House Rules

By Lancer999, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

3. Stuning: Anyone familiar with Exalted or Scion will recognize that term. Basically, the more cool/awesomely you describe what you're about to do, the bigger of a benefit I'll give you. Don't just say, "I'm going to try and intimidate the predator animal attacking the civilians" say "I'm going to ignite my saber, drag the blade along the ground, sparking up gravel and dust as it turns them to plasma heated gas, and screaming like a rancor!" "Hell yeah! That's what I'm talking about! Have a boost die for that!" It encourages more creative descriptions from the players, and in general, makes the game more dramatic, cinematic, and awesome. Which is what Star Wars is all about.

I honestly thought this was already a "rule rule" not a house rule. As a GM, I am regularly asking my players to "Give me an excuse to give you a boost", especially when they're rolling without any Proficiency dice.

3. Stuning: Anyone familiar with Exalted or Scion will recognize that term. Basically, the more cool/awesomely you describe what you're about to do, the bigger of a benefit I'll give you. Don't just say, "I'm going to try and intimidate the predator animal attacking the civilians" say "I'm going to ignite my saber, drag the blade along the ground, sparking up gravel and dust as it turns them to plasma heated gas, and screaming like a rancor!" "Hell yeah! That's what I'm talking about! Have a boost die for that!" It encourages more creative descriptions from the players, and in general, makes the game more dramatic, cinematic, and awesome. Which is what Star Wars is all about.

I honestly thought this was already a "rule rule" not a house rule. As a GM, I am regularly asking my players to "Give me an excuse to give you a boost", especially when they're rolling without any Proficiency dice.

Yup. Alluded to in the dice mechanics section.

I tend to avoid House Rules but I do have a couple.

A minimum of one (1) Damage per hit regardless of Soak, Unarmed Brawl does a minimum of 1 Strain instead. This only affects personal scale.

Any Talent, Mod, or Attachment that effects the Advantage cost to activate a Quality only affects the first instance of any roll, further activations are the normal Advantage cost.

3. Stuning: Anyone familiar with Exalted or Scion will recognize that term. Basically, the more cool/awesomely you describe what you're about to do, the bigger of a benefit I'll give you. Don't just say, "I'm going to try and intimidate the predator animal attacking the civilians" say "I'm going to ignite my saber, drag the blade along the ground, sparking up gravel and dust as it turns them to plasma heated gas, and screaming like a rancor!" "Hell yeah! That's what I'm talking about! Have a boost die for that!" It encourages more creative descriptions from the players, and in general, makes the game more dramatic, cinematic, and awesome. Which is what Star Wars is all about.

I honestly thought this was already a "rule rule" not a house rule. As a GM, I am regularly asking my players to "Give me an excuse to give you a boost", especially when they're rolling without any Proficiency dice.

Yup. Alluded to in the dice mechanics section.

It is? Oh, well sweet then. Good on FFG to use that concept to encourage it :D Apparently I just glossed over that part.

1. The GM also rolls for Destiny Points: My group is just 2 players, and sometimes, it means the DP pool is ridiculously low. So, I toss in a die too just to try and up the numbers. Works fine for smaller than average groups.

Our group has always done this one. Are you sure this is a house rule?

GMs don't roll DP RAW. Not a bad HR though.

GMs don't roll DP RAW. Not a bad HR though.

Our last session started with only two PCs, who rolled 2 destiny points. I was tempted to roll to beef the pool up. I may adopt this rule, at least when the number of players is limited.

1. The GM also rolls for Destiny Points: My group is just 2 players, and sometimes, it means the DP pool is ridiculously low. So, I toss in a die too just to try and up the numbers. Works fine for smaller than average groups.

Our group has always done this one. Are you sure this is a house rule?

I don't recall it being mentioned in the rules. IIRC, it says every player rolls a die to determine Destiny Point pool. I could be wrong, sure. I'll be the first to admit I don't know the rules inside and out, and have no intention of ever doing so. I run them how I like, mostly sticking to RAW, and try to have fun with it. But, given how rules lawery one of my players is, I'm pretty sure he would've pointed it out that it was RAW. But again, could be wrong. *shrugs*

GMs don't roll DP RAW. Not a bad HR though.

According to the pirate, no it's not RAW :D But yeah, it's really handy if you have a small group, to help increase the pool size a bit.

Edited by KungFuFerret

Obviously, GMs aren't players. Oh, wait. Core says they are.

Look it up.

p. 27 EoE CRB

"To determine the current Destiny pool, at the beginning of each game session, each player with a PC rolls one Force Die (the GM does not roll a Force Die)."

Obviously, GMs aren't players. Oh, wait. Core says they are.

Look it up.

Goooood, I can FEEEELLL your sarcasm!

Force users can flip a DP once per session to use a basic Force power they don't possess yet. This is to help with the narrative feeling of discovering new force powers because once they buy it they use it all the time :)

GMs don't roll DP RAW. Not a bad HR though.

Not RAW, but I definitely use it for a 1 or 2 player session. Just MHO, but a pool size of 4 is kind of optimal for a small group (3 or less).

Honestly when I first started I rolled them. Dunno why the devs chose not to include the GM.

Force users can flip a DP once per session to use a basic Force power they don't possess yet. This is to help with the narrative feeling of discovering new force powers because once they buy it they use it all the time :)

You could maybe benefit from one of the optional rules introduced in the Keepers of the Peace book. Where you let a player pick a talent/force power/whatever to start "training", and they can use it during the game sessions, even though they haven't bought it yet. But, they have to pay some cost. Either take some strain every time they use it, or suffer setback dice/upgraded difficulties/both when they use the skill, etc. To illustrate how it's hard for them to do it. But, it lets them pick up something earlier than normal. It can even be several talents down a chain if they want, as long as they pay the cost.

Hello,

Seeing as some people find the class system restrictive I was thinking of introducing the following house rule into my game and wanted the communities opinion.

Rule: Players can substitute any other talent for the Dedication talent in their tree.

Given how new talents are always being introduced and some player concepts just want a little something from another tree or some cool action to take I felt this was a good approach. Opinions?

I like the thought of that idea. It would be a major trade off to give up a stat point, and I doubt very many people would do it. You might want to consider allowing swaps on force rating talents too.

This might lead to unintended combos, and you should watch out for some of them. But if you limit it to non-ranked talents, that could help out. (I'm looking at True Aim and Enduring)

They should also make sense with the character. Otherwise I could see almost everyone picking up Tinkerer or Jury Rigged.

I'm on the fence about whether to allow a dedication to swap for a force rating though. That could be a nice feature, but could lead to problems, too.

Hello,

Seeing as some people find the class system restrictive I was thinking of introducing the following house rule into my game and wanted the communities opinion.

Rule: Players can substitute any other talent for the Dedication talent in their tree.

Given how new talents are always being introduced and some player concepts just want a little something from another tree or some cool action to take I felt this was a good approach. Opinions?

Maybe. Case by case.

Given how new talents are always being introduced and some player concepts just want a little something from another tree or some cool action to take I felt this was a good approach. Opinions?

I think it's simpler to just waive the cost of the new spec that has the desired talent. The point of the surcharge is to help the GM prevent people from bouncing around picking up the low-hanging fruit, but if the players are reasonable and don't flit from tree to tree, the surcharge isn't really necessary.

These are houserules I use:

Vehical scale
Vehicals of sillouette 1 through 4 do x5 damage to character scale targets instead of x10, and receive 1/5 damage instead of 1/10. Double all hull and system strain values for sil 1-4 vessels. Sil 5+ Capital scale ships are still x10, and do double damage to (and receve half from) Vehicals. (This is a stealth buff to Move Object- a thrown sil 2 speeder can now damage an armor 3 tie)

Force Seek Nerf
You must have some kind of recent connection to the seek target- a belonging, a hair, something more significant than a memory, which is all the power in the book requires. You know how this psychic power supposed to work.

No Force Unleashed Move power
The maximum sillouette you can lift with the move power is the same as your number of Move: Strength upgrades. Each pip spent only increases the object size by 1 sillouette. You need the Control power to make attacks (either thrown objects or "force slam") with Move object, otherwise it's just large slowly moving objects getting in people's way. And creatures generally have a chance to resist being directly lifted (and dropped), like Adversaries do, depending on the situation.

True Aim nerf
The True Aim action no longer gains the blue die from "aiming normally." Precise Aim gets it instead.

I call it "Upping your Pool"

Players get an extra 50 XP that must be used towards characteristics

Jedi Players get an extra 30 XP that must be used tow ar ds characteristics and an extra 20 XP that must be used towards force powers

this allows for more customization in case somewhere down the road the hired gun wants to become a doctor; as well as a baseline of good characteristics for campaigns that begin with the knowledge that they will be getting 600+ XP. Keep it nice and interesting and i will be using another house rule i saw on here as well to make specing interesting as well:

"We eliminated Non Class Skills. We still pick a career and specs for the free starting skills but we do not charge extra for buying skills in another field. And this leads into the next house rule. I don't know if we have had an instance where someone got a talent that gave them more class skills. In that case, as a GM I would just say they have the talent much like other permanent non ranked talents.

We threw out the cost for buying a new spec. Instead, PCs qualify for a new spec by buying two of the four spec skills up to level 2. This give the feeling of training into the spec or Unlocking access to it through skill use. This does mean that you can wind up qualifying for more than one spec but to my group this doesn't mean much since spreading your talents between many specs just means you are being more of a Jack of all Trades instead of a specialist. I did add in that the original spec they chose must also have two level 2s before they buy into a new spec. This let's anyone reverse engineer their character without needing to know which spec was first (since there are no non-class skills)."

Also, not much of a house (well maybe depends on your POV) but it always bothered me that RAW there is only Knowledge (outer Rim) and Knowledge (core worlds) for someone like me who knows a little too much about star wars i added 6 new skills:

Knowledge (Deep core)
Knowledge (Colonies)
Knowledge (Inner Rim)
Knowledge (Expansion region)
Knowledge (Mid Rim)
Knowledge (Western Reaches) < - i only use this one in a canon only setting.

additional Knowledge deep core can only be learned as a non career skill

Edited by AgniAvis72
5 hours ago, AgniAvis72 said:

Also   , not much of a house (well maybe depends on your POV) but it always bothered me that RAW there is only Knowledge (outer Rim) and Knowledge (core worlds) for someone like me who knows a little too much about star wars i added 6 new skills:

Knowledge  (Deep  core)
Knowledge (Colonies)
Knowledge (Inner Rim)
Knowledge (Expansion re  gion)
Knowledge (Mid Rim) 
Knowledge (Western Reach  es) < - i only use this one in a canon only setting. 

This reduces each of the "geography" Knowledge skills to being so niche that they're not worth investing in.

Also, there are plenty of regions more unique than the Western Reaches if you want to start doing that. It's a Pandora's box: Hutt Space, Chiss Space, Corporate Sector, etc.

A new one I just implemented recently:

  • Your character belongs first to Star Wars and its Galaxy, and then to you. If you Create, Do, or Hint at anything that doesn't fit, it will be invalidated.
1 hour ago, Archlyte said:

A new one I just implemented recently:

  • Your character belongs first to Star Wars and its Galaxy, and then to you. If you Create, Do, or Hint at anything that doesn't fit, it will be invalidated.

Curious how you implement and enforce this. Without any further context, this rule sounds draconian and counter-fun.

Just now, Icosiel said:

Curious how you implement and enforce this. Without any further context, this rule sounds draconian and counter-fun.

You do it by working with your players to have a culture for your game in which everyone agrees to strive toward a goal of simulating something. This kind of thing does not have to be one oppressor and x amount of victims as the false assertion usually goes. If there is no injured party there is no injury.