Hi guys, I played the EoTE beginner set last week and will be running the first session of a new campaign for a few friends this week. So far the system seems easy enough to learn, and captures the dynamic, heroic aspects of Star Wars very well. I like the idea of "screen wiping" over boring parts to keep the pace high and the story exciting.

Anyway I had two rule questions I'd like some help with:

1. Two-Weapon Combat (pg 210-211): So you basically add +1 Difficulty die, and if the player hits with 2+ Advantages they can spend those to have their offhand weapon hit. My question is on the +1 damage/success, is that PER WEAPON or total? As in two Blaster Pistols (6 dam) hitting on 3 successes would be 6+6+3+3 or 6+6+3?

Also for a single additional purple die there really doesn't seem to be much downside to dual wielding? Are there any talents or abilities to support dedicated single pistol fighting? Has anyone experimented with the Aim maneuver being allowed only for single weapons?

2. The book recommends 10 XP per session with +5 for good roleplaying or hitting a milestone. But what about financial guidelines? What do people normally give out for credits? Is it a traditional D&D style "loot the dead!", or do people tend to give equipment directly based on the story, or what?

Thanks!

In regards to the dual-wielding thing, yes, you add the successes to each shot. So in your example it would be two shots doing 9 damage each.

That extra difficulty die can really be a stinker to someone duel-wielding. If you twirl the die in your fingers, you'll notice that it has more threats than failures on it. When your goal is to generate two advantage, those additional threat that you're likely to get are really gonna cut your plans short. It's tricky for low XP characters to consistently dual-wield. Higher XP characters, though, aren't really going to feel that minor addition of a difficulty die. But at that point they have become so good with light ranged weapons that there really isn't any reason for them to be using only one blaster, as you pointed out. So what that means is that only really cool and experienced badasses are going to be dual-wielding, which totally fits into the Star Wars feel.

Welcome, and glad you like the game

1) that would be 6+3 for the first hit, and 6+3 for the second, but Soak is applied to each hit. The additional difficulty does have a pretty good impact. If you have Agility 4 you need at least 2 skill ranks to make it worthwhile, if you have Agility 3 you need 3 ranks to be hitting consistently. Note that if you're using your advantages to hit, you're not using them to crit...or make use of other weapon qualities. If you're finding the opponents too easy, just add more minions, make good use of cover, etc. Shooting at an enemy with the Adversary Talent comes with its own dangers.

2) We play infrequently, so I give a lot more XP than that. As for money, everybody will deal with this differently. The mechanical crunch is there if you want to make the players count credits, but I usually hand-wave light purchases like food, but make the players keep track of bigger items like hull repairs.

Okay cool thanks for the clarifications on the dual wield damage. I had forgotten that Soak would apply to both, so that brings the power down a bit. Right now one player has Agility 4 and 1 rank in Ranged Light, but only a single pistol, so I'll be interested to see when they switch over and how it goes.

I am a bit sad that single pistol isn't viable later in a campaign, since we have a support Droid character and two pistols really wouldn't match well. Basically imagine C3P0 dual wielding, haha.

Sounds like one option for credits is the hand waving approach you mention whafrog, which I've seen in other sci-fi/modern games. We didn't raise the starting obligation so the 500 base credits didn't go very far, so even food would be tough initially, but I could see eventually how a group could become established enough to only worry about big, non-incidental purchases.

Single pistol is certainly viable later in the game. As said, if you're spending advantages on hitting a second time, you aren't spending those advantages getting a critical, or triggering a weapon quality. As the players get better equipment and start modding it, a single pistol might still be better: you'll have more advantages to work with, and sometimes triggering a critical is far better than more damage.

For the credits, it's not about size of the group, more the tone you want to take in your game. If you want them lean and hungry, say like the crew in Firefly, then certainly make them count credits, it's all part of the flavour. The group could be really top notch in their fields, but still have a good reason to be broke. I've been handwaving in my game partly because there haven't been a lot of opportunities to go shopping yet (the equipment they've been "finding" has been sufficient), and partly because my particular group of players doesn't really care that much about poring through the book looking at equipment.

I am a bit sad that single pistol isn't viable later in a campaign, since we have a support Droid character and two pistols really wouldn't match well. Basically imagine C3P0 dual wielding, haha.

Single Pistols are still very viable, just in different ways.

Single pistols leave a hand free, don't need as many maneuvers to draw (especially with quick draw, which only works ona single weapon/item), have lower difficulty increasing odds of success, and don't need advantage to activate, allowing those advantages to be spent elsewhere.

The dual wielder is more likely to dump on WT, but the single shooter is going to be able to do other things, crit more often, and crit harder or generate more advantageous effects.

Dang it Frog! Ninjaed...

Well that sounds hopeful, like I said I've just done the beginner box so I'm more imaging issues we might run into. Sounds like they end up being non-issues though Thanks for the clarification and help.

Also I'm impressed with the speed of replies here and generally liveliness of the forums. Definitely nice to have a solid community around an RPG.

I am a bit sad that single pistol isn't viable later in a campaign, since we have a support Droid character and two pistols really wouldn't match well. Basically imagine C3P0 dual wielding, haha.

Single pistol is totally viable. Two Weapon Combat is not as good as auto-fire. Auto-fire can give you three, four, five, or more attacks, all of which hit and do damage (minus the soak). But TWC only gives you two separate weapons, and each one usually only hits once.

So, give that droid a blaster capable of auto-fire, and he can be a serious menace! Start with the list of energy weapons at http://swrpg.viluppo.net/equipment/weapons/category/1/ and go from there.

Oh, and $DEITY help you if they ever manage to Jury-Rig that auto-fire blaster to reduce the cost of activating auto-fire. They'll be a one-droid army that mows down everything in sight!

Do you know offhand if there is a Ranged Light weapon that has Autofire? Is it two handed like a rifle? The weapon list in the core rulebook is a bit lacking so it seemed like either Heavy with a rifle or Light with two pistols.

Yup. There is th

Do you know offhand if there is a Ranged Light weapon that has Autofire? Is it two handed like a rifle? The weapon list in the core rulebook is a bit lacking so it seemed like either Heavy with a rifle or Light with two pistols.

That's why I pointed you to the page at http://swrpg.viluppo.net/equipment/weapons/category/1/?order_by=damage so that you can see every single known Energy weapon that has been published by FFG in any of their Star Wars books.

Immediate options are the Merr-Sonn IR-5 "Intimidator" Blaster Pistol, Blastech SE-14r Light Repeating Blaster, and the Riot Gun (if you let him have one, it's not normally available to players).

If you want to let them convert a Rifle using Ranged Heavy into a Carbine/Pistol using Ranged Light, they could add a Czerka H9 Pistol Grip modification (see <http://swrpg.viluppo.net/equipment/attachments/370/>) and with some other mods (see <http://swrpg.viluppo.net/equipment/attachments/category/24/>) they could increase the Pierce rating, etc...

as for monetary. Don't sweat the small stuff. Usually they can find spare credsticks in the pockets of people they kill. These will cover incidentals. the Encumbrance rules kind of prevent looting the bodies for a few hundred credits by selling off their weapons.

I usually limit rewards to 10000 credits or so. My players had the $50000 from Long arm of the hutt, and only have about 20k of that left after scrubbing the transponders on the Krayt fang and paying people to make it legit. They really don't have enough credits to do speculative trading and are forced at the moment to do drop point shipments which only earn them 1000 credit profit or so after a run. Buying an astromech droid was a recent big purchase.

Instead of creating another thread I wanted to ask another question here.

The strain effect from the Stun Setting ignores Soak, correct? And Minions take Wounds instead of Strain. So wouldn't enabling the Stun Setting be better against anything but a Nemesis?

The reason I ask is the Droid mentioned earlier, a Doctor, will probably try to focus on nonlethal. But against minions...Stun is MORE lethal? I guess the Short range only balances it a bit, as do potential narrative consequences.

It inflicts strain the same way other weapons inflict damage. Soak is still there.
However: look at the Doctor's Talent Pressure Point. It ignores soak.

Turned out people disagree. Go with what they say.
http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/99283-stun-active/

Instead of creating another thread I wanted to ask another question here.

The strain effect from the Stun Setting ignores Soak, correct? And Minions take Wounds instead of Strain. So wouldn't enabling the Stun Setting be better against anything but a Nemesis?

The reason I ask is the Droid mentioned earlier, a Doctor, will probably try to focus on nonlethal. But against minions...Stun is MORE lethal? I guess the Short range only balances it a bit, as do potential narrative consequences.

Soak applies to Stun settings. There are items like Shock Gloves and the Charge suit that have a weapon effect Stun rating, both are 3 I believe. If you get the Advantages (2 I think), to activate that, the listed Stun rating causes Strain directly.

As for an economy, we went with a very Fireflyesque feel for our game. We don't get to worked up about food and the little things, but keeping us players 'hungry' has been a lot of fun.

Little things like the Pilot barley missing an over hang of rock and ripping off the sensor array enlisted a lot of RP hilarrity at the table. That little mishap cost us our ship fund and then some.

Keep them hungry for a bit and see hoe it pans out. If they seem bored you can always ramp up their findings / earnings. Going the other way seems forced and kind of like a punishment.

The basic guidelines for money are that unless it matters to the storyline you can ignore it.

Basic food and water while docked in a space port: just ignore it.

Food and water out in the middle of nowhere where both are really scarce or if it is central to the plot: make them pay for it(or scrounge around for it, gotta use that survivalist tree)

Instead of creating another thread I wanted to ask another question here.

The strain effect from the Stun Setting ignores Soak, correct? And Minions take Wounds instead of Strain. So wouldn't enabling the Stun Setting be better against anything but a Nemesis?

The reason I ask is the Droid mentioned earlier, a Doctor, will probably try to focus on nonlethal. But against minions...Stun is MORE lethal? I guess the Short range only balances it a bit, as do potential narrative consequences.

Soak applies to Stun settings. There are items like Shock Gloves and the Charge suit that have a weapon effect Stun rating, both are 3 I believe. If you get the Advantages (2 I think), to activate that, the listed Stun rating causes Strain directly.

To tack on to 2P51's excellent answer, don't forget forget about talents allow you to stun. Those usually call out if you ignore soak or not Pressure Point ignores soak while Stunning Blow (is that the talent's name?) doesn't.

It's confusing because there are two types of stun. Check out the wepon abilities section of the CRB for more information about stun. IIRC, passive stun (such as stun damage on a blaster) has soak applied while active stun (such as the shock gloves) ignores soak.

Both Minions and Rivals take wounds instead of strain. Sometimes doing strain damage against a Nemesis is better than wound damage because the ST is much lower than the WT. Gotta love being able to punch out a Rancor easier than shooting it to death. The general forum consensus seems to be that stun is MORE leathal in general, due to the ease of dropping high WT Nemesis. Also, the Droid doctor might want to look at the Pressure Point talent if he wanted to do nonlethal damage.

Don't forget that stuning opponents may be dangerous to a party. Every enemy that is left alive is someone who saw you. They can raise the alarm while you're still doing your dirty work or they can inform on you with the Imperials or rival gangs.