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Update 8: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=5154 Battle Meditation looks a lot better.
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Nov 2, 2014 15:56
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So I've rotated into running sessions with my group, and run into a few issues. The Tatooine Chainsaw Murderer First, one of my players has created a completely one-dimensional droid melee monster. I have absolutely no resentment of him for it, except that he's basically just been allowed to pump all his XP into melee and combat perks, and the result is that it feels like he's not had to make any actual real choices about his character. Combined with that, he's pretty much a monster in combat, which turns many battles into weird affairs where everyone spends a round shooting at things while he charges into range, and then it ends 1-2 rounds later as he axes everyone to death while the rest of the party watches. It's awesome to let happen occasionally, but I'm struggling to come up with ways to make the OTHER combat players feel useful. quote:Career: Soldier He's got a virbo-ax (of course) that is doing 8 damage + successes, Crit 2, Pierce 2, Sunder, and Vicious 4 (+40 to crit rolls). He's talking about modding it to have Crit 1, which is really concerning given that he can also increase his Vicious another point or two with mods and talents. Like I said, I don't hate the character (though I feel like he's never fleshed out the concept of "insane medical droid who's acquired a taste for slaughter" into the 'medical droid' part) but I need to actually challenge him, and I am trying to come up with ways to do that. I dropped him into a gladiator arena against a nemesis, and the fight lasted about 3 rounds with him scoring enough advantage to crit the guy twice on the first round, and (with Vicious 4) rolling high enough to basically mortally wound him. I think the combination of "Droids get Extra Soak" plus "Melee Weapons do crazy damage/crits" plus "there's no movement penalty for heavy weapons/armor" make it just a matter of time before he ends any given combat encounter. I've got some ideas, but all of them seem to have problems I'm not sure how to deal with: - Ion weapons as a specific "screw you" because he is pretty notorious in this sector by now. The problem is, they seem awful -- ion blasters do 10 damage versus the 8-9 of a carbine/rifle, and still have Soak applied. The Disorient 5 is a single black die, and is mildly annoying at best. - Break his poo poo. This requires throwing a lot more red dice though, which seem very hard to come by. A rival MIGHT have 1, and a nemesis will have 1 or 2 (plus another in either case with a force point). As an aside, I've been playing a Slicer and it seems weird to me that slicing is always an opposed roll against "the skill of the system creator" but most other things are static DCs that at most will add Black dice instead of Reds. - Drown him with fire so that he's dead before he gets to melee. It worked against the Jedi  - Provide encounter-specific situations to keep him from getting into Engaged range Are there any other tactical or weapon/ability tricks people could suggest to make his fighting decisions more interesting than "Move/Move/Murder"? The Lazy Star-Warlord I've got another character who's also made the reasonable decision of being the one to invest in Leadership. He's a Hired Gun class that has access to the Field Commander talent, which reads as follows: quote:FIELD CDMMANDER quote:FIELD COMMANDER (IMPROVED) Field Commander basic seems really cool: he spends an action, makes a roll, and everyone gets a free maneuver -- they can hustle into cover, complete a charge, take an extra move to aim, etc. Field Commander Improved seems pretty powerful, but it costs a fair amount of experience to unlock, and requires a decent investment in leadership to use regularly. The problem is the murder-robot. The devised tactic has become for the Leader to hide and "command from the rear", granting an additional maneuver to the droid to get into range (which lets him get from Medium to Engaged on round 1) and then just fishing for crits for the rest of the combat to give the droid an extra attack. At a cost of 1 strain to the acting ally that seems like an absolute bargain. Again, the difficulty for Field Commander is fixed at 2 Purple, which he can easily outstrip with a little investment (he's at 2 Yellow right now -- which gives him a roughly 16% chance of rolling a crit). Does anyone have ideas for excuses to throw black dice into that roll? I can upgrade it with a force point, but adding Setback seems a bit more appropriate.
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Nov 2, 2014 17:03
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I had some success with adding non-combat elements and reinforcement timers to encounters. In EotE at least there shouldn't be very many cases where the PCs only goal is to kill people; normally they want to achieve a goal that those people are in the way of. If they want to steal a car and the cops will arrive in ~5 rounds once fighting starts, the emphasis is on the rest of the party to hotwire it and rev the engine before they do. Patrolling thugs, wave upon wave of stormtroopers, closing blast doors... All these things make it more cinematic as well. Plus you get to use Nemises in a satisfying, Vader-like way to keep the pressure on them rather than just as tougher enemies.
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Nov 2, 2014 17:20
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Grenades. Lots of grenades. Give the enemies a few Demolitionist or Saboteur talents, then have them chuck ion grenades at him. If he gets stunned, all the better. Make it difficult to find someone to repair him because of his notoriety and then give him a setback on certain actions due to shoddy repairs. The previous suggestion is the key, of course... stop focusing on combat and add twists, but those two might help.
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Nov 2, 2014 17:37
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Fuzz posted:Grenades. Lots of grenades. Give the enemies a few Demolitionist or Saboteur talents, then have them chuck ion grenades at him. If he gets stunned, all the better. Are Ion Grenades in the core book, or is that the Hired Guns expansion? That idea did come to mind, but I didn't see any stats for them off-hand. That's a solid idea. Unfortunately, part of the problem is that it's a 7 PC party (ugh). Thus it can end up being really easy for a player to focus one one specific thing, and rely on someone else being really good at whatever they are missing. We've got decent mechanics, although I did manage to pile up a crit or two on him so I might be able to keep him wounded for a little while. I've found splitting the party and running simultaneous scenes works well to keep people from always deferring to "the specialist" (not to mention feeling very Star Wars-y as well) but I need a way to put the droid in a situation where he can't just hack and slash his way out of it, while still letting other PCs have some action. Ideally I'd like to give him the option of combat, but have it be an obvious bad choice so that it feels like he's choosing to do something different rather than feeling like I as the GM am just handicapping him by not letting him do what he's good at.
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Nov 2, 2014 17:45
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That's a problem that's endemic to any RPG where you can have non-combatants and very focused combatants in the same party. We ran into the same thing in our game where we had a bounty hunter, two colonists and a technician; only one of the PCs actually had access to a weapon skill in his career. The solution is to make sure that combat isn't the sole focus of the game. It's fine if murderbot murders the poo poo out of things as long as Talky McTalkerson and Hacky VonNevertouchedaboob get to spend commensurate amounts of time doing what they designed their own characters for. Thankfully combats aren't nearly as long to resolve in this system as in others, so this isn't as daunting as it would be in a more crunchy system. What are the rest of the PCs tailored to? You've only mentioned the droid and the mercenary soldier guy. If you want specific combat tips for the droid:
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Nov 2, 2014 17:52
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Have some enemies that are unassailable by melee, so the more ranged minded PCs can shine. Maybe the party is in a canyon on Tatooine with steep walls and gets ambushed by Tuskens. Some are on the canyon floor with the party, armed with gaffi sticks for the droid to slaughter while some are sniping from the cliffs. Or recreate the Nar Shaddaa level from Jedi Outcast.
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Nov 2, 2014 19:45
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Also just . . . not having all the enemies in the same place. Every set of enemies he has to close with is that many more chances for the others to get a good shot in, especially if closing with one group puts him further from (but still in range of) another.
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Nov 2, 2014 20:39
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I made a player rage quit today. Not sure if I should feel good or bad about it. We were playing the Mos Shadaa beginning adventure for ETOE. They got to the point where they had to fight Trex. Trex is supposed to run around the ship and shoot the players along with the droids. I felt that the encounter was boring so Trex hopped in the pilot seat and started making pilot checks to throw the party from the ship. The Togorian jedi character saved the party several times from being thrown from the ship off of the open ramp. Trex gets frustrated, turns the ship vertical, and then shoots down at the party from the safety of the pilot seat. Eventually the Zabrak jedi used Force Move to close the ramp so the party didn't have to worry about the Storm troopers who arrived and were now shooting at them. With the party now safe the Torgorian says he wants to climb up the ship, grab Trex and melee him with his vibro weapon. I tell him it's a Average Athletics check but I spent a Dark side destiny to increase the check. He rolls a Despair, two terrors and a fail. Before I could give his result he had to leave the room and go for a walk. Eventually the rest of the party defeats Trex, shanghai's the ship and fly off into the void. Still not sure if I that player will rejoin or not. Excelsiortothemax fucked around with this message at 08:59 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 08:51
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F&D update 9, more force power changes. http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=5204
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Nov 12, 2014 01:13
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Excelsiortothemax posted:I made a player rage quit today. Not sure if I should feel good or bad about it. you did the right thing.
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Nov 12, 2014 16:32
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YES. The Smuggler Sourcebook is called Fly Casual http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=5205 
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Nov 12, 2014 17:03
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alg posted:YES. Yessssss...
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Nov 12, 2014 17:32
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Best art pose for a blaster ever.
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Nov 12, 2014 18:03
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Hubis posted:Spinning R2 with a virbo-ax My party has a Wookie like this. We finally pushed our GM too far with him, and he dropped a Rancor at close range with an adversary sniper at long range. While I was deciding what kind of character to play next, our pilot hopped in our YT, blasted the Rancor, and got a really lucky shot that took out the sniper. His next go to is coming at us with stunners and other strain draining attacks and effects. In your case, you have a good tactic where droids are good at not breathing, but are bad at swimming. We also once used a crane magnet against an NPC murderbot, so you can try that.
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Nov 12, 2014 22:14
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alg posted:YES. Awesome… except no new species  You’d think that the gambling-crazy Herglic and the adventure-loving Lutrillians would make an appearance, but sadly not.
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Nov 12, 2014 22:18
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Except they specifically said three new species.
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Nov 12, 2014 22:20
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Yeah, we just don't know what the new species are yet. I'm surprised we didn't get that...didn't the Stay on Target announcement give us the specializations and the species?
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Nov 12, 2014 22:23
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I'm assuming based on the art it's Faleen and Gotal + something.
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Nov 12, 2014 22:31
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Did they already lay out Devaronians? Because if not, they're a logical choice. I'd bet money Falleen will make a showing and there will be a section about Black Sun, too.
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Nov 12, 2014 23:02
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I'm just happy to get better rules for hyperspace travel.
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Nov 12, 2014 23:06
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I'm coming to the party a bit late, but I can't help but notice that your super death droid has 2 willpower and no discipline. Have a slicer hack him. Have a wookiee stick a restraining bolt on the end of a bowcaster quarrel and shoot him with it. If it's the right era for it, have him run up against someone with a lightsaber and see how long he lasts against a weapon that ignores all of his soak. Those are just temporary solutions though, the permanent fix is to make sure your game has plenty of non-combat goals to achieve. That way your combat monster gets to feel special in a fight, but in the other three-quarters of the game he's cooling his heels while the non-combat players are doing their things. A combat monster character only ruins things for everyone else if the game is hinging mostly on combat, and there's nothing inherently wrong about a player who wants their character to be an rear end-beater. Let the guy beat rear end, just make sure you set things up so that him beating rear end is not the only thing that occurs in game sessions.
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Nov 19, 2014 08:56
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I finally got one of the Adversary decks (the one Carteret didn't get for me at Worlds). Apparently my FLGS couldn't get them in, and shipping from FFG was absurd. I got the Citizens of the Galaxy deck. It has great art, the stats are very useful and easy to read. They are super convenient and I can see using them a ton for my games. Just about the only complaint I have is that they don't have a page number for where they can be found in books.
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Nov 19, 2014 22:07
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alg posted:I finally got one of the Adversary decks (the one Carteret didn't get for me at Worlds). Apparently my FLGS couldn't get them in, and shipping from FFG was absurd. I got the Citizens of the Galaxy deck. It has great art, the stats are very useful and easy to read. They are super convenient and I can see using them a ton for my games. Just about the only complaint I have is that they don't have a page number for where they can be found in books. I am guessing it's because they are nominally from a book that isn't out yet -- namely Force and Destiny Core.
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Nov 19, 2014 22:14
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Valatar posted:I'm coming to the party a bit late, but I can't help but notice that your super death droid has 2 willpower and no discipline. Have a slicer hack him. Have a wookiee stick a restraining bolt on the end of a bowcaster quarrel and shoot him with it. If it's the right era for it, have him run up against someone with a lightsaber and see how long he lasts against a weapon that ignores all of his soak. Man, hacking is a good idea. I just need to figure out a good way to make it plausible (there's no Wi-Fi in post-Clone War Star Wars, after all). In recent sessions, it's become clear to me that a big part of the problem is the combination of: 1) He's just dumped points into the melee skill, so he's rolling a big pool of yellows with every attack (plus upgrades) 2) All combat is against a fixed target (rather than opposed) meaning it's hard to neutralize big pools 3) The weapon has a crit cost of 2, and he's at Vicious 6 right now (3 from the weapon, 3 from skills) which is +60 to crit rolls Like last night I threw him up against a nemesis bounty hunter. He managed to get into range, but this guy was pretty tough himself, with adversary 2 -- and the droid had failed a stealth roll with two Despair, which I turned into two difficulty upgrades on his next check. So he rolls YYYYG vs RRPPBB. Hits with 1 triumph and 2 advantage, meaning two crits. The first ends up being 80 + Vicious 60 = 120 -- the target is stunned for the duration of the encounter (has no action). The poor guy didn't even get a chance to shoot back (which sucks because he was tricked out with things to give the droid a hard time). At least I trashed the droid's tricked out vibro-ax. Not having as much combat specific stuff is a good solution, but it's hard in practice for two reasons: A) We've got several other people in the party who have also built combat characters. Not having combats isn't really viable because they all want to feel useful, but that droid just trivializes them. B) It can be extremely hard to create a sense of threat and tension because even things I don't intend to be combats get pushed very hard in that direction because I mean, poo poo, why wouldn't you just want to hit everything with your ax-wielding murder-droid? At this point I'm about to just take the gloves completely off and throw some pissed-off jedi outcasts at him.
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Nov 20, 2014 15:24
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Hubis posted:Man, hacking is a good idea. I just need to figure out a good way to make it plausible (there's no Wi-Fi in post-Clone War Star Wars, after all). Ion Grenades.
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Nov 20, 2014 15:54
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Another option: Make your combat more about the cinematic battle than about a tactical fight. I'm not perfect at this myself, but for example I had an encounter where the party walked into a hangar with a ship in pre-flight mode and they had to stop it from taking off to blow a hole in the dome. At one point there were two of them actually on top of the ship, one of them trying to cut open the cockpit and the other sabotaging wires on the thrusters. The rest of the party was busy dealing with the load lifters trying to crush them. I kind of consider it a foregone conclusion that the party will win all of the fights I throw at them unless I am a dick about it, so I want to try and make more interesting scenarios, instead of challenging fights when possible. I also had the exact same scenario. One of my players made a no-personality kill-bot, and eventually made a new character that was more roleplay-oriented once the campaign became more like... 90% social. Most of the time he had nothing to do and it was boring picking fights with everyone who he interacted with.
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Nov 20, 2014 16:15
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He had them, but got essentially disabled by an absurd crit on the first round and couldn't use them  In retrospect, I should have just chucked ion/stun grenades down every hall as soon as the doors opened, but the PCs had convinced him they were surrendering so he boarded cautiously, but had at least the veneer of good faith. Oh well. I think at this point it's clear the party has earned a "Dead Or Alive" treatment from here on out. So the setting was a nemesis bounty-hunter doing a forced boarding of their YT-1300 in space. The players had enough warning to try and set a trap (the droid hid around the corner) but the bounty hunter was smart and stopped to do a scan before moving past the airlock from his breaching transport. He calls out the droid, the player asks for a stealth roll and I allow it -- like I said, he rolls two despair which I elect to spend upgrading his next check twice. So he moves in and rolls his attack against a pool which is about as ridiculous as I can make it (upgraded five times) but still advantageous to him. He crits, giving my NPC a condition that means he can't take any actions for the rest of the encounter. He's suddenly completely neutered. Anyways, the hilarious part is what happened for the rest of the encounter. While the other players man the guns and fend off another Z-95 that's flying cover for this guy, he uses his maneuvers to panic and back up his breech airlock and hit the emergency disconnect -- pushing him and his ship away, and sucking (blowing?) the droid out into space if he doesn't make an Athletics check. The Droid, of course, decides he'd rather just go for it and says he wants to try and leap out and latch onto the separating spacecraft. He makes the Coordination roll, and the bounty hunter keeps scrambling up into the ship and seals the hatch (using free moves from disadvantage rolled). This metal monster then proceeds to pry open the hatch (Mechanics with Brawn instead of Intellect for a base). The bounty hunter, who can still only use maneuvers, tries to evasively roll the ship and throw the droid out the airlock, but no luck. This silicon psychopath then calmly grabs the pilot and rips off his sealed helmet, watching him die a gasping death in the cold vacuum of space. My players are monsters. e: also, no lie, my randomized movie soundtrack playlist started playing the title music for The Terminator when he pried off that hatch. Hubis fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 16:23
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Hubis posted:He had them, but got essentially disabled by an absurd crit on the first round and couldn't use them Ion Mines.
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Nov 20, 2014 16:39
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Also, two Despair on a Stealth roll is easily at least one free attack from the enemy before the Droid can act, not just a Challenge Dice upgrade. You are seriously underutilizing what a Despair means.
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Nov 20, 2014 16:40
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Fuzz posted:Ion Mines. This guy gets it. Fuzz posted:Also, two Despair on a Stealth roll is easily at least one free attack from the enemy before the Droid can act, not just a Challenge Dice upgrade. You are seriously underutilizing what a Despair means. Thanks, this is definitely useful. Although honestly even if he popped off an ion grenade it wouldn't have changed anything, since it only does 10 strain, which would still be reduced by the droid's 8 soak. I made the mistake of printing out some of the "things you can spend advantage/triumph/threat/despair on" cheat-sheets, and I've gotten a lot of push-back from players when I try and do stuff that isn't a listed example -- they even argued "you can't upgrade twice" before I shut that down. Riding that line between letting the players feel like they've got agency and letting the GM say "this is just how it is" is tough. On the other hand, the party's front-man did sort of get molested by a Lady-Hutt crimbe boss while trying to negotiate a contract when his attempt at seduction sort of got out of his control, so I guess I need to count my victories.
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Nov 20, 2014 16:49
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Hubis posted:On the other hand, the party's front-man did sort of get molested by a Lady-Hutt crimbe boss while trying to negotiate a contract when his attempt at seduction sort of got out of his control, so I guess I need to count my victories. I hope he'll be getting holographic invitations to a drink every once in a while so that he'll never be able to live down the shame. [edit] Of course, all NPCs - including any party Nemezis the party has - should be convinced the guy has some really kinky taste and will not be persuaded otherwise. Lichtenstein fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 16:54
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Hubis posted:This guy gets it. Your players are missing the point of the system and are far too concrete in their thinking. Worst kind of players to GM for, in my opinion... you need to start moving away from forcing rolls for relatively mild or meaningless poo poo, and then taking liberties and focusing on the narrative with the rolls that are actually made. This system isn't D&D, the dice don't make or break what's happening, they facilitate the narrative, that is all. In that Despair example, the first Despair should have given him a free attack, and the second should have meant that the ion grenade the guy threw wasn't a grenade, but a limpet mine that attached to the droid and bypasses his soak. Let the NPC actually roll his Mechanics or Ranged Light to figure out the damage, but conveniently give the guy that Saboteur talent that makes crits easier on explosions or upgrades their blast effects. If the player bitches at you for not playing fair, tell him it's not your fault that he sucks at Stealth, he should have considered that when making the character.
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Nov 20, 2014 17:04
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I mentioned this before, but it's also worth making the players raise the stakes themselves. When Challenge dice are getting rolled and a player is getting cocky and doing something risky, ask the players before the roll what they think is the worst thing that could realistically ("realistically") happen. Despair comes up? It happens.
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Nov 20, 2014 17:25
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homullus posted:I mentioned this before, but it's also worth making the players raise the stakes themselves. When Challenge dice are getting rolled and a player is getting cocky and doing something risky, ask the players before the roll what they think is the worst thing that could realistically ("realistically") happen. Despair comes up? It happens. This is what we do. We'll always posit "okay, the worst possible thing here would be for a stray shot to take out our landspeeder so don't roll any Despair" and the like. It makes it a hell of a lot funner when the group comes up with the worst of the worst because it makes it so much more personal.
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Nov 20, 2014 17:55
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Are you using Destiny dice? I didn't see it mentioned at all. It literally lets you screw around with your players rolls or just add bullshit to the scene to give them a greater challenge. Murderbot charges at your bounty hunter? Well, too bad it was really just his helmet on a stick! Player character ripping off the cockpit? Time to punch it into hyperspace immediately! I agree with others as well, making your players come up with the horrible events really helps.
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Nov 20, 2014 18:52
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Yeah, the players lied to Junior First Class Boba Fett. He should be accustomed to criminals lying to him. The guy the droid hit wasn't JFC Fett, but instead another droid in a mando helmet! The real JFC is right behind that guy and has the shot all lined up! Play your adversaries smarter, man. If there is a melee murderbot who kills anything he gets close to, most people aren't going to let him get close enough to make those melee attacks. Jet packs, snipers, mines, grenades, swarms of blasters, etc., are all good ways to take him out. The next bounty hunter that shows up alone is not 'brave' at this point, he's a complete loving moron. He should attack them when they're in a place that has no cover with six of his friends using ion grenades while he takes sniper shots from the window. He will literally only let up once the droid is disabled and all of the party's electronics are fried. And even then he's extremely likely to kneecap anyone that says a threatening sentence, let alone takes a threatening action. Bounty Hunters are not good people in Star Wars, man. They're murderers for hire, who MAY capture people if it's possible or if the job specifically requires it. But if it's not possible, they're still murderers for hire. Assume, at this point, that all of the bigwigs in the campaign have heard about murderbot and his glorious crew. Especially if they use the same tactics each time. And then account for those tactics. The smuggler and the soldier use blasters? Gas grenades with refracting particles. The murderbot charges? Glue-mines that hold him in place. That sort of stuff.
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Nov 20, 2014 23:17
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Yeah, seriously. At this point, a Hutt should have taken notice of these guys and sent out a crack Bounty Hunter team to track them down and either take them out or bring them in... setup a huge ambush for them and if/when they lose, they get taken before a Hutt and then thrown in a Rancor pit or forced to fight with their bare hands in some sort of demented arena on Nal Hutta or whatever. There's plenty of options, YOU just need to think outside the box if your players refuse to.
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Nov 21, 2014 01:26
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Devil's advocate: Most of the above suggestions are garbage.
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Nov 21, 2014 01:37
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| # ? May 12, 2024 21:43 |
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Bedurndurn posted:Devil's advocate: Most of the above suggestions are garbage. Care to elaborate? I mean, obviously the specifics are up for debate, but the general concept of "tailor an event to challenge even the beefiest of soak-monsters" and "have story consequences for being a murderhobo" seem pretty good to me.
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Nov 21, 2014 01:52
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