I was running The Long Arm of the Hutt last night and got to the fight with the bounty hunters. I found it to be incredibly brutal for the players. The Gand uses a blaster rifle set to stun using GGY. Since it's on stun, he had to move to short range. The PCs had taken cover which gave him a final dice pool of GGYPB. Generating a success with that pool is not that difficult.

The damage of the rifle is 9. This means that with even a single success, the Gand was doing at least 10 damage. One of the two players was Vex. His soak is 3 and his strain threshold (at best) is 12. All it takes is 2 hits from the Gand to drop him.

That seems way too difficult in my opinion. Am I doing something wrong with any of the calculations?

Seems pretty much correct to me, only comment would be that if your players took cover behind the rocks then the campaign suggest two setback dies from cover instead of one.

So it does indeed seem like the Gand is doing a lot of damage, but since he had to move into short range he's pretty much a sitting duck and would probably be down by the time it is his turn again.

So it does indeed seem like the Gand is doing a lot of damage, but since he had to move into short range he's pretty much a sitting duck and would probably be down by the time it is his turn again.

The Gand has a soak of 5, though, meaning that Vex's starting damage on him was only 1. Only Oskara (who wasn't one of the party members) would have been able to do any amount of meaningful damage, but even she would likely have taken at least 3 shots to take down the Gand. And that's all ignoring the fact that he's not alone.

My players using the pregens pretty much steamrolled that (and in fact most of Mos Shuuta as well). I dint feel the need to adjust anything much though as everyone was still learning and having fun. But it was all pretty easy for them.

Seems legit to me. Of course, if one character poses a significantly higher risk than all the others he's likely to attract a disproportionate amount of fire, so like Morridini said he might never get off a second shot.

Seems legit to me. Of course, if one character poses a significantly higher risk than all the others he's likely to attract a disproportionate amount of fire, so like Morridini said he might never get off a second shot.

I should say that the result of this was a TPW. Both players were dropped within 3 rounds. Both bounty hunters successfully hit each shot on each of their turns and the players were only able to do 2 or 3 damage to the Gand before losing. We just decided to stop playing at that point since it was getting late anyway.

Seems legit to me. Of course, if one character poses a significantly higher risk than all the others he's likely to attract a disproportionate amount of fire, so like Morridini said he might never get off a second shot.

I should say that the result of this was a TPW. Both players were dropped within 3 rounds. Both bounty hunters successfully hit each shot on each of their turns and the players were only able to do 2 or 3 damage to the Gand before losing. We just decided to stop playing at that point since it was getting late anyway.

You were running only two PCs? The adventure is balanced for 4 so if you are running less than that you need to tone down the difficulty a few notches. Conversely if you were using the two extra pregens to run a group of 6 you'd need to upscale it a bit. Which PCs were the players using? That matters too. Even though the adventure says 1 bounty hunter per PC, if you are only running 2 PCs instead of 4 and both those PCs are not the combat-focused ones, the gand alone would have been sufficient challenge.

It's rough, but bounty hunters *are* combat careers. I'm going to hazard a guess that your second player wasn't playing Lohrrik (apologies if I got the name wrong, it's been over a year since I've had access to the starter box - but I well remember that wookie running roughshod through squads of Stormtroopers when I played it). Your PCs needed to play to their strengths if neither was playing one of the two combat careers seeded in the pregens - running instead of fighting until they could fast talk someone into helping them or setting up some kind of trap for the hunters.

As Liloki just pointed out, probably a single hunter would have been a significant challenge for them, as well. Personally, while you and your players may have found out that EotE is a bit more lethal than, say, a d20-based system, I think what you described is a pretty fair learning experience and fits with the mystique of the bounty hunter in the Star Wars setting as well.

Even with 300xp under his belt, 41-VEX was dropped in my story in one shot, too. He's a robot cleric, he must be protected at all costs!

The fight itself is definitely pretty high on the challenge list. That coupled with the fact that I was only running 2 players and both were not combat focused is probably what caused the problems. I'll make sure to pay more attention to party comp in the future.

Yes, with only two players I'd scale it down some. Consider using minions instead of rivals, at least until your players have increased their combat skills and gotten a few ranks of toughness. Another possible solution is to change the gear of their opponents from heavy guns like blaster rifles to pistols and light pistols.

Speaking of which, were your players only toting light guns? Consistently rolling that low seems unusual. You do know that each uncancelled success adds to damage, right? It's not just the printed number plus one.

Speaking of which, were your players only toting light guns? Consistently rolling that low seems unusual. You do know that each uncancelled success adds to damage, right? It's not just the printed number plus one.

Yeah, one was using a light blaster and the other was using a holdout. And yes, I know that the successes add damage. I was intentionally using the minimum amounts for both the PCs and NPCs in my examples for ease of comparison.

OK, just checking. In that case I'd keep them away from rival or nemesis-level NPCs with rifles until they get some better gear and higher wound thresholds.

If you see something like that happening during a combat, you can fudge down the enemy's soak value or something, to give the players more of a chance.

If after a couple of hits nothing can get through the Gand's 5 Soak, then you can fudge it down to 3 or something for future hits during that encounter.

If you see something like that happening during a combat, you can fudge down the enemy's soak value or something, to give the players more of a chance.

If after a couple of hits nothing can get through the Gand's 5 Soak, then you can fudge it down to 3 or something for future hits during that encounter.

I'd actually advise against this. Your players might very well notice that the same amount of damage inflicted suddenly yields better results and realilze you're fudging the rolls. That's the sort of thing that, in my opinion, erodes away at the trust you need between the players and the GM. Better to reduce the soak beforehand, knowing what sort of weapons your players are sporting and what their skill levels are.

If the NPCs are using stun and the PCs get knocked out, it's hardly the end of the game, just the beginning of a new plot arc or sub-arc. Figure out why the NPCs might want the PCs alive. Then maybe let the PCs bargain for their freedom by taking more Obligation, say a Debt. I wouldn't make this happen often, but this particular problem seems to mainly be a scaling issue. I might consider giving the players a bit more gear or XP if there's just two of them, to help offset the fact that they are down a couple of force-multiplying allies..

If the NPCs are using stun and the PCs get knocked out, it's hardly the end of the game, just the beginning of a new plot arc or sub-arc. Figure out why the NPCs might want the PCs alive. Then maybe let the PCs bargain for their freedom by taking more Obligation, say a Debt. I wouldn't make this happen often, but this particular problem seems to mainly be a scaling issue. I might consider giving the players a bit more gear or XP if there's just two of them, to help offset the fact that they are down a couple of force-multiplying allies..

Yeah, normally I would agree and, if it had been an adventure I had planned, I would have accounted for that outcome. Since this was just a pick up game using a free adventure, I was totally unprepared since they just assume the PCs will win.

We won't be continuing the adventure (or if we do, we'll be starting over with different players and PCs), so it's moot. My concern was simply with the balance of EotE in general; I wanted a better understanding of what went wrong and how to fix it in my future games. Everyone here has been very helpful with that.

If you see something like that happening during a combat, you can fudge down the enemy's soak value or something, to give the players more of a chance.

If after a couple of hits nothing can get through the Gand's 5 Soak, then you can fudge it down to 3 or something for future hits during that encounter.

I'd actually advise against this. Your players might very well notice that the same amount of damage inflicted suddenly yields better results and realilze you're fudging the rolls. That's the sort of thing that, in my opinion, erodes away at the trust you need between the players and the GM. Better to reduce the soak beforehand, knowing what sort of weapons your players are sporting and what their skill levels are.

Or, even better, try and spin it so they learn that there are some fights they can't meet head-on. Teaching players to run and teaching players that they can be sneaky and use social interaction and information to neutralize brute force I've found are two of the hardest things to teach players, particularly if they are used to video games or d20-type systems where everything is supposed to be scaled to them.

If you see something like that happening during a combat, you can fudge down the enemy's soak value or something, to give the players more of a chance.

If after a couple of hits nothing can get through the Gand's 5 Soak, then you can fudge it down to 3 or something for future hits during that encounter.

I'd actually advise against this. Your players might very well notice that the same amount of damage inflicted suddenly yields better results and realilze you're fudging the rolls. That's the sort of thing that, in my opinion, erodes away at the trust you need between the players and the GM. Better to reduce the soak beforehand, knowing what sort of weapons your players are sporting and what their skill levels are.

Or, even better, try and spin it so they learn that there are some fights they can't meet head-on. Teaching players to run and teaching players that they can be sneaky and use social interaction and information to neutralize brute force I've found are two of the hardest things to teach players, particularly if they are used to video games or d20-type systems where everything is supposed to be scaled to them.

I would want to add to this that you're not going to teach your players a new behavior by punishing them for an old one. If your players assume that they can win any fight they get into because that's how every other game they've played has worked, they're just going to be frustrated by getting killed. Keep in mind that ultra deadly video games allow you to quickly restart, something missing from most roleplaying games. It's not player entitlement to expect for something to work in a game like this, it's human nature.

So let's say you DO want your players to learn how to run, or fight more tactically. It is your job as a GM to let the players know that is an option. Have an NPC ally who is obviously good at combat getting in cover and asking the players for a plan to get the advantage. Push a force point forward when your players are getting close to losing and say that maybe there's a way to get out of this fight. In essence, if you want to see a NEW behavior, you're going to have to work your players up to it and put the big glowing signs up letting them know to do it. Sometimes you can even just flat out suggest it. Ask your players how much xp or soak they have, than ask them if they have an exit strategy. If a player charges out in the middle of a fight, ask him if he plans on taking cover and point out the many blaster a being leveled at him.

Just remember this bit of basic psychology: punishment reduces an existing behavior and reinforcement increases an existing one. You don't teach a dog to shake hands by bopping it on the nose every time it doesn't respond. The dog will just learn to keep away from you. You don't teach players to fight more tactically by just killing them every time they fight. They won't stop getting into fights, they'll stop playing the game.

Hey there. First post from me, but i just wanted to add my 2cents on the topic. My group also failed this encounter within the first few round of combat.

After completing the beginners box adventure, we decided to create own characters but continue with the story by playing Long arm of the hutt.

Anyway my group consists of three players: One smuggler wookie, one human bountyhunter and one bothan colonist.

I also made the mistake to think that things will work out in this encounter. The main problems were that my players failed the initiative checks and thus the npc took the first turns. At first I was quite happy about this fact because in the ecounters in our first adventure I saw the group tearing apart nearly all opposition. This was mostly because in those situations they were the ones acting first and oskara with her rifle hits pretty hard.

So what happened: I took the opportunity to let my npcs unleash their first attacks, expecting my players to pretty fast finishing them, once its their turn. But well. The smuggler and bounty hunter went down within two rounds, while the colonist made the mistake to show his otherwise concealed holdout blaster.

We ended the session there because it was pretty late. But wee took the incident as a startingpoint for a interesting twist. The heroes were directly brought to angu dromb and interrogated about their motives. They then were locked away in drombs camp, while he ordered his men to start the attack on new meen.

From there my players were first needed to escape fom their prison and get their gear back. Second they had to make the choice of either pursue the attackers heading for new meen or to take advantage of reduced man power inside the camp and confront angu dromb right now.

Everything played out pretty good. My heroes finished angu dromb, wrecked his cantina and discovered valuable information on his computers, that otherwise would have been deleted, e.g. Dromb has spy inside the twilek organisation that informed him about the arrival of the heroes. (I'm derailing the story a bit from the original plot)

Back to the topic I have to say that initiative has a huge impact on the encounters. I encourage my players to consider using their destiny points on those checks if needed. For me as a gm this makes it quite hard to estimate the difficulty of an encounter. I've seen my players ripping holes in a stromtrooper squad before those guys could even respond to the attack. If the troopers were acting first my players would have had a serious problem to deal with.

In addition i dislike the ambush-initiative mechanic because in my group it rarely grants them any adantage on initiative. The same goes for the npcs so far.

I think i might suggest a house-rule on this one that a preparation for combat (or an ambush) will grant a boost die on the initiative check.

What do you guys think?

Since this was necro'd, I'll chime in for fun--don't forget targetted shots and disarming.

I really do think that's a big issue for people, that since EotE is such a narrative game, they don't think nearly as tactically as they should. With the options given to you, you can pretty easily pin down a target. If you make a called shot on their armor, you deal no damage, but are essentially exposing a temporary weak point that the next person can use to ignore the soak granted by the armor, which can be huge. Or you can disable his rifle for a round, or shoot him in the leg and then run so that he can't just move back into Short range next round. Heck, if you can get enough advantage on a shot, disarm him, and have one of your other players run in heroically to grab the rifle and turn it on him.

Players have a lot of options to deal with Soak-heavy enemies, they just have to think outside the "drop his hp to 0" box.

I like my bola launcher and Ensnare a lot. I have Range(L) 3 at this point with a 4 Agility and even before my 3rd skill rank when I needed it to perform I'd flip that DP. I pretty routinely get a Triumph and that is just a wicked Ensnare with it when you do. A target is @#$% outta luck with that 5 purple Difficulty Action to break free as the only thing they can even attempt.

I like my bola launcher and Ensnare a lot. I have Range(L) 3 at this point with a 4 Agility and even before my 3rd skill rank when I needed it to perform I'd flip that DP. I pretty routinely get a Triumph and that is just a wicked Ensnare with it when you do. A target is @#$% outta luck with that 5 purple Difficulty Action to break free as the only thing they can even attempt.

I can imagine that the same weapon used against PCs would quickly disturb the enjoyment of the game. I don't particularly enjoy using things that are so one-sided.

I like my bola launcher and Ensnare a lot. I have Range(L) 3 at this point with a 4 Agility and even before my 3rd skill rank when I needed it to perform I'd flip that DP. I pretty routinely get a Triumph and that is just a wicked Ensnare with it when you do. A target is @#$% outta luck with that 5 purple Difficulty Action to break free as the only thing they can even attempt.

I can imagine that the same weapon used against PCs would quickly disturb the enjoyment of the game. I don't particularly enjoy using things that are so one-sided.

Wow. HappyDaze doesn't like something, and feels the need to bring someone else down. I totally wouldn't have seen that one coming................

Ya know, you could probably list the things you do like and save yourself 4 or 5 thousand posts..............anything?.........cookies.............kittens....................anything?................

I like my bola launcher and Ensnare a lot. I have Range(L) 3 at this point with a 4 Agility and even before my 3rd skill rank when I needed it to perform I'd flip that DP. I pretty routinely get a Triumph and that is just a wicked Ensnare with it when you do. A target is @#$% outta luck with that 5 purple Difficulty Action to break free as the only thing they can even attempt.

I can imagine that the same weapon used against PCs would quickly disturb the enjoyment of the game. I don't particularly enjoy using things that are so one-sided.

Wow. HappyDaze doesn't like something, and feels the need to bring someone else down. I totally wouldn't have seen that one coming................

Ya know, you could probably list the things you do like and save yourself 4 or 5 thousand posts..............anything?.........cookies.............kittens....................anything?................

Why are you taking things so personally? I didn't insult you, nor did I try to 'bring you down' or even start serving up the sarcasm as your post does.

What I did state is that some things in the book can be very disruptive to the enjoyment of the game when used by the GM and players should be considerate that frequent use of such things on their side might likewise make the game less fun. IME, items with special rules like the bola should only appear rarely or else they will lead to escalation.