Ok the group I run has just finished its first season.. nice cliffhanger ending..

Rakghouls swarm over the race track that the party just won an epic battle race (part wipeout, part unreal tournament), the space station they destroyed in the Pilot episode has just jumped in and laid waste to there ship .. and their quick talking politico's has started to transform into a rakghoul......

I left them wanting for more... but I have a problem.. non plot related but with the party themselves.. they have over 400 exp and some of them are getting very very lethal.

This in itself I don't have a problem with.. the issue is they never miss. most have combat pools now at least 3y2g, and against standard differculty they never miss.. and equal rivals very rarely miss them...

its gotten to a point where dodging, sidesteps etc are almost pointless and combat has turned into who ever gets initative wins (almost) but it is a grind to who chews through wounds and gets scarey crits... the wookie rolled 280 on one crit....

I love this system.. just the combat just doesn't work...

I

Wait?!?................I feel like I've been here before?!?!.............

Tonight on Its The Mind, we examine the phenomenon of deja vu. That strange feeling we sometimes get that we've lived through something before, that what is happening now has already happened. . . .

Oskara got to about 550 xp (inc. initial build).

Highest base attack (before talents) was YYYG (tied between the smuggler, my bounty hunter and the marauder). We got into a lot of fights but tried to avoid them when we could. Not because we thought we'd die, but because it would draw attention to us (at which point stuff we couldn't protect ourselves from would occur - vehicle weapons vs. personal scale, swarms and swarms of minions, star destroyers when we tried to get away).

Even so, a jerk with a blaster could still ruin my day - I was just better at retaliating than I was at the start. So yeah, combat is nasty no matter what level of competence you have.

From my point of view, the combat system does what it should - in a fair fight, skilled chaps usually hit their mark, unskilled chaps are more random. Your problem seems to be that, given this, you're facing reduced challenge. A simple solution is to change the structure of fights - make them about more than defeating the enemy. Up the difficulty by giving them a different goal. Some ideas, here.

Sounds like it's time to ramp up your tactics and skill of opponents. Let the opponents be smarter and more dangerous. Vehicle weapons vs personal scale should be very scary. Set traps with proximity grenades and land mines. Overwhelming numbers of minions mixed with rival level leaders. Sure the PC will pop the minion group but the rival is still standing. Have the opponents use gear like personal shield, lay down smoke, shoot poison darts to apply debilitating effects. Give the enemies a medic droid who can remove wounds. Attack their stress levels with threats to make them spend advantage to heal versus going for the crit activation. Have the enemies hit and run, don't let them just stand in one spot and slug it out. Flip those destiny points to get some Red dice and go for the despair to break weapons. If the combat isn't unfair and scary for the PC's, look at whether it is really needed at all or can just be narrated to add some flavor to the story.

All of those suggestions are great if the GM has plenty of time to plan all that out. It can be a lot of work.

Combat is my chief beef with this game. The dice are supposed to help craft an interesting narrative, but there isn't much narrative when the Hired Gun in the group takes the first action and guns down all the enemies before anyone else can do anything. The Hired Gun in my group got to where he was doing around 16 damage per hit with around 3 hits using auto-fire. He'd smoke the minion groups and rivals in one action, and a couple of setbacks from situational modifiers would've made little to no difference.

I like it that combat is dangerous. I just wish that it would last a few more rounds to build more tension.

All of those suggestions are great if the GM has plenty of time to plan all that out. It can be a lot of work.

Combat is my chief beef with this game. The dice are supposed to help craft an interesting narrative, but there isn't much narrative when the Hired Gun in the group takes the first action and guns down all the enemies before anyone else can do anything. The Hired Gun in my group got to where he was doing around 16 damage per hit with around 3 hits using auto-fire. He'd smoke the minion groups and rivals in one action, and a couple of setbacks from situational modifiers would've made little to no difference.

I like it that combat is dangerous. I just wish that it would last a few more rounds to build more tension.

Out of curiosity, what's his attack skill?. We have played very little, but I was already considering beefing up defenses some ways to avoid this or some other solution. I'm considering too simply capping the skills lower so they cant overtake defenses so much, but I dont know how much is "very high"

I have two PCs at 500+ XP (the combat heavy PCs whose players have never missed a session), 2 in the 400s and a fifth about to clear 400.

The ones in the 500s are throwing 4-5 Proficiency with Boosts on their main skills. The ones in the 400s are not far behind that. I still have an easy enough time challenging them. Do I challenge them with the same pedestrian opposition they had to face when they were starting characters? Heck no!

The challenge and scale of their opponents both in and out of combat have scaled along with them and are more sophisticated in their approach, methods and resources than the stuff the PCs faced when they were sub-150XP no-names. To me the system is scaling perfectly fine. It is supposed to be Star Wars... at some point the PCs in your game are supposed to become Big **** Heroes/Protagonists.

I have two PCs at 500+ XP (the combat heavy PCs whose players have never missed a session), 2 in the 400s and a fifth about to clear 400.

The ones in the 500s are throwing 4-5 Proficiency with Boosts on their main skills. The ones in the 400s are not far behind that. I still have an easy enough time challenging them. Do I challenge them with the same pedestrian opposition they had to face when they were starting characters? Heck no!

The challenge and scale of their opponents both in and out of combat have scaled along with them and are more sophisticated in their approach, methods and resources than the stuff the PCs faced when they were sub-150XP no-names. To me the system is scaling perfectly fine. It is supposed to be Star Wars... at some point the PCs in your game are supposed to become Big **** Heroes/Protagonists.

That sounds good. All we've played are a few introductory sessions, but some things i dont know how i'll handle. For example, isnt a problem the fact that the defense stops going up? Do you use the adversary trait a lot for 2 or 3 dices of defense extra? Very high soaks? Masses of enemies? I mean, by RAW shooting someone at mid range will be 2P, 2P and 1B if he is in cover. Defense skills usually allow for an upgrade or extra black and little else, and the attacker will have the aim skills etc to counter that PLUS his 4-5 of proficency.

Defenses don't have to scale at the same rate as attacks. What should be scaling is WT and ST because targets will get hit.

Many of the Minions from the Core Rulebook have WT 5, while the Scouts from Beyond the Rim have WT 8. With large groups of such Minions, those few points of WT can add up.

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That sounds good. All we've played are a few introductory sessions, but some things i dont know how i'll handle. For example, isnt a problem the fact that the defense stops going up? Do you use the adversary trait a lot for 2 or 3 dices of defense extra? Very high soaks? Masses of enemies? I mean, by RAW shooting someone at mid range will be 2P, 2P and 1B if he is in cover. Defense skills usually allow for an upgrade or extra black and little else, and the attacker will have the aim skills etc to counter that PLUS his 4-5 of proficency.

Not sure if your concern is for the opposition or the PCs.

Adversary works well as a deterent, I find. That the Despair effect (as opposed to the Failure part) of the Challenge die can't be cancelled really changes how we tackle combat encounters - running out of ammo while surrounded by Minions because you couldn't resist a shot at the head honcho could really ruin your day.

For PCs... well, there are a lot of defensive talents out there that should keep them in the fight.

1. Armour Master, Enduring, Toughened/Grit, Resolve (Stun), Heroic Resilience, and even Dedication (if you're going with Brawn) all provide solid, reliable means of keeping your character alive.
2. Dodge, Defensive Stance (Melee), Improved Armour Master, Side Step (Ranged), Sixth Sense (Ranged), Superior Reflexes (Melee), the left-hand column of the "Sense" Force Power are less reliable - they may cause an attack to miss, or do less damage (through negation of success-based extra damage) or... do nothing - but may be more important in the long run.

The one thing that bugs me about the construction of the current Specialisations is just how rare Durable is. There's a lot of ranks of Lethal Blows dotted around, but its opposite is strangely absent. And Critical Hits are how you die.

Of course, there's "no defence like a good offence." You can gun 'em down faster than they can kill you, obviously. Less obviously is what you can do with any Advantages your roll generates. When we began play all we did with 'em was heal Strain and pass each other Boost dice or occasionally give a single bad guy a Setback. But take a look at the list of what else you can do with 'em! For 3 you could boost either your ranged or melee defence vs. everyone. For 2 you can get a free maneuver - like getting out of the line of sight! (This holds true for both the PCs and their enemies, of course. )

You've got a bunch of PCs that will handily win any fight they get into. Great.

Don't make fights the source of tension going forward.

One approach is to make the fights about something other than killing the enemy. Chris Chinn has a great list of combat stakes and you could use that.

Play up the consequences of fights. In the small scale, get the PCs worrying about collateral damage. For instance, in the Long Arm of the Hutt, my PCs were stymied when they discovered the attack on New Meen was led by the headman's son. Suddenly, lethal force was much less appealing. In the large scale, concentrate on what they do after they've won the fight. They've defeated the pirate captain. Now what? What do they do with the pirates? If the PCs just walk away, another pirate will step up to lead. What about the now-destitute civilians who were relying on the spoils of piracy to make ends meet?

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That sounds good. All we've played are a few introductory sessions, but some things i dont know how i'll handle. For example, isnt a problem the fact that the defense stops going up? Do you use the adversary trait a lot for 2 or 3 dices of defense extra? Very high soaks? Masses of enemies? I mean, by RAW shooting someone at mid range will be 2P, 2P and 1B if he is in cover. Defense skills usually allow for an upgrade or extra black and little else, and the attacker will have the aim skills etc to counter that PLUS his 4-5 of proficency.

Not sure if your concern if for the opposition or the PCs.

It was sort of both actually. Thanks a lot, very informative post. I never though of the Despair factor that way.

Using the extra maneuveur to just get out of line of sight, so simple and I never though of it . I've just used to get closer/further or go to cover.

You've got a bunch of PCs that will handily win any fight they get into. Great.

Don't make fights the source of tension going forward.

One approach is to make the fights about something other than killing the enemy. Chris Chinn has a great list of combat stakes and you could use that.

Play up the consequences of fights. In the small scale, get the PCs worrying about collateral damage. For instance, in the Long Arm of the Hutt, my PCs were stymied when they discovered the attack on New Meen was led by the headman's son. Suddenly, lethal force was much less appealing. In the large scale, concentrate on what they do after they've won the fight. They've defeated the pirate captain. Now what? What do they do with the pirates? If the PCs just walk away, another pirate will step up to lead. What about the now-destitute civilians who were relying on the spoils of piracy to make ends meet?

By the time the combat characters can breeze through combat, the social characters can breeze through social challenges, the techie characters can breeze through technical challenges, etc. This game does reach a point where challenging the group consistently with plausible opposition becomes very tricky.

Then go for implausible opposition. In a fantasy game, getting to high levels mean you tangle with gods, dragons, archmages and other powerful beings. No reason not to do the same (relatively speaking) in a Star Wars campaign. Let the newbie characters handle the small stuff, like smuggling cargo and sabotaging Imperial ship manufacturing capabilities. The high-level guys are busy beating down ancient Sith spirits and stopping Imperial super-soldier projects.

Implausible opposition - from time to time - can add to the campaign by mixing things up. When such becomes the norm, the game isn't what I signed up to play. IOW, when every stormtrooper has to be a Crimson Guardsman rotating out to field duty and every starship has to have cloaking devices (or some other extremely rare tech), the strain to my suspension of disbelief simply becomes too much for me to enjoy the game.

Implausible opposition - from time to time - can add to the campaign by mixing things up. When such becomes the norm, the game isn't what I signed up to play. IOW, when every stormtrooper has to be a Crimson Guardsman rotating out to field duty and every starship has to have cloaking devices (or some other extremely rare tech), the strain to my suspension of disbelief simply becomes too much for me to enjoy the game.

Why do they have to be Royal Guard? Can't you just up their Brawn (and soak) and wound threshold and give them ranks in Side Step or Dodge? If the pre-statted NPCs are too easy for your players, make them better. All stormtroopers are not equal; the 501st, for example, was clearly held to be the cream of the crop.

By the time the combat characters can breeze through combat, the social characters can breeze through social challenges, the techie characters can breeze through technical challenges, etc. This game does reach a point where challenging the group consistently with plausible opposition becomes very tricky.

So don't. Assume the characters can defeat any opponent they come across. But all their actions have consequences. Which consequences do they want, and which do they want to avoid? If they can solve every problem, people will come to them with problems to solve.

(Games like Nobilis and Amber deal with god-like PCs. Mine them for ideas on how to challenge powerful PCs.)

Wine at lunch. And it's warm. Sleepy now.

By the time the combat characters can breeze through combat, the social characters can breeze through social challenges, the techie characters can breeze through technical challenges, etc. This game does reach a point where challenging the group consistently with plausible opposition becomes very tricky.

So don't. Assume the characters can defeat any opponent they come across. But all their actions have consequences. Which consequences do they want, and which do they want to avoid? If they can solve every problem, people will come to them with problems to solve.

(Games like Nobilis and Amber deal with god-like PCs. Mine them for ideas on how to challenge powerful PCs.)

I'm not going to mine games with god-like PCs for ideas on how to challenge smugglers and outlaws roughing it in the fringes and underworlds of the star wars universe.

Seriously, the characters this game creates makes Han Solo and Boba Fett look like chumps despite all the experience they have in the Star Wars universe. I've seen a lot of suggestions for how to make combats more meaningful or challenging. A lot of them hinge upon making the game progressively more implausible. None of them tell me how to make it feel more like Star Wars. I hoped that Dangerous Covenants would offer some good suggestions. It basically told me what cinematic combat is and left it at that. In other words, it told me nothing that I didn't already know.

All of those suggestions are great if the GM has plenty of time to plan all that out. It can be a lot of work.

Combat is my chief beef with this game. The dice are supposed to help craft an interesting narrative, but there isn't much narrative when the Hired Gun in the group takes the first action and guns down all the enemies before anyone else can do anything. The Hired Gun in my group got to where he was doing around 16 damage per hit with around 3 hits using auto-fire. He'd smoke the minion groups and rivals in one action, and a couple of setbacks from situational modifiers would've made little to no difference.

I like it that combat is dangerous. I just wish that it would last a few more rounds to build more tension.

Out of curiosity, what's his attack skill?. We have played very little, but I was already considering beefing up defenses some ways to avoid this or some other solution. I'm considering too simply capping the skills lower so they cant overtake defenses so much, but I dont know how much is "very high"

His Agility was 5, Ranged (Heavy) was 3, and he had two ranks in True Aim. So he was routinely rolling five yellows and 1-2 blues.

Once your PCs are throwing 4-5 Proficiency at things, the scenes really need to stop being about the actions they are taking in and of themselves and focus on "why" they are even in those scenes. Granted, good GMing does that from the start, but you know... lowest common denominator of gaming and all that.

If the two mandalorians are throwing 4-5 Proficiency, a sterile combat encounter won't cut it. So the reason of the combat encounter becomes far more critical. Yeah, the PCs can shoot out a couple minion groups or a rival each round. That's a mechanical point.

The narrative comes in on the circumstances... like when the PCs find out they are on the train with a bunch of bad guys... and the train has a baradium bomb on it set to take out several city blocks once it reaches the station... and the train is on auto-pilot b/c the bad guys shot the driver and set the speed to increase to terminal speeds... so now the PCs have a bunch of things they need to try and do while enemies are coming at them in waves. Even if they can handily kill all of the opposition given time, they don't have time. Do they try and find the bomb so they can defuse it in time? Do they try and fight their way to the pilot controls to try and unlock the controls and stop the train? Or at least slow it down enough that they can jump off the train safely to save themselves? What if they get framed for the bombing? What if they stop it but the leader of the bad guys on the train that they killed has an even more powerful family member within the same organization. What if they save the city but are all over the local news when they are trying to keep a low profile? and so on...

The narrative is rarely ever from the dice of "how fast can I kill X number of dudes" and getting caught up in that way of thinking will lead one to believe that the game system is broken, when in fact it is the GM and Players who need to train up another Rank or two in their "Narrative RPGs" skill. Too many people mistake "oh I know how to roll dice and calculate damage" as narrative. That's the core problem with all these "This Combat is Broken" threads that keep cycling around the Deja Vu carousel.

This isn't a problem in this system alone, GMs have had this issue going back to the early days. Tank takes out your minions in round one? Add more minions! Tank takes out your nemesis in one shot? Buff him! Don't have time to prep? Copy & paste!

Once your PCs are throwing 4-5 Proficiency at things, the scenes really need to stop being about the actions they are taking in and of themselves and focus on "why" they are even in those scenes. Granted, good GMing does that from the start, but you know... lowest common denominator of gaming and all that.

If the two mandalorians are throwing 4-5 Proficiency, a sterile combat encounter won't cut it. So the reason of the combat encounter becomes far more critical. Yeah, the PCs can shoot out a couple minion groups or a rival each round. That's a mechanical point.

The narrative comes in on the circumstances... like when the PCs find out they are on the train with a bunch of bad guys... and the train has a baradium bomb on it set to take out several city blocks once it reaches the station... and the train is on auto-pilot b/c the bad guys shot the driver and set the speed to increase to terminal speeds... so now the PCs have a bunch of things they need to try and do while enemies are coming at them in waves. Even if they can handily kill all of the opposition given time, they don't have time. Do they try and find the bomb so they can defuse it in time? Do they try and fight their way to the pilot controls to try and unlock the controls and stop the train? Or at least slow it down enough that they can jump off the train safely to save themselves? What if they get framed for the bombing? What if they stop it but the leader of the bad guys on the train that they killed has an even more powerful family member within the same organization. What if they save the city but are all over the local news when they are trying to keep a low profile? and so on...

The narrative is rarely ever from the dice of "how fast can I kill X number of dudes" and getting caught up in that way of thinking will lead one to believe that the game system is broken, when in fact it is the GM and Players who need to train up another Rank or two in their "Narrative RPGs" skill. Too many people mistake "oh I know how to roll dice and calculate damage" as narrative. That's the core problem with all these "This Combat is Broken" threads that keep cycling around the Deja Vu carousel.

I don't disagree with any of this. Definitely, part of the problem in my group was that certain players were only interested in combat.

However, imagine a case where the players are about to run afoul of an imperial customs frigate. Ordinarily, I would think the best course of action would be to try to outrun them and avoid getting boarded. In this system, I find it more likely that the Hired Gun and Bounty Hunter in the group will repel boarders, launch a counter attack, and capture the enemy ship. After all, they wipe out a couple minion groups per character each round, and recovering from wounds is a stimpack per maneuver. Sure, maybe there's a bomb on board. Maybe the captain of the frigate is the group's pilot's cousin. There's a thousand ways to complicate the situation. Even if it isn't more complicated that an ordinary customs frigate, it should still be a very serious threat. You talk about raising the stakes. Maybe any situation where people start pulling guns should already have high enough stakes for the characters.

The way the game reads in the book is a game where the characters are going from job to job spending most of their money on repairs and upkeep while trying to stay a step ahead of the authorities. However in very short order their skills surpass that notion, which raises two questions for me: why are such skilled characters getting such a meager take on their work, or how did these guys get so far in the underworld so quickly? And as someone else said before, it's not just combat. In your example with the train, at that point the train is easy for the slicer to stop and the ace to pilot, the bomb is easy for the mechanic to disarm, the bomb is easy for the explorer to find, and the enemies are easy for the hired gun to kill. Our group played through Beyond the Rim, and whatever circumstance there was to complicate the narrative, someone in the group had no problem overcoming it in short order.

Once your PCs are throwing 4-5 Proficiency at things, the scenes really need to stop being about the actions they are taking in and of themselves and focus on "why" they are even in those scenes. Granted, good GMing does that from the start, but you know... lowest common denominator of gaming and all that.

If the two mandalorians are throwing 4-5 Proficiency, a sterile combat encounter won't cut it. So the reason of the combat encounter becomes far more critical. Yeah, the PCs can shoot out a couple minion groups or a rival each round. That's a mechanical point.

The narrative comes in on the circumstances... like when the PCs find out they are on the train with a bunch of bad guys... and the train has a baradium bomb on it set to take out several city blocks once it reaches the station... and the train is on auto-pilot b/c the bad guys shot the driver and set the speed to increase to terminal speeds... so now the PCs have a bunch of things they need to try and do while enemies are coming at them in waves. Even if they can handily kill all of the opposition given time, they don't have time. Do they try and find the bomb so they can defuse it in time? Do they try and fight their way to the pilot controls to try and unlock the controls and stop the train? Or at least slow it down enough that they can jump off the train safely to save themselves? What if they get framed for the bombing? What if they stop it but the leader of the bad guys on the train that they killed has an even more powerful family member within the same organization. What if they save the city but are all over the local news when they are trying to keep a low profile? and so on...

The narrative is rarely ever from the dice of "how fast can I kill X number of dudes" and getting caught up in that way of thinking will lead one to believe that the game system is broken, when in fact it is the GM and Players who need to train up another Rank or two in their "Narrative RPGs" skill. Too many people mistake "oh I know how to roll dice and calculate damage" as narrative. That's the core problem with all these "This Combat is Broken" threads that keep cycling around the Deja Vu carousel.

I don't disagree with any of this. Definitely, part of the problem in my group was that certain players were only interested in combat.

However, imagine a case where the players are about to run afoul of an imperial customs frigate.

Of course they can decide to take on the Imperial Customs Frigate if they have the skill to do it and for some reason decide to. Granted there are campaign level ramifications for taking hostile military action on Imperial personnel and assets. Even the best of criminals don't operate like mad dogs. Mad dogs attract unwanted attention and get put down eventually. This is why crime syndicates tend to keep under the radar for the most part and bribe law enforcement instead of just wantonly slaughtering them.

If the players decide to make murderhobo decisions, they should face the consequences... unless you want to run a murderhobo game.

The way the game reads in the book is a game where the characters are going from job to job spending most of their money on repairs and upkeep while trying to stay a step ahead of the authorities. However in very short order their skills surpass that notion, which raises two questions for me: why are such skilled characters getting such a meager take on their work, or how did these guys get so far in the underworld so quickly? And as someone else said before, it's not just combat. In your example with the train, at that point the train is easy for the slicer to stop and the ace to pilot, the bomb is easy for the mechanic to disarm, the bomb is easy for the explorer to find, and the enemies are easy for the hired gun to kill. Our group played through Beyond the Rim, and whatever circumstance there was to complicate the narrative, someone in the group had no problem overcoming it in short order.

That is the default starting situation described in the book. You are not beholden to use it as many people have run all manner of campaigns that aren't that in the game's short )so far) lifespan. Success and positions of power are not just about who is the best skilled. It takes a mix of preparedness, skill and luck to achieve great things. If your players can leverage their skills properly and make the right contacts and are careful about the sorts of Obligation they accrue then they can work away from their hand-to-mouth beginnings.

The one thing I do agree is that the core book does not take any space to explain to new GMs the ramifications of the level of XP awards they hand out in this system. I imagine that the sudden power spikes might come as a surprise to GMs who aren't used to evaluating game impacts when they do their read through of the rules. Using the default XP awards, PCs stop being small stakes protagonists in a reasonably short amount of time. It can take some by surprise that ten sessions in the PCs suddenly lay waste to a crime cartel hit squad that the GM thought would have been more than a speed bump.