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Lemon Curdistan posted:In theory, it should be more combat-heavy than EotE, but the game system being what it is I've found that AoR tends to work better if you play it closer to how EotE is played (i.e. you're breaking the law, you just do it for ideological motives) instead of having the mass battles and spaceship battles the game flavour wants you to have. Can I inquire more about this since I'm having thoughts of acquiring the other books? Saying that playing the game the way it encourages you to doesn't work because of the system itself is a worrying statement.
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Dec 16, 2014 21:05
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Covok posted:Can I inquire more about this since I'm having thoughts of acquiring the other books? Saying that playing the game the way it encourages you to doesn't work because of the system itself is a worrying statement. The combat sits at an uncomfortable boundary between "too complicated for something as storygamey as the custom dice mechanics want you to think the game is" and "not detailed enough to be an interesting tactical game in and of itself" for me, so it's just not very good. There's also the issue of the combat being weirdly "lethal" (i.e. a single hit will frequently take off 50-75% of a character's HP, resulting in them getting a random injury roll and falling unconscious, to then usually be revived immediately by teammates and probably get shot unconscious again in a couple of turns). I've not played much with the starship combat, but napkin maths seems to indicate the lethality on it is also stupid high and the game kind of relies on there being PCs onboard the ship to fix it in flight, which plain doesn't work when you're running single-seat snubfighters. There's also the issue that the damage mechanics are straight out of Dark Heresy and don't match the design of the skill/custom dice system at all, which is just puzzlingly bad design.
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Dec 16, 2014 21:28
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Covok posted:Can I inquire more about this since I'm having thoughts of acquiring the other books? Saying that playing the game the way it encourages you to doesn't work because of the system itself is a worrying statement. I think the rules in all the books best support being a Han Solo or C-3PO. Second to that, they support being Luke or prequel Obi-Wan. The difference is just your motivation and preferred target.
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Dec 16, 2014 21:41
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Lemon Curdistan posted:The combat sits at an uncomfortable boundary between "too complicated for something as storygamey as the custom dice mechanics want you to think the game is" and "not detailed enough to be an interesting tactical game in and of itself" for me, so it's just not very good. There's also the issue of the combat being weirdly "lethal" (i.e. a single hit will frequently take off 50-75% of a character's HP, resulting in them getting a random injury roll and falling unconscious, to then usually be revived immediately by teammates and probably get shot unconscious again in a couple of turns). I've not played much with the starship combat, but napkin maths seems to indicate the lethality on it is also stupid high and the game kind of relies on there being PCs onboard the ship to fix it in flight, which plain doesn't work when you're running single-seat snubfighters. That's kind of a selling point for me. Nothing is as off-putting to me as allegedly lethal weapons that result in apparently knocking chucks off of characters made of homogenous meat product. I want the starfighter combat to like like the films, not the X-wing series of videogames.
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Dec 17, 2014 00:06
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Madurai posted:That's kind of a selling point for me. Nothing is as off-putting to me as allegedly lethal weapons that result in apparently knocking chucks off of characters made of homogenous meat product. I want the starfighter combat to like like the films, not the X-wing series of videogames. The Star Wars films aren't full of the main characters being critically wounded and having their starships shot out from under them all the time though. Plenty of incidental characters get exploded, sure, a bunch of X-Wing and Y-Wing pilots eat it during the Death Star trench run and a whole lot of TIE pilots go boom, but when the main characters get hurt or their ships get damaged it's generally either a big dramatic deal (i.e. Luke getting his hand cut off) or the equivalent of a dramatic complication (your targeting computer is offline, you'll have to Use The Force to make this vitally important shot). Like, Star Wars is full of allegedly lethal weapons fire that miraculously never seems to hit what would be considered the PCs in an RPG all the time, there's a whole long-running joke about it. The idea of a Star Wars game that's lethal and dangerous and gritty honestly strikes me as pretty weird.
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Dec 17, 2014 00:14
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Yea Star Wars needs to be pulpy, and that means poo poo like highly trained Imperial soldiers who have committed crazy space genocide without issue before suddenly have trouble getting a kill shot on five douchebags in a smuggler ship. Still, I don't dislike EoE's system, but for my group we did scale things back a little. If you have a few troopers shooting at you and they all hit, you're hosed for sure, but you're not going to be taken down by a stray laser shot either.
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Dec 17, 2014 00:41
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I could see a system working where enemy accuracy was pretty low but getting hit meant complications working pretty well. I mean, I agree that "you get shot by a blaster but it only does 1d6 hitpoints so you shrug it off" would be pretty dumb and unfun, but the True Star Wars experience seems to me to be "shots fly all around you but mainly just hit the walls and explode panels and make sparks but don't knock half your party unconscious but all that blaster fire caused the emergency shutters to close cutting off your escape route, the only way out now is through the fighter launch bays."
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Dec 17, 2014 00:48
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Kai Tave posted:I could see a system working where enemy accuracy was pretty low but getting hit meant complications working pretty well. I mean, I agree that "you get shot by a blaster but it only does 1d6 hitpoints so you shrug it off" would be pretty dumb and unfun, but the True Star Wars experience seems to me to be "shots fly all around you but mainly just hit the walls and explode panels and make sparks but don't knock half your party unconscious but all that blaster fire caused the emergency shutters to close cutting off your escape route, the only way out now is through the fighter launch bays." This seems to be my experience using storm troopers to be honest. They are tough as nails but cant hit particularly well (assuming your not grouping them all) unless the players are straight out the gate new characters but they seem to build up a tonne of advantages which I like to spend to make the situation nuts, lights go off, power fluctuations, doors constantly opening/closing to drag the players in a specific direction.
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Dec 17, 2014 01:25
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Re: starship combat, lethality, and requiring regular repairs, do astromechs adequately serve that purpose or do you really need a PC to take care of it? Because a lot of the iconic rebel starfighters have astromech sockets so I'd normally assume that "you have your very own R2 unit to fix poo poo" would be factored into things unless you're using some weird-rear end EU fighter or something, but I don't have any experience with EotE/AoR ship combat so.
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Dec 17, 2014 01:30
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Kai Tave posted:The Star Wars films aren't full of the main characters being critically wounded and having their starships shot out from under them all the time though. Plenty of incidental characters get exploded, sure, a bunch of X-Wing and Y-Wing pilots eat it during the Death Star trench run and a whole lot of TIE pilots go boom, but when the main characters get hurt or their ships get damaged it's generally either a big dramatic deal (i.e. Luke getting his hand cut off) or the equivalent of a dramatic complication (your targeting computer is offline, you'll have to Use The Force to make this vitally important shot). The game should reflect that it's hard to hit things, and plenty lethal when you do get hit. R2-D2 was hit twice in the films, both times badly enough that in game terms, he'd have been out of action for the rest of the fight. Leia was shot twice, too--once by a single stun bolt that dropped her, and when she got winged by a blaster bolt it gave her at the very least a round of taking no action. The only fighters shown taking hits and surviving were Red Leader (briefly) and Luke.
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Dec 17, 2014 01:42
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Madurai posted:The game should reflect that it's hard to hit things, and plenty lethal when you do get hit. R2-D2 was hit twice in the films, both times badly enough that in game terms, he'd have been out of action for the rest of the fight. Leia was shot twice, too--once by a single stun bolt that dropped her, and when she got winged by a blaster bolt it gave her at the very least a round of taking no action. Or they could just have low-lethality combat and let you abstract it however you want (either as "they miss until you get dropped" or as "action heroes taking flesh wounds" depending on what the table wants the tone to be). HP has never represented health, it's always been a combination of stamina/luck, so it's pretty silly to go for a system where hitting is infrequent but damage is high (doubly bad because it leads to frustrating fights where everyone whiffs, and stupid spike damage when hits do happen, which is largely out of your control). Annoyingly, something that would have worked perfectly for exactly that and would have worked hand in hand with their fancy dice is Fate's stress/consequence system and the way Fate combat works (you pass on a series of bonuses to the last player to act that turn who then attacks with a ridiculous bonus, usually one-shotting an enemy). I'm seriously just considering halving the damage of all enemy attacks to make the whole weapon damage/WT system not be completely wonk. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 01:51
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Lemon Curdistan posted:I'm seriously just considering halving the damage of all enemy attacks to make the whole weapon damage/WT system not be completely wonk. I've given every weapon Vicious with a rating equal to however much damage gets through Soak.
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Dec 17, 2014 02:04
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I've not had the combat difficulties y'all have had in my games. My players are about 200 earned XP in and nobody has died. Two people have gone unconscious, and there have been some critical injuries, but nobody has died. My players wear armor, even the squishy dudes. The Mechanic has soak 5. It gets kind of irritating as the GM sometimes trying to threaten the party. I've only run a couple of AoR adventures, but they were squad level. Starship and vehicle combat worked OK. Since the FAQ ruled a player can heal hull on a ship, my players have taken a beating from a couple big ships but always managed to limp to a port to fix up. I think if I were to have mass battles I would probably use the mass combat rules in Arda and only address what's going on for my players' squad.
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Dec 17, 2014 14:35
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Yeah, I think once PCs have armoured clothing and 2 ranks of Dodge/Sidestep/that soak-boosting talent everything starts to work out. The agile characters are hit infrequently for high damage at the cost of strain, the tanks are hit regularly for low damage. My party has 1 char who doesn't have any survivability-boosting talents and he's noticably more squishy. Combats definitely don't last long, probably around 4-5 rounds, but I was under the impression that was considered the sweet spot.
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Dec 17, 2014 15:07
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Lemon Curdistan posted:Or they could just have low-lethality combat and let you abstract it however you want (either as "they miss until you get dropped" or as "action heroes taking flesh wounds" depending on what the table wants the tone to be). HP has never represented health, it's always been a combination of stamina/luck, so it's pretty silly to go for a system where hitting is infrequent but damage is high (doubly bad because it leads to frustrating fights where everyone whiffs, and stupid spike damage when hits do happen, which is largely out of your control). Wound threshold in Star Wars is representing health. Strain threshold is stamina, destiny points are luck. You burn strain and destiny to not be hit, but the weapons in Star Wars are insanely lethal so taking a shot straight to the chest is probably leaving you in a really bad way. There are spots in the movies where characters were just grazed by blasters or lightsabers and were more or less okay, and it seems fair that that's represented by 'just' damaging wound threshold without critical damage, since there's no in-game effect to being injured until you run out of wound threshold or gain critical damage. But at no point ever in Star Wars has anyone been okay after taking three or four hits. I think that's fairly represented with the system here.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:07
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The D20 versions represented HP as a generic idea of how long you could dodge blaster fire before getting taken down. So it was more a mix of physical and mental endurance.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:23
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FISHMANPET posted:The D20 versions represented HP as a generic idea of how long you could dodge blaster fire before getting taken down. So it was more a mix of physical and mental endurance. The D20 versions were also retarded. They were trying to shoehorn a cinematic and lethal setup into the D&D system of HP sponges. Fantasy Flight's done it considerably better where if someone's running at you with a laser sword that cuts through bank vaults, you'd better be actively dodging or blocking it, because having it stuck through you is likely going to kill you. They really missed the boat in Force and Destiny in not having a Jedi talent specifically for lopping off arms with lightsabers. They really seem to love doing that.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:42
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Saga had a damage track that was awesome.
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Dec 17, 2014 23:11
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Valatar posted:The D20 versions were also retarded. They were trying to shoehorn a cinematic and lethal setup into the D&D system of HP sponges. Fantasy Flight's done it considerably better where if someone's running at you with a laser sword that cuts through bank vaults, you'd better be actively dodging or blocking it, because having it stuck through you is likely going to kill you. Or maybe a "hit" isn't a literal "you got shot", which is the entire semantic issue at the heart of the HP argument.
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Dec 17, 2014 23:14
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Yeah, the first time you get "hit" in a D20 version your character dodged, but didn't actually get hit, but now they're a little worn out. And they'd keep dodging or whatever until they were just so worn out they'd actually get hit, and then bad things would happen. Unrelated, how do you guys describe NPCs getting hit to players? I want to have some way to indicate how much damage they're doing to an opponent but I don't want to be as mechanical as saying "you took out 3 of 7 wounds, leaving them with 4." Would you even let them know how much was absorbed by armor explicitly, or weave that into the narrative as well?
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Dec 17, 2014 23:42
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Valatar posted:Wound threshold in Star Wars is representing health. Strain threshold is stamina, destiny points are luck. You burn strain and destiny to not be hit, but the weapons in Star Wars are insanely lethal so taking a shot straight to the chest is probably leaving you in a really bad way. There are spots in the movies where characters were just grazed by blasters or lightsabers and were more or less okay, and it seems fair that that's represented by 'just' damaging wound threshold without critical damage, since there's no in-game effect to being injured until you run out of wound threshold or gain critical damage. Yes, I know what WT represents. I'm saying it's bad design to have "HP" represent being hurt instead of avoiding being hurt.
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Dec 17, 2014 23:46
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I don't find the combat - on the face of it - to be particularly compelling in this system. It's not bad, and it can actually be a lot of fun but you need the cooperation of everybody at the table to make it work. I think that way too much space is dedicated to making characters increasingly deadly in really fiddly ways; I think that not enough space is dedicated to how to make non-combat characters increasingly competent in other fields; and I think that when you roll the dice you have to be prepared to really narrate the consequences of the roll with the help of everybody at the table. It's not that its especially complicated. It's mostly that you can theoretically funnel near-infinite XP into being an increasingly badass assassin and then basically cap out on being a doctor. This problem is exacerbated if the game is run with a series of combat encounters, and doubly so if those encounters are dull "shoot until finished" affairs. The game is <this close> to being a Dungeon World-esque romp in space but it needs the right group to make it work.
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Dec 18, 2014 00:09
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Questions for you guys, since I'm running SW for the first time for people who have played for other DMs and understand the rules differently: -Do you need a {*} (hit) to 'buy' your weapon's base damage? So like, a blaster pistol deals 6 damage. Say you roll a net 2 hits... does that mean you deal 8? (6 base damage plus 2 hits) or 7 (first hit buys the damage, second hit increases by one) -What do you think of the houserule (that I thought was an actual rule) of letting people 'trade down' advantages into hits? So if your roll is just 'net 1 advantage' you can just make that into 1 hit? -I'm also struggling to develop dynamic and challenging encounters the same as the upthread person, since I have (much to my disappointment) a six-person party, which makes combat a chore since there aren't many interrupt/react-type actions for players and combat takes a long time to get through, especially with all the narration. My preferred size is 4, I said I would go to 5 and had 6 sprung on me. I'm now just hoping a person a session can't make it.
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Dec 23, 2014 23:29
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Everblight posted:Questions for you guys, since I'm running SW for the first time for people who have played for other DMs and understand the rules differently: The group i'm in has houseruled that three advantage can beconverted into a success. It's so high as to be far too expensive to do normally but you can on those rolls of 6 advantage and no successes use it to be able to pass a roll. A one for one looks far too cheap to me and starts to take away advantage as part of the core mechanic of the game.
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Dec 23, 2014 23:35
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- 8 - Aren't advantages also successes? Hence a failure can remove an advantage's sucess, but not the advantage part of the roll? - No idea. 
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Dec 23, 2014 23:37
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Advantages aren't successes, no. Only actual successes and triumphs count as successes. Threat and Advantage operate on their own totally different scale.
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Dec 23, 2014 23:39
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Tekopo posted:Advantages aren't successes, no. Only actual successes and triumphs count as successes. Threat and Advantage operate on their own totally different scale. Ah, right - getting them confused with Triumphs.
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Dec 23, 2014 23:48
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House ruling advantages into successes just seems to take away the interesting part of the system and make most tasks far too easy. Using advantage to make something happen even though you failed is the fun part.
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Dec 23, 2014 23:52
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Yea the whole point of the divide is letting you have moments where you miss the shot but manage to shoot a console behind the storm troopers, or where you hit the trooper but he fires his gun off as he dies and alerts the others. Making them the same takes the interesting bit of the special dice away, might as well just make em d8s.
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Dec 24, 2014 02:58
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The best is when someone rolls both a Triumph and a Despair, since those don't cancel. Always hilarious.
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Dec 24, 2014 19:10
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Stay on Target should be in stores today. I'll post up what I know about it when I pick it up on Friday.
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Dec 24, 2014 19:44
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alg posted:Stay on Target should be in stores today. I'll post up what I know about it when I pick it up on Friday. I got mine already. If you have any questions let me know and I can post tonight. The art is gorgeous, as usual.
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Dec 24, 2014 19:52
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Carteret posted:I got mine already. If you have any questions let me know and I can post tonight. The art is gorgeous, as usual. I am always curious about new talents in the new specializations , if any.
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Dec 24, 2014 20:25
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Sadly my FLGS won't be getting Stay on Target til next week. I envy those on the coast who got it already.
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Dec 25, 2014 06:01
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R-41 Starchasers in Stay on Target  There are some talents to increase the armor of a "Signature Vehicle", I guess a pilot's chosen vehicle. A talent called "Fancy Paint Job" that lets you increase social skills around your signature vehicle, lol "Showboat" - spend two strain to showboat during your next check. If you succeed on the check, gain a triumph. Otherwise gain a despair.
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Dec 26, 2014 19:53
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Having run into issues with PC ships being too flimsy in the past, I'm wondering what opinion people'd have on this fairly simple change: Ships don't shut down when their damage exceeds their hull threshold. Instead, when a ship takes damage in excess of its hull threshold, it suffers an equal amount of system strain and takes a critical hit. Ships shut down when their system strain exceeds their system strain threshold as usual. Pros/Cons: + PC & Nemesis ships effectively gain 50-100% more health, whilst Rivals & Minions don't + Crit effects see more use (currently, ships rarely suffer more than 1 before getting disabled) + Easier to flee when things start going south + Mechanics can make thematic last-ditch attempts to keep a crippled ship together + Lasers & ion weapons no longer attack different health totals, so mixing them isn't counter-synergetic (if that means anything?) = Big ships see a proportionally smaller health buff than small ships, in general (but are more able to regen SS anyway) - Means personal and planetary health mechanics differ - Slightly more complicated - Means PCs are more able to get themselves killed (It's almost impossible to get critted to death in the current system, you shut down first)
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Dec 28, 2014 17:29
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alg posted:R-41 Starchasers in Stay on Target You're welcome
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Dec 30, 2014 19:32
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So I'm starting to re-evaluate my stance on Force Powers...had an in-person game of F&D the other night...and only had one successful force power usage the entire night. None of my players took talents or Power tree nodes that allowed the rolling of Force Dice in normal checks, so it was all specific Move checks and the like...and it really feels like the game is asking you to come up with way more pips that is feasible, especially to use any kind of Range or Magnitude upgrades.
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Jan 2, 2015 10:27
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jivjov posted:So I'm starting to re-evaluate my stance on Force Powers...had an in-person game of F&D the other night...and only had one successful force power usage the entire night. None of my players took talents or Power tree nodes that allowed the rolling of Force Dice in normal checks, so it was all specific Move checks and the like...and it really feels like the game is asking you to come up with way more pips that is feasible, especially to use any kind of Range or Magnitude upgrades. Having played force users a bit they do need a bucket of XP before they can be prequel/clone wars Jedi, the rules are much more akin to the original films where force powers are an edge and not super powers. The way my group looks at it is anyone with one force dice is just a sensitive, two force dice to be a padawan and at least three to be a knight. Masters should be five or more dice. The good news is that Jedi don't outstrip other characters. To reliably activate any low level force power takes two dice and if you want to add any magnitude or range reliably then you need three dice or be prepared to use destiny points.
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Jan 2, 2015 12:10
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Move is kind of a terrible first force power choice; as you mention, it requires a lot of pips to get things done with that. I think Sense or Enhance are much more newbie friendly force powers. Things you can commit force dice to are much more reliable than rolling and hoping for two white pips.
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Jan 2, 2015 19:07
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