True but I find in most games I've run or been in that characters with high def tend to have good offense, also I've typically found melee to be far more deadly than ranged in this game unless the opponent can move faster or starts far away. Though that could just be do to my player base.

In this game, the Melee monsters are not the big damage dealers. They are limited by the fact that their weapons don’t do auto-fire, and at best they can probably swing just two of them.

The big guy with the bigger gun that does a hell of a lot of damage with one shot, and is also capable of auto-fire, those guys are the ones who do all the real damage.

We walked into a scenario last week where we had been hired to provide additional security to some equipment that was to be delivered, only to discover that the equipment in question was a Dark Trooper, and it was going to some secret Imperial base. A Rebel group came in and we helped them wipe out the local security forces, and then they set bombs around the container the murder-droid was in, and left.

Afterwards, we went back to the office of the guy who had hired us, and he was in there with his goons. We tried to convince him that more Rebels were on their way and we had done the best we could to fight them off and these guys needed to get out of there as quickly as possible, but our "Face" flubbed his roll. So, they knew what had happened and what we had done, and weren’t believing any of our BS.

At which point the other four guys in the party took their blasters and mowed them all down. My Wookiee Marauder didn’t get a chance to swing his pair of super-nasty vibro-axes at a single target, and we’ve only got the one Heavy in our group.

Ranged weapons, especially ship-mounted weapons against ground targets, that’s where all the real damage is done. Melee weapons is more for show and making a lot of noise.

It's more the viscous and sunder on the vibro axe that are scary, especially if a player gets the mod talent from outlaw tech or gadgeteer and lowers it's crit to one then slaps superior on it for that bonus advantage like a Wookie player in my group decided to do.

The bigger danger comes from Mono-Molecular Edge. You can get to Crit 1 and Pierce 4, among other things. Superior is not bad, but I’ll take Accurate instead.

I run this combo with my Wookiee Marauder, and yeah — in melee it’s pretty nasty. But I do the least damage of anyone in our group, and we’ve only got the one Heavy. If you’ve got a blaster, you don’t have to close to Engaged range. If you’ve got a blaster, you can probably do auto-fire and get more than two blasts to hit the target.

Throw some nice attachments and mods on that thing, and add Talents like Barrage and Rain of Death, and the Wookiee Marauder with 5 Brawn and a pair of super nasty vibro-axes is actually the least of your worries in combat.

Most combats I've seen are decided by Damage more than Critical Hits, and Sunder just doesn't come up all that often (why wreck gear when you can wreck the guy using the gear?).

If you can crit a lot, then you can wipe out a lot of minions pretty quickly. But in melee, you can still do two crits at most, which means two minions at most. The rest comes from damage.

The easy way to fix that problem from the GM side is to run fewer minions, or a larger number that are well distributed, so that the Marauder has to run all over creation to get to their various targets.

Just about anything scary about a melee weapon can be replicated with a ranged weapon, and ranged weapons are just generally more useful too.

Yup.

If you really need to counter high-Soak guys trying to rush you with melee weapons, the AP Grenade from AoR is a rude surprise to pull out of a pocket.

The glop grenade would be more embarrassing. A stun grenade would also do a pretty good job.

There are lots of solutions to this problem.

Combats should never just be about two groups beating on each other till one side is unconscious. These aren't spontaneous cage fights. Each side has an underlying goal and keeping this in mind is a great way of equalizing the heroics of different party members. Why are the guards fighting? To defend something. So their goals are to raise the alarm, or destroy the encryption codes when it looks they'll be taken or to get the VIP safely out of there. Immediately that the guards start acting in such a way rather than as monsters in some MMO waiting to be cleared from a room, then everyone has important roles. The Marauder might be killing / tying up lots of enemies but are they more important than the thief somersaulting over the enemies to get to the data tapes before the guard finishes erasing them? Or the Scoundrel trying to shoot the door panel to close it before the vice-Moff can be hurried out of the room to safety? Realism and context are your first weapons in dealing with the combat focused monster because it provides more things to focus on than killing X enemies per turn.

Your second weapon is more realism - social interaction is not optional. If the PCs are at a party and they've brought along a seven foot wookie who's attitude to life is "KILL!MURDER!KILL!!" then that's a problem. Players of such characters tend to turn their character on and off again, waking up for combat and going into some sort of hibernation state in between. Such players react with surprise and confusion when poked awake during non-combat, but again - realism. At the gang meet or the negotiation with your client or in the restaurant, do you think the giant killmonster is invisible? Of course not - everyone is staring at it. Do you think that character got Presence 1 and no social skills because they know when to shut up and to be discreet? Do you think they're a massive killing machine because their shy and don't like confrontation? Of course not - in any social situation they're going to put their giant hairy foot in it. MAKE THEM ROLL. Have them impair the other member's rolls the way it would if I was trying to make a seduction attempt with a blood-soaked wookie behind me; or whatever scenario it is. Ditto for situations involving Intellect when you can work them in. Don't let the player turn their character on or off. Remember that they're there at all times. You'll probably see some points being put into social skills and either way, it at least makes for some really fun encounters.

I want to point out that most characters (PC or NPC) don't actually have ranks in social skills unless that's their focus since even a single rank represents a great deal of time and effort spent to develop that task.

I want to point out that most characters (PC or NPC) don't actually have ranks in social skills unless that's their focus since even a single rank represents a great deal of time and effort spent to develop that task.

Perhaps not in your games. In mine, players pretty much always end up putting a few points in the social graces just so they don't have weak areas when they need them. Out of curiosity do "Face" characters still put a few points into combat or defence skills in your games?

Any high Soak PC Marauder should be facing an opponent (or two) with a Vibro-ax. Pierce 2, higher with modifications, hurts.

Most combats I've seen are decided by Damage more than Critical Hits, and Sunder just doesn't come up all that often (why wreck gear when you can wreck the guy using the gear?).

If you can crit a lot, then you can wipe out a lot of minions pretty quickly. But in melee, you can still do two crits at most, which means two minions at most. The rest comes from damage.

The easy way to fix that problem from the GM side is to run fewer minions, or a larger number that are well distributed, so that the Marauder has to run all over creation to get to their various targets.

You know, running more minion groups would be a way to slow down a marauder. (Or really, any non-autofire character.) Have a group of six minions? The marader will kill one with a crit (two with two weapons) and hack through a large portion of the rest with pierce and damage. If you have two groups of minions instead, then the marauder will probably wipe out the group he goes up against, but he'll have to spend another turn and maneuvers to become engaged with another target. If he's spending a maneuver to become engaged, he isn't likely to spend strain to aim as well since these "killbot" marauders are known for having low strain thresholds. Or, have everyone back up to medium range from the marauder. Let him kill himself by suffering strain running all over the battlefield.

Another thing that might work, depending on the group, is to swarm the marauder with minions. The way we play, minions are always engaged with each other and when they become engaged with a PC, they all are engaged with the PC. So, if a marauder attacks a minion group and doesn't kill them all, then the party needs to think if they want to shoot into combat to "help" the marauder with the last stragglers. There is nothing more frustrating for a marauder than to be stuck in combat with a half dead minion. They know they could do so much more damage if they were on a fresh target but it's not worth spending the strain to disengage then engage with a new target.

Lets look at some math and see what it'd take to bog down a beefy marauder with minions. How much damage can a marauder with a vibro-ax do? Lets go with extremes and assume maxed Brawn, melee skill, and complete tree. Brawn 6 + ax damage of +3 is a base of 9 damage and pierce 2. Three ranks of Feral Strength would up that to 12 damage. The right mods on the weapon can increase the pierce to 4. So, before dice the maxed out marauder can do 12 damage pierce 4, for a total effective 16 damage against armored targets like stormtroopers. The marauder would be attacking with YYYYYG due to Brawn and skill. Maxed out, the marauder would have three ranks of Frenzied attack, which each allow an upgrade for strain. How many strain does a marauder typically spend on Frenzied Attack? I'm going to assume typically not much unless he's going against a hard target like a Nemisis or large minion group. Since I'm looking at how large a minion group would need to be to survive, lets assume the marauder spends all three strain on Frenzied Attack. That would give a dice pool of YYYYYYYPP. There will probably be boost dice floating around from the weapon being accurate, aiming, or allies assisting. For the sake of this argument, lets assume that the marauder gets two boost dice, making the overall dice pool YYYYYYYBBPP. How many successes should this provide? Honestly, I have no idea on the math, but I'm willing to bet that rolling 9 good dice against 2 bad dice could be expected to net around 7 successes. Some dice will roll only advantages or nothing while some dice could have two successes. Where does that put us? 7 successes + 12 damage + 4 pierce = 23 damage against a minion group of stormtroopers. Stormtroopers are soak 5 WT 5. A group of 5 would be WT 25. Knock down the Brawn/Melee some and/or don't spend so much on Frenzied Attack, and the GM might be able to get away with a group of 4.

TL:DR If the marauder could engage himself with a minion group of 5 stormtroopers, odds are fairly good that an injured one would be left to keep the marauder engaged. A marauder engaged with a half dead minion will either kill that minion or waste strain moving to a fresh target.

Any high Soak PC Marauder should be facing an opponent (or two) with a Vibro-ax. Pierce 2, higher with modifications, hurts.

Lightsabers hurt until they get Cortosis.

So looking at the Marauder tree. aside from a high brawn what makes them have super high soaks compared to everyone else?

Part of the issue is Soak (Brawn 6 + Armor 2 + Enduring 2 + Cybernetic armor 1 = Soak 11) but the other issue is Wounds. Most characters have wounds in the low to mid teens, depending on how many ranks of Toughened they stumble upon. Marauder has 4 ranks of Toughned in their tree for a total of +8 WT. A lot of Marauders are Wookies with a starting WT of 14, so by the time they max out Marauder they have (Wookie 14 + Brawn 6 + Toughned 8 = WT 28) a huge WT.

High WT and Soak compounds the issue. Twice the Soak of everyone else means they take half the damage. Twice the WT of everyone else means they are killed half as fast. Add those together and it can take up to four times the damage to take out a Marauder when compared to any other PC in the party.

It's more the viscous and sunder on the vibro axe that are scary, especially if a player gets the mod talent from outlaw tech or gadgeteer and lowers it's crit to one then slaps superior on it for that bonus advantage like a Wookie player in my group decided to do.

Most combats I've seen are decided by Damage more than Critical Hits, and Sunder just doesn't come up all that often (why wreck gear when you can wreck the guy using the gear?). Just about anything scary about a melee weapon can be replicated with a ranged weapon, and ranged weapons are just generally more useful too.

If you really need to counter high-Soak guys trying to rush you with melee weapons, the AP Grenade from AoR is a rude surprise to pull out of a pocket.

I don't know our wookie has viscious 3 on the axe and his talent from gadgeteer lowered it to crit 1, throw in a few ranks of his lethal blows and serrated edge and he's criting minimum with a +60 with a single advantage which is already generated by superior, much higher if he generates anything more than one advantage which isn't all that hard as you can imagine with his stats. Or that said he can do the same with sunder, the auto advantage from superior + his stats and all it really requires him is to get a few more advantages and suddenly he's chopped the nemesis nice boom stick into two useless pieces making the big bad have to resort to other less powerful side arms or to duke it out with their firsts which is obviously sub-optimal for doing much of anything for most foes.

As for the range difference that really means nothing because he has a jet pack. Sure it's two difficulty but with 4 melee and 5 brawn that's really nothing. He's not as good at taking out minions, that's a given, but that's not really the role he found in the group instead he takes out the big fish rivals and nemesis even if they have high soak or wounds simply by critting them... a few hits and they're gone typically unless I throw on some stacks of durable dedicate some dodge and expen most of my destiny pionts trying to slow him down. Not that I mind, a few of my earlier suggestions work great to slow him down, I'm just pointing out he outdoes all of our ranged without much difficulty in most fights.

So looking at the Marauder tree. aside from a high brawn what makes them have super high soaks compared to everyone else?

Part of the issue is Soak (Brawn 6 + Armor 2 + Enduring 2 + Cybernetic armor 1 = Soak 11) but the other issue is Wounds. Most characters have wounds in the low to mid teens, depending on how many ranks of Toughened they stumble upon. Marauder has 4 ranks of Toughned in their tree for a total of +8 WT. A lot of Marauders are Wookies with a starting WT of 14, so by the time they max out Marauder they have (Wookie 14 + Brawn 6 + Toughned 8 = WT 28) a huge WT.

High WT and Soak compounds the issue. Twice the Soak of everyone else means they take half the damage. Twice the WT of everyone else means they are killed half as fast. Add those together and it can take up to four times the damage to take out a Marauder when compared to any other PC in the party.

True but then they're likely lacking in ST and on top of this all that WT and Soak really won't protect them from crits that can slow them down if you roll the right ones. Of course they're much tougher, but as has been pointed out a few times the game does a very good job at giving you lots of options to deal with these kinds of players, you simply can't gun them down in a straight forwards manner without risking unbalancing the fight for other players should those foes turn their sights on them like you have to in many other RPG's.

You should be able to survive longer against stun as a non-brawn centric character usually since their heavy focus goes into wounds.

You do realize that your "longer" is only 1 round right*? The difference between our "Soak/Wound Threshold" machine of a BH and the rest of the party at it's greatest was 6. Also most weapons that deal Stun are still having to go through Soak...

So, sure Soak Machine (Soak 10) gets hit by a weapon dealing 12 Stun, he takes 2 of his 12 Strain, leaving him at 10, he can take 5 more hits. The next best in the team takes 7 Stun (after a Soak of 5) of her 14 and is at 7, one more hit like that and she's out. Next best takes 8 Stun (Soak 4) of her 17 Strain, she can take 1 more exactly like that and still be standing. The worst Soak (my Technician)) takes 10 Stun and lays down and "pretends" to be unconscious (took 10 of my 14)... however since I tend to be 3-6 Strain down from extra maneuvers or previous Strain damage, no, I'm just out in one hit (actually most of the party except the Trando BH tended to be anywhere from 2 to 4 Strain down going into each encounter).

So... as anyone can see your repeating the mantra of "Toss About The Stun and Be a Better GM" wouldn't have solved our issue. Trando BH would still be kicking ass and taking name after the rest of the party is napping off a few Stun hits.

Trust me, the GM tried this. Once. It ended in TPNT (Total Party Nap Time) because everyone went down before the Trando BH did and Mr. Soak Machine refused to flee and save himself.

* That's only if you're applying Strain without the possibility of Soak of course.

As for the focus fire "mmoey" feel it's more just common sense that anyone would use in a combat situation. If your in a fight and one person in that fight is shrugging off blows and chopping your allies up into itty bitty pieces it's expected that he's the first thing the enemies going to go "oh **** kill it!" to

Sure... if he's the biggest threat. If he's the one the enemies are after. Etc.

Also, keep in mind if he goes out to a "bad roll" too early in the fight, the rest of the party will join him in 1 or 2 rounds. It's just that simple.

High WT and Soak compounds the issue. Twice the Soak of everyone else means they take half the damage. Twice the WT of everyone else means they are killed half as fast. Add those together and it can take up to four times the damage to take out a Marauder when compared to any other PC in the party.

Right. I keep not focusing on this. Toughened + High Brawn + Higher Starting WT is a very large part of the problem.

I wonder if lowering Toughened to +1WT would help solve this issue?

Nothing spells Failmaxed like Wookie Marauder.

You start off with a strain level of 9, meaning any Doctor that has Preasure point talent will oneshot you, even without using Destiny. Or twoshot by any Politico.

And you dont feed all the minion groups to marauders, you feed them minons de-grouped, that lowers the killrate from about 9 Stormtroopers a round to maximum one.

A marauder vielding Vibroaxe with mono edge is like Cheese with extra cheese and some cheddar on top, if you ever encounter this as a GM feel free to have an Assassin shoot him with a Disruptor rifle, from extreme range, twice.

The main problem though with having one highsoak char in any group is that what kinda hurts the tough guy, kills the others. I managed to persuade my friends to dress for the occation, while my Marauder started to dress down, so instead of me having 10 soak and they 3, it is now 8 to 4. And that seems to work a lot better, and I can still do my main job, which is not to deal damage as much as it is to let the GM play with heavy weaponry without having partywipes.

It's more the viscous and sunder on the vibro axe that are scary, especially if a player gets the mod talent from outlaw tech or gadgeteer and lowers it's crit to one then slaps superior on it for that bonus advantage like a Wookie player in my group decided to do.

Most combats I've seen are decided by Damage more than Critical Hits, and Sunder just doesn't come up all that often (why wreck gear when you can wreck the guy using the gear?). Just about anything scary about a melee weapon can be replicated with a ranged weapon, and ranged weapons are just generally more useful too.

If you really need to counter high-Soak guys trying to rush you with melee weapons, the AP Grenade from AoR is a rude surprise to pull out of a pocket.

I don't know our wookie has viscious 3 on the axe and his talent from gadgeteer lowered it to crit 1, throw in a few ranks of his lethal blows and serrated edge and he's criting minimum with a +60 with a single advantage which is already generated by superior, much higher if he generates anything more than one advantage which isn't all that hard as you can imagine with his stats. Or that said he can do the same with sunder, the auto advantage from superior + his stats and all it really requires him is to get a few more advantages and suddenly he's chopped the nemesis nice boom stick into two useless pieces making the big bad have to resort to other less powerful side arms or to duke it out with their firsts which is obviously sub-optimal for doing much of anything for most foes.

As for the range difference that really means nothing because he has a jet pack.

Let me se if i got this straight, A wookie with a jetpack and a Vibro-axe is killing off everything.

There is no way he can fly a twohanded jetpack towards enemy, wield axe, manouver into engaged, kill, sheathe axe in one round, unless ofcourse he started as an Explorer and has Unmatched Mobility, or if the Jetpack is jacked directly into his brain, and requires only thought to fly.

I think I'm going to stick to my idea posted somewhere around here that tieing Soak to Racial Brawn stat instead of purchased Brawn stat would help mitigate the Marauder issue. If I was going to house rule a change to the Soak rules, this is what I'd probably go for.

Most characters have a 4-5 Soak from Brawn 2/3 + Armor 2. Not many characters have access to Enduring. The combat minded Marauder will have a 4-6 Soak just from Brawn alone. If you don't increase Soak when you increase Brawn, than that Brawn 6 Wookie Marauder would only have Soak 7 (Brawn 3 + Armor 2 + Enduring 2). IMHO, only having a 50% better Soak is balanced as opposed to having a 100% better Soak.

The "problem" is that the Marauder tree works too well together. Every single talent they get is focused in either improving killing things because they have a good Brawn score or improving survivability because they have a good Brawn score. Everything they do only needs Brawn to be good. It's super easy/lazy for even the most novice player to just up one skill (Melee) to 5 and one stat (Brawn) to 6 and just take every single Marauder talent. How many other characters can be so narrowly focused and fulfill everything the career was designed for?

Perhaps this is a Hired Gun issue, because they are the "kill stuff" career. When you go into the game with the character concept of "I'm gonna kill every last one of you" then it's super easy to stay on that narrow path. All other careers are designed with non-combat skills and talents that are part of the character concept. Bounty Hunters aren't just shooting, they need to track down their bounties. Colonists are the face, which by itself requires 2-3 different characterists to be decent. Explorer is the jack of all trades, so they should be decent at everything. Smugglers do more than fly and shoot, they need skills to smuggle well. Tech, well, I suppose Tech could get away with a good Int and nothing else, but there are so many good Int skills they can put XP in to be good at. Astrogation, Computers, Mechanics, and knowledges. All great to diversify your SP into. Whereas the Hired Gun was brought onto the team because he's good at killing things. Nothing else. So the PC motivation is to be the best at killing. Which is probably the game design that was followed for the Hired Gun. The problem is that players need to think outside the box for reasons to not just be the very best at killing and Marauder is the best at showing the flaws in how the career was designed.

Honestly, I'm surprised that Enduring is a ranked talent, or a talent at all. On paper it seems fine, but when you're playing a character that only needs to be good at Brawn, being able to buy talents to improve soak can get out of hand. The tough guy should be better at taking damage, but I don't think he should be twice to quadriple better at taking damage. The problem is that a rank or two of Enduring on anyone else isn't that big of a deal.

Wouldn't want every npc to be running around with them, that would seem too contrived, but stokhli spraysticks in Far Horizons would be a nice counter to a high soak or melee focused character, entangle and activated stun damage. Could say that as the adventure progressed the bad guys took note of the tactics the party used and prepared accordingly. Someone in another thread also mentioned keeping minions as individuals so one attack does not take out 3 or more at once. Think that was Dark Bunny Lord's idea about the minions, I also like it because it keeps the combat from feeling too much like Star Wars: Dynasty Warriors. Also just looked through Dangerous Covenants and the concussion grenades and the alternate concussion missiles would be nice too, since I believe Concussive can be activated and take effect even if they soak all the damage.

It's more the viscous and sunder on the vibro axe that are scary, especially if a player gets the mod talent from outlaw tech or gadgeteer and lowers it's crit to one then slaps superior on it for that bonus advantage like a Wookie player in my group decided to do.

Most combats I've seen are decided by Damage more than Critical Hits, and Sunder just doesn't come up all that often (why wreck gear when you can wreck the guy using the gear?). Just about anything scary about a melee weapon can be replicated with a ranged weapon, and ranged weapons are just generally more useful too.

If you really need to counter high-Soak guys trying to rush you with melee weapons, the AP Grenade from AoR is a rude surprise to pull out of a pocket.

I don't know our wookie has viscious 3 on the axe and his talent from gadgeteer lowered it to crit 1, throw in a few ranks of his lethal blows and serrated edge and he's criting minimum with a +60 with a single advantage which is already generated by superior, much higher if he generates anything more than one advantage which isn't all that hard as you can imagine with his stats. Or that said he can do the same with sunder, the auto advantage from superior + his stats and all it really requires him is to get a few more advantages and suddenly he's chopped the nemesis nice boom stick into two useless pieces making the big bad have to resort to other less powerful side arms or to duke it out with their firsts which is obviously sub-optimal for doing much of anything for most foes.

As for the range difference that really means nothing because he has a jet pack.

Let me se if i got this straight, A wookie with a jetpack and a Vibro-axe is killing off everything.

There is no way he can fly a twohanded jetpack towards enemy, wield axe, manouver into engaged, kill, sheathe axe in one round, unless ofcourse he started as an Explorer and has Unmatched Mobility, or if the Jetpack is jacked directly into his brain, and requires only thought to fly.

Maneuver to jet back to close, maneuver to engaged, incidental to quick draw and swing.

Also I never said he was "killing everything" I was showing a player in the group I run capable of using melee to compete with ranged

You should be able to survive longer against stun as a non-brawn centric character usually since their heavy focus goes into wounds.

You do realize that your "longer" is only 1 round right*? The difference between our "Soak/Wound Threshold" machine of a BH and the rest of the party at it's greatest was 6. Also most weapons that deal Stun are still having to go through Soak...

So, sure Soak Machine (Soak 10) gets hit by a weapon dealing 12 Stun, he takes 2 of his 12 Strain, leaving him at 10, he can take 5 more hits. The next best in the team takes 7 Stun (after a Soak of 5) of her 14 and is at 7, one more hit like that and she's out. Next best takes 8 Stun (Soak 4) of her 17 Strain, she can take 1 more exactly like that and still be standing. The worst Soak (my Technician)) takes 10 Stun and lays down and "pretends" to be unconscious (took 10 of my 14)... however since I tend to be 3-6 Strain down from extra maneuvers or previous Strain damage, no, I'm just out in one hit (actually most of the party except the Trando BH tended to be anywhere from 2 to 4 Strain down going into each encounter).

So... as anyone can see your repeating the mantra of "Toss About The Stun and Be a Better GM" wouldn't have solved our issue. Trando BH would still be kicking ass and taking name after the rest of the party is napping off a few Stun hits.

Trust me, the GM tried this. Once. It ended in TPNT (Total Party Nap Time) because everyone went down before the Trando BH did and Mr. Soak Machine refused to flee and save himself.

* That's only if you're applying Strain without the possibility of Soak of course.

As for the focus fire "mmoey" feel it's more just common sense that anyone would use in a combat situation. If your in a fight and one person in that fight is shrugging off blows and chopping your allies up into itty bitty pieces it's expected that he's the first thing the enemies going to go "oh **** kill it!" to

Sure... if he's the biggest threat. If he's the one the enemies are after. Etc.

Also, keep in mind if he goes out to a "bad roll" too early in the fight, the rest of the party will join him in 1 or 2 rounds. It's just that simple.

High WT and Soak compounds the issue. Twice the Soak of everyone else means they take half the damage. Twice the WT of everyone else means they are killed half as fast. Add those together and it can take up to four times the damage to take out a Marauder when compared to any other PC in the party.

Right. I keep not focusing on this. Toughened + High Brawn + Higher Starting WT is a very large part of the problem.

I wonder if lowering Toughened to +1WT would help solve this issue?

So you've taken one part of my suggestion, ignored most of it (like using entangle and formation of minion groups as well as pen)... So yeah sounds like a bad gm. If this was such a large problem I'm curious why we're not hearing it more often, I've yet to run into the I big bad unstopable tank once even with my combat monkeys.

As for "it's just that simple" it is simple but I don't think your conclusion is correct. The GMs job isn't to kill off his characters it's to provide them a fun and stimulating story.

This might mean dividing up minion groups after the big lugs go down to make the shots more numerous but more prone to do less damage and outright miss.

If he party all gets knocked out then perhaps they should consider approaching conflict differently than running in guns blazing or maybe now they have to deal with escaping an imperial prison. This strange idea that there's only one way to progress and that's running through everything seems to largely be your (or the GMs if he's not allowing alternatives) problem

I want to point out that most characters (PC or NPC) don't actually have ranks in social skills unless that's their focus since even a single rank represents a great deal of time and effort spent to develop that task.

Perhaps not in your games. In mine, players pretty much always end up putting a few points in the social graces just so they don't have weak areas when they need them. Out of curiosity do "Face" characters still put a few points into combat or defence skills in your games?

My statement is to point out that the book says that even one rank in a skill is a significant development of the skill in question. Many beings in Star Wars manage just fine without ranks in skills like Charm, Knowledge (Education), Negotiation, Perception, Piloting (Planetary), and Streetwise that would seem important for daily life. This is because only dramatically challenging situations require rolls, and I think it's OK for only a few people in a group to excel in specific areas during such times.

We've had two characters in my games that didn't have any ranks in combat skills. One of them (Politico) did have one rank of Dodge.

It's more the viscous and sunder on the vibro axe that are scary, especially if a player gets the mod talent from outlaw tech or gadgeteer and lowers it's crit to one then slaps superior on it for that bonus advantage like a Wookie player in my group decided to do.

Most combats I've seen are decided by Damage more than Critical Hits, and Sunder just doesn't come up all that often (why wreck gear when you can wreck the guy using the gear?). Just about anything scary about a melee weapon can be replicated with a ranged weapon, and ranged weapons are just generally more useful too.

If you really need to counter high-Soak guys trying to rush you with melee weapons, the AP Grenade from AoR is a rude surprise to pull out of a pocket.

I don't know our wookie has viscious 3 on the axe and his talent from gadgeteer lowered it to crit 1, throw in a few ranks of his lethal blows and serrated edge and he's criting minimum with a +60 with a single advantage which is already generated by superior, much higher if he generates anything more than one advantage which isn't all that hard as you can imagine with his stats. Or that said he can do the same with sunder, the auto advantage from superior + his stats and all it really requires him is to get a few more advantages and suddenly he's chopped the nemesis nice boom stick into two useless pieces making the big bad have to resort to other less powerful side arms or to duke it out with their firsts which is obviously sub-optimal for doing much of anything for most foes.

As for the range difference that really means nothing because he has a jet pack.

Let me se if i got this straight, A wookie with a jetpack and a Vibro-axe is killing off everything.

There is no way he can fly a twohanded jetpack towards enemy, wield axe, manouver into engaged, kill, sheathe axe in one round, unless ofcourse he started as an Explorer and has Unmatched Mobility, or if the Jetpack is jacked directly into his brain, and requires only thought to fly.

newsflash QuickDraw is a thing

Maneuver to jet back to close, maneuver to engaged, incidental to quick draw and swing.

Also I never said he was "killing everything" I was showing a player in the group I run capable of using melee to compete with ranged

Ahh, so the flying furrball is an assassin too..Things get hairier in the telling, like allways.

And quite obviously, I didnt get it right in the first place.

Anyways, the cheapest solution to combat 10 Soak characters mixed with 4 soak chars without overkilling the weak ones while actually worrying the tough guys, is have your minions equip Fusion Cutters; 5 damage ; Breach 1. 375 credits

It's more the viscous and sunder on the vibro axe that are scary, especially if a player gets the mod talent from outlaw tech or gadgeteer and lowers it's crit to one then slaps superior on it for that bonus advantage like a Wookie player in my group decided to do.

Most combats I've seen are decided by Damage more than Critical Hits, and Sunder just doesn't come up all that often (why wreck gear when you can wreck the guy using the gear?). Just about anything scary about a melee weapon can be replicated with a ranged weapon, and ranged weapons are just generally more useful too.

If you really need to counter high-Soak guys trying to rush you with melee weapons, the AP Grenade from AoR is a rude surprise to pull out of a pocket.

I don't know our wookie has viscious 3 on the axe and his talent from gadgeteer lowered it to crit 1, throw in a few ranks of his lethal blows and serrated edge and he's criting minimum with a +60 with a single advantage which is already generated by superior, much higher if he generates anything more than one advantage which isn't all that hard as you can imagine with his stats. Or that said he can do the same with sunder, the auto advantage from superior + his stats and all it really requires him is to get a few more advantages and suddenly he's chopped the nemesis nice boom stick into two useless pieces making the big bad have to resort to other less powerful side arms or to duke it out with their firsts which is obviously sub-optimal for doing much of anything for most foes.

As for the range difference that really means nothing because he has a jet pack.

Let me se if i got this straight, A wookie with a jetpack and a Vibro-axe is killing off everything.

There is no way he can fly a twohanded jetpack towards enemy, wield axe, manouver into engaged, kill, sheathe axe in one round, unless ofcourse he started as an Explorer and has Unmatched Mobility, or if the Jetpack is jacked directly into his brain, and requires only thought to fly.

newsflash QuickDraw is a thing

Maneuver to jet back to close, maneuver to engaged, incidental to quick draw and swing.

Also I never said he was "killing everything" I was showing a player in the group I run capable of using melee to compete with ranged

Ahh, so the flying furrball is an assassin too..Things get hairier in the telling, like allways.

And quite obviously, I didnt get it right in the first place.

Anyways, the cheapest solution to combat 10 Soak characters mixed with 4 soak chars without overkilling the weak ones while actually worrying the tough guys, is have your minions equip Fusion Cutters; 5 damage ; Breach 1.

My advice: stick to RAW for player characters. Brawn is a balanced thing. Find other ways to challenge your marauder besides nerfing him after he's put so much XP and effort into making a beefy character.

My advice: stick to RAW for player characters. Brawn is a balanced thing. Find other ways to challenge your marauder besides nerfing him after he's put so much XP and effort into making a beefy character.

Yeah, most everyone is saying that, but how is what is really being asked

Hit them with Stun attacks. Swamp them with 10-man minion groups. Drop grenades on them. Take their character sheet, modify a few bits, then throw their own self against them as an elite adversary with a different face and name. Engage from long-range.