Higher soak? How long do you want combat to last, anyway?

In the words of several of my players I've had over the years; "as long as it takes to win."

By restricting armor from adding more than 2-3 points of soak baseline, the characters' own statistics and abilities, and more importantly, their actions, take front and center in their combat survivability. This makes using armor more of a style choice than an absolute necessity when going into combat, which I think is a good thing for the game.

I agree with this and I agree too that armour is nothing important in the SW universe as seen in the movies, and it should be reflected in the game.

Yet, I think that another system of damage would have been more appropriate for this game. I don't like the toughness based soak for all the issues it rises at some tables, like we can see in these forums by the many threads discussing "high soak" characters. I don't like it neither, as I said, by its lack of "reality".

I specially like systems where damage is based only on wound severity (the equivalent of only having critical injuries in SW EotE) and not on soak or wound threshold. Especially I find it a bit too much that here we have Soak, Wound Threshold AND Critical Wounds, three items.

In my games I have removed Brawn from the Soak formula, so that Soak is only given by armour + ranks in Enduring talent. Together with this change, I have reduced all weapon damage by 2 points. It is by far perfect, but I like it more. In the future I may look for something more elaborated, using only WT and critical injuries (along the lines proposed by Brother Orpheo) or just using critical injuries, I will see.

Don't mis understand me, I like the game, just this part of the system is not of my taste.

Cheers,

Yepes

By restricting armor from adding more than 2-3 points of soak baseline, the characters' own statistics and abilities, and more importantly, their actions, take front and center in their combat survivability. This makes using armor more of a style choice than an absolute necessity when going into combat, which I think is a good thing for the game.

I agree with this and I agree too that armour is nothing important in the SW universe as seen in the movies, and it should be reflected in the game.

Yet, I think that another system of damage would have been more appropriate for this game. I don't like the toughness based soak for all the issues it rises at some tables, like we can see in these forums by the many threads discussing "high soak" characters. I don't like it neither, as I said, by its lack of "reality".

I specially like systems where damage is based only on wound severity (the equivalent of only having critical injuries in SW EotE) and not on soak or wound threshold. Especially I find it a bit too much that here we have Soak, Wound Threshold AND Critical Wounds, three items.

In my games I have removed Brawn from the Soak formula, so that Soak is only given by armour + ranks in Enduring talent. Together with this change, I have reduced all weapon damage by 2 points. It is by far perfect, but I like it more. In the future I may look for something more elaborated, using only WT and critical injuries (along the lines proposed by Brother Orpheo) or just using critical injuries, I will see.

Don't mis understand me, I like the game, just this part of the system is not of my taste.

Cheers,

Yepes

I plan to do something similar, I still need to check it in play, but I'm planning something along the lines of:

1)Remove brawn bonus from soak

2)Increase armor soak. Maybe give them a secondary higher soak for primitive weapons

3)I will leave damage the same for now, but I will improve some defense bonuses such as armor defense and cover stacking.

I dont really care about following the movies (In fact our game is going to be set in KOTOR era) so I'll probably try to tune it so a heavily armored character can shrug off at least light blaster fire.

Yet, I think that another system of damage would have been more appropriate for this game. I don't like the toughness based soak for all the issues it rises at some tables, like we can see in these forums by the many threads discussing "high soak" characters. I don't like it neither, as I said, by its lack of "reality".

It may not be simulationist from a real-world perspective but it is completely "realistically consistent" with what we've seen in the movies, which is the style that this game tries to evoke. That's an important perspective that I think often goes unconsidered with this conversation.

I recognize not everyone is trying to play in the precise style of the movies, but this seems to be a pretty consistent theme throughout the EU as well.

I don't see why people have such issues with soak. Unless they've got players with 11 soak, which even then is remedied by sufficiently sized squads of stormtroopers or heavy weapons teams or some other dastardly option.

It may not be simulationist from a real-world perspective but it is completely "realistically consistent" with what we've seen in the movies, which is the style that this game tries to evoke. That's an important perspective that I think often goes unconsidered with this conversation.

I am not so sure it goes that good with the movies. In the movies, everybody is "scared" or "afraid" of being pointed with a blaster, even a light blaster pistol, and those few who are hit by a blaster, die or are seriously wounded. On the other hand, in this game, you may play a character with soak 6 or 7 for example (and more), for such a character if someone threatens him with a blaster pistol the reaction will be: So what? Shoot at me, while I finish the cocktail. So, I don't think the high soak character option has anything to do with SW.

It may not be simulationist from a real-world perspective but it is completely "realistically consistent" with what we've seen in the movies, which is the style that this game tries to evoke. That's an important perspective that I think often goes unconsidered with this conversation.

I am not so sure it goes that good with the movies. In the movies, everybody is "scared" or "afraid" of being pointed with a blaster, even a light blaster pistol, and those few who are hit by a blaster, die or are seriously wounded. On the other hand, in this game, you may play a character with soak 6 or 7 for example (and more), for such a character if someone threatens him with a blaster pistol the reaction will be: So what? Shoot at me, while I finish the cocktail. So, I don't think the high soak character option has anything to do with SW.

If the antagonist is a no skill having doofuss maybe. Someone with soak 6 getting plinked at by a group of minions with Range(L) and some numbers are going to suffer damage pretty routinely.

I have a Marauder/Heavy/Gadgeteer player with non-Superior PX-1 power armor who's saving up for a superior customization attachment and a sub-dermal implant. Right now he's sitting at Soak 10, and as soon as the party invests 12,500 credits into him (or a lot less, considering the party's Trader) he'll be sitting at Soak 12.

But you know what he hates?

Lightsabers, mono-molecular vibro weapons, certain slugthrowers, and of course heavy ordinance (Gunnery weapons). He might be a beast against most personal-scale weapons, but the firepower exists to take him down, especially if his foes know who he is and how he rolls.

(Plus, if all else fails, ONE blast from an ion weapon is all it takes to render his armor nearly useless.)

There are a bajillion ways to raise your soak in this game, and I don't find any of them particularly game-breaking.

On the other hand, in this game, you may play a character with soak 6 or 7 for example (and more), for such a character if someone threatens him with a blaster pistol the reaction will be: So what? Shoot at me, while I finish the cocktail. So, I don't think the high soak character option has anything to do with SW.

Just like how one Ranged - Light check does not equal one single pull of a trigger, each application of Wound damage does not equal one intersection of a blaster bolt with your body.

Narratively, it means whatever you and your players want it to mean. However, if a PC really does just sit there while an NPC holds a blaster to his temple and pulls the trigger and you and the player do that whole "Are you sure?" "Yeah, that's what I do." thing that GMs and players do then that PC falls to the ground with a smoking hole in the side of his head. At least it would if I were running the game.

Soak doesn't fix stupid.

I have a Marauder/Heavy/Gadgeteer player with non-Superior PX-1 power armor who's saving up for a superior customization attachment and a sub-dermal implant. Right now he's sitting at Soak 10, and as soon as the party invests 12,500 credits into him (or a lot less, considering the party's Trader) he'll be sitting at Soak 12.

But you know what he hates?

Lightsabers, mono-molecular vibro weapons, certain slugthrowers, and of course heavy ordinance (Gunnery weapons). He might be a beast against most personal-scale weapons, but the firepower exists to take him down, especially if his foes know who he is and how he rolls.

(Plus, if all else fails, ONE blast from an ion weapon is all it takes to render his armor nearly useless.)

There are a bajillion ways to raise your soak in this game, and I don't find any of them particularly game-breaking.

The only issue I'd have as GM is the whole "balancing encounters for the whole party" issue: threatening someone with Soak 10 requires weapons that will 1-shot most of the other PCs (at least into unconsciousness); attacks that are more of a threat to someone sitting around a total Soak of ~5 will provide no threat to the Soak 10 guy. That's where the tricky balance comes in; not calling high Soak overpowered per se, because there are certainly ways to get around it, but it skews the difficulty of appropriate encounter-crafting when considering the rest of the party.

I don't understand the concept of balance applied in RPGs. If it's a PVP video game I get it. If I can do a point or two of damage to the high soak guy and I do 10 to the low soak guy it sounds essentially balanced to me. If players are getting their characters involved in combat, then it falls to them to prepare themselves accordingly. That might be armor and go all soak. It might mean average soak and Dodge and Side Step, it might mean low soak but grab as much Toughened as you can.

If a player builds their character with low soak, no offensive skills, no defensive skills, doesn't wear armor, it seems to me they should get their @$$ kicked in combat. Is it really the high soak guy's fault or is it the rest of the group for neglecting their offensive/defensive skills/talents, not wearing armor, not spending xp on Toughened?

I have a Marauder/Heavy/Gadgeteer player with non-Superior PX-1 power armor who's saving up for a superior customization attachment and a sub-dermal implant. Right now he's sitting at Soak 10, and as soon as the party invests 12,500 credits into him (or a lot less, considering the party's Trader) he'll be sitting at Soak 12.

But you know what he hates?

Lightsabers, mono-molecular vibro weapons, certain slugthrowers, and of course heavy ordinance (Gunnery weapons). He might be a beast against most personal-scale weapons, but the firepower exists to take him down, especially if his foes know who he is and how he rolls.

(Plus, if all else fails, ONE blast from an ion weapon is all it takes to render his armor nearly useless.)

There are a bajillion ways to raise your soak in this game, and I don't find any of them particularly game-breaking.

The only issue I'd have as GM is the whole "balancing encounters for the whole party" issue: threatening someone with Soak 10 requires weapons that will 1-shot most of the other PCs (at least into unconsciousness); attacks that are more of a threat to someone sitting around a total Soak of ~5 will provide no threat to the Soak 10 guy. That's where the tricky balance comes in; not calling high Soak overpowered per se, because there are certainly ways to get around it, but it skews the difficulty of appropriate encounter-crafting when considering the rest of the party.

True that, but this game isn't like d20; there's no static advacement in combat ability. So you're always going to be left with that problem no matter what in a game where you can play a Marauder/Heavy/Gadgeteer OR a Trader/Politico/Mechanic.

Luckily, my players are a canny sort and those who aren't speced for battle usually find some way of making use of their other skills during a fight, and if they don't I'll find a reason for them to be occupied with a non-combat scene of some kind. It can get tricky, but luckily the group's Doctor/Politico/Scholar wears traditional Twi'lek heavy battle armor, and the party Trader/Fringer carries a distruptor pistol and (believe it or not) a friggin' lightsaber (that he's TERRIBLE with and usually waves around to get Boost dice on social checks... which hardly ever works out for him outside of Coercion [since it's red], but I digress). Quite often, the non-combat folks will run, hide, and find some sort of antics to get themselves into.

I don't understand the concept of balance applied in RPGs. If it's a PVP video game I get it. If I can do a point or two of damage to the high soak guy and I do 10 to the low soak guy it sounds essentially balanced to me.

The concern to me really is "if it takes a Gunnery weapon to scratch the Marauder, what's the consequence if the E-WEB team shoots at the Politico and the Slicer and the Pilot because they're clumped together under cover, instead of the Marauder." While it's tempting for the E-WEB guy to only shoot at the Marauder (the thing he's designed to counter) it feels way too metagamey to me if the E-WEB guy doesn't see 3 of the 4 party members under cover next to each other and maybe think "3 for the price of 1, time to even these odds by a fair bit" and mow them down.

If players are getting their characters involved in combat, then it falls to them to prepare themselves accordingly. That might be armor and go all soak. It might mean average soak and Dodge and Side Step, it might mean low soak but grab as much Toughened as you can.

If a player builds their character with low soak, no offensive skills, no defensive skills, doesn't wear armor, it seems to me they should get their @$$ kicked in combat.

I think your post takes to a bit of an extreme. First, not all players choose to get their character involved inc combat, but combat is gonna happen and always running away is frequently not viable or worse, becomes a source of IC and OOC derision (and that has been discussed on these boards before). Further, not every Spec gets Talents that directly make them better at surviving combat. As we've seen, most armor is not going to beef you up THAT much. Characters (legitimately) have higher priorities than Brawn in many cases to build a character effective for the roll (yeah, I would question a Brawn 4, Int 2 Doctor a little bit, since you're not going to be that great at doctoring).

I'm not lamenting the guy who doesn't even bother to buy Heavy Clothes and runs out into fire instead of taking cover. But I don't think a reasonable response is "to hell with the guy who decided to be a Doctor instead of a Gadgeteer or Bodyguard, he made a choice" especially if he doesn't want to buy into those Specs for either IC (character flavor) or OOC (XP allocation) reasons?

My concern is that it is difficult to (1) create a scenario where the Marauder (high Brawn and Soak) is legitimately threatened by enemy forces who can hurt him; (2) create a scenario where the rest of the party (average Brawn and Soak) is legitimately threatened by enemy forces but still have a fighting chance/are not likely to be 1-shot; and (3) have (1) and (2) be the same combat scene without too much GM-level metagaming, by which I mean "I put the E-WEB here to hurt the Marauder so the Marauder is the only person he'll shoot at, regardless if that's realistic logic for the gunner."

Is it really the high soak guy's fault or is it the rest of the group for neglecting their offensive/defensive skills/talents, not wearing armor, not spending xp on Toughened?

To me, if the single High-Soak Guy makes me have to radically re-design encounters that would otherwise be "challenge-appropriate" for the rest of a party of 4, but won't threaten High-Soak Guy in the least, yeah, I am comfortable thinking that the high-Soak guy is the cause of that issue.

Define "legitimately threatened"? How is the encounter any less satisfying if the high soak guy suffers maybe one or two wounds as opposed to the low soak guy who took 10 or 12? I just don't place an artificial value on how successful or challenging a scenario is by how much damage people suffer or don't. That strikes me as a videogame metric way of looking at it.

Honestly I don't consider a Marauder "legitimately threatened" if he takes 4 Wounds and his WT is in the mid-teens.

But I agree with you, I'm not really trying to put a value on "level of challenge = # of wounds suffered" but I think the potential to be hurt (or not) isn't a bad metric of what is "challenging" in a particular way. I'm not saying it's the only metric or even that it's the best metric, but to me it is a metric.

Interesting convo! *grabs popcorn*

The Marauder/Heavy/Gadgeteer in my group has a WT of 26, and he can get it to 30 without too much trouble. He's a beast to be sure, but he's also practically useless outside of a fight. In fact, he's a liablity since he's carrying a metric ton of illegal equipment that he's ENTIRELY useless without. And once again, one shot from an ion pistol will humble the crap out of him if he gets used to being so "invincible".

I agree with 2P51 -- balancing this game ain't like balancing a video game. There's more to consider than just fights; I'm find with combat monkeys being combat monkeys, because more than half of my games don't involve combat.

I'll be honest too, I really don't have a dog in the fight one way or another. To me the easiest way to challenge someone who specializes is to come at them in a way they don't expect and in a way they didn't prepare for. Don't shoot at the high soak guy at all, hit him with glop grenades, or use Pierce etc. I'm pretty sure stormtroopers are accustomed to dealing with big tough high soak guys so introducing that option in an encounter isn't meta gaming at all, why wouldn't they use something more effective.

The Return on Investiment for Soak improvement is huge. Let's start with a Brawn 3, 15 wounds character. This is not a super combat character. Could easily be a starting Technician/Mechanic character as they get Toughened for 5 XP.

Soak of 4 (3 Brawn, 1 from Armor.)

Damage 6 base attacks (non-uber melee and blaster weapons) do 3 points of damage min on a hit. We'll say 4 points as can get hit by 2. That means it takes 4 hits on average to go from fine to over threshold.

Damage 9 base attacks (Stormtroopers with carbines) will do 6 points of damage min on a hit. As long as they don't hit by 3, you will be wrecked by 2 and down by the third one.

Now you get 60 or so XP and switch to Padded Armor. You picked up Enduring with that XP. You've gone from a 4 to a 6 Soak.

Damage 6 does min of 1 damage now. So if they hit by 2, you can take 8 hits before going down. That's DOUBLE the amount of punishment you can take from probably THE most common small arms damage range.

Damage 9 base are still scary, but you have turned heavy weapons into what small arms used to be. Now you are taking 4 to 5 damage per hit, meaning it takes 4 hits to drop you. So again with just 2 points of soak increase you have doubled your effective health.

And that was just with 2-3 sessions of XP and 500 credits spent on better armor. We're not talking anything more than that. And this is as a Mechanic. We're not talking a 'combat' career.

So let's stick with Mechanic. You get down to Dedication and you earn a bit more money and decide this armor thing Really is your bag. So you raise brawn as you are the brawling mechanic (it's a Bonus career skill even!) and you looted some nice laminate armor off some high end bounty hunter that came after your smuggler friend. Saving up your share of some hauls, you dumped superior on it. it's a major investment, but you didn't want a swoop like everyone else did. So now you have a soak of 8.

Damage 6 is really irrelevant now in the hands of 'normal' foes. If anything boosts your defense notable (you pick up sidestep/dodge or hang with the Marauder/Bodyguard in the group) you are pretty solid as odds of them landing 3+ hits on command is slim. Likely you aren't going to see minion hoards with heavy blaster pistols as those just are expensive for the common man.

Damage 9-10 is still dangerous, doing 2 to 4 per hit as you may be seeing some nicer rifles and getting tagged by 2-3 successes hurts, but even then it's 4 to 8 hits to go from fine to dropped.

Now, let's say you had a big score and decided to save and skip superior. Cortosis Weave is FAR better. You lose 1 soak, but it removes the one thing that makes the Damage 5 to 8 weapons threatening: Pierce.

So with 90 XP and 500 credits you can have a Brawn 4 Mechanic that is STILL a mechanic that started with 3's in most of his stats wearing Padded armor, having a soak of 7. If you invested money into your soak, it'll climb that much more. If you made a Brawn 4 character to start and picked Marauder you could easily have with just 1 tree and STILL only 500 credits in gear (which you could start with) a soak of 9 (Brawn 4 to start +1 from Dedication, 2 from Armor, 2 from Enduring).

A Survivalist/Gadgeteer will see lots of soak synergy as Survivalist has Enduring and Gadgeteer makes their armor amazing with Armored Defense and Jury Rig to get a Soak of 3 and 2 setback dice against whatever attack type scares you most.

And none of this really depends on having expensive gear. If you had credits to use Tinker and really add attachments to your gear (like SUperior) and/or get armor like Battle Armor and Power armor, your character will be a beast. Add into the fact that we didn't even discuss getting more ranks of Toughened besides the first one, which only makes the character much nastier, you'd quickly find that you need Rivals with Ranged (heavY) weapons and talents like Soft Spot for a damage boost to really hurt characters.

6 stormtroopers. 1 Sergeant. Big sarge tosses the Glop grenade or fires the net gun. Pretty easy shot. Soak guy goes down. Maybe he breaks free but that's all, can't stand up, can't do any maneuvers that turn, so he's prone at least. Stormtroopers base dice pool is YYYGG plus they can aim once, maybe twice if they were already in cover, big sarge gives them a boost die, and soak guy is prone, so that's a third or fourth boost die, maybe sarge had some extra advantages and throws the squad the boost for that as well. So that's at least 3 boost dice, maybe 5, plus YYYGG or BBBBBYYYGG v. P. I'm thinking high soak guy is gonna take a hit.

In an attempt to answer to 2P51's comment: "I don't understand the issue people have with soak."

Our issue is tying Brawn, or Toughness, or Constitution, or whatever other resilience characteristic a game may use, to a mechanic that represents a character's ability to shrug physical damage. And it's not an issue, at all, finding something to challenge soak monsters, but it is a challenge balancing an encounter so that it challenges all characters equitably. With the SWRPG being so innovative, this resilience/soak mechanic is still dredged along?

With my group, a combat encounter is something that everyone wants to participate in, and that means swinging swords and pulling triggers. My group also have scholars alongside a marauder, and that doesn't make a lick of difference when the blaster bolts start flying- the slicer feels cheated if relegated to cracking a code locking them out of the hanger while the marauder "gets all the glory." It's just the way it works in my group. So, to "balance the encounter", removing Brawn from soak would put everyone on an even keel* in the trigger pulling phase. My players (and many other GMs' players) simply do not run from a confrontation, they see it through to the end before slicing doors, and then, honestly, the marauder really couldn't care any less that he doesn't get to "shine" at opening a digitally locked door. Or should the door be a challenge that is balanced for the marauder, as well?

Some groups of players play with perfect synergy. If you ask me, that's metagaming, so there you go. Other groups don't even know what synergy means and metagame in completely alternate ways, such as hording soak. The point being: just because you don't understand the issue, doesn't mean there isn't an issue some GMs feel the need to address, and pipping in with "I just don't understand" is not at all helpful. I'm not attacking, or belittling, or chastising, just saying we'd prefer help, and if that means you have to think about it from outside your perspective then by all means do so.

*If I've offended the 80's hair band Keel in any way, I offer my sincere apologies.

Just wrote an example how the high soak guy can easily be addressed with RAW. Doesn't even require big huge guns, although by my count in docking bay 94 there were 7 troopers, with a LRB and at least one HBR, so it isn't like they don't show up ready to rock in the movies.

Just wrote an example how the high soak guy can easily be addressed with RAW. Doesn't even require big huge guns, although by my count in docking bay 94 there were 7 troopers, with a LRB and at least one HBR, so it isn't like they don't show up ready to rock in the movies.

But if that very same stormtrooper clique were to then find their attention on another PC (presumably not the worrisome soak-beast), it splatters the poor fool so far into "DEAD", the potential risk of the character sheet spontaneously bursting into flames at the table is real...

Just wrote an example how the high soak guy can easily be addressed with RAW. Doesn't even require big huge guns, although by my count in docking bay 94 there were 7 troopers, with a LRB and at least one HBR, so it isn't like they don't show up ready to rock in the movies.

But if that very same stormtrooper clique were to then find their attention on another PC (presumably not the worrisome soak-beast), it splatters the poor fool so far into "DEAD", the potential risk of the character sheet spontaneously bursting into flames at the table is real...

So what do you plan on throwing at your players for opponents? I don't think of a squad of stormtroopers and a sergeant as completely off base for potential opponents players in a Star Wars RPG might face. My example was to simply add a glop grenade or two to the sergeant. The stormtroopers could be armed with plain ol blaster rifles like they are.

Just wrote an example how the high soak guy can easily be addressed with RAW.

Yes, you did. Use something similar to this every time you need to balance the encounter around one or more high-soak characters and it begins to look like the GM is out to get everybody. Not good.

Yepesnopes has removed Brawn from the soak mechanic and reduced all weapon damages by two (my initial suggestion-in a thread vehemently shot down and poo-pooed with it's first response- was almost exactly this, though I was suggesting reducing damage of all weapons by three); personally, I favor this proposal over the antiquated mechanic currently published.

To be clear, we've not said anything about Brawn not being used to determine wounds.