.
Under Kirk’s orders, the Enterprise is matching the Bird-of-Prey’s course and speed and holding at Long Range. The Bird-of-Prey is Cloaked, but it is Experimental, and the cloak is unreliable, so it has intermittently revealed itself: the Enterprise knows the Bird-of-Prey is near and can track it with some difficulty. Further, the cloak impairs the Romulans’ own sensors, so they cannot accurately detect the Enterprise: Kirk is trying to pass the Enterprise off as a sensor echo by matching course and speed.
After a tense briefing, Spock has identified a comet in the Bird-of-Prey’s path, and when the Bird-of-Prey passes through the comet’s tail, they will be revealed briefly. Kirk orders battle stations, and the new scene begins.
Round 1:
Momentum: 2 Threat: 3
Turn 1, player characters, “Phaser weapons energized, set for proximity blast.” Stiles—a supporting character played by Scotty’s player—takes his action to create a trait: Phaser Proximity Blast. This is intended to make it easier for the Enterprise to fire at the cloaked Bird-of-Prey, but the gamemaster rules that this might have a damage trade-off. He passes the task roll, but doesn’t generate any Momentum. He adds 2 Threat to Keep the Initiative.
Momentum: 2 Threat: 5
Turn 2, player characters, “Let’s get him, Mister Sulu.” Sulu takes the Impulse minor action to move two zones, attempting to perform an end run on the Bird-of-Prey, moving into position to attack. To this end, he also takes the Attack Pattern major action, so he’ll get to assist on any attack the Enterprise makes.
Momentum: 2 Threat: 5
Turn 3, gamemaster, “Our reflection no longer follows us.” The Bird-of-Prey’s crew continues on course to enter the comet. The Commander is secretly aware of the Enterprise’s presence, and he intends on striking against them at the opportune moment. But when the Commander realizes that the ‘reflection’ is no longer matching their course and speed, he declares “Escape maneuver one, quickly!”, and the Bird-of-Prey takes the Impulse minor action to change course, turning away from the comet, and the Evasive Action major action to try and avoid attack.
Momentum: 2 Threat: 5
Turn 4, player characters, “Fire blind, lay down a pattern.” When the Romulans don’t enter the comet’s tail, Kirk realizes there’s a problem: the Romulans have guessed their plan. Kirk orders the ship to change heading (no action right away, just roleplay for now), uses the Direct action to order Stiles to fire, saturating an area with phaser blasts.
Stiles fires the phasers. This would normally be Difficulty 2, but the Bird-of-Prey is cloaked; this would make the attack impossible, but the gamemaster rules that the Phaser Proximity Blast trait makes the attack possible, but at +1 Difficulty (essentially, the Cloaked trait affects Difficulty instead of making the action impossible), so it’s Difficulty 3. Further, Sulu is assisting from his Attack Pattern action, Kirk is assisting from his Direct action, and the Enterprise is assisting because it’s an attack with her phasers. However, the Romulans took Evasive Action, so they get to oppose this attack: they get 2 successes, plus an extra success from the Cloaked trait, for 3 successes. Stiles gets 1 success, Kirk gets 1 success, and Sulu gets 1 success… but the Enterprise rolls a 20, suffering a complication.
The attack is successful, and the Bird-of-Prey is rocked by a barrage of blasts. The gamemaster reduces the damage of the Enterprise’s phasers to 6 (to offset the benefits of Phaser Proximity Blast), but this matters little as the Bird-of-Prey’s shields are down while cloaked: it suffers a breach to Structure.
However, the Enterprise’s phaser control circuits burned out in the process, strained by their use, and it will take time to repair them.
Momentum: 1 Threat: 5
Turn 5, gamemaster, “Divert all power to weapons.” The Bird-of-Prey decloaks (a minor action), spends 1 Threat for an extra minor action to Prepare, and then spends another Threat to fire a plasma torpedo at the Enterprise, which is currently at medium range.
The attack has a Difficulty of 4: normally 3, but +1 because plasma torpedoes are Cumbersome, intended more for overwhelming static positions or ambushing vulnerable targets… but the Enterprise’s Attack Pattern action reduces that Difficulty back down to 3. Hoping to score some Momentum to boost the attack, the Romulans buy two extra d20s for the attack, for another 3 Threat. A mere 3 successes come back, and the Enterprise is hit: not as successfully as the Romulans would have preferred, and the gamemaster describes the Enterprise attempting to withdraw and avoid the blast, only managing to minimize the impact.
The plasma torpedo inflicts 7 damage, vs the Enterprise’s Resistance of 3, means 4 damage, knocking the Enterprise’s Shields down to 10. However, they failed to generate enough Momentum to activate the torpedo’s Persistent quality, so that’s all the attack does—clearly the blast dissipated too much to have its full effect.
Momentum: 1 Threat: 0
Turn 6, player characters, “Phasers operational, Captain…” Spock makes repairs to the ship’s Weapons, restoring use of the phasers, attempting to remove the complication—a Difficulty 2 task. He buys an extra dice with Momentum to make it certain, and scores 3 successes… enough to return that spent Momentum to the pool but no more.
Momentum: 1 Threat: 0
Turn 7, gamemaster, “Back to his old course…” The Bird-of-Prey, seeing few options and little to be gained from staying to fight, turns back to its old heading towards Romulan space. The Commander takes a Prepare minor action, then the Direct action, commanding the ship to go to Warp, which it does, scoring 5 successes (3 from the crew, one each from the Commander and the ship), and adding the surplus of 4 to Threat. The Bird-of-Prey begins its escape, heading quickly back towards the Neutral Zone.
At this point, the gamemaster ends combat rounds, and Kirk orders the Enterprise to pursue at maximum Warp, hoping to catch the Romulans before they can cross the Neutral Zone. The scene is over… but the danger continues.
Momentum: 1 Threat: 4
After-Action Report
A tricky scene to replicate, as much of the tension and drama of the episode comes in the waiting, rather than the urgency of the action, and while it’s the first true ‘ship combat’ scene in the show, before a lot of the ideas we take for granted are developed: phasers fired as ‘proximity bursts’, the distinctions between warp and impulse and the dynamics of cloaking, and the simultaneously deadly-but-limited Romulan weapon are all difficult to match to the rules without some gamemaster rulings.
Still, an interesting example of how ship combat can go. They don’t have to end in one or other ship destroyed: fleeing and turning the scene into a chase or moving the fight to a new location is fine and allows a brief breather from the fighting.
It also shows a couple of useful ways for how traits can interact with one another: the Cloaked trait normally makes attacks impossible, but against an anti-cloak tactic like proximity bursts, it merely makes the attack more difficult instead. The reduced damage of the phasers on proximity burst doesn’t have much impact, but it’s a sufficient drawback (and a fair ruling from the gamemaster) that can help discourage players from overusing a tactic or technique: giving players an advantage and commensurate disadvantage means they get versatility from their traits, rather than just power. In the later scenes, the gamemaster may allow the proximity burst phasers to be fired at longer ranges than normal, with a similar drawback, turning an impossible attack into a higher-difficulty one.
What are your thoughts on this example of play? How would you and your crew handle this differently? What other key scenes from the Star Trek franchise would you like to see written up? Share your ideas and insights with your fellow fans at the official Modiphius Discord!
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