I want to thank another one of the game’s awesome fans, Jim Ford from Facebook’s Star Trek Adventures RPG group, for contributing this great house rule. I am sure my players will love (by that I mean ‘hate’) me for it.
House rule: CASUALTY REPORT
- Total Result (Including Effect Dice) = Number of crew-members that were injured and need immediate medical attention.
- Total Number of Effects = Crew-members killed in action.
- If Structure received any breaches: Number of Blank or Zero Result Dice = Crew-members who are unaccounted for.
I added this House Rule also:
If any PCs have determination leftover at the end of the mission, they may use this much like Resistance. After you complete step 1, Roll 1D6 for each leftover determination. This number is deducted from the number of crew-members that were injured and need immediate medical attention. Now, return to step 2.
Jim adds, “Canonically I think…team leads and then department heads [have the] responsibility to account for their people, assess the damage, and then report.”
With that said, we need to determine which departments have members killed in action (KIA). Once you have determined how many people are dead, use the following table to roll out affected departments. (One roll per death. Yes, one department might suffer multiple categories. I can picture players watching with dread as the casualty reports come in, sighing with relief if they have none but mourning the loss for other players who have lost team members.)
Roll 1d6 for each KIA.
1 = Command 
2 = Conn
3 = Engineering
4 = Ops
5 = Medical
6 = Science
What do you think? Scary, eh?
I love this! It really really hammers home how deadly ship combat is.
Yes. I think it will make players be more cautious when fighting
Hansen is smiling down on you
Man, I miss that guy!
He’s dead, Jim
the only issue with this is that bigger ships have more crew. losing 1 person on a 50 man defiant is heavy losses. 1 person on a galaxy is.. pretty minor.
That is a fact. But a true fact.
Not to the guy that went flying outside the hull an emergency bulkheads into the vast expanse of frigid space.
You could have it scale as the ships get bigger, or put a temporary penalty for the crew support until resupplied with fresh personnel. It would also have an emotional impact as someone’s favorite background character got sucked out a hull breach.
Numbers are always trivial until they effect someone personally