By Nathan Dowdell, 2d20 System Developer
Art by Andrew Clark
Central to many parts of Star Trek Adventures are traits. As explained in the core rulebook, a trait is a word or short descriptive phrase representing some important fact about the scene, location, or a character present. Traits are used to capture these details, mark them as significant to the game, and use them as prompts to adjust the way the rules are applied in play.
- A TRAIT IS TRUE. Traits always represent facts about the scene. If something isn’t true, then it shouldn’t be a trait. If you establish something as true, then it might become a trait. If you change the situation so that something is no longer true, an existing trait might go away. Sometimes you can blur this line with how a trait is phrased: if a character has been lied to, they might gain a trait that represents something false they’ve been convinced to believe.
- A TRAIT IS IMPORTANT. Traits should represent things that are significant to the current situation. This is more of a practical consideration, ensuring that you don’t drive yourself to distraction trying to create a trait for every little factor present in a scene: you should only focus on the ones that are likely to impact the current situation. Sometimes you will have unimportant traits, though: the traits your characters possess are a persistent part of your character, but those details might not always be relevant to a given scene.
The most obvious way a trait might affect play is when it comes to judging the Difficulty of a task roll: the gamemaster agrees a particular trait would logically make things easier, or more difficult, then they can adjust the Difficulty of the task accordingly. It’s up to the gamemaster to make the final rulings on this, as not every trait can or should apply to every task.
Beyond this, a trait might make a particular course of action possible or impossible. This is a potent tool for shaping play, both for the gamemaster and the players, and should be used judiciously. A character at the bottom of a sheer cliff may not be able to climb up it, but having climbing gear suddenly means you can make the attempt.
- When a trait makes something possible, it might mean that something becomes automatically possible, no roll required. A character with security access codes can freely pass any locked door controlled by those codes. Alternately, it may mean that a task roll can be attempted: if you’ve detected a cloaked ship, you still need to make task rolls to fire at that ship, as detecting it merely allows you to attempt the attack, not to succeed automatically.
- A similar logic applies when a trait would make things impossible. It might prevent any attempted tasks whatsoever, or it might mean a character must attempt a task when they normally wouldn’t need to roll.
- These two dynamics can work in concert with one another: a trait that prevents a particular action can be countered by a trait that enables that action, or vice versa. This is a common dynamic in Star Trek stories: something is impossible up until you can develop or obtain a solution that makes it possible.
The overwhelming majority of traits that do have an effect will do so in one of the ways already described: making a test easier, harder, possible, or impossible. However, there’s nothing to prevent the gamemaster from ruling differently during play and having traits grant different effects, as suggested on page 322 of the core rulebook.
- A trait might affect whether or not a particular other rule applies: a Barricades trait functions as a prompt for characters to count as in cover for attacks (denser cover may have a higher potency, having a bigger effect).
- A trait representing a weakness or vulnerability discovered or exposed might affect a starship’s Resistance or a character’s Protection. Similarly, enhanced defenses might improve Resistance or Protection.
- A trait that applies during an extended task might be used to increase or decrease a character’s Impact.
- A trait that represents a team of personnel might allow you to perform a task that couldn’t normally be attempted by a lone person or even allow you to attempt a task in a place where you are not personally present, essentially using the trait to perform the task remotely by instructing the team.
- A trait that represents a modification to weapon systems might mean that weapon gains an additional quality while the modification remains in effect.
A trait should only have one effect: Darkness might make a task to spot an enemy harder or it makes that enemy’s roll to hide easier (or makes it possible for them to even attempt hiding), but it shouldn’t do more than one of those things on any single action. Where a trait should have a greater effect, or multiple effects, applying Potency is the next step. Potency functions as if you had multiple identical traits, all representing the same thing. They’re ideal for representing traits that are more important, more impactful, and harder to change than others.
When it comes to actually creating and manipulating traits in play, there are a few ways this can happen. All of these can apply equally to creating a new trait, changing one trait for another, or removing a trait. This can also apply to increasing or decreasing the Potency of a trait (and, technically, reducing a trait’s Potency to 0 is the same as removing it).
- The most direct route is through action. If you’re trying to gain an advantage, or remove a significant problem, this is normally the way, and it’ll likely require a task roll. This has a default Difficulty of 2—it isn’t meant to be a trivial matter—but the gamemaster is free to adjust this according to circumstances, as with any task Difficulty.
- If you’re looking to create/alter/remove a trait alongside the effect of another action, you can spend Momentum to do so. This costs 2 by default to ensure that it doesn’t happen trivially. This can be combined with the above, allowing you to create a trait with a task roll, and then create a second trait (or step up the trait’s Potency by 1) with Momentum.
- Traits can be created by the gamemaster by spending 2 Threat, as long as there’s a reasonable explanation for how they happened. Additionally, they can be created as the result of a player character suffering a complication, where the trait should have some connection to the action attempted.
This blog post barely scratches the surface of what can be done with traits, but hopefully it gives some clarity on how useful they can be, how flexible they are, and the potential they possess for shaping play.
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