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I find that combat can be super deadly for a lot of characters, but when you get some experience under your belt, the pure martial characters become nigh unkillable. Particularly Wookiees with a Riot Shield. e: I circumvented this problem by adding in enemies who wield Missile Tubes. They aim for the biggest target first, which is invariably the giant wookiee with the shield. 
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Apr 15, 2015 04:37
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Endman posted:In that case, what's the issue with EotE being a bit "grittier" than regular Star Wars? I think its pretty reasonable to have a slightly less lethal start. Anyone using a blaster rifle just murders everything early on.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:42
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kingcom posted:I think its pretty reasonable to have a slightly less lethal start. Anyone using a blaster rifle just murders everything early on. Good point, but there are options for this. There are a lot of NPCs who only wield pistols (Imperial Navy Troopers, for example) and with the starting 500 credits, I'm not sure any PCs can actually afford anything more lethal than a Heavy Blaster Pistol.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:43
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Don't have your PCs fight Stormtroopers in their first few sessions. FFG is working with the EU fluff that suggests Stormtroopers are way more badass than they appear in the movies.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:45
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Is Stormtroopers being badasses really EU or is it just that they appear incompetent to show how competent/lucky the heroes are?
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Apr 15, 2015 05:25
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It's definitely a plot armor thing. In the original they're built up to be pretty deadly, they take over the blockade runner with ease, massacre jawas and Luke's family. They're pretty consistently shown as a force to run away from until Jedi.
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Apr 15, 2015 05:42
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There's still this collective assumption that Stormies are rubbish that you have to account for when GMing. You can't just plonk a squad of them down and expect the players to give them their due reverence as deadly combatants.
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Apr 15, 2015 05:50
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Endman posted:Don't have your PCs fight Stormtroopers in their first few sessions. FFG is working with the EU fluff that suggests Stormtroopers are way more badass than they appear in the movies. It never been the storm troopers its just purely if you give someone a blaster rifle. Things go way more lethal than default characters can handle. Imperial Planetary Defence Forces or just standard imperial soldiers, the mookiest of the mook, still pack a powerful punch. Endman posted:Good point, but there are options for this. There are a lot of NPCs who only wield pistols (Imperial Navy Troopers, for example) and with the starting 500 credits, I'm not sure any PCs can actually afford anything more lethal than a Heavy Blaster Pistol. Assuming nobody takes obligation for money which shoots you through the roof which makes stuff get pretty hilarious. Often very much worth it versus getting 5 extra xp.
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Apr 15, 2015 05:52
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Endman posted:There's still this collective assumption that Stormies are rubbish that you have to account for when GMing. You can't just plonk a squad of them down and expect the players to give them their due reverence as deadly combatants. I wonder how you do that without coming off as "a dick GM." I guess a simple "by the way, quick warning, this game makes stormtroopers really tough like they are narratively supposed to be."
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Apr 15, 2015 05:54
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kingcom posted:Assuming nobody takes obligation for money which shoots you through the roof which makes stuff get pretty hilarious. Often very much worth it versus getting 5 extra xp. drat, I forgot about that. My only suggestion then is to make a custom list of equipment they can take at the beginning of the game and to get into the habit of designing your own NPCs. Something like the GM tools that come with this can be particularly handy for that.
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Apr 15, 2015 05:56
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Covok posted:I wonder how you do that without coming off as "a dick GM." I guess a simple "by the way, quick warning, this game makes stormtroopers really tough like they are narratively supposed to be." Yeah just have an NPC have the players tell them 'that laminate can take hits from any old blaster pistol! You'll need something biggest to take them down.' Or alternatively. Just have a squad of 5 show up. They only get the one shot off so oneone gets hit hard, players return fire and struggle to drop them and hopefully try and run. Killing a player is incredibly hard in the system so someone goes to zero and they get captured or carried away to the waiting escape ship. Just make sure the first time you engage them you present a clear escape route for people just climb aboard and get out from. Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon's hanger on tatoooine. Endman posted:drat, I forgot about that. My only suggestion then is to make a custom list of equipment they can take at the beginning of the game and to get into the habit of designing your own NPCs. Something like the GM tools that come with this can be particularly handy for that. I would never ever build npcs from scratch using any kind of character creation system. Ill just straight set the numbers I want them to be and give them any talent I like pretty much at will which is what I'm already doing. Having some nice clear universal enemies like stormtroopers goes a long way in people feeling they understand the game and what stuff is like in universe. Hey take my pbp at the moment. My players just carve through stormtroopers right out the gate since i made every take 20 obligation and the associated rewards. kingcom fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Apr 15, 2015 |
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Apr 15, 2015 05:57
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Combat isn’t so much super deadly as it’s super easy to knock people out. Every Star Wars movie has a scene where the heroes have to escape from captivity, so if you just have the bad guys take the party prisoner and let the PCs escape, you’re emulating Star Wars perfectly.
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Apr 15, 2015 09:06
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FishFood posted:It's definitely a plot armor thing. In the original they're built up to be pretty deadly, they take over the blockade runner with ease, massacre jawas and Luke's family. They're pretty consistently shown as a force to run away from until Jedi. Yeah, speaking as an old fart, stormtroopers were scary and dangerous until they were summarily asskicked by a bunch of teddy bears with rocks and twigs. They lost a lot of their edge after that. It's like what happened with Jean Claude Van Damme.
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Apr 15, 2015 15:05
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Side question spawned from reading all the various Star Wars dialogue. Do the pre-canned adventures that feature the Empire portray them as cartoonish evil? For example: "Hey fruit seller give me your produce!", Eats fruit and smashes produce laughing at plight of fruit vendor.
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Apr 15, 2015 21:26
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Super 3 posted:Side question spawned from reading all the various Star Wars dialogue. Isn't that literally the start of the Rebels TV show?
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Apr 16, 2015 00:35
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Feeple posted:Isn't that literally the start of the Rebels TV show? Yep. But it's a kid's show, so cut them some slack. The Empire is pretty cartoonishly evil to begin with. "Tell us where your friends are or we'll blow up your planet, Princess!" "They're on Dantooine." "Blow up Alderaan anyway! Bwahahahaha!"
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Apr 16, 2015 01:33
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Rebels for all its faults is better than anything in the EU.
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Apr 16, 2015 01:48
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Endman posted:Yep. But it's a kid's show, so cut them some slack. All I am seeing here is Tarkin being a cool villain, which is better than some of the more silly ones introduced in the EU. Also I tend to love over the top villains like the Eaters of the Lotus from Feng Shui so that'll color my opinions.
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Apr 16, 2015 02:46
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Ramba Ral posted:All I am seeing here is Tarkin being a cool villain, which is better than some of the more silly ones introduced in the EU. Star Wars needs more BBGs that are just like regular humans or at least Big Bads that don't use the force/lightsabers all the time.
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Apr 16, 2015 03:05
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Rannos22 posted:Star Wars needs more BBGs that are just like regular humans or at least Big Bads that don't use the force/lightsabers all the time. You want a big bad?  There's your big loving bad. That right there is an Imperial Star Destroyer. It has 6 full squadrons of TIE fighters on it, more than enough to overwhelm any planet's pissant little "Civil Defense Force" of what, a half-dozen slow-as-poo poo Z-95s? It has 4 AT-ATs and a battalion of highly-trained stormtroopers for pacification, and dozens of turbolaser batteries if the captain's feeling lazy and/or unrepentant. Turn that ship sideways and open up on a planet and you can flatten half a continent in about an hour. Their point-defense systems can take out most bombers before their torpedoes impact harmlessly on their acres of thick shields, and their ion cannons will disable any capital ships that dare challenge them. These things are helmed by brutal, conniving men who are cunning enough to rise in the insane, fascist and irredeemably xenophobic Imperial Navy to the rank of Captain and have been given the awesome power to project the Empire's might wherever they choose. They are stationed in a sector and have pretty much free reign at their moff's discretion to pursue whatever they choose in terms of military or personal goals. Oh, and these weapons of destruction? There are hundreds of them, all connected by holonet to call in reinforcements if they don't feel like wasting their time to set up a dragnet. Star Wars doesn't need big bads, I can envision an entire campaign where the players are on the run from just one ship, completely ignoring the rest of the Empire.
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Apr 16, 2015 04:47
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Everblight posted:You want a big bad? Now this just makes me want to run a Farscape-esque campaign where the PC's are being hunted down by a SD crazy captain 
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Apr 16, 2015 05:29
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Everblight posted:You want a big bad? Right, that's pretty much what I meant. You don't need to have a red lazersword or a "Darth" in front of your (probably ridiculous) name to be a reoccurring pain in the party's collective rear end or something that let's them know poo poo just got real. You could just be the leader of an Imperial task force formed to hunt down the players after they cause too much of a problem for the regional Moff.
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Apr 16, 2015 06:26
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Rannos22 posted:Right, that's pretty much what I meant. You don't need to have a red lazersword or a "Darth" in front of your (probably ridiculous) name to be a reoccurring pain in the party's collective rear end or something that let's them know poo poo just got real. You could just be the leader of an Imperial task force formed to hunt down the players after they cause too much of a problem from the regional Moff. I've always enjoyed setting up my villain team to fight the players. Inquisitor/Officer/Agent hunting down the players sometimes together, sometimes independently each presenting different . Keeping it different made it a lot easier to be creative about what the players needed to do to keep up with them.
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Apr 16, 2015 06:34
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X-Wing and LCG announcements are hitting from Celebration...hopefully there's some RPG stuff too!
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Apr 17, 2015 23:28
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No RPG announcements, but they hinted at Rebels stuff appearing in their games
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Apr 17, 2015 23:32
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alg posted:No RPG announcements, but they hinted at Rebels stuff appearing in their games Neat! I need to get around to watching Rebels soon...
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Apr 17, 2015 23:33
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I started running Escape from Mos Shuuta last night for another group and I can already tell I have some power-gamey types in my group. The two smuggler-types with 4 agility (one with two ranks of ranged(light)) and the tendency to aim twice before every shot are just absolutely murdering everything I send them again. Gammoreans swing for 2A+1P vs. 2D. PC shoots for 2A+2P+2B vs. 1D. It's a bummer to me both 1) how melee is always a higher difficulty. I know that it doesn't rise up like ranged does, but still. It's a bummer. One of the players made a Rodian enforcer focused around brawl and I don't think he's ever doing to be able to hit as well/frequently as those pistol guys. And 2) it seems like if I have the bad guys actually present some sort of a threat, I think everyone is going to die. There's only one guy in the group with a soak of 5 or higher. If I have the stormtroopers in that module do the same thing those pistoleers are doing, they're hosed. Also: I went with the rule of adding 1 Setback die to each non-combat check, with the option of adding more in particularly harrowing situations. This has instantly made some of the talents more attractive to the players. They look at it as 5 XP well spent now, rather than "Man, I gotta waste XP to get to the good poo poo." So that's nice. For example, one of my guys has two ranks of Convincing Demeanor from the scoundrel tree. He decided to use Deception to lower the Gammorean's defenses in combat (hey, why the hell not), but since it was in combat in addition to being a normal skill check I gave him an additional setback die. When the rest of the table saw that he got to flat out ignore 2 setback dice, they instantly thought that was the best thing ever. They're also starting to realize that anyone that asks for it and makes a particularly convincing argument can get bonus dice. "I've been studying Xenology a lot. I bet I know everything about Ishi Tib." "Sure ya do. +1 Bonus die."
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Apr 18, 2015 00:00
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My players did the best thing to get away from the Stormtroopers in that beginner game. They clambered over the wall into the junkyard and a silly gunfight/obstacle course chase ensued as they used the terrain to get away.
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Apr 18, 2015 00:12
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Endman posted:My players did the best thing to get away from the Stormtroopers in that beginner game. They clambered over the wall into the junkyard and a silly gunfight/obstacle course chase ensued as they used the terrain to get away. I have run that beginner game for 3 totally different groups, consisting of experienced role players, board gamers and newbies. They have never met each other yet all three destroyed the water tower when they were attacked by the storm troopers and washed one group away. I made a point to tell them as they escaped how they have probably just killed everyone in that town and only the newbies showed any remorse.
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Apr 19, 2015 12:12
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Phrosphor posted:I have run that beginner game for 3 totally different groups, consisting of experienced role players, board gamers and newbies. They have never met each other yet all three destroyed the water tower when they were attacked by the storm troopers and washed one group away. I made a point to tell them as they escaped how they have probably just killed everyone in that town and only the newbies showed any remorse. I love doing postgame writeups for my players for this very reason. When I put up the facebook event for the next session, I link the document detailing the aftermath of their whirlwind of destruction. Blew up that train on Ord Mantel? All those railway workers were fired for the disaster and now live as refugees along with their partners and children. Sold a metric fucktonne of gear at the market on Tatooine? The local economy becomes ridiculously inflated with weapons, spawning well-armed organised criminal syndicates who fall out with the Hutts, leading to gang wars. These also make really good hooks for later returns to these places.
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Apr 19, 2015 12:32
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It might seem like I'm being a bit of a dick GM, trying to make my players feel bad, but it has caused them to consider to wider impact of their actions. Now they're more likely to talk first and shoot second, which is refreshing. After all, even those two-bit mercs guarding the crate of spice might have families.
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Apr 19, 2015 12:38
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My group is on a stealthy mission right now, basically trying to claim funds owed to a Hutt crime boss from an underling without compromising relations with said underling...they split into 3 groups. Group 1, consisting of a B1 battle droid, snuck into a warehouse inside a crate full of powdered explosives. They promptly detonated said explosives as a "diversion", creating a Harry Dresden-esque column of blue-green hellfire that burned for at least 30 minutes and shows no signs of slowing down. Somehow this was framed as an industrial accident by a terminally clumsy guard, so "stealth" has been maintained. Group 2, consisting of a Trandoshan marauder and a human ex-commando, raided the other warehouse, managed to completely forget about the security cameras they had spotted earlier in the day. The Trandoshan on-foot-jousted the guard with a force pike and the used his claws to rend him from thigh to neck before he could raise an alarm. Thus "stealth" is maintained. Group 3, human smuggler and Chiss archeologist, headed for the administrative building, broke in, and found a secret sub basement. They tried to pose as late night elevator repairmen to fool the guard...this failed, and the guard was stunned into submission. I'll use slightly less emphatic quotes when I say 'stealth' was maintained.
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Apr 19, 2015 12:39
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jivjov posted:Group 1, consisting of a B1 battle droid, snuck into a warehouse inside a crate full of powdered explosives. They promptly detonated said explosives as a "diversion", creating a Harry Dresden-esque column of blue-green hellfire that burned for at least 30 minutes and shows no signs of slowing down. Somehow this was framed as an industrial accident by a terminally clumsy guard, so "stealth" has been maintained. As the B1 battle droid, you missed the best part. I couldn't fully unscrew the crate from the inside to get out (fail with advantage), and uses a little bit of the explosives ignited by detaching my finger (success with threat) which shot the bolt out like a bullet. It got a guard's attention. He snooped around for a while, then went back. Then the best idea hit me. "I'm going to do this twice again. Once to get the guard back, and the other to nail him in the head." By that point I could climb out but I failed my escape roll and caused a lot of the warehouse to topple over getting the attention of the other guards, and killing the guard I knocked out. I dumped an armload of the explosive powder to make it look like it was his fault then folded up and hit in the shelves. I wanted to try to get away undetected, so I shot the placed powder thinking it would only kill the two guards that came to look, but the GM flipped a destiny point and had other plans.
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Apr 19, 2015 17:38
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jivjov posted:My group is on a stealthy mission right now, basically trying to claim funds owed to a Hutt crime boss from an underling without compromising relations with said underling...they split into 3 groups. Seems like for an RPG party they're being super stealthy to me.
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Apr 19, 2015 17:58
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Phrosphor posted:I have run that beginner game for 3 totally different groups, consisting of experienced role players, board gamers and newbies. They have never met each other yet all three destroyed the water tower when they were attacked by the storm troopers and washed one group away. I made a point to tell them as they escaped how they have probably just killed everyone in that town and only the newbies showed any remorse. D&D trains players to murder everything and loot the bodies because genocide against a evil race is a good thing. Thinking about the wider impact of your characters actions produces interesting roleplaying opportunities as in Star Wars the good guys are supposed to think about the little people while it's the evil NPCs that are happy for innocents to be harmed. For example our group faked the death of an Alliance spy on Nar Shadaa by faking a speeder explosion but made sure that the only collateral damage was a bounty hunter known for flashy high collateral damage take downs. Even then we hummed and harred a bit about letting the bounty hunter get caught in the explosion but that was part of the price for Bossk to not accept the bounty on the spy's head.
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Apr 19, 2015 18:10
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Warnings about Moff D. Butt are still plaguing my characters. That's what they get for slicing in a fake Moff into the imperial net to get away with one of their hair brained schemes months ago. Moff D. Butt is really powerful now, according to the rumors.
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Apr 19, 2015 22:37
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Everblight posted:You want a big bad? This is exactly how my current game is going and it's loving great. We have literally just one star destroyer that's been our bane in the area, we know the dude at its helm well, we know some of his under officers, we've fought his TIEs and soldiers and had a lot of really great space fights with the destroyer itself. The destroyer, as a whole, feels more like a 'baddie' than any other we've had in a while.
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Apr 20, 2015 04:11
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How would you handle a strafing run on stationary AA emplacements? Treat the AA guns as starships that can’t move?
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Apr 20, 2015 11:40
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echopapa posted:How would you handle a strafing run on stationary AA emplacements? Treat the AA guns as starships that can’t move? I'd probably just use the stats for the AA walker in Stay on Target, but forget the speed stat since it's stationary.
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Apr 20, 2015 14:27
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My current PbP is dying a slow death due to player attrition despite me planning around a much shorter and more focused campaign.  I'd like to think it's something I'm doing wrong since this is probably my 4th PbP on this forum that's met the same fate, but a lot of the others I've joined as a player have failed miserably and it just seems like barely 5% of PbPs in general even make it past one month, let alone get completed, so I'm pretty much giving up any aspirations of running my mini campaigns because it's not gonna work in that format. The days of successfully completing a PbP on SA are likely over, maybe it just has to do with the people or maybe it's just a sign of the times, gently caress if I know.Regardless, I'd like to switch gears over to a live format, either through Hangouts or even IRC. Would anyone be interested in that sorta thing? It'd run maybe weekly or biweekly, sessions would be at least 2 hours or so, maybe longer if people are up for it, and ideally with people that won't take a full 10 minutes to type out one sentence because they're busy multitasking and are on the phone with their GIRLFRIEND, walking their dog, cooking dinner, watching a movie, AND playing a tournament game of League of Legends during the session while insisting that they're actually paying attention (you know who you are). Probably would start with this current campaign, because I'd like to see how people like it. Anyone interested?
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Apr 20, 2015 16:10
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