Trait Management Improvement

[WesWedding]

This is an issue brought up by https://github.com/mikira7 in another Issue thread, seems worth breaking out into its own issue.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Trait management is only loosely supported by the System; as a text field on character and ship sheets. Traits that apply to a scene/situation, an item, a location, or have potency, etc are left to the players and GM to figure out how to manage. Traits come and go frequently, as well.

Traits are the Star Trek Adventures version of the common Modiphius d20 system of "facts" that can be applied to characters, scenes, areas of a room, etc. that describe a fact about the thing that is pertinent to gameplay. When an action is taken, traits are taken into account to determine how or what actions can happen. A classic rulebook example is "If a Human wants to arm wrestle a Vulcan, and they both have the same Fitness level, the Vulcan will still have twice the strength of the Human because of the immense physical strength provided by the Vulcan species trait."

Traits can come and go frequently during any given session, and be generated at-will by both the player and GM via game mechanics in the form of Advantage and Disadvantage traits. Traits in 1E and 2E both can have potency, as well. "Dense Smoke 2" could suggest an increase in difficulty to certain actions by 2, or an increased complication range by 2, or require 2 uses of Create Advantage, etc. Social Conflict, in particular, is a game of applying and removing traits a lot. At least as written in the Command Division book.

The System lacks a convenient way to track and update traits in general, but even on a Character/Ship the trait field is a simple text field. If a character has accumulated traits it can be hard to read and modify the entire list due to the space available.

Describe the solution you'd like

An Item of the type "Trait" would be a good starting point. See @mikira7's original comment in the other issue, specifically about traits on players:

          I think a tab design is the way to go for the future of the system, though one thing I would like to see personally is moving traits to be item based or maybe combined with the Injury section on the character sheet for ease in implementing. Along with moving trait section into the Values, Talents, etc... tab; since that would be the tab that would be open the most of the time for quick glancing at before making a roll. If that is something you guys wish to undertake when doing this character sheet revamp.

         Mainly this is more of a reflection of how 2nd Edition works and how it can increase or decease in potency and their effect on the injury and starship damage gameplay. (Even though this is somewhat the same in First Edition, but is just glossed over and the trait potency system just not covered very well. pg. 76 in the 1e core book if you wanna double check.) 

         I've just noticed in both running and playing in 2e how the character sheets sometimes with just writing them in tends to gets too cluttered at times. And somewhat slows gameplay down, and generally I believe would make for better ease of use, etc...

Originally posted by @mikira7 in https://github.com/mkscho63/sta/issues/162#issuecomment-2409824747

The more general issue of "How to I keep track of traits, in general" is a little murky, though. A visually persistent list the GM can modify at will would be pretty useful.

Describe alternatives you've considered In the real world, this would be a pile of notes or a sheet of paper on the table everyone could look see. In a VTT context this is less clear. A journal, perhaps? I have tried the Journal approach and it's hard for me to keep the list updated. Writing text on the screen is another alternative but if you switch scenes it can be easy to forget (example: those "Gravimetric Eddies 2" I added two scenes ago still matter but I forgot them when they would have been important in the current situation).

Additional context 1E CRB: pg. 76, 94, 270-280 Klingon CRB: pg. 73, 74, 77-79, 90, 96 1E Digest: 54-55, 75, 246-248 2E CRB: 87, 250, 321

[WesWedding]

Submitted by mistake, still writing up...

[WesWedding]

Okay, I think I'm done re-writing that.

[mikira7]

So you're thinking on going with a Hud element to display scene traits? I know it's possible to do something like that in foundry, and the hud element will be able to display the traits are assigned to it in the scene using the flag system and objects. Though it might come at a cost of performance, depending how much information want the trait object to hold.

[WesWedding]

Some kind of HUD element, yeah. But not a passive display element which is somehow searching the scene and active players for traits to display. Rather, an actual Thing I'm adding traits to that are relevant to the current situation. They can be the advantage a player just generated, or the complication I just created via Threat, the traits for a given scene or location, etc. If necessary, I can move them to a more appropriate spot later.

Examples of the styles of traits I routinely lose track of....

• Gravitational Eddies X: The adventure is taking place in a region of unstable space and this trait can mean sensors and engines suffer a difficulty or complication range increase of X. In this imaginary new HUD element, I would add the trait to it for the duration of the adventure, and it would be a visible reminder that I have to modify the task I'm asking my player to roll.
• Detailed Sensor Recording - My science officer player had the foresight to launch several probes into the system to get detailed readings which should help with future sensor scans or other action that might benefit from that forethought throughout the rest of the adventure. I would add it to this imaginary HUD element and now I'll never forget it exists because it's always there floating on the screen.

[tokeidlom]

Do you still use injuries, or are injuries traits?

[WesWedding]

If you mean currently: I've never used the Injuries feature in this system, I've used the built-in Foundry VTT statuses as a proxy.

If you mean in this theoretical HUD element, I think Injuries would still be handled the way they are. Injuries aren't a trait, but they can be the source of a trait (Complication).

[tokeidlom]

I mean that, at least in 2e, injuries are treated as traits, so could we swap out the injuries section for traits perhaps?

[WesWedding]

Reviewing page 290 (2E) and I see that now. Yeah, I guess that's how I tend to handle injuries in my 1E games, too (if someone takes a hit from a disruptor they're at least a little singed, even if it's nonlethal). So even in 1E that would be applicable.