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've tried lots of things, house rules, etc.. nothing seems to work.. anyone else havee any ideas?

Give huge city stomping robots lots of soak? Retire them and make new characters? Change the focus of the game away from combat?

I've tried lots of things, house rules, etc.. nothing seems to work.. anyone else havee any ideas?

Easy - change the focus of the game. That Combat God might be an unstoppable force of nature when the shooting starts, but imagine the entire dinner party laughing at him because he used the wrong fork for the 3rd course. Put them in a situation where if the guns come out, the mission has already lost and see how well they fare. Run Jewel of Yavin where they have to rely on their wits instead of their quick draw.

Non-combat focus is a good choice, but try to focus on Soak or more small damage focus like a big quantity of small minion groups. They will have to focus on defense and tactics instead. Traps could be great too.

Also, do as people from FFG do with NPC creation: Forget the rules and build up what you need.

Now its a bit late but I suggest to you game XP planification next time. If your idea its to create a "month or weekend" campaign, feel free to give tons of XP to your players.

If you plan to play a long therm game (even years) be pretty cautious with XP. Give them NPC, plot or material rewards instead to compensate.

There is another more interventionist system where you decide what and when is added,increased or upgraded on players characters.

Also try to adapt XP to "common sense rule". For example, if one of your players characters is a master tailor/dancer (aka: non-combat "class") don't let him/her have 2Y on its combat pools if don't justify it. Even combat carreers must have some justification to improve them.

Hope I helped a bit

I've tried lots of things, house rules, etc.. nothing seems to work.. anyone else havee any ideas?

What house rules have you tried?

Combat in this game is basically a hit points system (with some options, like crits, changing things up). You will usually hit and be hit, defenses are just there to make the hit hurt a little less or to prevent a crit. This makes combat a resources management decision since, while you might win, you will almost certainly suffer wounds making the next combat encounter more challenging. The Doctor, Medic, and other specialties with certain talents can really mess with the balance here.

why do the rivals have to be equals? A bunch of guys who are just good enough to hit if the players dont use their defensive talents but not extremely good means that the talents are now useful, and having enough of them that the players cant just take them all out at once means it is now a fight.

yeah, it just sounds like you need to increase the stakes of what they're up against. i'm sure they'll tire of paper doll npcs, so just up the stakes before they get tired. have rivals attacking along with large groups of minions. a nemesis with a couple of rival bodyguards. if you're not increasing the difficulty of the npc's they're going up against, then you need to at least increase their numbers.

Hmmm... another suggestion. Increase Soak could be a problem cause to mechanics, it can create a lot of problems, but, if you increase Wounds and the value that Talents give (ONLY in some cases not every minion) this could be a nice choice too.

Remeber Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy games where you fight a boss with thousands of HP and after the battle he/she joins you with only a few HP? That's the spirit! XD

This happens already with Adversary talent. My player fight and Imperial Inquisitor with 2 Adversary and after the fight he charmed him and joined his cause... loosing those 2 Red dices from Adversary XD

ok things I have tried.. not all together.. and as things got worse I incrementally worked down these examples..

Soak only reducing damage by half up to is max e.g. soak = 8, if take 4 damage, 2 get through, 9 damage 5 gets through etc...

Removing Brawn from soak, yes they only get armour in soak

Allowing a new reaction that costs a manoeuvre 'duck' adds a setback to peoples roll who are trying to hit you.. like a reverse aim

Allow people to spent yellow dice to add purples to peoples roll who are trying to hit you..

both the last two only affect one attack

and finally dodge, sidestep etc.. increase the difficulty instead of upgrade....

This made it harder to hit people really trying to dodge out of the way, and when you get hit it hurts a lot.....

Still need more time to play test all these changes, but the current down side is there is very little purple dice being rolled, but dodging does have some meaningful effect rather than hit point attrition that just doesn't feel star warsy

Most of the rules seem to make the games natural favouring of offence even more pronounced.

As accuracy is cheap and already rapidly out strips difficulty.

Removing soak will only compound the "who ever goes first wins" problem.

But here is some handy "high level" advice. (its kinda universal)

1, Never use a singular boss or enemy if you can help it. No matter how big and bad you make something the party will drop a single enemy fast, with focus fire. Stick some bodyguards on it and give them enough skills to be a threat.

2, PCs will get ridiculously good at the things they do, this is ok. Skip unimportant dice rolls on things that they will do easily, and try to build scenarios which require the extreme level of skill, that they have.

3, PCs hate stun damage and non lethal weapons. Particularly in this game dropping strain is MASSIVELY more effective than dropping wounds, as it rapidly takes options away and makes using talents more of a gamble.

4, Pistols are for punks, unless there is a good reason use rifles as default weapons

Running a bi-weekly combat heavy campaign some things that I've noticed are:

1. That PC's tend to like to stay grouped together, and explosives can get them to scatter quickly and throw them off their game.

2. Always outnumber the PC's. They are quick to focus fire and have wonderful abilities to deal with small minions very quickly, so stack the odds. The more experience you get as a GM the more you learn where that challenge level is and isn't for the PC's.

3. Extreme range is a friend. A good sniper that they haven't noticed forces them to rush in to more dangerous situations to avoid his fire that is usually further (range wise) then theirs.

4. Find a way to incorporate tactics and other challenges then simple point and shoot. The room is being gassed and they didn't bring their masks or something similar.

5. Leader units to create PC tactics. I love this personally as I can justify my own reasoning for focus fire so long as my "commander" is still alive (and a reason why my PC's kill them off very quickly now).

As long as everyone is having fun with combat don't fret over it, but always try to create a challenge with it. I hate saying this but those mmorpgs that all the kids play, their end level content isn't a bad example of some stuff to add to combat encounters. Make them move around and make them think.