So, after having played a few sessions of EotE now, and after reading and rereading the core rulebook a couple of times I've noticed a few things...

1. There is really very little indication for most skills about what difficulty particular uses of those skills should entail (Athletics, for example).
2. Additionally, there is little guidance in determining what should increase difficulty, upgrade difficulty, or add a Setback or Boost die (or dice) to a skill's usage.
3. The descriptions for some skills can be somewhat confusing (such as Vigilance--see below).

I've noticed that most of the time, my GM is increasing difficulty for skills whenever something seems to be not easy, but rarely uses Setback dice, or upgrades to the difficulty (other than the occasional flipping of a Destiny Point). Is this how most people's games go? I feel like there could be some more definition here, to indicate some relative difficulty of various tasks, to get a better sense of when the different sorts of difficulty dice should be employed.

On the Vigilance comment, the description of the skill mentions spending Threat and Despair, but there's not really any indication of when rolling against a difficulty would ever occur--the uses for the skill are to determine initiative, for which the section on Initiative on page 200 says is a Simple (-) check, meaning no difficulty dice are rolled, or determining whether you have a key piece of equipment, which is fairly vague on its own, let alone when attempting to determine difficulty. What am I missing?

So, other than some clarification or wisdom on this point, I was wondering if people might want to post some of their own examples of situations/skill uses with the difficulty they use, assign, or have faced off against, and maybe what they consider grounds to improve or upgrade difficulty, or add Setback to.

1) its up to the gm, he's supposed to just use common sense to try and figure out what the base difficulty should be on a lot of things. Average is usually a good starting point.

2) again its sorta GMs call, but there are some tips. If it needs to get harder he's supposed to increase. If it needs to get more dangerous, upgrade. If there is something that can make things a little more difficult, but doesn't have to do directly with the task, setback. The devs seem to assume that most checks will have at least one setback added.

Spending a destiny pt to upgrade is an option, but usually reserved for situations that normally might not be dangerous, whereas the gm can just upgrade a check if it is dangerous enough that a despair is a natural possible outcome of doing something so dangerous.

3) Its the base difficulty part. Init is typically a simple check... But not always. If you are setting up and ambush, and score a despair on the check, maybe your vigilance check is going to have a difficulty as a result.

I run it based on the CRB, I don't have the exact page, but it went something along the lines up:

Determine difficulty based on the difficulty of the task excluding situational/environmental difficulty.

Setback Dice is based on situational/environmental difficulty.

One example I remember is a Skullduggary check to break into an ordinary person's house.

Easy to Normal Difficulty based on the quality of the lock. (Since this IS an ordinary person's home and not the President of some high and might company)

+1 setback dice for trying to crack it silently

+2 setback dice for trying to crack it silently and quickly because of approaching guards

+3 setback dice etc etc.

The only occasion where Difficulty dice would be upgraded (that I know of) is when you use a Destiny point or on opposed checks using the enemy's skill to determine difficulty.

I haven't utilized Vigilance checks but from rereading the book, it seems you would use Vigilance checks in place of perception checks (as their reaction is based on how alert rather than how perceptive they are) if the PCs are going to get ambushed. I have no idea how difficulty is determined.

If anyone has more insight on Vigilance checks, please send it this way

One thing I saw described somewhere was that Perception checks might be used when the players are actively looking for something specific, even if it's something like "I want to examine the building's gates to see if there's a way in", or "Look around the room to see if the statue is hidden somewhere inside."

Vigilance checks would be used to spot somebody following you, to spot an ambush about to happen, to notice that a rock is about to fall on you from the mountain above you, to spot a pickpocket sneaking up on you. You can also use Vigilance to determine you've remembered to bring something along, even if you didn't specify it earlier. "There's a clue at the bottom of that lake? I'll make a Vigilance check to see if I remembered to bring a rebreather."

So compared to other RPGs like DnD...instead of using Perception check for all of that, you would use Vigilance checks in place of Perception checks when NOT actively looking for something specific.

On the subject of difficulty and setback dice, the difficulties have names for a pretty good reason, I feel...

If something is an average difficulty, 2 Difficulty Dice is appropriate. Lots of basic checks would fall under Average difficulty. It's very much up to the GM to determine, but just think about it in terms of the difficulty to accomplish the task.

To pickpocket an oblivious tourist would be an Easy task, to pickpocket a wary traveller might be an Average check. To pickpocket a vigilant seasoned adventurer might be Hard.

To crack the security of a basic home computer system or that of a cheap business, or a security system in the jail of a poor backwater town might be Easy. A more competent and effective security system would be an Average difficulty. The compound of a local planetary militia might be a Hard check, and an important Imperial base might be Daunting.

Then you add Boost or Setback dice based on other conditions, external to the difficulty of the task.

To pickpocket somebody in a bustling crowd, in the middle of a political speech, where everybody was focused on the speaker's words might add 2 Boost dice. To pickpocket somebody standing alone on a street with nobody around might add 2 Setback.

To crack a computer's security after having been told some of the codes by a disgruntled slicer might add 2 Boost dice. To crack a computer that's been put on high alert after an alarm has been tripped might add 2 Setback dice.

Many talents make things easier by removing Setback dice rather than adding Boost dice, to represent somebody skilled at doing things under pressure or under difficult circumstances.

To drive a speeder through a particularly dense forest might add 2 Setback dice. A pilot with the right talents could remove those Setbacks.

I try to keep this in mind, especially during combat scenes, and remember to frequently set encounters in situations where the weather is bad or some other element makes things more difficult. A shootout at night in the rain might add 2 Setback Dice to combat checks. A sandstorm on Tatooine might add 2 Setbacks, a less powerful windstorm might add 1 Setback.

Hope this helps!

So compared to other RPGs like DnD...instead of using Perception check for all of that, you would use Vigilance checks in place of Perception checks when NOT actively looking for something specific.

Yes, I believe that's correct. If the PC is looking specifically for something, it's Perception. If the PC has a chance to notice something they're not actively looking for, that could be Vigilance.

Oh, and on upgrading difficulty:

Most of the time when I upgrade the difficulty of a check, turning a purple Difficulty die to a red Challenge die, it is because I have something in mind for the Despair that could result.

If the PCs are having a shootout in the rain at medium range, that could be 2 Difficulty dice and 1 Setback die. If there's a cache of explosives nearby, I might upgrade those checks to 1 Difficulty, 1 Challenge and 1 Setback die. If the Despair results, it probably means the cache of explosives got hit with a laser blast and explodes.

If the PCs are sneaking at night into a military base, it might be a Hard check, with 3 Difficulty dice and 1 Boost die (because sneaking at night is easier than sneaking in broad daylight). But I might upgrade the check to 2 Difficulty, 1 Challenge and 1 Boost die. If the Despair goes off, they've triggered an alarm and the whole base knows they're there.

And so on...

The way I've looked at it is perception for something that's there but you have to notice it. And vigilance for something that is changing. Sherlock Holmes had a 5Y perception. He sees every single detail. Spiderman has a 7Y (or more) vigilance and can react to changes in the environment and situation.

Another example would be where perception would let you spot the small hole in the wall and react. Vigilance would let you react to the dart flying out of the hole before it hit you.

As for the difficulty dice, I look at them like this.

Purple: How challenging the check is. From yawn easy to OMG hard.

Red: How dangerous the check is. If you fail, can something really, really bad happen? i.e. Despair.

Black: Are there outside influences reducing your chances of success? Environment (Noise, Rain, Gravity), injuries, situations caused by previous rolls, etc. These are generally dice that can be overcome if you happen to have the right talent.

I kind of assume you set base difficulty for a given task.

Setback dice are for environmental concerns, as well as, non time sensitive no pressure scenarios. Whether that is doing something athletic in the dark or on a rain slicked surface, or picking a lock with your hands behind your back not looking while doing it.

Upgrading difficulty represents being under real pressure and dire consequences for failure a possibility. Things like 'cut the red wire!', 'the guards will be back in 30 secs, no pressure, but hurry up!', that sort of thing.

Thanks everyone, this is good stuff!

Some of your comments cover basically what I think I'd do when GMing, but others are definitely things I hadn't considered.

On the front of base difficulty, while some of the tasks have something of an obvious difficulty, particularly those that are hierarchical in nature (a normal lock, a better, lock, a high-security lock, etc...), I find that the lack of examples of difficulty means that a lot of the stuff is rather nebulous. Sure, it's up to GM discretion, but it's also helpful to have some firmer footing as a starting point for making those decisions.

Then in regards to Vigilance...would you use this skill to notice someone using Skullduggery or Stealth when you were otherwise not looking for such things? Does this receive a difficulty rating only when you're caught unawares in a situation where you didn't expect any trouble? For example, while sitting in your living room watching the Holonet a squad of Stormtroopers bursts in through the front door, vs. a group of smugglers walking around on a potentially dangerous planet... Is that how you'd define difficulty here...probably Hard or even Daunting for the first, and the "standard" Simple for the latter? Or maybe Easy or Normal for the latter if they hadn't thus far encountered anything hostile?

Just trying to get a handle on some of the less clear parts of the game here, to then pass along to my group.

To me Vigilance is what is used when you don't have an opportunity to use Perception or you didn't make a point of saying you are on the lookout for something. That's about as easy as I look at it. So in your example if the door is kicked in you use Vigilance for the initiative. If players haven't said they are on their guard looking for something like pickpockets or ninjas in the crowd, then I would use Vigilance. If they are moving through an area or whatever and have notified you, 'we are keeping our eyes peeled for biker Ewoks', then I would have them use Perception to spot something.

I'd like to piggyback this thread...

What would you do for astrogation checks? First off, how long do astrogation checks take? Honestly I don't really get how astrogation checks work, it's very abstract.

My take on it is 5 minutes of astrogation, under no stress, with a maximum of 15 minutes to add a boost die.

Here's my cumulative difficulty dice...

+0 difficulty dice for going in a major trade route.

+1 when not using a major trade route

+1 for using an old or infrequently used route.

+1 for heavy traffic areas or major gravity sources.

+3 for navigating either the Maw or the Core.

+5 difficulty without navicom

and +1 setback for every attempted minute shaved off.

In this system it's really important (in my opinion) for the GM to hold back a little on the difficulty dice and instead make liberal use of setback dice. Starting characters in particular will be fairly low on skill, so unless the GM wants to send a clear signal that "this is really difficult and you should think twice about trying it" Hard should be about the upper limit. And remember, the difficulty should be set as "how hard is it to do this under ideal conditions". Then add less-than-ideal conditions and assign Setback dice. This requires a bit of an adjustment in thinking for most GMs, myself included, who are used to simply upping the difficulty when the conditions worsens.

Also, it's important because so many specializations feature talents that remove setback dice from checks. This lets characters get really good at something in two different but complimentary ways: increasing their skill and removing setback dice. If the GM never assigns setback dice, the players feel that they've wasted XP on taking the talents that remove setback dice; never a good situation.

I'd like to piggyback this thread...

What would you do for astrogation checks? First off, how long do astrogation checks take? Honestly I don't really get how astrogation checks work, it's very abstract.

My take on it is 5 minutes of astrogation, under no stress, with a maximum of 15 minutes to add a boost die.

Here's my cumulative difficulty dice...

+0 difficulty dice for going in a major trade route.

+1 when not using a major trade route

+1 for using an old or infrequently used route.

+1 for heavy traffic areas or major gravity sources.

+3 for navigating either the Maw or the Core.

+5 difficulty without navicom

and +1 setback for every attempted minute shaved off.

I did something similar, but again: add setback dice instead of increasing the difficulty. The Galaxy Mapper talent removes setback dice from Astrogation checks, and if all you do is increase the difficulty this talent becomes worthless. I stick to the Astrogation difficulties in the core book, and then pile on setback dice for all the things you've listed in your post.

In this system it's really important (in my opinion) for the GM to hold back a little on the difficulty dice and instead make liberal use of setback dice. Starting characters in particular will be fairly low on skill, so unless the GM wants to send a clear signal that "this is really difficult and you should think twice about trying it" Hard should be about the upper limit. And remember, the difficulty should be set as "how hard is it to do this under ideal conditions". Then add less-than-ideal conditions and assign Setback dice. This requires a bit of an adjustment in thinking for most GMs, myself included, who are used to simply upping the difficulty when the conditions worsens.

Also, it's important because so many specializations feature talents that remove setback dice from checks. This lets characters get really good at something in two different but complimentary ways: increasing their skill and removing setback dice. If the GM never assigns setback dice, the players feel that they've wasted XP on taking the talents that remove setback dice; never a good situation.

I'd like to piggyback this thread...

What would you do for astrogation checks? First off, how long do astrogation checks take? Honestly I don't really get how astrogation checks work, it's very abstract.

My take on it is 5 minutes of astrogation, under no stress, with a maximum of 15 minutes to add a boost die.

Here's my cumulative difficulty dice...

+0 difficulty dice for going in a major trade route.

+1 when not using a major trade route

+1 for using an old or infrequently used route.

+1 for heavy traffic areas or major gravity sources.

+3 for navigating either the Maw or the Core.

+5 difficulty without navicom

and +1 setback for every attempted minute shaved off.

I did something similar, but again: add setback dice instead of increasing the difficulty. The Galaxy Mapper talent removes setback dice from Astrogation checks, and if all you do is increase the difficulty this talent becomes worthless. I stick to the Astrogation difficulties in the core book, and then pile on setback dice for all the things you've listed in your post.

My post listed only direct astronavigation checks. If an obstacle in question is directly related to navigation, it's difficulty. If the obstacle is not, it's setback dice. Setback dice aren't meant to be guaranteed. If the navicomn is in a foreign language, that's a setback die. If you wanted to pick a lock without a lockpick, well, that's still considered directly lockpicking, and I would up the difficulty instead of doing a setback die.

It's very situation oriented to me but in the game I play our GM has NEVER used a setback die not imposed by cover or mandated in a module and our GM is a longtime D&D 3+ DM so I imagine that it's a set in ways thing.

When I GM I apply setbacks for:

1) Lack of tools

2) Conditions adding to distraction/stress

3) Using a skill not quite right for the task i.e. I let our Archaeologist make Lore checks for rumors related to the various other knowledge skills it adds some disinformation and lets them benefit from the ranks in Lore before we go after ancient Sith temples.

I apply Challenge dice for opposed checks, going so far as to say the average trader has at least 1 rank in Negotiate to add a bit of Challenge (pun intended) to the mundane tasks.

As for what difficulty is best in a given situation page 17 of the Core book has a chart detailing the estimated difficulty dice for a given situation, it's pretty much the best guideline a GM has (as far as I've seen).

And, in my opinion, a far more important question than "How difficult a task IS this?" would be "How difficult a task do I want this to be?"

In our group's first session in our new campaign, the characters were brand new, so they didn't have much in the way of skills yet.

I had set the difficulty of several things to Hard checks, because I thought that would describe it well. A Hard Athletics check to climb down a mountain. A Hard Mechanics check to unlock a datapad they find.

The problem was, I wanted them to get down the mountain and I wanted them to find most of the data on the datapad. I'd hoped they would do both successfully but with minor complications, rather than failing repeatedly to make their climbing Athletics checks and failing outright to decode the datapad.

If I had to do that first session over again, I'd use fewer Athletics checks in the first place, and on the datapad I might make it an Average or even Easy check with a Setback.

Everything in the game is relative to how skillful your players are in the circumstances.

For a while, it took my and my group some getting used to adding blacks and blues instead of just monkeying with the base difficulty. It's not a difficult concept to wrap your brain around, but it's a hard trap to escape coming from WEG where the difficulty is the difficulty is the difficulty.

So, some reasons I'd throw some blacks at my players:

Speed - are you trying to complete the task in a short time frame? Have a black

Wrong tools - you have to pick that lock with nothing but a bobby pin? Black for you!

Environmental issues - Stopping the self destruct with warning strobe lights and jets of steam going off in your face? Black!

Personal issues - had one too many Whiskey Sours while conning the ambassador? Setback!

Of course the reverse of those apply too. Plenty of extra time, tools that custom tailored for the job, peace and quiet all net the players blue dice.

On the front of base difficulty, while some of the tasks have something of an obvious difficulty, particularly those that are hierarchical in nature (a normal lock, a better, lock, a high-security lock, etc...), I find that the lack of examples of difficulty means that a lot of the stuff is rather nebulous. Sure, it's up to GM discretion, but it's also helpful to have some firmer footing as a starting point for making those decisions.

A GM building a dice pool in Star Wars is a bit of an art form, and there is some skill and technique required. Practice makes perfect though.

One thing that is kinda cool though is that Players can, to a limited extent, manipulate the difficulty by adjusting their actions. So for example the players are digging through a junk shop. Normally shopping is a Negotiate, but in this case even the vendor isn't totally sure what's buried in the crates of stuff that make up his "store" so the GM goes with Perception instead. If the players search for "any weapon" the difficulty is easy. If the search for "any ranged weapon" it's average, "any blaster" hard, "Blaster pistols" daunting, and "Sniper appropriate blaster rifles" formidable. Looking for something with specific mods or attachments adds setback dice. Looking for weapons in good condition is another setback. The difference is just the margin for error, searching for "any ranged weapon" can result in everything from a heavy blaster rifle, all the way down to a bow. Searching for a Sniper Blaster limits you to only specific weapons with certain attachments...

A good little exercise you can do is just watch your favorite adventure movie or show (Adventure being a good genre because it usually has a good mix of action, social encounters, and problem solving). As you watch, envision the lead characters as players, and try and compare their actions to an in-game action and take a guess what you think the difficulty will be. After a movie or two you'll pretty much have it.

I'll use the McConeghe..McKonnehey...Mc...Bongos flick "Sahara" as a source for a few examples...

My wife keeps making fun of me because when we watch adventure movies, I keep calling out "Oh he rolled a Triumph!", "Ooh, that was a Despair..." "A couple of threats..."

A good little exercise you can do is just watch your favorite adventure movie or show (Adventure being a good genre because it usually has a good mix of action, social encounters, and problem solving). As you watch, envision the lead characters as players, and try and compare their actions to an in-game action and take a guess what you think the difficulty will be. After a movie or two you'll pretty much have it.

Or just go through the actual Star Wars flicks and do the same. Conning C&C after blowing away every stormtroopers in the detention block? Well, they wouldn't be expecting trouble on the most top secret imperial installation in history, so probably pretty low - probably 2 purples. However, Han's player did some lousy role playing in the con job, so throw a black on. And because I'm a jerk, spend a destiny point to upgrade one purple to a red.

Swinging across a yawning abyss? Call it 3 purples for the really tiny landing platform, a black for holding a princess and a black because people are shooting at you.

Conning stormtroopers to let you out of the control room? Please, they're droids. Who would think droids were up to shenanigans? One purple, and a blue for the reasonable cover story.

A good little exercise you can do is just watch your favorite adventure movie or show (Adventure being a good genre because it usually has a good mix of action, social encounters, and problem solving). As you watch, envision the lead characters as players, and try and compare their actions to an in-game action and take a guess what you think the difficulty will be. After a movie or two you'll pretty much have it.

Or just go through the actual Star Wars flicks and do the same. Conning C&C after blowing away every stormtroopers in the detention block? Well, they wouldn't be expecting trouble on the most top secret imperial installation in history, so probably pretty low - probably 2 purples. However, Han's player did some lousy role playing in the con job, so throw a black on. And because I'm a jerk, spend a destiny point to upgrade one purple to a red.

Swinging across a yawning abyss? Call it 3 purples for the really tiny landing platform, a black for holding a princess and a black because people are shooting at you.

Conning stormtroopers to let you out of the control room? Please, they're droids. Who would think droids were up to shenanigans? One purple, and a blue for the reasonable cover story.

I didn't suggest the Star Wars films because everyone has seen them a thousand times and tends to get into the weeds of them. Sahara, Hell on Wells, The Mummy, all just as effective, but with a lot less baggage...