The RAW mentions using Charm or Leadership to sway individuals, with advantages applying to extend the influence to (single) additional targets. But the RAW doesn't really address situations where one is addressing a large crowd (say a few hundred or thousand on a stage, or via media could even be millions across an entire planet). How many get affected by your skill check? Something like how trade works, where the dice get interpreted as affecting a percentage of the crowd, would be ideal.

If a group has a frigate or cruiser and they need to hire crew for it, they'll need hundreds, perhaps thousands, of minion-caliber NPCs. The game is geared towards small groups with small needs, and doesn't really provide guidance on players setting up and controlling a large organization. d20 Saga had rules for managing organizations, but it, too, didn't address building it in the first place (or growing it).

Sounds like Negotiation rolls to me.

You know, Negotiation does make sense. But I'm still left with the basic problem of what to roll against. If it's the resistance of a crowd of minions, that's a mere Average difficulty, and doesn't address what the baseline is. Half the crowd? (Seems like way too much for success.) Better would be a table that scales difficulty to the size of the crowd. Then the question becomes where to draw the lines.

I'm not sure why you think it has to be roll for #s of people to convince, that sounds more like a salesman wanting to get people to buy something as opposed to a ship's captain who is going to give money for work. Someone saying they are hiring crew in a place full of out of work crew are going to get more than they need looking to sign on if they pay well, and not so much if they're cheap. Total numbers of applicants aren't what you're rolling. Total cost of hiring is what the roll is with additional successes lowering the total cost. Difficulty would be influenced up or down based on where you're doing the hiring.

Average is a good Difficulty to start that all at.

It's not a negotiation for salary. The question is how many people are available to be hired. Money is not an object of consideration at all. Everyone is being offered ONE MILLION credits per person. The total number of applicants, as you phrased it, is precisely what I am interested in, and how many of them I can get. I hope you now understand my question and what I'm looking for.

If you're offering NPCs a million each, if there isn't some other ship offering 1 million and 1 each, who would say no? I wouldn't even roll.

Well, there is a small catch. It's not cash up front. All they get is room and board until we seize ships and cargoes and dispose of them. And they get to hurt the Empire. The promise of a million is backed up by the fact that the current crew (which is shorthanded, thus why we're hiring more) has already earned over 300k a person from privateering.

Yeah, there logically ought to be hordes of people willing to sign on for what we're offering, even if none of the money is up front. But it just seems a bit abusive, or perhaps lax, to just assume that we can get however many warm bodies we want.

5 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

If you're offering NPCs a million each, if there isn't some other ship offering 1 million and 1 each, who would say no? I wouldn't even roll.

Agreed, this is where you don't really "roll against" anything specific to the NPC that forces them to take the job. If the offer is good, and the NPCs want the job, why roll? However, you can roll against things like:

- Pay: how much the NPCs will settle for. Maybe on a Triumph you get an NPC who is top notch but desperate and will take any job

- Future loyalty: sure, they'll take the job, but threats might mean they'll run at the first sight of danger

- Future integrity: will they eventually decide they can run the ship better than the PCs? Mutiny? Turn the PCs over to the Empire for a small bribe?

I think any of the social skills can come into play. Leadership generates loyalty for those inclined to follow strong personalities, but can generate resentment for NPCs inclined towards independence; Charm generates goodwill during successful times, but can also smell like weakness when the chips are down; Negotiation gets a good price, but might generate resentment at the miserly nature of the PC; Coercion keeps the toughs in line, but threats and despair might suggest the PC is a paper-tiger...

8 hours ago, ShadoWarrior said:

The question is how many people are available to be hired.

If you are the GM, you can determine a suitable number of potential crew; if a player, your GM should decide upon a reasonable number.

8 hours ago, ShadoWarrior said:

It's not cash up front. All they get is room and board until we seize ships and cargoes and dispose of them. And they get to hurt the Empire.

This is, indeed, a bit different than "ONE MILLION credits." Still, quite a generous offer, and should attract crew (and imperial informants) accordingly.

When hiring a large crew such as this, vetting would be a priority for me.

Personally I'd use the PCs Leadership (which is described as "Helping allies to overcome fear, swaying a crowd over to your cause, organising a group)

1 hour ago, VikingWolf said:

Personally I'd use the PCs Leadership (which is described as "Helping allies to overcome fear, swaying a crowd over to your cause, organising a group)

I'd say it would vary according to situation. So, if you're the captain of a Rebel ship with a budget and you're vying for crew with other Rebel captains, Leadership may work for inspiring desirable crew to sign on with you instead of another. But a fellow captain who used his smuggling contacts to secure a full holo-entertainment suite and fully stocked bar might get more mileage out of Charm. And if yet ANOTHER captain was able to wrangle a slightly higher budget for crew salaries, HE might might be better able to make use of Negotiation than the first two could.

On the other hand, if you're a filthy pirate King, you might be able to Coerce crew from ships you capture into joining, or even Deceive crew into joining with promises of riches untold...but beware, such scallywaggery rarely goes unpunished!

As for the mechanical specifics, I'd say just choose a target difficulty based on the circumstances around when and where and how the PCs recruit. I wouldn't go any lower than 3 purples unless they've really stacked things in their favor. Sprinkle in boosts and setback to taste, upgrade as needed.

TL;DR You can justify just about any social skill for recruiting crew.

I would say this is a leadership check in this specific case, mainly because the crew needs to be convienced that they actually survive the trip and have a chance to collect their million credits.

Furthermore it attract traitors to you, so the bigger question is not finding a crew, but actually finding a good one.

But as Benjan said, coercion suits just fine when converting crews of your targets into your own, charm when money is not enough motivation anyway and deception when your deal is not as good as you are trying to make it sound, which might here apply as well, depending how good the chances of survival are.

Pick a number of crew. Roll a d100 for percentage of the number..