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Bedurndurn posted:So starting on page 45 of the EotE book and continuing through the entire section on Droids, here is every sentence that contains the word 'encumbrance'. NPCs are not PCs, the same rules don't apply unless the GM thinks they should. Specifically Encumbrance in this case. Additionally, there are tons of items that just give you encumbrance for free (Backpack is +4 with essentially no drawback) so even if you wanted to say it has the same rules as a PC you could just argue it was designed to carry the thing (rather than having it modded in) and so just doesn't count. Or you could just pretend that the HK has "XP" invested in a hidden talent tree that lets it ignore encumbrance from weapons if you really want to be a stickler about it. It's clearly not intended to be counted into encumbrance. Hubis fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Aug 22, 2014 |
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Aug 22, 2014 15:12
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insanityv2 posted:So, in EOTE Data breakers say " Data breakers add two blue to any computer check made to slice computers (as opposed to the usual one for having the right tools for the job." (p186) but I cant find any other reference to what "right tools for the job" means in this context. yeah, that's what we ruled at the table. Likewise, with Mechanic's Tools. It's a weird omission.
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Aug 30, 2014 03:23
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The way the dice work, any roughly comparable pool will most likely generate either success w/ threat, or failure w/ advantage. Success w/ Advantage and Failure w/Threat are very unlikely. This means that, provided you're not trying something that is incredibly risky to begin with, you should end up with some sort of hook to keep things moving (sidways if not straight ahead, at least).
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Sep 4, 2014 18:36
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:I was going to say just treat it like suppressive fire but I checked the index and oddly enough there doesn't seem to be rules about it.. Treat it as "Use a Skill" Action rather than as an attack. Gunnery versus Discipline. Give them the option to actually roll attacks for each success beyond 1
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Sep 21, 2014 21:40
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Arcturas posted:Ok, so generally you get a few stats to 3 and one to 2, then pick up a big pile of skills? Most races get one potential "dump" (1) stat, except Humans which have a minimum of 2. In that case the advice is to get your main two-three stats up to 3, and ideally get one up to 4 if possible. Droids can have multiple dump stats since they start at 1, meaning you can potentially get one to 5. Agility, Intelligence, and Cunning are good candidates for that since they have the widest number of dependent skills; if you can, get one of those to 5 and the others to 2-3 (or all of them to 3-4) and spend the rest on picking what your "dumps" should be. The "skill bonus" refers to the fact that droids get more "free" ranks in their starting skills. If you choose wisely you can get "free" XP by overlapping the Career and Specialization skills so you get 2 ranks. Either way you start off with a much broader variety of skill ranks while still putting a majority of your XP into the 'ability' economy.
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Sep 23, 2014 19:25
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The Colonist expansion book (Beyond the Rim?) We have a droid in our group, and I'd say that how much fun they are depends on a few things, like group size and composition. We have a fairly large (6 player) group, and there have been times where the droid played just sits around doing nothing until "the thing he's good at" comes up. Then he slams the roll and is done for another 10m. The key thing about droids is that their general weaknesses are just as much a part of their character as the tremendous specialization, so you need to invoke both to really make them feel fun and not just munchkiny. For 4-person parties there's enough rolls to go around that you can force some off balance situations. Think of C-3PO - he spends basically the entire series being completely out of his element, only to wind up on Endor, roll double Triumphs, and not only save the day but become a literal Golden God.
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Sep 24, 2014 16:23
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Valatar posted:R2 is a more fun example of the things a droid pc can do, I think. He hacked the hell out of everything, repaired important stuff, and rode shotgun on a starfighter. 3PO just stood around being gay most of the time, up until he saved the galaxy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX0CDwZJe-s 
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Sep 25, 2014 01:11
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Fuzz posted:An elegant weapon for a more refined era... that uses brute strength to determine its usage. What? Light sabers are basically game breaking universe defining things that should exist outside the system. They should not be a skill, they should be a special side-case where you just use Brawn and Agility instead of (Ability) and (Skill). Specific traits should let you substitute Cunning one of them instead. *Mic Drop*
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Sep 30, 2014 01:06
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 incomingMadurai posted:Well, in the Original Trilogy it kind of was, though. Everyone used the two-handed grip and swung the sabers around like they were heavy. ACTUALLY, while the rod thing was part of that, they used similar technology throughout the Original Trilogy - yet the swordfighting really changed from ANH to ROJ. Apparently, Lucas originally wrote the lightsabers as being like medieval broadsword combat (to fit his whole "wizards and knights in space" motif). He actually wrote the lightsabers as being extremely heavy and unwieldy when activated. The fight in Ep IV is the way it is because their swordfighting coach was basically instructing them in medieval swordfighting moves. By Ep V, however, his swordfighting choreographers made the suggestion that what would be really revolutionary would be a weapon that's incredibly light and agile, and so that approach made its way into the blocking. By Ep VI it had been completely ret-conned, and the need to model Jedi after medieval knights was long gone. Of course Ep I-III kind of went hog-wild in terms of variety, but the lightsabers there were barely even physical objects. For a laugh, compare how Ewan McGregor doing his Alec Guinness impersonation (which is still the best part of that trilogy) fights as General Kenobi versus how Ben Kenobi fights in Ep IV. Hubis fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 14:35
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MisterEff posted:I believe it is, actually. Brawn is over fitness, while Agility is "balance, flexibility, and deft hands." Atheltics is a Brawn-based skill, and it's not just used for lifting heavy stuff, it's also for running, jumping, and climbing. With those descriptors, I'd still say either is a fit for the lightsaber skill. As an example, Mace Windu uses Brawn with his light saber, not Agility. In fact I'd say he even has Brawn 4 or 5. Being physically powerful does not mean you're necessarily a clumsy hulk. That's kind of what I was thinking with my house rule suggestion - it would force a Jedi who wanted to be good with his lightsaber to be both strong and agile. Another interesting approach might be to keep the Lightsaber skill, but key it off THE LESSER of Brawn and Agility. Hubis fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 14:44
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ImpactVector posted:It can't be two attributes, because that'd make a mess of the dice pool mechanic. Everyone would start off really good at lightsabering and never get any better. It's almost impossible to start with a skill above 2, but you could start with 4+3 br/agi pretty easily if you wanted to dump other stuff. My thinking is that light sabers are things you just plain can't use if you're unskilled, and the difference between a neophyte (1 rank) and a master (5 ranks) is pretty low. In the fiction, lightsaber fighting is less about simply practicing and getting "good" with it, and more about becoming versed in specific schools of the art which are far more situational and nuanced. So instead, I'd use the same dice pool ([Min Die] yellow, [Max Die-Min Die] greens) but with [Brawn, Agility] and rely a lot more on Traits which would get invoked in more situational ways rather than a blanket "how good are you with a light saber" number. You could get really unique and flavorful with the Traits. I don't want it to fit with the other skills because lightsabers are supposed to be completely unlike every other weapon in the universe, and so I would want them to feel completely weird and unique mechanically as well. You make a good point about the starting abilities of course, but that character would end up dumping a lot of other stats to get there which feel is an OK trade-off. Anyways, this is sort of just me theory crafting, so it's probably not worth spending too much effort worrying about its viability since it'll never be how it *actually* works in game.
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Sep 30, 2014 16:36
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Part of the problem is that the universe isn't even really very consistent with itself, as far as force users go.
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Oct 1, 2014 01:35
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alg posted:Yeah I'm not sure what is preventing anyone from creating a Luke type character People want to limit "super-powerful force users" Luke was allegedly "the most powerful force user" known Luke's demonstrated use of the force is very tame and generally in keeping with the tone of EotE, as opposed to supposedly "less powerful" force users from the Prequels/EU
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Oct 1, 2014 02:03
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If it were me, I'd let him situationally assist in a Coersion roll as per the normal rules, but using Brawn instead of Willpower as his base stat. So your Duros says "Me? Yeah, I may not be worth being frightened of. But see my friend back there? We haven't fed him yet this week, and he's starting to get cranky..." *RRRRRAAAAAAWWWWW*
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Oct 16, 2014 14:08
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ProfessorCirno posted:Coercion has always been kinda stuck. On one hand, you want the big meathead who glares sullenly at you to be able to actually make that threat. On the other hand, in most cases, it's the small wiseguy next to the big meathead that actually makes the threat; the meathead is just there to provide an example for what'll happen. Chewie didn't coerce the droids into losing - Han did. Yeah. Chewbacca did a lot less "threatening people" and a lot more "deciding it's time to pick people up and throw them".
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Oct 16, 2014 21:26
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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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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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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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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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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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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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So I think my group is done playing FF Star Wars. My contribution to the set was the threee Adversary Decks. Since I am no longer going to need them, I figured I'd see if anyone in the thread wanted to pick them up -- $20 for all three, shipped to the Con US? They are $30 from Fantasy Flight with shipping.
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Jan 5, 2015 13:44
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