Hi all,

While reading through Beyond the Rim I saw that all skill checks are presented with their difficulty i.e. one, two, three...purple dice, plus some suggestions for adding set back or boost dice. So far so good. Additionally, the adventure book, under the entry of most skill checks, also provides suggestions on how to spend triumphs, advantages, threats and despairs. The only way of rolling a despair is by including a red die in the dice pool, which according to the adventure book as written, can only happen if the GM flips a dark destiny token to upgrade the dice pool.

My question is, have any of you played this game (any adventure) with any of the EotE designers as GM? Which is their philosophy regarding skill checks? Do they upgrade skill checks often by spending dark side destiny points?

Haven't played with them but I have heard them discuss it on podcasts often enough to answer you; they do upgrade skillchecks quite often indeed.

My question is, have any of you played this game (any adventure) with any of the EotE designers as GM? Which is their philosophy regarding skill checks? Do they upgrade skill checks often by spending dark side destiny points?

I got play in a GenCon game last year run by Sam Stewart and Sterling Hershey last year, and Sam did make pretty frequent use of Destiny Points to upgrade the difficulty of PCs' checks when he felt the circumstances warranted it, but also to ensure that the PCs had Destiny Points to spend on their own check. Sterling didn't do so quite as often, though by his own admission that was more a case of him forgetting about the Destiny Pool than not wanting to spend them.

Our GM has been a long time non listener of Order 66. He has been a fan of SW forever and started with WEG in running / playing games.

He spends DP all the time when it seems warranted.

If things can go really bad (Despair), he makes sure to upgrade.

For GMs, a somewhat associated lesser known side note, if you are interested in tamping down players ability to generate Advantages, unless a Difficulty upgrade adds a die to the pool, it is better to leave purples in the dice pool then convert to reds for the purpose of Threat generation. It's an odd quirk of the dice and their make up. Obviously if say through Adversary ranks a dice pool is already all Challenge dice, then flipping a DP to add a purple makes sense. In addition Challenge dice are far more likely to generate Failures, it is just in the instance of wanting to see Threats generated that a purple is better than a red.

This has been your morning Star Wars EoE dice probability tip of the day..............good gaming all.............

http://maxmahem.net/wp/star-wars-edge-of-the-empire-die-probabilities/

For GMs, a somewhat associated lesser known side note, if you are interested in tamping down players ability to generate Advantages, unless a Difficulty upgrade adds a die to the pool, it is better to leave purples in the dice pool then convert to reds for the purpose of Threat generation. It's an odd quirk of the dice and their make up.

Yeah, I don't understand that either. All the good dice generate Advantage at the same rate (roughly 15 or 16 per 24 rolls). The Difficulty should have 4 or 5 Threats instead of 6.

I got play in a GenCon game last year run by Sam Stewart and Sterling Hershey last year, and Sam did make pretty frequent use of Destiny Points to upgrade the difficulty of PCs' checks when he felt the circumstances warranted it, but also to ensure that the PCs had Destiny Points to spend on their own check. Sterling didn't do so quite as often, though by his own admission that was more a case of him forgetting about the Destiny Pool than not wanting to spend them.

Donovan, thanks for the answer. It is good to know how they thought their game. Of course at the end it is a matter of individual taste, but I suspected from reading the published adventure of BtR that they designed the game having in mind a lot of difficult upgrading (and or back and forth destiny points flipping).

Two side questions if I can

1) in the games you played with Sam and Sterling, did the players (you for example) tend to counteract the difficulty upgrade with an upgrade ability by immediately spending a light side point?

2) Were Sam and Sterling also upgrading skill / difficulty during combat by flipping destiny points?

Thanks a lot

Yepes

Yepesnopes,

On #1, since the rules don't permit the player to flip a Destiny Point after the GM does when the player is the one making the roll, the answer would be no. So by the time Sam or Sterling spent a Destiny Point to upgrade the difficulty, the player has already passed on the choice to upgrade their dice pool.

On #2, they were spending Destiny Points to upgrade difficulties, usually with the case being "here's the difficulty at X number of purple dice, but I'm going to flip a Destiny Point to upgrade it." I don't recall any instances of either GM announcing they were upgrading the difficulty just because.

Hedge, the dice were designed this way on purpose. As a game designer (Jay Little in this case) makes choices on probable outcomes, he or she has to decide what they want the most statistically likely outcome to be. In this case, the team decided that they wanted success with threat to be the most likely outcome. This has a sort of star wars feel to it, you get the big task done, but SOMETHING goes wrong. You locked the stormtroopers out, but you blasted the bridge controls, You made the piloting check, but you lost your rectenna dish, etc etc. The idea was never to have the statistical liklihood of a neutral roll where threat and advantage cancel out. All things equal (dice type wise), you should succeed with threat more often than not.

For GMs, a somewhat associated lesser known side note, if you are interested in tamping down players ability to generate Advantages, unless a Difficulty upgrade adds a die to the pool, it is better to leave purples in the dice pool then convert to reds for the purpose of Threat generation. It's an odd quirk of the dice and their make up.

Yeah, I don't understand that either. All the good dice generate Advantage at the same rate (roughly 15 or 16 per 24 rolls). The Difficulty should have 4 or 5 Threats instead of 6.

In this case, the team decided that they wanted success with threat to be the most likely outcome. This has a sort of star wars feel to it, you get the big task done, but SOMETHING goes wrong. You locked the stormtroopers out, but you blasted the bridge controls, You made the piloting check, but you lost your rectenna dish, etc etc. The idea was never to have the statistical liklihood of a neutral roll where threat and advantage cancel out. All things equal (dice type wise), you should succeed with threat more often than not.

The point was that Difficulty dice generate more Threats than Challenge dice (18 per 24 rolls vs 16). So upgrading a Difficulty to a Challenge will produce more Failures but less Threats. Whereas upgrading a Ability to a Proficiency will produce more Successes but the same number of Advantages.

I don't think that is something most GMs realize.

Ahhh, I wasn't aware of that myself, though I suppose it does fall in keeping with the idea that adding challenge dice makes it harder to achieve success? It was certainly intentional, but thanks for pointing it out! Learn something new every day!