So I was thinking about ways that the PCs could spend Threat from NPC rolls.

Ejecting from Starships

PCs can spend Threat to eject from their fighters or freighters. Because of the order of events, the PCs must decide to eject in Step 5 which is after hits are determined but before criticals are rolled so they'll have to guess and might eject a bit too early.

One Threat can be used to eject from ships with superior or bidirectional ejection system when the pilot is wearing a spacesuit. For example, most TIE Fighters.

Two Threats can be used on other ships where the pilot is wearing a spacesuit such as TIE Bombers and most Clone vessels.

Three Threats are for typical starfighters like Y-Wings and Headhunters.

Four Threats are needed for Sil 4 ships with escape pods.

A character in an ejection seat can make one Fly maneuver at Speed 2 on his next turn but no maneuvers after that. An escape pod can make Fly maneuvers, also at Speed 2, for as long as the combat lasts. (in effect the escape pod is a new vehicle)

Nice concept. I would suggest though that the escape pods are unlikely to have much in the way of speed or maneuverability. 2 seems to high.

I'd argue that escape pods are designed to go decently fast. After all, if you're trying to get away from an attack and/or an exploding ship with a fusion reactor, you're gonna want to make fast getaway.

So speed is important for an escape pod, but maneuverability not so much. Maybe give it some negative handling.

I'd argue that escape pods are designed to go decently fast. After all, if you're trying to get away from an attack and/or an exploding ship with a fusion reactor, you're gonna want to make fast getaway.

So speed is important for an escape pod, but maneuverability not so much. Maybe give it some negative handling.

I can buy that logic.

I picked Speed 2 because that's the slowest speed where the escape pod can move from Close to Short range in one maneuver.

Escape pods should have a bad handling but, more importantly, a very low Strain theshold so it can't do lots of double moves. That will help make it's movement more predictable and keep it from doing lots of Evasive Maneuvers.

Some notes:

- Do TIEs have ejection seats? For some reason I had the impression they did not.

- Ejection seats in say Y-Wings might have some minor manuevering capabilities, but it doesn't have an engine. It's got the single burst to clear the blast radius, then you are just EV and hoping for a pickup before you freeze or run out of air. The Legends material doesn't seem to address th efact that you'd be ballistic at that point. So the chair has to have some sort of stablizing jets to keep a pilot somewhat close to the engagement zone and not spiraling into the abyss

- This is for the PCs? This might work better if you were mixing in the X-Wing game for space combat. If Julie's Headhunter gets toasted, she's going to end up in an ejection seat by the nature of being a PC (and therefore a Big **** Hero). Genreally though I think this would work better for NPCs on the PC's attack rolls.

For PC hero's they should always have the option of ejecting, or trying to hold the ship together. To make it truely cinematic you can roll to find out how many mementos (Picture of Girlfriend, Fuzzy dice, bubblegum, victory cigar) they can save before ejecting from their ship

Ejection seats should really only have the thrust to clear the ship.

Escape pods should have 2 Phases of movement. The Ejection would be speed two to get it away from the ship mostly from charges on the ship itself or some sort of accelerator. Then speed 1 and -2 handling afterwards. But only enough thruster fuel for a few maneuvers and a thrust towards a nearby planet

The best example is the ANH where the two obviouslygay droids escape the Homophobic clutches of the Empire using an escape pod. After the ejection they wobble out in space until firing maneuvering thrusters to land near the Dune sea

(The second to last sentence above is meant as a joke)

I thought of this as a PC thing because I've been noticing many posts where GMs are worried about destroying the PC's ship as they'd all die. This rule was to have some chance of the PC surviving even when he their ship explodes. Sure, the GM could fiat that they all manage to survive but this way the PC's possibly have a choice to make and a say in what happens.

Ejection seats should really only have the thrust to clear the ship.

My text isn't very clear but I meant that an ejection seat can make one Speed 2 maneuver and the pilot's next action (usually to go from Close to Short range) and then can't make any more maneuvers. You're pretty much at the mercy of your enemy at that point.

Just a short reply to this, as my previous answer was eaten by the forum

I think it is not the best idea to trigger an emergency ejection by spending threat. Instead i would rule that an ejection should be triggered by advantage. I mean isn't it quite advantegous to eject fwrom a ship that is about to explode and probably kill everyone inside?

One could asume that an automatical emergency system might initiate an emergency ejection due to some threat or in narative: system failures caused by enemy hits.

I think an event that benefits a PC should always be triggered by advantage. Things that make the PCs life harder or more complicated should be triggered by threat. One could argue that an emergency ejection will never make your life easier, but bring more complications in the next scenes. (Surviving in space, on a unknown planet etc.) But as the alternative outcome of the encounter would be death by starship explosion an emergency ejection will most likely be the advantegeous outcome from a PCs perspective.

I'm afraid that if you don't draw a clear line between threat: things go wrong or don't work as intended versus advantage: You are lucky and the outcome partly benefits your current situation, an important part of the game mechanics get out of hand.

Just a short reply to this, as my previous answer was eaten by the forum

I think it is not the best idea to trigger an emergency ejection by spending threat. Instead i would rule that an ejection should be triggered by advantage. I mean isn't it quite advantegous to eject fwrom a ship that is about to explode and probably kill everyone inside?

You are spending the Threat generated by the NPC's attack roll against you. If the NPC had Advantage, then he'd be spending them to do criticals to you.

Consider the opposite. You manage to get a lucky proton torpedo attack on your Nemesis's damaged Decimator. You rolled 3 success and 4 Threat. .The GM, knowing the Decimator is out of Hull points, decides to spend the Threat to have the Nemesis use the escape pod to get away. Which is bad for you.

IOW, an NPC rolling Threats is kinda sorta the same as you rolling Advantage. It's bad for him that you escape.

I'm sorry if I have missread your first post. But varous passages read like the PCs are spending threat for themselfs to bail out or eject. Maybe this is just me, as English is not my native language as might have guessed. But looking at the following passages:

Ejecting from Starships

PCs can spend Threat to eject from their fighters or freighters.

Bailing out of Vehicles

PCs can spend Threat to bail out of vehicles. If the vehicle is flying high or moving at high speed the PC(s) might have to make some sort of check when they hit the ground.

Both passages are stating that PCS have things happen exclusively for them. That is why I'm a little confused here.

So just to clear things up: You mean your PCs can force a NPC to eject its ship if the said NPC roled some threats when making a maneuver or attack roll?

I would still argue, that spending a single threat from the npc role to force an enemy tiefighter-pilot to eject its ship is too powerfull to be in total control of the players. In your example you only stated that a number of threats are required depending on ship-types and stuff, no damage is needed on the nPC-spacecraft. I think this is imbalanced. If your PCs are to decide what they can do with the enemys threat symbols what point is there to not use the eject-option in every possible situation.

I mean the very first attack of an tie-fighter could lead to the pilot being forced to eject if he rolls a single threat. This will make space-engagements even more unpredictable. If you create some engagements it could be very likely that your NPC squadron will lose one or two vessels after the first round.

I guess I must have missunderstood your suggestions again because all this doesn't make sense to me.

How can a NPC be forced to eject its ship, when not even a single hit was dealt by the players? Makes no sense. At least you should tie the NPC-Ejection to the ships Hull-Trauma. So forcing an ejection always requires a certain amount of damage or stress dealt to a ship.

Anyway: As I'm still confused about your proposed system, here is my rough take on the idea:

Ejection of PCs from their own ship:

• can be triggered regular as an maneuver to safe your crew (maybe introducing ejection system - modifcations that can be added to spacecrafts)
• can be triggered by an amount of advantage from PC-Rolls (Attack rolls, or skill-checks on board of the ships)
• can be triggered by an amount of threat from an attacking NPC-Rol

Forced Ejection of NPCs:

• The NPC-ship must have at least 50 % of its HT-Threshold or 90% of its System-Strain-Threshold, Forcing an NPC to eject an undamaged or mainly intact ship is impossible.
• NPC-Forced Ejection can be triggered by a number of advantage from a PCs Attack-Roll against the NPC
• NPC-Forced Ejection can be triggered by a number of threats from the NPCs Attack-Roll or Skill-Check

So just to clear things up: You mean your PCs can force a NPC to eject its ship if the said NPC roled some threats when making a maneuver or attack roll?

No. You cannot force your opponent to eject. If you look on page 236, you can see that two Threats can be used to give the opponent a free maneuver. This is what I'm talking about. In this case the opponent happens to be the PCs. The NPC makes an attack roll and generates Threat. The players get to spend that Threat*. They can, if they wish give themselves a Boost, give their opponent a Setback or, if they so desire, they can eject.

I guess a character could eject on his own turn and it might be a good idea to do so if his ship has the Breaking Up critical.

*When the players roll, the players spend any Advantage and the GM (generally) spends any Threat. However, when a NPC rolls, the GM spends the Advantage and the players (generally) spend the Threat.

I guess an argument could be made that since two Threats can give a maneuver, then two Threats are all that are needed to eject. I'm ok with that.

*When the players roll, the players spend any Advantage and the GM (generally) spends any Threat. However, when a NPC rolls, the GM spends the Advantage and the players (generally) spend the Threat.

Just to be clear, spending NPC-generated Threat is, by default, the GM's prerogative. Page 13, 23, and 205 all call this out. However, page 205 does say that the GM may give players the option to spend Threat in some cases. So, generally, the GM spends all Threat, but may delegate this task to a player (I would encourage this).

Just to be clear, spending NPC-generated Threat is, by default, the GM's prerogative. Page 13, 23, and 205 all call this out. However, page 205 does say that the GM may give players the option to spend Threat in some cases. So, generally, the GM spends all Threat, but may delegate this task to a player (I would encourage this).

I wish the rulebook talked about this more. If you look over the spending rule, it always says that players spend Advantage even though they probably shouldn't in the case of an NPC roll. I couldn't find a single case where it says GM spends NPC generated Advantage.

I've seen questions related to this pop up all over the place, so it's not just me.

I wish the rulebook talked about this more. If you look over the spending rule, it always says that players spend Advantage even though they probably shouldn't in the case of an NPC roll. I couldn't find a single case where it says GM spends NPC generated Advantage.

By RPG defaultness, it is the GM deciding where the NPC moves to, what the NPC shoots at, what the NPC repairs, etc. I don't think it needs to be stated who spends the Advantage rolled when the NPC moves, shoots, repairs, etc.

If it's your pet NPC hireling/pet, then I would make an exception but of course the PC would probably be controlling this NPC.

I don't think it needs to be stated anywhere. If the rulebook has to clarify such default RPG concepts we are going to double its size. A.i., where does it say the GM decides where NPCs move to when an NPC uses the Move maneuver?

Regarding Advantage spending: check out the first sentence under "The Game Master" on page 8. "The Game Master (often abbreviated as "GM") is the player who..."

FFG considers Game Masters to be "players."*

Flip forward to page 23. "The player rolling the skill check generally chooses how to spend Advantage..."

In this case, the only reasonable explanation is that the word "player" here is meant to include the GM as well as the other players at the table. So it is stated.

*There are instances where the terms "GM" and "player" are juxtaposed, but I would think this is simply for ease of reading.

Barring severe conditions, ejecting out of a starship would be generally a bad idea. You become a lot harder to find. Not to mention, other space hazards that can befall you. A fighter hull would provide some protection.

The way the FFG system is, destroying a ship is hard to do. So, unless you are in a ship who reactor is critical or your flight controls are forcing you to crash into the surface of a moon sized space station, stay in your disabled fighter.

As to TIE fighter design, I would imagine that unless a hit impacts the central control pod, the pilot would be protected from most shots by the wing design. Especially in FFG's system.