The fact that my players have chosen less combat oriented characters (a marauder is the best they have - other than that we have outlaw tech, pilot, and scholar) has been throwing me off as I plan the details of my encounters. I'll do some experimenting in our upcoming first session, but I'm wondering if anyone else has had personal experience with this and how they've gone about making sure combat is possible without making it far too easy. Is there any 'rule of thumb' here?

Play a session, you're going to probably have to kick their @$$es a bit to see what they are capable of. I wouldn't say they aren't combat capable through potentially. The Outlaw Tech will be able to beef themselves up with gear eventually. A pilot should have a good Agility, so if they are packing a rifle they will do well regardless of having actual skill ranks. The Marauder will be ok I'm sure. The Scholar can slap attachments on a rifle as well and do ok, but they need to not neglect Agility.

Since death is pretty difficult to achieve in this game, you shouldn't be afraid to test the waters and see what they can handle.

Play a session, you're going to probably have to kick their @$$es a bit to see what they are capable of. I wouldn't say they aren't combat capable through potentially. The Outlaw Tech will be able to beef themselves up with gear eventually. A pilot should have a good Agility, so if they are packing a rifle they will do well regardless of having actual skill ranks. The Marauder will be ok I'm sure. The Scholar can slap attachments on a rifle as well and do ok, but they need to not neglect Agility.

Did I mention he is a Drall scholar? Haha he is totally worthless in combat, though he has assured me at some point he plans to purchase a very large gun for 'personal protection' that he has no business using simply because he is paranoid. I plan to involve him in combat by making the enemies/environments have weaknesses that can be revealed with knowledge checks.

Guess I'll see how the first session goes and if it is far too easy I'll have to bump it up. One of the encounters is going to be a re-skin of the corellian shuffle with enemies at the end with the same stats as those in that encounter. That's probably the biggest combat scene I have planned for the first session.

I threw some special poisonous plants or exploding fungi in some of the Beyond the Rim encounters just for my smarty pants PCs, sadly no one took the time to make use of them. My players are very straightforward gamers.

Play a session, you're going to probably have to kick their @$$es a bit to see what they are capable of. I wouldn't say they aren't combat capable through potentially. The Outlaw Tech will be able to beef themselves up with gear eventually. A pilot should have a good Agility, so if they are packing a rifle they will do well regardless of having actual skill ranks. The Marauder will be ok I'm sure. The Scholar can slap attachments on a rifle as well and do ok, but they need to not neglect Agility.

Did I mention he is a Drall scholar? Haha he is totally worthless in combat, though he has assured me at some point he plans to purchase a very large gun for 'personal protection' that he has no business using simply because he is paranoid. I plan to involve him in combat by making the enemies/environments have weaknesses that can be revealed with knowledge checks.

Guess I'll see how the first session goes and if it is far too easy I'll have to bump it up. One of the encounters is going to be a re-skin of the corellian shuffle with enemies at the end with the same stats as those in that encounter. That's probably the biggest combat scene I have planned for the first session.

I'm all for people having diversified character concepts, but the name of the game is 'Star Wars' emphasis on the 'Wars' I wouldn't go to a hockey game without skates and I wouldn't go to war without a BFG...............

Play a session, you're going to probably have to kick their @$$es a bit to see what they are capable of. I wouldn't say they aren't combat capable through potentially. The Outlaw Tech will be able to beef themselves up with gear eventually. A pilot should have a good Agility, so if they are packing a rifle they will do well regardless of having actual skill ranks. The Marauder will be ok I'm sure. The Scholar can slap attachments on a rifle as well and do ok, but they need to not neglect Agility.

Did I mention he is a Drall scholar? Haha he is totally worthless in combat, though he has assured me at some point he plans to purchase a very large gun for 'personal protection' that he has no business using simply because he is paranoid. I plan to involve him in combat by making the enemies/environments have weaknesses that can be revealed with knowledge checks.

Guess I'll see how the first session goes and if it is far too easy I'll have to bump it up. One of the encounters is going to be a re-skin of the corellian shuffle with enemies at the end with the same stats as those in that encounter. That's probably the biggest combat scene I have planned for the first session.

I'm all for people having diversified character concepts, but the name of the game is 'Star Wars' emphasis on the 'Wars' I wouldn't go to a hockey game without skates and I wouldn't go to war without a BFG...............

Oh but I so love his character, and it all drives the whole colony 12 plot which I plan to use as an 'epic conclusion' to the story: https://trouble-on-kwenn-station.obsidianportal.com/characters/drall

He's very much heavy-duty into roleplaying and likes the narrative more than the combat. I think it is fine and usually quite funny, and I've learned GMing lessons from playing with him that I hope can make this our best campaign to date. For instance, I'm going to come up with at least a half-dozen different mini-encounters I can use to simply interrupt him when he starts to go on and on about something or another.

Sounds like you are too focused on one thing: combat. Make sure you have an encounter that works for the scholar, one for the pilot, etc. A non-combat group should have non-combat encounters.

in the meantime:

Use minion groups liberally. Either bunch them up into one skilled roll (say, against the Marauder), or break up the rolls into the lesser skilled base rolls. Make sure the adversaries are doing things other than just shooting so that the group has a chance to turn the tide of battle without risking life and limb. Dynamic battlefields that supply obvious tactical advantage to the group like terrain features, higher ground, gunnery emplacements make it fun, interesting and creative.

Suggest ways to use the party's non-combat skills to effect. Use Leadership to demoralize, knowledge to gain insight, piloting or computers to send machinery plowing into the enemy.

Encourage your players to work within their limitations and think creatively. That's when the fun begins...

Another idea - a bit risky, but can be a game-changer. If they're intellectuals etc. allow them to earn more money. For combat encounters they can hire proffesionals (the better pros, the more they cost). This is a logical move for a travelling, rich merchant.

Going even further - allow them to have a second set of characters who usually spend their time on the ship or just stay in the background and are used only for combat situations. Of course, that assumes that your characters don't provoke unnecessary, random fights (they shouldn't if they're not suicidal) and only want protection in certain environments.

I've had this happen in my game - even though we're 400xp and a year in, everyone but my wookiee slaughter machine goes down in one or two shots. So, I always provide lots of cover and I like to add elements to the encounter that let the non-combat people contribute in significant ways, or there's a goal outside combat that they have to achieve before they can advance and man, those stormtroopers keep on coming.

Fight's in a warehouse? You betcha there's a crane the tech can hack. Sure enough, there's some ventilation shafts the ewok (yes, there's an ewok pilot at my table) can crawl into and snipe from weird angles.

I've had some of my best stories unfold from elements on maps that are just there for flavor until the tech says, "hey, is that a real tractor beam or just a piece of scenery? Oh, well then I lock it on his ship and disable the controls."

tl;dr Rule of thumb: combat encounters shouldn't necessarily be all about combat. Figure out some tasks for all the PCs and you can build a high-tension encounter that engages everyone in their prime skills.

Agreed with the above sentiments about combat not needing to be the majority encounter type with your party.

When you do have combats, you can engineer them to focus on the stuff the non-combat types are doing.

The group is on board investigating a derelict unknown alien ship in orbit over a magma planet? A competing group docks with the derelict but their momentum puts the derelict into decaying orbit. Now the outlaw tech is bickering with the scholar over what the actual translations of the alien language of the various readouts are while trying to restore engines while the pilot and marauder keep their rivals at bay.

The engines back online at the last minute, the pilot has to dash to the cockpit/bridge and keep them from breaking up in re-entry while the scholar continues to grab as much data as possible off the data core while the outlaw tech moves to backup the marauder. The scholar grabs as much as he is able before the pilot says it's time to bail and they both fall back to where their own ship docked with the derelict and they group with the outlaw tech and marauder performing a fighting withdrawal.

The scholar translates some readouts on the way back to their own ship and has the outlaw tech try to do a sequenced launch of escape pods whose inertia will roll the derelict forcing the enemy ship to be on the bottom as the whole mess starts to dive into the magma lakes and the pilot gets their own ship fired up and the marauder continues to fend off the now more determined opposition. Back on their own ship, they detach and take off as the derelict and their enemies continue the streak into the lava. Roll credits.

In that example, the non-combat PCs had stuff to do that was exciting and important while not always being combat. The marauder (combat PC got to carry the bulk of combat activity during structured time). So the opposition is balanced to him plus occasional help from other party members, but the other party members are kept busy doing things they are actually good at.

Players tell you what kind of game they want to play by the characters they make.

If I'm making a scholar, I'm looking for adventures like this:

that be one whack datacron, yo.