You guys really should look at the squad rules... They accomplish what you want. And minion s die on behalf of the pcs

I disagree. Its "NPCs as ablative armor". Yeah, the player characters are important because its their story, but I kind of draw the line at PCs using NPC lives as an HP stat. Unless you want to run a game that is 99% the players roleplaying writing letters back to the families of the pilots they got killed. If I play a game that has the characters with a squadron, I would want that squadron to be NPCs they can interact with, not ones they expect to die so why bother.

Also, it takes away from being a super badass fighter pilot if you NEED squad rules to even survive. We can make characters that could take out a dozen stormtroopers alone with enough XP. The same for starfighters is just not really true.

I haven't finished the thread yet but IMO when you are referring to the bolded part above you are referring to a character who has pilot talents. Someone with a high skill is good, but to be a "super badass fighter pilot" you need talents.

edit: heh, just realized how old this thread is.

To be a Super Bad Donkey fighter pilot you need skill ranks, talents, and a solid working knowledge of the system. So basically XP, and time earning it.

Like the Jedi, fighter pilots in Star Wars have been put on a bit of a pedestal.

I hand a player a light repeating blaster and send him solo against four 3 man minion groups of stormies and they'll know they've still got problems. But when I put em in an x-wing and send in four 3ship groups of TIEs they expect an easy victory. Because Wedge did it all the time in a book.

Never mind in every fighter engagement Luke was in in the actual films he squadroned up...

To be a Super Bad Donkey fighter pilot you need skill ranks, talents, and a solid working knowledge of the system. So basically XP, and time earning it.

Like the Jedi, fighter pilots in Star Wars have been put on a bit of a pedestal.

I hand a player a light repeating blaster and send him solo against four 3 man minion groups of stormies and they'll know they've still got problems. But when I put em in an x-wing and send in four 3ship groups of TIEs they expect an easy victory. Because Wedge did it all the time in a book.

Never mind in every fighter engagement Luke was in in the actual films he squadroned up...

I don't know, the thing with ordinary combat is whether it's routine or not, you can at least achieve these things if you wish. With fighter combat it rapidly caps out how much better you can be than someone else. It doesn't have to be 4x3 Tie-Fighters you're fighting - send a PC pilot against just 1x3 Tie-Fighter minions and the hardest the PC can ever be to hit is, I think a couple of difficulty upgrades if they buy up both Hotshot and Driver. And the double-edged and conditional upgrade from Evasive Manoeuvres sometimes. No matter how much they invest and focus on space combat, that small group of ties has a significant chance of wiping them out. Star fighters are so fragile that a couple of lucky rolls and down they go.

It's not that players must be as capable as Wedge or Vader in that recent Rebels episode, it's that the system design caps them and everyone else way below this making it just not possible to be an awesome, ace fighter pilot.

As Ghosty says, Jedi, starfighter pilots and other "myths" have fallen from the pedestal. Just considering canon, they still pretty awesome, better that any others, but still human.

Backing to pilots, we use to see that pilots use to fall just with one or two hits and doesn't use to be "so hard" to hit. Another anlysis is that when a starship looses its shields, seems pretty vulnerable. Clone Wars, Rebels, new comics and even movies have shown this to us.

In my gaming group are considering to introduce a pretty bi change with Hull and Shields. Even capital ships seems tha are "not so resistant".

MY house rule (and a simple one i think) Evasive ManeuverAny attack made against a ship doing evaise maneuvers receives an upgrade in the difficulty equal to the piloting (space) skill of the target.The number of dices upgraded this way cannot be greater then the target ship handling value and if the target ship has 0 or less handling then upgrade the difficult one time only. Any attack made by the ship doing Evasive Maneuver receives one upgrade in difficulty. Has worked so far.

I'm still working out what I think would be best, but if I were to go with the above, I would modify it slightly to be called something like "Advanced Evasive Manoeuvres" and put a Silhouette maximum of 3 upon it. That way you're both adding to the rules rather than changing existing ones (which is simpler) and you're addressing the reason why anyone would ever want to be in a fighter rather than a larger ship.

Thats a very good point, I might do something similar. I think the system is reasonably good but as ither have mentioned I would never get on a starfighter given the choice since light freighters are so badass comparatively. That beign said, I personally havent played as much as other people defending the system so i dont want to jump to conclussions.

Ok here is the rule I came up with; please let me know what you guys think!

I think this takes into account pilot skill, doesn't fiddle with too many of the stablished rules, doesn't upgrade more dice than it needs to (don't want to be rolling more challenge dice than necessary so as to get multiple dispairs), and makes fast and nimble ships harder to hit, but only in the hands of skilled pilots and only when performing Improved Evasive Maneuvers (if a pilot is not doing anything to dodge incoming fire his ship shouldn't be harder or easier to hit than normal), can only be performed by small starfighters (and not light freighters which I think are already pretty well balanced), and is not toooo fiddly, and is somewhat simple, specially after doing it a couple of times. Also, since you can perform Evasive Maneuvers twice (as per Sam in a question he answered) you could perform this once and then perform regular Evasive Maneuvers to upgrade an additional dice.

The one thing I would do to other rules is add the line about the boost to the regular Evasive Maneuvers maneuver so that less maneuverable ships get a penalty of some sort when trying to dodge (I would only add it to remain consistent... it only makes sense that less maneuverable ships are easier to hit somehow than more maneuverable ones when they are trying to dodge attacks). Lastly, I added the increase in handling bit to represent a good pilot using his ship beyond its capabilities, but paying some sort of price for doing so (I mostly added this bit to allow pilots to ignore the boost bit, or to allow pilots on ships with lots of strain left over to be a bit extra hard to hit if their skills are better than the ships they are on).

Using this new Maneuver, a pilot with Agi 3 /Piloting 3 on an A-Wing would get Defense 4 plus an upgrade to all incoming attack's difficulty after performing evasive maneuvers, but this would be ignored by an enemy that successfully performed a Gain the Advantage action (which might make Gain the Advantage checks more appealing as well). Conversely, a crappy pilot without any ranks in piloting on a B-Wing would only be able to upgrade the difficulty of attacks against it when performing evasive maneuvers, and would grant attackers a boost by doing so (probably B-wing pilots would just shoot instead of trying to dodge ).

Here are some other examples in case anyone is confused:

Agi 5 / Piloting 1 on an Tie-Defender - 1 Upgrade + 1 Defense

Agi 2 / Piloting 5 on an X-Wing - 1 Upgrade + 1 Defense (but may gain an additional point of Defense by paying 3 system strain)

Agi 5 / Piloting 5 on an Tie Fighter - 1 Upgrade + 3 Defense (but may gain an additional point of defense by paying 3 system strain)

Agi 5 / Piloting 5 on a Y-Wing - 1 Upgrade + 0 Defense (but may gain 3 additional defense by spending 9 system strain total).

Nice mod linkbox

What do you consider mates about adding Duty "health" bonus to starships too?

My vehical rules are simply a x5 instead of x10 for sil4 or less, and double the book hull/system strain to compensate.

Fighters are just as vulnerable to turbolaser fire, but last longer ib fighter dogfights, and speeders and personal scale are a smoother transition. (An eweb can threaten a tie fighter with a good enough roll)

I haven't read most of this as I'm on my mobile phone, but one thing I've done in my games that has increased the durability of ships is changing how shields operate. I really dislike the setback dice mechanic so I scrapped it, instead now if your ship has shields the equation I use is this: Commercial grade shields is silhouette^2 divided amongst the defense zones. Military grade is silhouette^2 in all defense zones. Essentially shields become free hp that a ship gets once per encounter.

It has worked fairly well in the small space combats I've run so far, so if you're sil 4 with commercial grade you can get 8 fore 8 aft or any combo you prefer, like in say a chase scene you might angle your shields so they at all aft (which it takes the angle deflector maneuver to change the shield rating in mid combat). It makes it so things aren't exploding on turn one if they have shields but they also aren't so tough it's impossible to damage.

Nice mod linkbox

Thanks! I certainly spent like 2 days thinking about it before I came up with it so its nice that at least one other person likes it!

As for duty to health, that might actually be pretty good. You could also do group duty divided by group members (or some arbitrary number like 5) to represent your group working as a team and making up for each others deficiencies, etc. Either way, in the end all this would mean that the DM can throw more fighters at you and still expect you to come out on top which is awesome in my book

I haven't read most of this as I'm on my mobile phone, but one thing I've done in my games that has increased the durability of ships is changing how shields operate. I really dislike the setback dice mechanic so I scrapped it, instead now if your ship has shields the equation I use is this: Commercial grade shields is silhouette^2 divided amongst the defense zones. Military grade is silhouette^2 in all defense zones. Essentially shields become free hp that a ship gets once per encounter.

It has worked fairly well in the small space combats I've run so far, so if you're sil 4 with commercial grade you can get 8 fore 8 aft or any combo you prefer, like in say a chase scene you might angle your shields so they at all aft (which it takes the angle deflector maneuver to change the shield rating in mid combat). It makes it so things aren't exploding on turn one if they have shields but they also aren't so tough it's impossible to damage.

Yeah its kinda interesting that FFG decided to use setbacks to represent shields; in their latest armada game shields behave more or less like "hp", which is how I would have expected it to work (that or soak that goes away the more you get hit), but hey I love rolling dice so I don't mind it too much hahaha.

Still, the good thing about RPGs is that you can easily customize it to suit your needs (actually, you know you have made a good RPG when it easy to mod) so doing changes like these are possible if your group like more survivability.

I'm still considering to introduce a heavy change on hull/shields rules (apart from piloting modifications).

As I commented before, seems that shields are so much important than hull itself. A big cruiser or destroyer can fall "easily" when their shields are out. We seen som many examples on Clone Wars mainly.

Also, almost everytime a starship, at least starfighters (the ones who survives XD) and freighters get hit, some systems use to fail. Coms, Shields, Stabilizators... so, almost everytime a (small?) starship gets a hull hit, get a critical hit?

Anyone else introduced or wanted to introduce heavy changes on shields/hull mechanics? I'll try to look for a formula to give shields so much importance. A months ago we tested a house rule where defense from shields gives a Failure instead a Setback is the damage value where lesser than a X value. But this rule failed with big and easy to hit ships, even with high or max defenses (4).

I'm still considering to introduce a heavy change on hull/shields rules (apart from piloting modifications).

As I commented before, seems that shields are so much important than hull itself. A big cruiser or destroyer can fall "easily" when their shields are out. We seen som many examples on Clone Wars mainly.

Also, almost everytime a starship, at least starfighters (the ones who survives XD) and freighters get hit, some systems use to fail. Coms, Shields, Stabilizators... so, almost everytime a (small?) starship gets a hull hit, get a critical hit?

Anyone else introduced or wanted to introduce heavy changes on shields/hull mechanics? I'll try to look for a formula to give shields so much importance. A months ago we tested a house rule where defense from shields gives a Failure instead a Setback is the damage value where lesser than a X value. But this rule failed with big and easy to hit ships, even with high or max defenses (4).

You could turn shields into soak (that either stays the same or goes down as it gets hit), and armor into a new number which represents whether or not a shot damaged a crucial system. As an example, lets say shield soak is 3 and armor is 2; any shot whose damage is above 3 (the shield soak) does hull point damage, but if it also does damage above the armor value then its an automatic crit on top of the damage (and any advantages you roll would count as "additional crits" when rolling the d100). And maybe make it so that when you angle deflectors only a certain portion of the shield soak carries over or something.

So using the numbers above, a shot that deals 4 or 5 damage would deal 1 or 2 hp (and no crits unless you roll enough advantages/triumphs) but a shot of 6 and above would always crit. For larger capital ships you could make armor somewhat high so that only shots from powerful weapons would crit in this fashion.

That being said, you may have to restat all the ships you are going to use if using this

Stuff like this would certainly need some good playtesting, but I am sure you could work something out if you put time into it. The one thing I would worry is making certain talents useless, but if you really want to do it you can tweak those to accommodate them into your new system.

My analytic and math ability is near zero XD

Can you put a clear sample to understand it. I love the general concept but I need a clearer sample please.

What about shields being extra soak that decrease by one every time you are hit. You could also double the values and then say that it also decreases by two when exceeded. Then you can use the lower of a pilots piloting or ship handling minus the same for the target. Positive numbers are boosts to attack, negative are setback. Pilots can take 2 system strain to boost their number by one to a maximum of their piloting.

This allows highly maneuverable fighters to have an advantage on slower ones as long as they're good enough pilots. It also allows fighters to last a little longer but still be overwhelmed by firepower.

You still end up with a few basic issues. The obvious being vehicle combat is complicated enough as it is, FFG seemed to be intentionally trying to avoid the whole "If this guys skill is this and handling is that, and that guys skill is this and handling that, then the difficulty is this, unless there's a thing" difficulty calculations.

This is an RPG, to keep it from getting weird you need to keep sub-systems like vehicle combat, VR combat, astral projection combat, and so on all working within a unified mechanical core. Do something funky with Starship shields, and now you have to do it for airspeeder shields and personal shields too. Say that a pilot gets to add his Ranks to the difficulty, and the ground pounder will want to know why he can't add athletics or coordination to his...

I've run numerous space combats, the system isn't broken, it's just a little different and starfighters in Star Wars have been put on a pedestal thanks to video games and novels. Go back and watch EP IV again, the Death Star attack is pretty fast and horrific.

Just suggesting an alternative for those that don't feel the current system meets their needs or for those who want to experiment with something different.

Just suggesting an alternative for those that don't feel the current system meets their needs or for those who want to experiment with something different.

And I think it's great, don't get discouraged, if there's a better way I want to know.

It's just game design is hard, and game adjustment is even harder. You change one thing, you'll probably change everything. I've seen what others have done and kicked around a lot of ideas myself, but I always ended up back with the same issues:

• It's too complicated, usually based on comparing this to that all the time, or tracking little points
• It focuses on Stafighters and ignores that the rules work for everything vehicle
• It makes leveling questionable by giving features to everyone normally restricted to talents.
• It requires an entire reworking of pilot trees and restating of every vehicle

And that's the rub. I've seen a lot of things to make starfighter combat more survivable, sort of, but I've seen very little that does so while maintaining the speed, simplicity, and unity of what's in the books now.

Having run some pretty serious hairballs I've found the system works, it's just similar to a lot of the "Knight Level" arguments. People have very high expectations of a system that actually goes simple and effective instead of complex and guilded. To make it work, the GM has to get it, has to use all the tools available in multiple books and mechanics, and has to communicate it in a way the players can comprehend and interpret. Which isn't an easy thing to do.

.... I need to get back to work on my video tutorials....

I just don't feel the setback dice mechanic accurately represents shields in the Star Wars setting. I can understand the choice to go with simplicity and efficiency over how a mechanic "feels". So far I like the way my house rule works, that may change as the campaign progresses, and with factoring in things like Breach. It just seems like starfighter combat is more like playing rocket tag if you use RAW.

I just don't feel the setback dice mechanic accurately represents shields in the Star Wars setting. I can understand the choice to go with simplicity and efficiency over how a mechanic "feels". So far I like the way my house rule works, that may change as the campaign progresses, and with factoring in things like Breach. It just seems like starfighter combat is more like playing rocket tag if you use RAW.

And the ablative HP thing is an option. Star Wars hasn't been consistent in it's depiction of shields, and if you wanted a more Trek feel where things are largely OK until the shields drop, it makes sense.

But it has it's issues as well, in that you'll also have to rejigger some talents and trees to balance it. Now if you don't have any players with the trees and talents in question it's no biggy... but that doesn't help the people that do.

You still end up with a few basic issues. The obvious being vehicle combat is complicated enough as it is, FFG seemed to be intentionally trying to avoid the whole "If this guys skill is this and handling is that, and that guys skill is this and handling that, then the difficulty is this, unless there's a thing" difficulty calculations.

This is an RPG, to keep it from getting weird you need to keep sub-systems like vehicle combat, VR combat, astral projection combat, and so on all working within a unified mechanical core. Do something funky with Starship shields, and now you have to do it for airspeeder shields and personal shields too. Say that a pilot gets to add his Ranks to the difficulty, and the ground pounder will want to know why he can't add athletics or coordination to his...

I've run numerous space combats, the system isn't broken, it's just a little different and starfighters in Star Wars have been put on a pedestal thanks to video games and novels. Go back and watch EP IV again, the Death Star attack is pretty fast and horrific.

We're actually in agreement in avoiding the This + That - Other vs. Something x Attribute formula. It's why I haven't posted a fix myself yet. I know what I want to achieve but I'm struggling to find a way to keep it consistent with FFG's approach and similar to normal combat. I like the kernel of the idea suggested but think there are too many exceptions and special cases built in. I would be in favour of sliming it down significantly back to the core idea of just an Advanced Evasive Manoeuvres. My essential problem is that anything you roll would normally be an Action, and if you make it an Action, you don't have an Action left for attacking.

However, I will post something once I've worked out the details.

I just don't feel the setback dice mechanic accurately represents shields in the Star Wars setting. I can understand the choice to go with simplicity and efficiency over how a mechanic "feels". So far I like the way my house rule works, that may change as the campaign progresses, and with factoring in things like Breach. It just seems like starfighter combat is more like playing rocket tag if you use RAW.

And the ablative HP thing is an option. Star Wars hasn't been consistent in it's depiction of shields, and if you wanted a more Trek feel where things are largely OK until the shields drop, it makes sense.

Meh. Very much with you there. Shields as Hit Points I definitely don't like. It jars too much with the rest of the system and it's also less exciting to me because it gives you safe rounds.

Yes, but watch the latest episode of Rebels or that opening battle scene in Ep. III. or a few particular episodes of TCW. That one where Anakin is leading a surprise attack on the Malevolence is what comes to mind particularly - Ahsoka points out to him that whilst he is able to make it through the defensive batteries, his squadron are getting slaughtered. There are plenty of instances of ace pilots in canon regardless of how the trench run in Ep IV. goes. The trouble is something like Anakin's attack on the Malevolence doesn't work in EotE. He's barely harder to hit than the clone flyers and no more resilient.

You're forgetting squadron rules though. The squadron takes hits and gets chopped to meat, but Orphan Leader keeps on flying. And Anakins (presumably) good skill ranks will actually allow him to get some serious use out of the squadron.

In fact you can even suggest the GM planned it out as IIRC the squadron in question is so large they actually exceed the max squadron bonuses, meaning some of them were included specifically because the GM ran the numbers and wanted to ensure the players didn't get greased on the first pass.

That's also the whole trench run thing. Biggs, Porkins, even Wedge were Minion squadronmates that mechanically were there to protect the relatively low ranked Luke. Narratively you end up with this desperate fight. Again in the very next fight we see Luke he does it again, regularly squadroning up with other snowspeeders to survive the walker attacks... The sweet part is those battles probably didn't last more then around 4 or 5 rounds, keeping it nice, quick, and in line with the general mechanics. Yeah, in hindsight it feels weird making the glorious and stupendous Wedge a Minion... but mechanically it's pretty sound...but now we're back in Pedestal territory...

That's kinda the big pain in the arse about starfighter encounters and big space battles, to make them work as well as possible you essentially need to use rules presented in: AoR GM kit, AoR Core, SoT, Arda, EotE Core, and probably at least one more book I'm forgetting. Miss out on any of those and you're absolutely going to encounter some problem or issue...

I'll watch that Malevolence one again though, as I suspect you can run that around Knight level pretty effectively, or at least that encounter string....

There is no such thing as safe rounds. With things like Linked and Breach, I'd take on a battalion of stormtroopers before I got into the cockpit of a fighter. I'll take that flight of minion Ties over a basic freighter everyday.

Let me clarify, I don't think the RAW is "bad" per se, it just seems wrong that your shields are somehow making you harder to mechanically hit. That and with RAW ditch the lasers and get torps and missiles on your ship as fast as possible and you'll never lose, so long as you have ammunition.

There is no such thing as safe rounds. With things like Linked and Breach, I'd take on a battalion of stormtroopers before I got into the cockpit of a fighter. I'll take that flight of minion Ties over a basic freighter everyday.

Breach isn't that common among weapons able to target fighters, just warheads really. And Linked isn't an involuntary thing. If your GM is shooting missiles and activating linked on you often.. you may want to ask him what you've done to offend him.

There is no such thing as safe rounds. With things like Linked and Breach, I'd take on a battalion of stormtroopers before I got into the cockpit of a fighter. I'll take that flight of minion Ties over a basic freighter everyday.

Breach isn't that common among weapons able to target fighters, just warheads really. And Linked isn't an involuntary thing. If your GM is shooting missiles and activating linked on you often.. you may want to ask him what you've done to offend him.

Hahah I am the GM, and while I'm not out to kill the players, I am here to make things at least difficult for them. One of the good quotes I've heard is "The GM isn't trying to kill you, he's trying to make you a hero" (paraphrased from Critical Role). If you're flying against Z-95's expect concussion missiles, if you're fighting a Star Destroyer, expect turbolasers.