I've heard this both ways on the forum so I am completely confused.

The Setup: Lets say that I have a ship combat within an asteroid belt. The pilot would not normally need to make a piloting check for ship maneuvers, but because they are in an asteroid belt the pilot most roll piloting to perform maneuvers.

Now the confusion

Some posts are under the impression that if a maneuver requires a roll it becomes an action

Other posts give the opposite opinion

Some upgraded talents state the action they applied to can now be performed as a maneuver and then list a difficulty.

What is the correct way of handling Maneuvers which require a roll. Do they take up the player's action?

As an aside: is it just me, or is the Knockdown "Talent" as written the most pointless use of a Triumph ever?

As a general rule, skill checks = Actions. However, there are some very specific circumstances in which a maneuver calls for a skill check. You just don't want to do those very often, since forming and resolving a dice pool takes a while and can bloat the encounter with excess Threat/Advantage...so when players are rolling 2 dice pools per turn, they take at least twice as long.

But there's no rule that says you can't make a skill check as a maneuver. It's just a good general rule, and if you're making a call on the fly, err on the side of Action = Skill check. But if there's something codified as a maneuver that requires a skill check, it's a special rule. Just make the skill check and carry on with the encounter.

The Knockdown talent is very underwhelming. There's been quite a lot of discussion over it; I'd recommend a forum search for the topic. IIRC there were some really helpful suggestions about how to make it better (e.g. giving your Melee attacks the Knockdown quality, so only require 2 Advantage to activate).

If you are rolling dice it should be an action (generally).

From memory there is an advanced talent in the driver specialisation that allows the pilot skill check to be performed as a maneuver.

However at present I'm prepared to bend the rules where a player wants to execute something cool. Last session a player was weaving through a rain forest on a speeder bike and wanted to jump to another speeder bike that had been vacated by the death of it's scout trooper pilot, this was 2 actions (piloting in difficult terrain and the athletics jump).

I just used the rules for fighting with 2 weapons to merge the 2 actions into one single more difficult action.

I've heard this both ways on the forum so I am completely confused.

The Setup: Lets say that I have a ship combat within an asteroid belt. The pilot would not normally need to make a piloting check for ship maneuvers, but because they are in an asteroid belt the pilot most roll piloting to perform maneuvers.

Now the confusion

Some posts are under the impression that if a maneuver requires a roll it becomes an action

Other posts give the opposite opinion

Some upgraded talents state the action they applied to can now be performed as a maneuver and then list a difficulty.

What is the correct way of handling Maneuvers which require a roll. Do they take up the player's action?

As an aside: is it just me, or is the Knockdown "Talent" as written the most pointless use of a Triumph ever?

I think in the case of piloting a ship through an asteroid belt you are using maneuvers to move from point A to point B. The fact that you have to make a piloting roll does make the maneuver an action, it simply makes it a maneuver with consequeces of failure . This is referenced in the core rule book on page 240 in the first paragraph.

Page 240

"When a ship passes near or through one of these treacherous obstacles, the pilot might need to make an approprite Piloting check, even if he his attempting a starship maneuver that typically wouldn't require one."

This is also true for planetary vehicles and I have also used it in foot chases such as the one at the end of Act I in Beyond the Rim, in the foot/grav sled chase through the wheel.

A few posters have mentioned skills in the Pilot Talent Tree that change an action into a maneuver. The skill Full Throttle lets a pilot take the FULL THROTTLE ACTION as a maneuver. Full throttle is an ACTION that has a specific set of results and is not the maneuver FLY/DRIVE. Fly/Drive is the maneuver being referenced when discussing vehicles moving from point A to point B.

I see no reference in the rule book about changing fly/drive maneuver into an action. I could have missed it.

Ian

Just because there is a skill check doesn't make the maneuver an action. it just makes it a maneuver with 2 possible outcomes.

In the scenario the OP describes I'd run it as follows: At the start of/between each round, before anyone starts acting their turns, I'd have the pilot make a Piloting check (much in the same way as the Piloting checks in a chase scenario). Then that result would apply to that whole round (setback dice to everyone aboard for failing the Piloting check, for example) while acting as normal in his own turn.

From an email conversation with Sam Stewart I can supply the following information:

1. Any starship Manoeuvre that requires a skill check is "upgraded" to an Action.
   1. This would really, at least could, include any of the Manoeuvres, it's not necessarily limited to Fly/Drive.
      1. However, even if in difficult terrain over multiple rounds one should not necessarily require multiple pilot checks to be performed.
      2. Depending on the importance of the challenge in relation to the plot, as little as one check can be required to show that the pilot can successfully navigate the terrain for the rest of that encounter, to as much as one per round if it's imperative and the chances for failure should be considered high and likely.
      3. Although not every manoeuvre in difficult terrain should require a check, so if you first make a Pilot check to successfully navigate the terrain as part of, for instance a Fly/Drive manoeuvre, then your Evasive Manoeuvres manoeuvre shouldn't require a skill check. Although you could do it the other way around if you wanted to.
2. This means that the Master Pilot talent is really, really useful and is a real advantage. So pilots are basically better at piloting than anyone else, because they can get that.

That covers it I think.

you could just have the pilot execute an Evasive Maneuver if traveling at speed 3+ through the asteroid field. the upgraded difficulty of subsequent checks gained could easily narrate as asteroids falling in and out of the line of fire (and the chasing ship would also need to make a similar maneuver to follow you into the field, experiencing the same upgrade to difficulty as your players). you can still remain within close range of the target but still not have this count as an action. using this to maneuver through an asteroid field makes more narrative sense as well. it's not easy to just fly through that sort of terrain and in fact, RAW states that fly is "the simple act of moving the ship or vehicle closer or further away from something at its current speed." flying through an asteroid field is not a "simple" act. therefore you may want to gm this as an evasive maneuver for the pilot to make rather than a skill check.

another option would be to have him make a piloting (space) check when entering the asteroid field. go with those results until something changes the state of the ship (i.e. it takes strain, damage, or through threat/despair results). having the check stand for the encounter until affected by threat/despair, would allow for some quick reactionary piloting skills to occur that might mitigate some collisions. the occurrence would in essence upgrade the simple fly maneuver into an evasive action on the pilot's part, bending the RAW a bit, but narratively it might be fun to play out in this manner.

From an email conversation with Sam Stewart I can supply the following information:

1. Any starship Manoeuvre that requires a skill check is "upgraded" to an Action.
   1. This would really, at least could, include any of the Manoeuvres, it's not necessarily limited to Fly/Drive.
      1. However, even if in difficult terrain over multiple rounds one should not necessarily require multiple pilot checks to be performed.
      2. Depending on the importance of the challenge in relation to the plot, as little as one check can be required to show that the pilot can successfully navigate the terrain for the rest of that encounter, to as much as one per round if it's imperative and the chances for failure should be considered high and likely.
      3. Although not every manoeuvre in difficult terrain should require a check, so if you first make a Pilot check to successfully navigate the terrain as part of, for instance a Fly/Drive manoeuvre, then your Evasive Manoeuvres manoeuvre shouldn't require a skill check. Although you could do it the other way around if you wanted to.
2. This means that the Master Pilot talent is really, really useful and is a real advantage. So pilots are basically better at piloting than anyone else, because they can get that.

That covers it I think.

If I had the question, I could add this to the "Developer Answered Questions" thread. This conversation seems like it could come up a lot in the future, especially considering how starfighter heavy AoR could become.

I can look for the questions, only issue is that this is a condensation from a lot of questions, specific and general examples and various replies.

Thanks for sharing. That clears it up a bit.