Go listen to the order 66 Podcast
Specifically this Episode
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Order66/~3/CzqST19g0gQ/episode7.mp3
The List Strikes back.

CRB pg. 132

Trees:NPC only

Adersary: UPGRADE the Difficulty of any combat check targeting this character once per rank of adversary.

As a force user and end boss, he could've had a 0 turn action. The idea of bringing the ceiling down? Could've done that just as the PCs entered the room.

One thing I've learned from all the years of GM'ing, you definitely don't want to save the cool stuff your NPC is going to do for later in the fight. Blow all that cool stuff early on, because chances are the fight isn't going to last that long.

(Do people really want fights to drag on?)

Also, rounds in EotE are not supposed to be the 3 second rounds we are used to in most RPG's nowadays. It's a somewhat amorphous sequence of action rather than a single trigger pull in most cases.

Happens all the time, one shotting bosses. The only way to minimize it is to mimic the films and split the party. Which the films do frequently. You almost never have 4 PCs up against 1 BBEG in the films, it is generally 1-2 PCs vs. the BBEG as pointed out above. Splitting the party should also only be handled by a very experienced GM because even after 20+ years of GMing I still find it difficult. One trick I have learned is to allow the players who are not in the scene to play the NPCs. That way everyone is still involved in the scene just not main characters. I've pulled that off with varying degrees of success. You should also flip back and forth between rounds also. That helps to keep the tension and cause drama. What I have learned over the years is you either have to split the party (works well in games like this but not d20 games) or you have plenty of obstacles (minions, rivals, hazards, etc) in the way along with the BBEG and or give them an extra turn.

With the initiative system we have, splitting the party is not so bad perhaps. You would setup two battles and switch between. The initiative would mimic the scene changes in the film.

Just a word of caution: all of those things that insta-gib your NPCs can turn around and do the same thing to PCs. This game doesn't provide the PCs with any special resistance to high critical results either. In fact, they can die just as quickly as the three Jedi that went down like chumps against the Emperor.

I have players that accept the lethality and embrace the risk. Because of this, I have no problem when characters (PC or NPC) die suddenly to a critical hit. OTOH, if your players expect that their PCs are exempt from the lethality of the rules, then you might start feeling that way about NPCs too. If so, then the ruleset is going to need some massive house rules to get you there.

I think every GM had at least one of his evil baddies go down way sooner and much less spectacular than he would have liked. I for once had (a long time ago) set up a very complex story about a very intricate scheme that should have kicked of with the players trying to escape a flaming inferno that the bad guy had started to slip away. They were supposed to watch the guy escape on a boat and then meet him again later on. But one of my smarter players looked at the exact layout of the warehouse they were in and noticed a crane with a rope not far from an opening in the wall. So he went for it and jumped for the rope, clinging to it with one hand and swinging away, which brought im just far enough to try a one handed desperate shot at the guy. He made the 1 in 1000 roll and mr. evil collapsed dead on the boat. The story arc was prematurely finished (short about several sessions of prepared story), but in a great way I suppose.

My point would be, if you as a GM don't want your players to kill a character, don't allow them to try. If you give them a roll to do so, they might succeed and should be able to.

Especially fights against one single enemy tend to be fickle in RPGs. Either you tend have DnD-style slug-fests against massive numbers of HP, or you have deadly combat, where the first one to hit wins. So the encounter of Qui Gon and Obi vs. Darth Maul for example would probably play out very underwhelming, if you just use the rules as written. Lightsabers are desiged to be absolutely deadly in EotE and the first one to hit will probably finish the fight. If we are talking Melee Specialiced Character with Lightsaber, well I guess it will be the one that wins initative.

If we take the example of Maul vs.the two Jedi it would probably be: Maul charges in and hits Qui Gon - well so its one on one. Obi yells NOOOOO and slashes at him, decapitating him quickly.(Or slicing him in two, whatever you like). Which is approximately what happened, but the narrative and contribution of the palyers are somewhat lacking.

The WEG-Version had the same problem to some extent, so when I way back in time wanted to create an interesting duel for my Jedi-Player, I decided not to let the rules dictate the flow of the combat. What I came up with:

1. I prepared the Player for this moment. I handed him visions of a bridge and his nemesis for quite some time and the player knew he would be facing his enemy on that bridge. He also came to the realisation that he would die there.When they finally reached the bridge, the player immediately recognised it.

2. As they were crossing the bridge the Nemesis and Hordes of minions came up behind them. The Player immediately sent the others to finish what they came to do and turned around to hold them of.

3. I first tossed some minions at him (cutting back to the other players at appropiate moments), then the nemesis himself entered the battle.

4. The player was smart enough to taunt his enemy, tricking him into single combat. When the player charged in to attack the nemesis I just didn't tell him what to roll. I told him: "You smash your sword at him with all your weight behind it. He dives back, seemingly giving way to your advance and then suddenly, like a sake he dives sideways and lets your blow slide along his hissing blade. UNable to stop your momentum yous stumbel forward and feel his sword turn in the air behind your back, lashing at you" The player immediately screamed "I take my head down and use my momentum to make a forward roll" "His Saber sweeps through the air behind you and your opponent smiles. As turn around to face him, he nodds approvingly" (Cut to the other players)

5. Now the player knew what we were palying and a simple "what do i nead to roll to hit the guy" became a "how do i move and what tactic do I use to get past his seemingly impenetrable defenses?"

This session our Jedi died an heroic death, taking the nemesis with him, and we didn't roll a single dice. Of course I could have let the player roll dice for his maneuvers, as long as the goal would be "put him at a disadvantage", "create an opening" or "cancel an advantage he has gained" and not a simple check hit or no hit that would end the encounter in one roll. With this little change, the game had become more of a guessing game for the player, where he had to find the weaknesses of his enemy in order to get past his defenses.

A lot of great advice already on how to have your solo boss survive being one-hit killed when it seems appropriate. Here's something else you can do: Check out the Under a Black Sun adventure and check out what they do for that final boss fight.

They add an interesting optional rule that you can apply to the final BBEG nemesis fight—give him an extra initiative slot at the end of the round. It's hands down one of the coolest little additions you can make to make your boss fights memorable.

I just checked out that adventure and there are a lot of good tips for scaling an encounter. The specific rule you're talking about is this ability that he has:

I'm sort of new to the GM business, and this is the first large scale campaign I've run, and the first campaign which isn't out of an official adventure book, so I'm learning as I go.

As others have said, solo boss fights are unpredictable. For a final climax fight, I'd aim for one enemy (Rival or Minion group) per PC, with plenty of trappings and scenery in the environment for people to use and manipulate.

Also, I find combats where both sides are just fighting to the death to be boring. Give people other objectives. For instance, the pirate captain wants to escape or preserve his standing in front of his crew (so the PCs can win if they can destroy his credibility). Hostages, fragile treasure, death traps on a timer are all good things to throw into the mix to make things more interesting. Is the cavalry turning up soon, to win the fight and steal all the PCs' glory (and bounty)? Better get a move on!

Happens all the time, one shotting bosses. The only way to minimize it is to mimic the films and split the party. Which the films do frequently. You almost never have 4 PCs up against 1 BBEG in the films, it is generally 1-2 PCs vs. the BBEG as pointed out above. Splitting the party should also only be handled by a very experienced GM because even after 20+ years of GMing I still find it difficult. One trick I have learned is to allow the players who are not in the scene to play the NPCs. That way everyone is still involved in the scene just not main characters. I've pulled that off with varying degrees of success. You should also flip back and forth between rounds also. That helps to keep the tension and cause drama. What I have learned over the years is you either have to split the party (works well in games like this but not d20 games) or you have plenty of obstacles (minions, rivals, hazards, etc) in the way along with the BBEG and or give them an extra turn.

I never see splitting the party playing out well, but I have seen suggestions on here to mimic cut-aways in the movies, i.e. everyone rolls initiative at the same time for separate scenes, and they're played out as players assign slots. It should keep the action jumping back and forth which keeps everyone tense and excited, versus resolving one fight first, where Team 2 is just sitting around twiddling thumbs.

I never see splitting the party playing out well, but I have seen suggestions on here to mimic cut-aways in the movies, i.e. everyone rolls initiative at the same time for separate scenes, and they're played out as players assign slots. It should keep the action jumping back and forth which keeps everyone tense and excited, versus resolving one fight first, where Team 2 is just sitting around twiddling thumbs.

That's a really cool idea. It's perfect for a narrative game like this and really fits the Star Wars movie theme.

I can't take credit, I saw someone else bring up the idea a few days ago, possibly on the GMing forum. But it really clicked as a cool idea to allow splitting the party during combat without all the typical boredom and waiting.

to me it sounds natural that if you face alone an armed group of 4 PCs you die fast.

I never see splitting the party playing out well, but I have seen suggestions on here to mimic cut-aways in the movies, i.e. everyone rolls initiative at the same time for separate scenes, and they're played out as players assign slots. It should keep the action jumping back and forth which keeps everyone tense and excited, versus resolving one fight first, where Team 2 is just sitting around twiddling thumbs.

That's a really cool idea. It's perfect for a narrative game like this and really fits the Star Wars movie theme.

This is how I handled it in my group a few weeks ago. We had one person flying in a race while the rest of the party was engaged in combat with the guys trying to sabotage the race.

Because I wanted to give the impression that the race was fast paced, the racer got an extra turn in between each of the full party turns.

I can't take credit, I saw someone else bring up the idea a few days ago, possibly on the GMing forum. But it really clicked as a cool idea to allow splitting the party during combat without all the typical boredom and waiting.

I started thinking about it when the age of rebellion campaign I had planned could have involved playets playing both TIE pilots and stormtroopers at the same time.

While they decided to all be pilots, the idea stuck, as I had a mission idea wherer the pilots were ordered to fire on a ship with the troopers on board and having to evacuate.

I never see splitting the party playing out well, but I have seen suggestions on here to mimic cut-aways in the movies, i.e. everyone rolls initiative at the same time for separate scenes, and they're played out as players assign slots. It should keep the action jumping back and forth which keeps everyone tense and excited, versus resolving one fight first, where Team 2 is just sitting around twiddling thumbs.

That's a really cool idea. It's perfect for a narrative game like this and really fits the Star Wars movie theme.

This is how I handled it in my group a few weeks ago. We had one person flying in a race while the rest of the party was engaged in combat with the guys trying to sabotage the race.

Because I wanted to give the impression that the race was fast paced, the racer got an extra turn in between each of the full party turns.

We did something like that when I ran a modified version of the swooprace from Suns of Fortune. We had two racers, one person who used camera's to keep an eye on the terrain and possible nasty surprises (which he related to the rest of the party via comlinks) and two players who went ahead to the ravine to scout out a possible ambush.

Just as a disclaimer, I only have the beginner game, but I hope to get the corebook soon, so I apologize if I am contradicting anything in there with my suggestion.

Why not treat the three phases of the battle as three separate battles, so that each time he is "defeated" it just causes the battle to progress to the next phase. That way it wouldn't matter if the player dealt a million damage on the first turn, it would just cause the battle to move to the next phase.

Sure, that may seem a little too video-gamey, but that's one of the things I really like about EotE. I'm not someone with an extensive history in tabletop RPGs, I'm more of a Computer RPG person (Mass Effect, Vampire: Bloodlines, Deus Ex (The original!), etc...) and I think EotE does a really good job of recreating the feel of a CRPG in a table top format, especially with the skill tree mechanic.

Sorry, that went a little off topic at the end

Just as a disclaimer, I only have the beginner game, but I hope to get the corebook soon, so I apologize if I am contradicting anything in there with my suggestion.

Why not treat the three phases of the battle as three separate battles, so that each time he is "defeated" it just causes the battle to progress to the next phase. That way it wouldn't matter if the player dealt a million damage on the first turn, it would just cause the battle to move to the next phase.

Sure, that may seem a little too video-gamey, but that's one of the things I really like about EotE. I'm not someone with an extensive history in tabletop RPGs, I'm more of a Computer RPG person (Mass Effect, Vampire: Bloodlines, Deus Ex (The original!), etc...) and I think EotE does a really good job of recreating the feel of a CRPG in a table top format, especially with the skill tree mechanic.

Sorry, that went a little off topic at the end

The trick with this is to be able to justify it narratively so that the players don't feel cheated. If the fight really is just three stages where his "health bar" refills each time, it will definitely feel super gamey and will break the immersion of the players. I'm sure there are lots of ways it could be done with the OP's fight with a little thought.

It could really depend on where the party is fighting him. In a big landing bay, maybe the pirate jumps into an AT-CT that has to be overwhelmed. When it is, he fights the players on foot. When he's defeated there, environmental conditions separate him and the players and he makes it into a small shuttle or something, then the players have to chase him in their ship.

There's always a bigger fish...

I cast summon bigger fish

dude ive thinking about it what if the bbeg isnt the only nemesis in the room what one of his bodyguards or maybe al of them to give that more challenge or just scale enemies closer to what pcs look like add mors flavor to el cappitain maybe his best men are in fhe room as well. the captain is going some what compatente men around him like everyone made it out someone make his men sort of cool to even if its only one of them is an ex enforcer for black sun or even ex soldier who was discharged for susipsicon of killing his commanding officer you cant jus make it about the bbeg in im not saying this will work by anymeans but its a worthy if trying add in your enviro effects and cool baddie in gou can always think of a sick boss fight