I am in need of some GM advice from someone with experience. I recently began running a game with some friends who had been playing the campaign with a different GM before I began. I guess they ran somewhere from 6 to 7 sessions before I joined in as a player character for a session. I realized very quickly that they had been playing the whole game wrong since the beginning. Here is what they did wrong, kind of important to know for the advice I need.

First off, character creation. I dont know how they did it, but they all built their pc's wrong. They had invested into their characteristics at creation as advised, however, they had not spent the required amounts to get to the levels they needed. Example, the wookie hired gun had starting characteristics of 5 brawn, 3 agility, 2 intelligence, 2 cunning, 3 wisdom, and 2 presence. Obviously, if you run the numbers, this is impossible at character creation. They all did this.

To make matters worse, the gm had been awarding them insane amounts of xp per session. The core rulebook recommends 20 to 30 xp per session depending. I know this is just a figure, but the gm was giving them upwards of 70 experience per session. They told me they had gotten 135 xp for just one session of three encounters. Needless to say, they leveled up really quick and the game did not scale so well. We just finished up session 10, they started with escape from mos shuuta, then the gm had his own story for a few sessions, and when I started as gm we went into the long arm of the hutt. They just destroy everying... I am not even doing any damage to them with the npc's. Two of the guys have soak of ten. Most guys in the game use blasters that deal 5 to 7 damage per hit plus extra success'.

They had also been building the dice pools wrong. I dont know where they came up with how they built their pools, but it was way off. They were building pools of 6 to 8 dice with characteristics and skills under five, mostly four. I have no idea what they were thinking, but we got that clarified now...

They also werent using strain right. They were only burning 1 strain per extra manuever, not two. They also werent using obligation at all, which is something that I imagine could be a house rule if decided, but basically they never had to worry about strain ever.

They had been killing the characters they build when they hit their wound thresh hold, not when it was exceeded, and they were just killing the pc's, not incapacitated with a critical injury, just dead. Lol. Oh well, got that clarified now too....

Finally, the gm was giving them whatever they wanted to buy without regard to rarity, where they were in the galaxy, etc. Basically he gave them tons of credits and let them have whatever they wanted to buy so I am dealing with very powerful guns, great armor, and all of which is modified multiple times. Ugh...

The problem I am having is they are way overpowered. They just dont have a challenge in combat at all. They are taking down huge groups of guys with multiple nemesis in combat. The first session i ran was just silly, the way they took down everything. So in the second session we just played I scaled up the difficulty by adding more baddies in the form of rivals and nemesis and bigger minion groups. Still couldnt even hit some of them with the soak. I need to find a way to make this a challenge again. It is just too easy and they are getting bored with it.

I have considered just adding adversary dice to all the npc's, but that feels a little generic to me. The whole point of achieving a high level in somethings is so you do feel very powerful and excell at that thing, so if I just make all the npc's really touch, it defeats the purpose of getting all the perks from skills and talent trees. Feel me? They are supposed to feel like bad ass' when they get high level, but they are already there after a few months.

What I am thinking of doing is just nerfing the whole party. Go through each character next session and make sure they are all built correctly from the start so the characteristics are correct. Then go through all the leveling they want to do with them so they all get it right and dont spend xp wrong. Now, when I jumped in the game it was 320 starting xp, right now I awarded thirty xp for each of the last sessions, so they would be at 380xp after character creation. This is still a lot of xp for playing a couple months, and from what I read, this game does not scale well at higher levels of experience, making it too easy. I am considering just saying they get 30xp per session for really good play, at session nine they could all rebuild their characters with about 270xp, which is still pretty good.

Another problem I kind of have is the gear. If they have been in the outer rim the whole time, it would be kind of tough to find really good gear, plus they got way too much credits from the last gm, taking away the hunger for treasure, loot, etc... They all got everything they need for the rest of the game!!! I have considered saying that they need to start with all new gear, giving them 5,000 credits per pc since they have been playing a while, and letting them have anything rarity 5 or lower they can buy, then one or two items rarity 6 or higher. I think this would work, but at the same time I don't really want to take their stuff away from them, that feels kind of cheap to me, plus I could see a few of them being upset by this. Oh the moral dillema I am facing... LOL.

Now, before you say anything, I know that creating interesting and difficult combat encounters requires more than tough npc's. I have read lots on making encounter interesting and more difficult with environmental effects, 3d space, cover, npc tactics, etc etc... I plan on doing all this and from past experience as a dm, I am pretty confident in myself as a creative combat designer...

I just need some advice. You guys think I should nerf them back to a normal level of xp and credits? Should I just throw larger minion groups at them and more nemesis? Should I just make all the npc's adversary 2 or 3 to make it harder? What would you do at this point?

Nuke it from orbit.

IOW, start a new campaign with fresh characters (at whatever level of XP and starting credits you feel is best).

Yep, start fresh, it sounds beyond fixing. If you downgrade everybody you risk cognitive dissonance..."this guy *used* to be able to do X, why can't he now?" At least with new characters there's no lingering prior history.

Of course new characters are somewhat feeble, if they need a perk to keep that sense of badassery there's nothing wrong with giving them a free spec, or extra XP for skills.

Start over from scratch and make sure every player actually reads the rules about game mechanics and character-building. This is honestly a thing that pisses me off beyond all reason, when the GM invests time to learn the game rules but the players put absolutely no effort into it. In this case though it doesn't sound like the previous GM learned the rules either.

If they don't want to start over I'd probably just bow out from GMing that game entirely. Too much of a mess to fix.

I'll throw my vote in the "start fresh" camp.

If you don't want to start fresh, I would definitely sit with the players and explain to them that there have been some misunderstanding with the rules (to avoid hard feelings don't accuse anyone or make it sound like you are). Explain to them that it's had a negative effect on the quality of the game play. All of the changes you will be making will be in order to bring everyone closer to how the rules were intended to play, which you feel will make the game both challenging and a lot more fun.

You might find that they did not like how everyone became too easy. Definitely go through each character's sheet with the player about all the issues you found. Again, don't be accusatory, just explain how its intended to be done and why there could be negative consequences for keeping it as is. If you need help with this, show them OggDude's character generator. All the rules are baked in so it's difficult to screw up.

As for the gear dilemma, there's not much you can do but be honest with them. If you attempt to deal with it any other way the players are going to become resentful. Explain to them that there's been a significant amount of power creep. Try and reason with them and meet them half way. If there's a deadly weapon or powerful armor, see if you can find something a bit more balanced to replace it. I've gone the 5K starting credits route and it's surprising how little you can get with that, but to the players it seems like a lot.

I would start over with fresh characters, BUT give them a "peace offering" of somewhere around 100 XP for post-character-gen spending. They have been playing for a while, after all.

.....if they hate the idea of a fresh start, start suggesting they make up an RP connection between their old characters and their new. Also you could throw in that the old characters were all slaughtered by some big baddy. Perhaps even make this the last session of the old campaign? This may help sidetrack their anger at the fresh start as they begin thinking up ideas such as their new character is a relative with revenge on their mind, etc.

Thanks so much for the advice, guys! It seems everyone has come to the same consensus here. I am in the same boat. I will talk to them about starting fresh. I am sure that we will all come to a reasonable resolution. I figure that if they all have developed a man crush on their characters and don't want to axe then yet, we could say anything like the empire imprisoned them for their crimes in solitary and they all got weak and wasted away in prison. Thanks again for the advice, I am happy to be a part of the community and look forward to helping anyone else out if they need advice as well.

(I kind of figured I would have to kill it, but now I don't feel like a total nerf herder for it.

I totally agree with the plan to start with new characters. However, you may consider giving them a last hurrah. Combat with a bunch of rancors, Sith Lords, crashing into a star destroyer, something like that. Let them know beforehand that you're starting a new game after this session. Tell them their new character will get some bonus Xp for having a glorious death. Let them use up all their gadgets and powers one last time and then wipe the slate clean, allowing their final sacrifice to play into the story for your new campaign. That should help out with keeping the group's cohesiveness a bit and give them some catharsis for their current characters.

That could be fun. It could also be a huge pain if nobody knows the actual rules and a ton of correcting during the session has to keep happening. Just saying.

I totally agree with the plan to start with new characters. However, you may consider giving them a last hurrah. Combat with a bunch of rancors, Sith Lords, crashing into a star destroyer, something like that. Let them know beforehand that you're starting a new game after this session. Tell them their new character will get some bonus Xp for having a glorious death. Let them use up all their gadgets and powers one last time and then wipe the slate clean, allowing their final sacrifice to play into the story for your new campaign. That should help out with keeping the group's cohesiveness a bit and give them some catharsis for their current characters.

This is how i would go out...

Have thier death be the catalyst and reason for the new partys creation!

It would keep a sence of continutiy for the players....

I totally agree with the plan to start with new characters. However, you may consider giving them a last hurrah. Combat with a bunch of rancors, Sith Lords, crashing into a star destroyer, something like that. Let them know beforehand that you're starting a new game after this session. Tell them their new character will get some bonus Xp for having a glorious death. Let them use up all their gadgets and powers one last time and then wipe the slate clean, allowing their final sacrifice to play into the story for your new campaign. That should help out with keeping the group's cohesiveness a bit and give them some catharsis for their current characters.

I like this way. It's more of a fun way to say goodbye.

One way to add to this is to just have them wake up as themselves (with corrected balance issues for starting characters) at Mos Shuuta having lost to the Gamorreans and actually being knocked out. Turns out they had a distorted group vision of a possible future. The vision was because they are all force sensitive. Give them access to one of the force trees for free with a few free force powers as a reward for their "envisioned" future. They get a reward for their previous actions and it doesn't hurt their continuity. Might even get them excited to face some of the encounters with "advanced knowledge."

I'd start fresh with new characters too, but if that is really difficult for roleplaying reasons (maybe they love their characters?) I would do a thing often seen in video games (of course, after the players agree!):

The PCs are kidnapped, almost killed, thrown into a death pit etc. and afterwards they are so demolished that they need to rebuild their skills etc. This way they are 'nerfed', or reduced to lower power level (100xp?), they can keep some of their talents/skills or even a single item.

And it's still fun - they remember they were powerful and now they're back to being afraid of stormtroopers but in time they'll be powerful again! Roleplaying wise it builds characters, gives them more story and hopefully a motivation (to get the guy who did it to them).

I'm with the start fresh crowd. I would frame it as "finishing up the campaign". Also, as Nimsim suggested, let them go out with a bang. Stage a huge final encounter worthy of a campaign ending. Then as awayputurwpn suggested give them a small, reasonable boost to their new characters as a "reward for successfully completing a campaign". This way they feel a sense of accomplishment and that they finished something rather than having something taken away, being punished or having the campaign arbitrarily shut down on them.