Group just got done with our first session and it was awful, clunky, and boring. The dice system stifled any creativity and narrative. We couldn't tell a story bc none of us could pass a dice check.

I had such high hopes. I love narrative systems. Character creation was fun and pretty free form. Everyone thought they had the character they really wanted and couldn't get out of more strict systems.

We thought the game was more about story so optimization which most of us loathe isn't necessary. That we could have generalist instead of dull one trick ponies. We were excited each of us had something to offer in social, combat, and skills.

Then we failed every roll. Roll after roll. Just take turns one of us will get it nope. Our big bad brawler failed both his coercion checks to end up pistol whipped with his own gun and shoved down by an npc with less brawn. We couldn't kick a simple turn key door in. It took 9 attempts to stop drop and roll the one character on fire. We failed so many med PAC uses that everyone ran out of their encounter use. We spent 2 hours on one awfuln boring shoot out with 6 v 3 npcs bc only one person could hit. He could hit every time bc he had 5 agility but could do nothing else out of combat bc he had to spend so many points on 5 agility. I failed simple role play, that was played well, bc the dice checks are so misguided. This was the worst part, good role, excellent opportunity for narrative goes up in flames bc a gimped dice system.

From our experience you need at least a 4 in a characteristic stat to ok and a 5 in it to be reliable. The RAW balance is way off. A narrative game shouldn't have such randomly difficult rolls, it hinders the story the players are telling.

Sadly this game seems like it requires the most optimization and the flattest one trick ponies out of any system I have ever tried. As you absolutely need a 5 for something to be reliable and RAW you won't have points to even flesh out the skills or talents that go with that 5 so forget about a halfway decent secondary role.

Were you running the Beginner game?

If not, what were the difficulties like? (1-3 should be the limit for stuff the GM expects a starting character to pass)

I've just made a starting character for AoR. Bought no characteristic above 3, skills at rank 1 (except Charm and Negotiate at 2) - I passed around 3/4 checks I was asked to make.

That said my EotE character hit runs where it was more like 1/2.

It sounds like you guys just had a run of bad luck - I think you should keep at it.

You are doing something wrong. What kind of dice pools are you using? You mention a 6 on 3 fight but only a guy with 5 agi could hit? At short range, a character with 2 agi and no skill should be rolling 2 green vs. 1 purple. You will miss a bit, but it should not be all the time.

That is pretty much a shame, you might want to try to master different elements of the games before hand.

Try to make another game but this time, give yourself the time to anticipate the weaknesses you and your group had during this game?

Also I don't know what adventure you tried, but I recommend you try playing the Beginner's Box first. It gives you all the hints necessary for you to to apprehend the system and the narrative positions that the game takes.

If you did, then I guess it's simply bad luck, or a lack of preparation on your side. And bad luck is always a handfull on any tabletop game, but should be treated as a full part of the game.

Also you say :

Maybe you should not base your experience on a unique one, try it again, with a more restrained group this time maybe? So that you can fully explore the system in each of it's sides. From my experience, when you have three in a Characteristic, it means you can start beeing proefecient in it. In that case, did the GM dose the difficulty well?

Anyways, I can only say that much, but it seems to me you didn't fully understand the whole system and maybe didn't understand all the RAW, but it's only my opinion after all. And bad luck is a misguiding lady after all.

satire?

To be honest, OP reads like a troll.

Even if you would have 2 green vs 2 purple, the dice favor succes over failure. Which means that just about any character can hit with a blaster pistol on a pretty reliable basis at medium range!

Rebelarch86, I'm with everyone else here. I'm not sure what game you're playing, or if you're reading the rules to this one right. As others have pointed out, just two Ability dice (two points in a characteristic) gives you better than 50% odds when rolling against Average difficulty (two Difficulty dice). It sounds like whoever was GMing (was that you?) might have been making checks harder than they should have been.

I'm going to assume you're not trolling and advise you to read through the rules again.

There are other options in the game. A character could 'help' the person best at shooting.

6 on 3 sounds like minions not being used, and much of the issue seems from not knowing everything available to do or a really bad GM.

That or trolling.

If anyone legitimately had this experience with the Edge rules, they were doing something badly, badly wrong. This is one of the few systems I've ever seen where a PC generalist still stands a good chance of making a lot of their checks.

I'm betting against this being trolling. Trolling's about getting people angry, right? Nobody seems to be getting mad, so this'd be pretty lame trolling.

Wait, has this forum become too nice for trolls?!

Pretty much... The rest of can go on about your business. Move along...

Then we failed every roll. Roll after roll. Just take turns one of us will get it nope.

This happens, and yep it makes life tough. I had a session recently where the players couldn't make a single roll, but I was making everything. At one point they had YYGGGB vs PP and still failed. It happens. The most important thing is how it's dealt with by both the GM and the PC's. With co-operation, it doesn't have to derail the session.

Rebelarch86 posted earlier asking for help on creating a character that would not be useless. So I sincerely doubt there is any trolling here.

I would be interested to hear the average difficulty you were rolling against. If you were running one of the adventures sold in book format you were likely in over your head. As has been suggested here the rolls you should be making should be against no more than one red and two purple dice, and this should be the hard rolls. Normal rolls should be against no more than two dice (red or purple) with the possibility of a black thrown in on occasion.

Your biggest complaint appears to be with the dice system. It is complicated the first time or two you play it. However, once the GM gets a handle on how things work things should smooth out.

I too am curious how the OP was constructing his dice pools. I don't want to assume he or she is misunderstanding the rules on building his or dice pool, but I like to start with the basics when troubleshooting potential problems.

Rebelarch86 posted earlier asking for help on creating a character that would not be useless. So I sincerely doubt there is any trolling here.

I would be interested to hear the average difficulty you were rolling against. If you were running one of the adventures sold in book format you were likely in over your head. As has been suggested here the rolls you should be making should be against no more than one red and two purple dice, and this should be the hard rolls. Normal rolls should be against no more than two dice (red or purple) with the possibility of a black thrown in on occasion.

Your biggest complaint appears to be with the dice system. It is complicated the first time or two you play it. However, once the GM gets a handle on how things work things should smooth out.

Since this was cross posted to the reddit, I'll cross post too:

For most actions, it was 2 green and 1 yellow vs 2 purple. Failed every time. Some of the rolls were 2 yellow and 1 green vs purple, failed. The 9 survival rolls that we failed was 2 green and 2 yellow vs 2 purple. I had quite a few rolls with 2 green 1 yellow and a boost die, failed every time I had a boost die. The 1 yellow and 4 green our one player could roll succeeded every time. Seems to me the most important thing is excessive dice over the challenge die.

To me, this absolutely screams that the dice are being misread.

Nine Survival rolls (Seriously? Nine?!) with YYGG v PP? The chances of failing all of those is incredibly tiny. YYGG v PP should be a roll you are knocking out of the park. Sure, you could miss the check every once in a while, but to miss nine in a single setting? I don't think so.

Could have been mistaking threat symbols for failures or possibly counting both as failures?

Sounds like a terrible GM. Three dice with one skill rank (YGG) should be plenty for most tasks at a beginner level, especially combat. And if the dice are "clunky", then somebody didn't explain them right. Seriously, my group of pre-fossilizing over-50 stuck-in-their-ways players got it in about 20 minutes, and love the system. So, how old are you guys? ;-)

with seniors and clunky dice it's all about posture!

wrong!

this is how you should throw them:

Rebelarch86 posted earlier asking for help on creating a character that would not be useless. So I sincerely doubt there is any trolling here.

I concur, he seemed pretty earnest wanting to create a new character.

That is true now that you mention it....

Maybe it was just as simple as thinking that if you end with any uncancelled threat you still fail?

Rebelarch, I'm really sorry you had such an experience on your first time. I promise you this is not normal for this game!

I agree with others who have suggested your group might have been either reading the dice wrong, or perhaps adding too many purple difficulty dice to your skill checks.

If you're shooting a blaster at somebody at medium range, the difficulty is 2 purple Difficulty dice. If your character has a 3 Agility and 1 point in Ranged (Light), you're rolling 2 green Ability dice and 1 yellow Proficiency die.

If the character takes the Aim maneuver, they can add 1 blue Boost die.

If the target is behind cover, that might be 1 black Setback die.

This is still a pretty average difficulty roll, this kind of roll is going to come up with successes pretty often.

Maybe when you read this, could you grab your dice and put together this kind of dice pool, roll it a few times, and post the results?

We might be able to help you get better at interpreting the results. I think you'll find it's not too hard to roll a successful check with this kind of dice pool.

Thanks!

Rebelarch,

I will agree with the others, this appears to be WAAAAAAAY out of whack from my experience of the game. Even teaching it to a bunch to d20 fanboys and a couple of completely new players to Tabletop games in general I did not have this kind of trouble. I also started by having everyone learn HOW to assemble dice pools, and then read the results. We also found it useful to get one of the dice roller apps on our phones. Fantasy Flight puts out an AMAZING app for like 5 bucks; there is another one that is nearly as good for free.

If I may be so bold as to make a recommendation, take your Survival roll that everyone managed to fail somehow, build the dice pool again, and roll it 10 times. Write down all the results here on the forum, and let us help you interpret the results (I know, there is a nice 4 page glossy section of the Core Rulebook (CRB) that covers this as well, but the more help the merrier sometimes).

Most of the people here on the forums would much prefer you to have a good time playing a game. And while rolling poorly is part of the game (I know, I am the joke at the table, since I roll about half as bad as you guys apparently did on a regular basis); rolling as poorly as you indicate leads me to believe something was incorrect with how the dice were being used (either in assembling the pool, or in interpreting the results), since the probability of what you describe is possible, it is well below a 1% chance over the course of an evening.

Hoping you come back to talk to us so we can determine what went so screwy,

Kevynn

From our experience you need at least a 4 in a characteristic stat to ok and a 5 in it to be reliable. The RAW balance is way off. A narrative game shouldn't have such randomly difficult rolls, it hinders the story the players are telling.

Sadly this game seems like it requires the most optimization and the flattest one trick ponies out of any system I have ever tried. As you absolutely need a 5 for something to be reliable and RAW you won't have points to even flesh out the skills or talents that go with that 5 so forget about a halfway decent secondary role.

I feel your pain on the dice. Sometimes they are great and some days they just never work out. I've had days where I roll nothing but advantages, which means I never succeed because I didn't get a single uncanceled success. I've also had the reverse, where I roll nothing but successes, but I needed a couple advantages to turn on blast but rolled a ton of threat. We have a guy in our group that rolls 2-3 dice on his combat checks and fails half the time on short to medium ranged shots because the dice just don't play nice. So, I completly agree that the dice can be uneven and just starting characters can have fights that drag out a bit. That being said, in general we have no problems with the dice.

However, I'll agree with others in this thread. You're entire experience isn't the norm. As others suggested, perhaps the dice wern't read correctly? For example, a result of 1 success and 2 threat is still a success, it's just that something "not so good" happens while you succeed.

Can you let us know how you read the dice? We'd all love to help you find out what the issue is and help you guys have fun with this system.

I too am sorry to hear about your first experience with this system being so bad. While I can't say this is the best RPG out there or ever made. I feel this system is the best one made for Star Wars yet. And I have them, and have GM'ed them all so far. This system, like any other does have it's problems, but what you are describing seems very unlike EotE.

I have just moved to VA from Germany and found a gaming group near where I live now, and none had played or even owned the EotE books. Like a lot of people the "needing special dice" thing turned them off, and the costs of the books. After I explained how the ECRB had a chart to use normal gaming dice, that seemed to ease their irritations quite a bit. Well I ran a small game for them, and all characters were created ECRB RAW. No one died, hell, I think I only hit one or two of the 6 PC's like a time or two. We even did some really quick minor starship combat.

To my surprise, everyone really had a great time, and want to continue with my campaign. I did expect a least a couple of naysayers out of 6. One or two did by the ECRB before the game, now all 6 are buying the ECRB, ACRB, dice and even some of the source books.

They all thought the dice system was pretty neat. It took them some getting used to it, but none felt that a narrative feel or creativity was taken away.

I would like to point out one thing though.

Group just got done with our first session and it was awful, clunky, and boring. The dice system stifled any creativity and narrative. We couldn't tell a story bc none of us could pass a dice check.

You don't need to pass a die check to tell a story. If you feel or think that succeeding a dice check is the only way for this game to be narrative, then perhaps this is where the problem lies.

Judging from your earlier postings, I don't think you were the GM, and it seems that the GM and the group really do not have a good grasp of how the game works. I too am interested to see what the enemies looked like. For my group they faced one Rival Political at about 90 XP, and three groups of three minions each. By using their cover, and working together, they made short work of the problem. Like I said a few hits got through to the PC's but the Doctor was able to patch them up quick.

If the GM threw you guys up against 3 400 XP Rivals, I can see you guys having a hard time, but you don't need 5 dice be it ability or proficiency to hit in ranged combat unless you are shooting at a 3 Adversary at long rang in beefed up armor.

By using the rolled advantages to give others Boost die, even an unsuccessful attack can still be good. I wonder if the GM did not allow Advantages rolled to not be used unless the attack was a success. By RAW that would be incorrect!!!! I also wonder if he made every Threat into a Threat/fail combo. Then it makes me wonder if he used some weird hybrid system where you needed a certain amount of success to actually hit/.succeed. In this game, you only need one.

I had read some of your posts on the X-wing thread.

Never played any hobby game without heavy house rules, company game books have always been a suggestion or starting point. Surprised that's such a shock. I would think most groups do that to make the game flavor fit.

Destiny points are the cure for cold dice