Warrant Officer RPGbot

[mothers_1st_son]

I’m using the color coding scheme which has become common for these types of discussions. In case you’re not familiar, here’s a rundown:
*Red: Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
**Orange: OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
***Green: Good options. Useful often.
****Blue: Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

Coterie:
***Humans. Flexible enough that you can really fit any alignment/playstyle. Hard to go wrong with a human. Cons: boring.
*Lyelli - difficulty communicating cross-species (need to know Lyelli sign language) can make it challenging to run a Lyelli officer without an all-Lyelli crew since so much of the Officer class features rely on communicating with your red-shirts. Know what you’re signing up for.
***Chowlus → Strong combat-focused option for like a security officer. Do not pick if you’re playing diplo.
****Komore → Speed penalty can be a problem in time sensitive situations. Not a **bad** option, but more of an RP angle than anything else.
*Calyptra → Just no.
**Pleuryke → you really gotta protect yourself here given how fragile the suit is. Noble Sacrifice is an absolute must-have for away missions. Bonus to relations with Molxi can make them a niche pick depending on crew composition.
****Molxi Great pick for engineering-specced bridge crew. Bonuses to mycorrhizal communications really help and Molxi have no penalties to communication with any other coterie, making them great at cross-species diplo or rapport checks. Also does well as ship counselor for the same reason.

Origin:
Don’t want to get into all the origins here, just want to highlight some options that work well for an officer:
****The Fields - Strong Back synergizes well with logistics officer if you’re doing that. Outdoorsman can be good if you go on away missions a lot.
****The Court - Pretty much only an option for Counselors or first officers in diplo-heavy playstyles. Bonus to affluence can be nice sometimes but kind of niche
****The Corps - Generic security officer background. Hard to go wrong with this one.
***The Slums - Kind of a wildcard.
****The Library - Good for like engineering or first officers, though combat tactics bonuses can be solid for security too.

Alignment: Alignment is mostly flavor so I won’t get into the weeds on this one. Do what you feel.

Skill clusters:
Suggested investment varies wildly depending on your spec. Obviously security officers want lots of investment in defense, Logistics officers in scutwork, Engineering in mycorrhizal communication. Just remember that your redshirts can cover some of your weaknesses so don’t be afraid to minmax and take penalties in the clusters you don’t care about. If you’re not getting into combat very often you can take heavy penalties to Defense for example and just use Noble Sacrifice to cover yourself for those times when you do get into trouble.

Class features: not going to get into the weeds on all of these, just going to list out a few important/notable picks
**Get your hands dirty - Take it or leave it tbh. I would put this at the bottom of your list of priorities unless it’s very important to your character concept.
****Eleventh Hour - Absolutely essential. All of your redshirts getting a bonus during “time-critical operations” is so open to interpretation that 90% of GMs are just going to give it to you on all of your important rolls.
***Noble Sacrifice - It hurts to lose one of your little guys but if you’re not combat-specced this keeps one bad roll from taking you out of the game completely.
***Lead from the front/hold the line/sally forth - solid picks for security officers. Skip for everyone else.
***Requisition/Delegate - Solid picks for logistics officers. Skip for everyone else.
****Signal Retreat - separating Retreat from the rest of the combat focused class features because this one is vital for all officers. You’re just gonna get into combat sometimes, and you need to get the hell out of combat if you’re not specced for it
**Motivate - Sure. Low priority, but it’s fine. You’re going to end up taking this eventually if you play an officer for long enough, but never first.
*Retire - It’s a fun flavor thing but it provides you with actually no bonuses.
**Promote - low priority, but nice to have.
*Approve PTO- Not worth it. It’s not even like a “roleplaying as a bad boss” thing, the bonuses are just not here to make going down a redshirt for a whole mission worth it.

Before I leave you, a final note on synergies: There’s a temptation to try to cover your weaknesses here but I’d suggest you instead try to augment your strengths. The class is built so that you can burn a few redshirts on bad rolls. Be a specialist, and use your synergies to make your large numbers even larger rather than trying to cover your bases.