Star Wars Roleplaying by Fantasy Flight Games

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Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

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.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2014 17:20

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 09:19

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Do we know if Stay On Target is really out on the 1st of December? FFG, release dates etc. but since Forbidden Planet have dropped SWRPG it'd be a trek to pick it up from a local store rather than Amazon.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2014 18:43

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

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.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2014 15:07

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

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)

# ¿ Dec 28, 2014 17:29

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Major Isoor posted:

Also, the backup pilot's not bad; they've got three yellow dice (no greens), so they're only slightly worse than me - however I think the most other people have in gunnery is two greens, unfortunately. It's a slightly tricky situation we're in, there. I don't suppose there's some kind of 'IFF auto-targeting' add-on you can get for ship turrets that make gunners obsolete/unnecessary

The Advanced Targeting Computer- upgrades gunnery checks up to twice. Perhaps a bit *too* good, as it stacks with existing skill ranks rather than just being a way to bump up unskilled chumps you brought along. I wish there was something like like the Accuracy Corrector from X-Wing- that let you take 2S rather than rolling your skill pool.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2015 15:49

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

homullus posted:

It's possible I was running it wrong, but I did that race in Jewel of Yavin and it came out all kinds of weird. A guy going pretty slow got all kinds of Advantage and Triumphs, so he actually gained more "places" than the people who floored it. One roll, sure, you explain that they floor it but get caught in a pack of other racers; it kept happening, though, and just got silly. It's also too long., considering the number of rolls you need to make.

Plus a single hit will pop a car, and you're rolling at 1D1C at most. It's really badly structured.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2015 16:42

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Fuzz posted:

They would but I get the feeling it will never happen because Disney controls the IP and Star Wars is really, really being pushed hard as the feel-good kid-friendly IP of the millennium, and playing as Stormtroopers would sorta undermine that

Well, there is a Darth Vader comic- it's not as if they're shying away from dealing with the Empire. Plus the sourcebook would probably be a GM one like Lords of Nal Hutta.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2015 20:18

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

TaurusTorus posted:

Are there any limitations on angling defense for large starships? Whats stopping a star destroyer from adding 11 black dice to the front and being unhittable from the front, other than potential flanking by starfighters?

I'm sure I saw defense was capped at 4 somewhere, but I can't track it down.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2015 12:48

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

TaurusTorus posted:

Am I reading the system strain rules and it only matters if strain exceeds the limit, not matches? I'm trying to figure a way to fit proton torpedo launchers on a speeder bike using the oversized weapon mounts and it reduces the system strain threshold to zero, that would mean that it is incapacitated the second it takes a single point of strain, but not before, right?

Yup, like with HT. So if you roll a single threat whilst driving that monstrosity...

# ¿ Mar 21, 2015 15:26

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Foxtrot_13 posted:

So i just need to find the factory where they were made for the start of the Droid Liberation Army

Doorhandles would be your main weakness.

# ¿ May 5, 2015 00:40

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

FISHMANPET posted:

My only concern with something on a larger scale is that he's a Thief not a Scoundrel. It probably doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things, but swindling someone as a sleazy contractor/developer sound much more like a scoundrel thing rather than a thief. But I'm not sure how much the player is invested in being a "thief" vs just a smuggler in general.

Well, he could've stolen the deeds to a property at the centre of a huge buyout at the peak of a bubble. When the deal collapsed, so did investor confidence and the market went with it- leaving him with a worthless piece of paper.

# ¿ May 6, 2015 15:32

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Blooming Brilliant posted:

So I ran my first game of this yesterday, first time GM'ing as well. It went pretty well and everyone had a laugh which made my day but I've got a couple of questions that came up.

First how does attacking with two weapons work? We all read the section out in the rulebook a few times and none of us could get our heads round it.

Second is a comment from one of my players. Is there a way to defend yourself against an attack when it isn't your turn? Was there a dodge/parry rule I missed?

Take the highest base difficulty of the two weapons and increase it by 1, you can spend 2A to hit with the offhand weapon. So no giving Brawn 1 characters a Cumbersome 5 offhand weapon and piggybacking hits with it off a weapon they can actually use.

Dodge is a talent. If you're using Force and Destiny, there's also Parry/Deflect.

# ¿ May 17, 2015 12:09

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

FISHMANPET posted:

Man, so I ran a combat where it was Gozanti cruiser (50 HP, 5 armor) vs the party YT-1300, and then another Gozanti carrying 4 TIEs jumps in, and fires, and while the players are making GBS threads their pants, it turns out the second Gozanti is actually an ally and is firing on the first.

But after about a half round of the Gozanti's six cannons, I just said "screw it, the odds are overwhelming, you win."

So keeping track of 14 NPCs (2 pilots plus 12 gunners) is just kind of awful. There's got to be some way to... abstract that all.

Try combining them in minion groups, or just making 1 attack roll per weapon type and multiplying by the # firing. The biggest problem IMO is the lack of streamlined 'NPC Actions' like they added for space combat in Rogue Trader- so NPCs can use Damage Control/boost shields/spoof missiles without needing tons of rolls.

# ¿ May 25, 2015 11:43

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Flame112 posted:

Adversary only works on combat checks, although I'd assume Vader would have enough discipline/cool that any social checks are going to have a pile of challenge dice even without adversary.

Nobody's Fool is basically social Adversary IIRC.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2015 21:42

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

ShineDog posted:

Howdy.

So I'll be running my last sessions of Fate with Star Wars dudes this weekend to transition over to this system. Still haven't played it so I'd like any new GM advice you can give. I've got some specific questions and concerns too.

First - Any house rules I should be aware of? It looks like it's pretty common to nerf auto fire by requiring each extra shot after the first to require another advantage. Is this fair?

I've seen entire re-writes of the space combat rules since it's apparently bad. If that's a good idea I'd probably prefer to start with it rather than learn the RAW. If theres no good patch for RAW I could just run space combat entirely narratively?

Concern - Over the course of playing much DnD and similar my group (including me) has generally settled on being fairly averse to the idea of tight HP budgets. If everyone has 3hp left they'll end up sleeping it off and the adventure will grind to a halt. We've ended up moving to things like Strike where HP is an abstract of how bruised and tired you are and you just reset to max at the end of the encounter. This game appears to treat wounds fairly literally and makes them hard to heal as a result and I'm really not sure if that'll go down well.

My off the cuff idea for how to solve this without really understanding the system in detail : Wounds are not necessarily literal wounds, and are a general mark of combat damage and fatigue. All wounds are healed as an encounter ends. To offset the easier combat, in addition to normal crits, at 50% of wound threshold the player is bloodied and rolls on the crit table.

Obviously this is a pretty fundamental change, but I know my group and I know they'd sooner be free to be big and heroic and charging into battle with your arm in a sling and disadvantage dice instead of going down instantly the next time they get tagged.. If anyone can think of a better way to handle that please let me know.

You can heal wounds easily anyway- ~10 free/day from Stimpacks, 3-5 from Medicine after each fight. You'll go into most fights with a nearly full tank. Running out from time to time isn't a big deal either- it's only once you've got 5+ critical injuries that you're under threat when you run out of HP. Honestly your fix makes combat *more* dangerous by making it easier to take crits.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2015 10:57

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

ShineDog posted:

OK, we'll see how it goes. The teams NPC lovely broken astromech is the teams medic and I'm sure nothing can ever go wrong there.

Even if it does, hey, it's Star Wars. They all wake up a few hours later in a Wampa cave or the back of a van to the Hutt slave auction and have to escape, then go right back to what they were doing (maybe with a few of their favourite toys damaged/broken to teach them a lesson...).

# ¿ Dec 27, 2015 17:22

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

First make sure they spend all their starting XP on stats, then skills- that means no time spent rooting through talent trees.

Then you can try and link the PCs together- when they pick career skills, try having them explain the circumstances they met one other PC in and give that PC a free rank in one of their career skills. E.g. Scoundrel picks Stealth, goes "We met when we tried hiding under the same table in a barfight" (a link that uses Stealth) and gives the other PC a free rank in it. Or "He hired me to fix up his ship" or "We were both hired for a bank job by the same Hutt", that kind of thing.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2016 17:28

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

kingcom posted:

Yeah in a game where its pretty easy to slam a couple of successive hits, its a nightmare to run with them. A big part of the reason I stopped using the Eote vehicle rules for space fights.

Even in the X-wing you've got 10 health and 3 armour. Something 2-3 hits from a TIE fighter is going to be able to cut through.

I would recommend just adding the character's health on top of the vehicle's health for personal vehicles (same for rivals and Nemesis though tailor as needed). Its enough so you can dogfight and repair your ship. Remember to have ships like the X-wing carry their Astromech so the pilot is getting a free tech specialist as a crewmember who is constantly repairing them.

The fix I've wanted to try is 'shields convert damage to System Strain (1 point per, pre armour)'. It makes shields more reliable and players way more likely to end up over strain and drifting rather than dead.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2016 14:43

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

I'm the guy who made the flawed ship rules on the last page- I also made some stat cards for ships, the ones I've gotten round to putting online are here.
They look like this:

As ships have waaay more detailed stats than characters I had to resort to using icons for weapon properties. Hopefully they should be fairly easy to decipher from context.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2016 15:18

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Siivola posted:

I don't get why Cirno's making such a big deal out of the whole mechanic. It doesn't do anything

I thought that was one of the issues. It adds a bunch of fiddly tracking and extra rolls you have to remember to make at the end of the session and the net result is basically nothing. The consequences of going dark are still basically down to the GM.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2016 15:14

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Pretty sure the start of the skill section mentions this exact situation as an example of when to use an alternate stat. You don't have to only use skills with their listed stat.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2016 06:15

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

HOOLY BOOLY posted:

So is True Aim as described in the Age of Rebellion broken as it seems? Basically being able to use any weapon from any range AND decrease the difficulty on top of that? We have been house ruling it to cost strain to do because the group's Sharpshooter at this point has been able to hit perfectly with a pistol from extreme ranges with no penalty otherwise.

But he could be using the aim boosting talent that upgrades the attack as well as adding a blue, with a heavy blaster rifle or another better gun. Sounds like he's just mitigating the penalties he's chosen to take by using a suboptimal gun for the sake of looking cool.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2016 13:03

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Pretty sure they say it's 500 credits somewhere in the vehicle weapon rules?

# ¿ Jul 30, 2016 13:34

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

PupsOfWar posted:

you want the X-wing/ration-pack cost ratio to be a lot smaller than the F-15/sandwich cost ratio, to achieve requisite levels of pulp

The ratio is still a bit too high, though. If you give the PCs enough money to buy even a low-end fighter, they can afford to buy all the personal-scale goodies they could want instead, and they'll give a much better ROI- consider cybernetic arms for +1 agility vs upgrading from a Headhunter to even a Heavy Headhunter.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2016 18:10

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

A lot of prices are just set by bots. Sometimes they get caught in weird loops and prices end up completely insane (as in this example).

# ¿ Sep 1, 2016 11:39

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Beyond The Rim starts with the discovery of a distress beacon from a lost Separatist treasure ship. When they recover the disk, you could have them find out that actually it's a fragment of the navigation records from it (along with basically a sales brochure on 'Why you want to buy this info'). The crime lord had bought the data, but the human stole it to sell elsewhere- unfortunately, his courier was shot down. Of course, it's only a fragment, and they can't use it to find the Treasure Ship. The last record is of the distress beacon being picked up at The Wheel station, though...
If they make good with the crime lord by turning in the thief, he can offer to fund their expedition for a share.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2016 10:57

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

You get up to 10 wounds/day back from stimpacks, plus around 1-4 per encounter from Medicine. Wounds matter a lot less than criticals do, usually. If your PCs are having trouble, you could let them flip a Destiny point to have another medical treatment, or just reduce downed PCs to 1 free maneuver, 0 actions/turn so whilst they can't attack they can still take part.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2016 17:51

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

ProfessorCirno posted:

Consider just letting players act as if they had the stimpack item and refluff it, really.

Given the cost is negligible and the encumbrance is 0... hell, the game even has a mechanic for this. Spend a Destiny point, "oh my pockets were full of stims all along!".

# ¿ Dec 5, 2016 23:00

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

FuriousAngle posted:

Hey everyone, got another question (Hopefully it's a quick/easy one):

If I'm making NPCs, does it break them if I give them bonus EXP to spend on attributes? Or is it more balanced to use all bonus EXP to skills and Talent Trees while only using the racial and duty/obligation EXP for attributes? (I've only gotten through the beginner boxes, so forgive me if this is all covered in detail in one of the core ruleboks)

You don't make NPCs using the PC rules. NPCs have their own talents like Adversary instead of Dodge/Side-step, and don't need many of the fiddly abilities and options a PC needs. Base your NPC stats off similar NPCs in the books, and sprinkle in any talents you think will be interesting.

Try to avoid active abilities (eg Dodge, Intense Focus) and those with stress costs, as they're fine when you have 1 PC to run, but make running 6-7 NPCs a faff.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2016 19:31

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

BetterWeirdthanDead posted:

I don't know how up to date or accurate this is, but it at least works as an index.

http://swrpg.viluppo.net/transportation/

It doesn't quite have everything but it's really useful.

There's no ARC stats but the scout version appears in Force and Destiny's Savage Spirits splat.

(I've done a few other ship cards like that here)

# ¿ Jan 4, 2017 13:17

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Nah, starting cutoff is 120k.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2017 19:37

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Soak is applied per hit. Dual-wielding is just better vs poorly-armoured targets.

Consider getting 2 damage 6 blaster pistol hits @ 2 success (2x8) vs 1 damage 9 blaster rifle hit @ 2 successes (1x11)

Target has a soak of...
2: pistol does 2x6=12, rifle does 9
3: pistol does 2x5=10, rifle does 8
4: pistol does 2x4=8, rifle does 7
5: pistol does 2x3=6, rifle does 6
6: pistol does 2x2=4, rifle does 5

5 is Stormtrooper soak so a good breakpoint for rifles to start winning out.

Dual wielding is also more strongly affected by your degrees of success than a rifle- at 1 success, rifle always beats pistol over the listed range, at 3 successes pistol always beats rifle. Don't buff it unless you want your high-level characters to get OP.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2017 18:21

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

You only really need one. I'd suggest picking one of the three and getting a core and a few extras for it (e.g. adventures, class books, resources). The cores have a lot of duplicated content between them, and mixing all 3 can lead to slightly unfocused games.

# ¿ May 31, 2017 18:38

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

That seems unlikely, it's probably the late-lifecycle malaise that afflicts all RPGs. Sales drop, corporate attention drops, sales drop, repeat. The RPG team have probably moved focus to their generic, since it's too early for a 2nd Edition.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2017 19:29

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Harkano posted:

Thanks. That makes more sense. I've got a player speccing for crazy high damage gunnery weapons so just wanted to figure it out. Since it's 11 minus soak each time it's a low lower than I was thinking (theoretically a 33 damage single shot would destroy most things I've put together )

Also since he's already out damaging every other party member combined we're currently in a gentleman's agreement where autofire as a rule doesn't exist.

Yeah, autofire being soaked on each hit seems like a good balancing mechanic until you realise the most common autofire weapon also has the highest base damage of any common weapon.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2017 01:56

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

PupsOfWar posted:

Yeah, it's an awkward situation because autofire seems important to the flavor or ~feel of certain weapons, specs or archetypes.

So nobody wants to take it away entirely, but the RAW is genuinely gamebreaking in a way that nothing else in the system is, so people feel as if they must.

There are a ton of different house-rules that attempt to fix or mitigate this.

Some I've seen:

- increase the base activation cost of Autofire to 3, so that jury-rigged only reduces it to 2.

- disallow using jury-rigged on Autofire to begin with.

- rule that the difficulty of an autofire attack must be increased by 1 per each extra shot that the character wants to fire, so that difficulty scales as fast as damage.

- remove the autofire quality from Heavy Blaster Rifles and similar weapons, so that it is limited to huge unwieldy support guns and small crappy SMG analogs. Autofire is far from game-breaking on the Vrelt autopistol, with its base damage of 4.

- rule that you must use auto-fire while prone or firing from an entrenched position.

You'll find a ton of these if you poke around the FFG forums for a bit.

Personally, I'd only use the RAW if I had a party with just one combat character.

Or a situation where the player was comfortable with me using narrative context to ~deprive them of the weapon much of the time. (Think of how, in Firefly, Jayne doesn't get to use Vera all the time because sometimes the crew is trying to be low-key, or how Arnold only gets to break out the minigun for the biggest and gaudiest battle in Terminator 2). Better yet, if the player suggests this themselves.

I think you could preserve the autofire feel but add balance by stopping you allocating multiple hits to the same target. Makes it good vs hordes, not vs a single target. But then it's basically Blast, and Blast is always a bit underwhelming.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2017 14:23

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Fuzz posted:

But shooting someone multiple times should be allowed. Because, you know, you can do that.

Right, but it's not as if the system is 'One attack roll = one shot' anyway- rounds aren't the D&D-style 6-second ones. Say autofire is using the weapon to spray a large area, job done. The gameplay problem is mostly from autofire being able to burst down rivals/nemesises in a single attack, and it solves that.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2017 16:51

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Fuzz posted:

Then it does become blast, yeah.

Could house rule it that for every extra advantage (or two) over the activation threshold you can declare a target that gets hit twice. Can't hit a target more than twice, just to make it slightly more fair.

Though it does become a more flexible blast that can allocate additional hits beyond 'engaged' at a cost of higher advantage cost per hit, in general longer range, reusabity, and higher damage. Most blast weapons are either short ranged shotgun-types with weak blast or one-use grenades.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2017 17:47

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Elendil004 posted:

If you shoot something with limited ammo 8, and you use the linked quality do you use two limited ammo or one?

I think the devs answered this in one of the FAQ threads but I can�t remember. I *do* remember people arguing Limited Ammo should only be reduced when you *trigger* Linked, which is mad.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2017 17:21

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 09:19

Talkie Toaster: Jan 23, 2006; May contain carcinogens

Elendil004 posted:

I would love a dev ruling on this.

Checked, you use two but can choose to fire one without the Linked quality if you want.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2017 22:20

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