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.

Yep, and you only ever need 3 Advantage to take that weapon out of their hand.

Marauders don't tend to do well against vehicles without a vehicle of their own, and if they put everything into Brawn, they are usually sub-par with vehicles.

Separate them from the party and throw a bigger threat at them... and so on. I count 12 ways in last 3 posts. More farther up.

Also use "The List" from the order 66 podcast. Design things in the encounter for those with skills to take advantage of. Use altitude so have bad guys shooting from the roof top. have something at long range to deal with etc. Have terrain like crates, difficult terrain etc. The list is really helpful listen to the list strikes back episode of the order 66 podcast.

Breach 1

Also, this doesn't address the other 2/3 of the Marauder "problem" 1) twice the Wound Threshold (so he can still take twice as many hits as everyone else) and 2) the massive damage output (which we didn;t face as much as our Soak Monkey was a BH and was only slightly more deadly than our Scout or Smuggler in Ranged).

Find other ways to challenge your marauder besides nerfing him after he's put so much XP and effort into making a beefy character.

Breach 1

Yes, Breach is the great equalizer for Soak. But again, if you're facing Breach armed foes every 3rd or 4th combat, it get boring retty quickly.

Also, this doesn't address the other 2/3 of the Marauder "problem" 1) twice the Wound Threshold (so he can still take twice as many hits as everyone else) and 2) the massive damage output (which we didn;t face as much as our Soak Monkey was a BH and was only slightly more deadly than our Scout or Smuggler in Ranged).

Find other ways to challenge your marauder besides nerfing him after he's put so much XP and effort into making a beefy character.

The idea is to fix the Spec before the player spends copious EXPs and the character becomes a problematic boring nightmare.

And again you don't do it all the time. Because doing it all the time is a **** move to do to a player who spent extensive character resources to be able to be awesome in this manner. But there are several options to switch things up occasionally.

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

This thread is full of ideas as to the "how," and everyone else had already said what I'd say

Breach 1

Yes, Breach is the great equalizer for Soak. But again, if you're facing Breach armed foes every 3rd or 4th combat, it get boring retty quickly.

Also, this doesn't address the other 2/3 of the Marauder "problem" 1) twice the Wound Threshold (so he can still take twice as many hits as everyone else) and 2) the massive damage output (which we didn;t face as much as our Soak Monkey was a BH and was only slightly more deadly than our Scout or Smuggler in Ranged).

The one problem the Marauder does not have is too much damage potential.

It is trivially easy for anyone with a few ranks in Ranged (Light) to do more damage than a fully tricked out Marauder. Spend 25 experience points to get Ranged (Light) Rank 3, buy two blaster pistols, and dual wield them. Congratulations, you will now routinely do more damage at Short and Medium range than a Marauder does at Engaged. Don't like pistols? Don't worry! Get a Heavy Blaster Rifle, add some mods, a few ranks of Ranged (Heavy), and you're done. Anything with Auto-Fire is grotesquely brutal.

A Marauder with Brawn 6, a Vibro-ax, and every Feral Strength Talent available to them is going to do 13 damage with 1 success. That's the maximum-minimum for a Marauder with tons of XP dumped into them. A non-combat class with zero-combat oriented Talents can easily out-damage a Marauder after a session or two. If they really wanted to do it, they could build their PC from character creation to do it. Hell, a Heavy Blaster Rifle starts at damage 10, 11 with the 1 success, and you don't need a lot of ranks to be good with it.

Unless you have a lightsaber, a Marauder's main advantage isn't their raw damage, but their ability to critical hit. Everyone who has played a Marauder should know this. If you don't know how the rules work, don't make arguments about how they're unbalanced.

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.

We looked at Sunder. Each successful Sunder damages the weapon, but the first one doesn’t slice it right in half. It takes multiple Sunder activations to do that. So, it doesn’t seem that Sunder is all that useful in many cases to me.

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

I looked at a Jet Pack for my Wookiee, but I was concerned about intense rocket flame from the exhausts being that close to fur. I went with the Grav Belt instead, and since the Grave Belt doesn’t have any stats written up, the way my GM has ruled it is that it allows him to jump as if in low gravity circumstances and close the distances a lot faster — so essentially kind of the same way you seem to be using Jet Pack, but in a safer flame-free manner.

But my Wookiee still has to engage with each of the various targets and has to move to do that.

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.

If the big fish always have minion groups around them, then they can disengage and let the minion groups handle the situation. If you’re in close quarters like the interior of a ship, then the additional range advantage from the jet pack won’t help.

And since flying a jet pack is an Agility-based skill, that could be made pretty hard to both fight and fly at the same time.

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.

Yeah, my Wookiee hasn’t bothered to get better armor than a Catch Vest, and I haven’t boosted his Soak and WT by as much as I could. He’s unbalanced relative to the rest of the party in that regard anyway, and I don’t want to tip the scales any further in that direction.

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

But that’s not competing with Ranged. You’re spending both of your maneuvers to actually maneuver instead of Aiming (or taking some other maneuver), and your swing is only going to affect at most two targets unless the amount of damage you do is enough to kill more than two minions in the minion group that you’re attacking.

The Ranged attacks don’t have any of those problems.

Don’t get me wrong, the Wookiee Marauder is a very powerful tank, but he’s supposed to look and act dangerous and get all the attention from the other side, so that the people on his side who really can do all the real damage are able to do so. That’s the whole point of a Tank+DPS combo.

If you’re the Wookiee Marauder, you’re the tank. But everyone in the party needs to know the dangers of what can happen when they get to close to the tank, especially if the enemy has some nasty tank-busting weapons.

We looked at Sunder. Each successful Sunder damages the weapon, but the first one doesn’t slice it right in half. It takes multiple Sunder activations to do that. So, it doesn’t seem that Sunder is all that useful in many cases to me.

I looked at a Jet Pack for my Wookiee, but I was concerned about intense rocket flame from the exhausts being that close to fur. I went with the Grav Belt instead, and since the Grave Belt doesn’t have any stats written up, the way my GM has ruled it is that it allows him to jump as if in low gravity circumstances and close the distances a lot faster — so essentially kind of the same way you seem to be using Jet Pack, but in a safer flame-free manner.

But my Wookiee still has to engage with each of the various targets and has to move to do that.

If the big fish always have minion groups around them, then they can disengage and let the minion groups handle the situation. If you’re in close quarters like the interior of a ship, then the additional range advantage from the jet pack won’t help.

And since flying a jet pack is an Agility-based skill, that could be made pretty hard to both fight and fly at the same time.

Its incredibly easy to sunder (1 advantage per step of damage), it costs one advantage per step of damage on the weapon, one or two rounds and that things toast and you've now disabled a large portion of your enemies ability to even deal damage.

The problem with the grav belt is it doesnt' propell you at all, I don't see how it would be quicker than having a rocket on your back. Also I get the fur thing but if you're wearing armor that concern is kinda gone.

As for engaging with your targets to do that so what? Yes you don't have to do it with ranged but in 90% of situations it's typically going to take a manuerver or two in the first round and not much more after that.

If the enemy is disengaging you've just made them waste their manuevers to, not to mention nothing is stoping you from pursuing in the following round.

As for flying being agility based you don't make the skill check all the time, only when the manuever would be difficult (ie like through tree's or a crowded street or something) and even then tossing in a few skill ranks typically overcomes a low stat rating fairly easily aside from the most difficult of checks.

In the end don't mistake me I'm not saying that the wookie character is going to out-damage a ranged whose specced for damage, but his potential to crit seems higher simply do to things like lethal blows and the massive amount of viscious on the axe, pick up Jurry rigged from gadgeteer or one of the technician trees and that gets compounded all the more by lowering the crit rating especially if you decide to slap superior on the weapon. Also nothings there to stop a melee centric character from also carying round a ranged weapon on them as they close the gap to get into melee, they won't be optimal during that time sure but it does increase their overall average dps while they're traveling (again in the rare situation that long or even extreme ranged are a thing as that's almost never encountered indoors).

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

But that’s not competing with Ranged. You’re spending both of your maneuvers to actually maneuver instead of Aiming (or taking some other maneuver), and your swing is only going to affect at most two targets unless the amount of damage you do is enough to kill more than two minions in the minion group that you’re attacking.

The Ranged attacks don’t have any of those problems.

Don’t get me wrong, the Wookiee Marauder is a very powerful tank, but he’s supposed to look and act dangerous and get all the attention from the other side, so that the people on his side who really can do all the real damage are able to do so. That’s the whole point of a Tank+DPS combo.

If you’re the Wookiee Marauder, you’re the tank. But everyone in the party needs to know the dangers of what can happen when they get to close to the tank, especially if the enemy has some nasty tank-busting weapons.

Yes once, after that typically not unless the opponent is also using both of theirs to move in which case you're either making them strain themselves up and/or not be able to use their manuevers for the same thing. Aside from that a boost die from aiming isn't really that big of a loss statistically, it hardly effects your ability to hit or deal damage and I think is certainly worth the trade off of hitting with the vibro axe. Also note your axe is never going to jam on a despair.

As for ranged attacks not having those problems that's also not true, if your opponent moves out of your range you'd have exactly the same problem just in fewer situations.

As for the purpose I agree, but again I'm seeing melee compete fairly easy with ranged in terms of dps, there are just very few situations where our melee character has had a difficult time keeping up, typically he's been the highest dps in the group and this is largley because of crits, with his flat +60 without triggering it's crit multipe times he can pretty much take out next to anything with high soak or many wounds if I as the GM don't work around trying to slow him down (again not a bad thing I've very few issues throwing things in the way of my players). I'm not saying someone couldn't spec a ranged to do better, they could if that's what they largely focused on but the marauder doesn't really have much in terms of utility, it is pretty much a big bad killer and that's it. (not that that's a bad thing).

The problem with the grav belt is it doesnt' propell you at all, I don't see how it would be quicker than having a rocket on your back. Also I get the fur thing but if you're wearing armor that concern is kinda gone.

So, the thing with the grav belt is that there is no write-up of it, just a line in a table that was supposed to be removed before the final copy went to the printer, and they goofed. So, the grav belt is basically whatever your GM rules it to be, because there is no in-game writeup of how it is supposed to work.

The way my GM ruled it, it greatly lowers the effective mass of my Wookiee, as if he was on a planet with much lighter gravity. So, he can jump a lot farther with it than he otherwise would be able to do. That jumping allows me to cover all the range I wanted with regards to getting to Engaged, and without having to have a jet pack.

With regards to armor on a Wookiee, kind of the whole point of this thread is that a properly started Wookiee is already one hell of a tank, and doesn’t really need to be wearing any armor. And if you look at the Canon sources, very little armor was worn by any of the examples we have. So, the "fire near fur" thing is a very real concern for me.

In the end don't mistake me I'm not saying that the wookie character is going to out-damage a ranged whose specced for damage, but his potential to crit seems higher simply do to things like lethal blows and the massive amount of viscious on the axe, pick up Jurry rigged from gadgeteer or one of the technician trees and that gets compounded all the more by lowering the crit rating especially if you decide to slap superior on the weapon.

Sure, there’s lots of things he can do to his weapons to make himself more deadly. But no matter how deadly you make him in melee combat, he’s still not going to compare to what a properly equipped blaster-user can do in Ranged combat.

Also nothings there to stop a melee centric character from also carying round a ranged weapon on them as they close the gap to get into melee, they won't be optimal during that time sure but it does increase their overall average dps while they're traveling (again in the rare situation that long or even extreme ranged are a thing as that's almost never encountered indoors).

That’s also true, and I’ve been thinking about whether or not I want to have my Wookiee start doing ranged weapons as well. But unlike a "normal" Hired Gun Heavy, their Agility is going to tend to be a lot lower, so they’re not going to be nearly as effective in Ranged combat as they are in melee. They might still do more damage in Ranged combat than they would in melee, however.

For me, the character concept is "tall furry scary melee monster tank", and I have explicitly chosen to avoid doing much of anything in certain other careers or specializations because there are already other characters in the group who do those things. I’m happy to let them shine in what they do best, so that I can shine in what I do best.

But in that regard, to each their own.

Yes once, after that typically not unless the opponent is also using both of theirs to move in which case you're either making them strain themselves up and/or not be able to use their manuevers for the same thing. Aside from that a boost die from aiming isn't really that big of a loss statistically, it hardly effects your ability to hit or deal damage and I think is certainly worth the trade off of hitting with the vibro axe. Also note your axe is never going to jam on a despair.

It’s a vibro-axe. If I get a Despair, odds are that it’s going to do something much more nasty than just jam on me. Like, I might accidentally cut off one of my own arms.

As for ranged attacks not having those problems that's also not true, if your opponent moves out of your range you'd have exactly the same problem just in fewer situations.

True enough, but still your range on a Ranged weapon is much larger. My range with a melee weapon ends past the point where I can’t physically touch them any more. From 1-100 is a much larger range than 0-1.

A melee monster is basically bringing a knife to what is almost certainly a gun fight.

As for the purpose I agree, but again I'm seeing melee compete fairly easy with ranged in terms of dps, there are just very few situations where our melee character has had a difficult time keeping up, typically he's been the highest dps in the group and this is largley because of crits, with his flat +60 without triggering it's crit multipe times he can pretty much take out next to anything with high soak or many wounds if I as the GM don't work around trying to slow him down (again not a bad thing I've very few issues throwing things in the way of my players).

I’m sure that’s true in your group, and I suspect that’s true in many groups at the start.

But my experience has been that the big tall furry scary melee monster tank runs out of steam pretty fast in the game, as he is overtaken in damage by all the other guys with ranged weapons, especially the Hired Gun Heavies.

I'm not saying someone couldn't spec a ranged to do better, they could if that's what they largely focused on but the marauder doesn't really have much in terms of utility, it is pretty much a big bad killer and that's it. (not that that's a bad thing).

It’s a tank. Tanks are pretty good at killing, up until the point where they find a bigger tank, or traps designed specifically to fight them. Or vehicles equipped to kill them. But drawing and soaking damage is actually a more important part of their role than their outright killing capability. They’re tanks, that’s their job.

Hired Gun Heavies are very well named as the mobile heavy artillery of the game, and they’re pretty good at tank busting.

Where the combo gets really deadly is when you combine the tank with the heavy artillery.

Then you can throw in the vehicles for some really silly amounts of damage. ;-)

I see everybody talking like the Marauder is going to be the most obvious threat and will thus attract the most attention from the enemy, but I've seen them do very well with just a vibroknife and heavy clothing. Sometimes it's counterproductive to go for that extra bit of damage or soak.

Depends on group, i've played in a game when most the group used gunnery as their primary combat skill. In that group a marauder would have been a joke damage-wise.

But then again i've also seen a marauder one shot a rancor, with a single hit (7 advantage on a crit 1 weapon will do that)

Oh to get back to topic, stop using pistols. Most rifles will damage high soak characters with only minimal success's

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.

This is my problem with the marauder. He should not be able to shrug every blaster shot and take no damage. He should be able to suck a few up because of his high wound threshold, but not completely ignore half ,or three quarters of the weapons in the game because his soak is much higher than those weapons base damage.

And throwing gimmicks at the marauder to keep him entertained gets old after a while.

Oh, and as a side note, what Doctor in his right mind gets close enough to a marauder to use pressure point on him. Sure he might get one shot in if he hits with his whopping 2 brawn before he gets smeared like jelly across bread by the marauder.

Naleax

Yes once, after that typically not unless the opponent is also using both of theirs to move in which case you're either making them strain themselves up and/or not be able to use their manuevers for the same thing. Aside from that a boost die from aiming isn't really that big of a loss statistically, it hardly effects your ability to hit or deal damage and I think is certainly worth the trade off of hitting with the vibro axe. Also note your axe is never going to jam on a despair.

It’s a vibro-axe. If I get a Despair, odds are that it’s going to do something much more nasty than just jam on me. Like, I might accidentally cut off one of my own arms.

As for ranged attacks not having those problems that's also not true, if your opponent moves out of your range you'd have exactly the same problem just in fewer situations.

True enough, but still your range on a Ranged weapon is much larger. My range with a melee weapon ends past the point where I can’t physically touch them any more. From 1-100 is a much larger range than 0-1.

A melee monster is basically bringing a knife to what is almost certainly a gun fight.

As for the purpose I agree, but again I'm seeing melee compete fairly easy with ranged in terms of dps, there are just very few situations where our melee character has had a difficult time keeping up, typically he's been the highest dps in the group and this is largley because of crits, with his flat +60 without triggering it's crit multipe times he can pretty much take out next to anything with high soak or many wounds if I as the GM don't work around trying to slow him down (again not a bad thing I've very few issues throwing things in the way of my players).

I’m sure that’s true in your group, and I suspect that’s true in many groups at the start.

But my experience has been that the big tall furry scary melee monster tank runs out of steam pretty fast in the game, as he is overtaken in damage by all the other guys with ranged weapons, especially the Hired Gun Heavies.

I'm not saying someone couldn't spec a ranged to do better, they could if that's what they largely focused on but the marauder doesn't really have much in terms of utility, it is pretty much a big bad killer and that's it. (not that that's a bad thing).

It’s a tank. Tanks are pretty good at killing, up until the point where they find a bigger tank, or traps designed specifically to fight them. Or vehicles equipped to kill them. But drawing and soaking damage is actually a more important part of their role than their outright killing capability. They’re tanks, that’s their job.

Hired Gun Heavies are very well named as the mobile heavy artillery of the game, and they’re pretty good at tank busting.

Where the combo gets really deadly is when you combine the tank with the heavy artillery.

Then you can throw in the vehicles for some really silly amounts of damage. ;-)

The way I think of despairs with melee weapons and lightsabers is you don't hit your self. No that isn't what happens. You hit things like the control panel for the shield protecting the installation from the lava like on Mustafar. You hit the window next to you exposing you to the possibility of being blasted out the window. Stuff like that is what despair does. Or you lop of your friends arm...How much conflict is lopping your friends arm off accidently worth?

Sounds like your way overexaggerating the effects of despair there when a single for ranged is typically like your weapon runs out of ammo instead of blasting off your own or other peoples body parts. I treat it more like your weapon gets lodged in something nearby like the floor or a wall, or perhaps you swing and your opponent moves in where your exposed upgrading their next attack die against you, etc. extremes like you to suggested make it no wonder why melee weapons in your group are thought of as so much worse when the despairs are being treated like that (especially when despairs against a foe with moderate adversary are even rare)

As for gunnery weapons we also have two players that use one (one a rocket launcher and I can't remember the other off the top of my head) and yeah those kill melee in terms of ability to kill with ease problem is I don't let my players take them everywhere. After all not many cities will let you walk around with something like that and sometimes the same for certain heavy weapons and it's not exactly easy to conceal either so I feel that really needs to be considered where as a melee weapon, while still dangerous, isn't treated with the same restrictions more often than not.

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.

This is my problem with the marauder. He should not be able to shrug every blaster shot and take no damage. He should be able to suck a few up because of his high wound threshold, but not completely ignore half ,or three quarters of the weapons in the game because his soak is much higher than those weapons base damage.

And throwing gimmicks at the marauder to keep him entertained gets old after a while.

Oh, and as a side note, what Doctor in his right mind gets close enough to a marauder to use pressure point on him. Sure he might get one shot in if he hits with his whopping 2 brawn before he gets smeared like jelly across bread by the marauder.

Naleax

Those initial fear checks, usually do wonders on player that have all their eggs in the combat basket.

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.

This is my problem with the marauder. He should not be able to shrug every blaster shot and take no damage. He should be able to suck a few up because of his high wound threshold, but not completely ignore half ,or three quarters of the weapons in the game because his soak is much higher than those weapons base damage.

And throwing gimmicks at the marauder to keep him entertained gets old after a while.

Oh, and as a side note, what Doctor in his right mind gets close enough to a marauder to use pressure point on him. Sure he might get one shot in if he hits with his whopping 2 brawn before he gets smeared like jelly across bread by the marauder.

Naleax

What you fail to understand is that any doctor in his right mind can easily hit and take out a wookie failauder in that one hit.

With 2 Brawn and 4 ranks in medicine you do a minimum of 7 damange, NO soak mind, when you hit. And then pop a destinypoint to add the Int score to the total, if necessary. Seeing as the failauder has a train threshold of 9, math says mangy glassjaw goes down like a furcoat on a sunny day.

failauder...

I'm not sure this little portmanteau works quite as well as it could.

Could I suggest perhaps "lamerauder" as an alternative? Or at least keep the "r" sound, for "failrauder".

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.

This is my problem with the marauder. He should not be able to shrug every blaster shot and take no damage. He should be able to suck a few up because of his high wound threshold, but not completely ignore half ,or three quarters of the weapons in the game because his soak is much higher than those weapons base damage.

And throwing gimmicks at the marauder to keep him entertained gets old after a while.

Oh, and as a side note, what Doctor in his right mind gets close enough to a marauder to use pressure point on him. Sure he might get one shot in if he hits with his whopping 2 brawn before he gets smeared like jelly across bread by the marauder.

Naleax

What you fail to understand is that any doctor in his right mind can easily hit and take out a wookie failauder in that one hit.

With 2 Brawn and 4 ranks in medicine you do a minimum of 7 damange, NO soak mind, when you hit. And then pop a destinypoint to add the Int score to the total, if necessary. Seeing as the failauder has a train threshold of 9, math says mangy glassjaw goes down like a furcoat on a sunny day.

Assuming he hits... I wouldn't want to roll GG vs PP knowing that a failure means you're going to get walloped on the next turn. Personally, I don't assume I'm going to succeed unless I'm rolling at least two more dice than the difficulty.

The point still remains though, and it is a good point, that a Doctor can take out a Marauder. As long as the party doesn't start robing hospitals, the Marauder would be fine.

I'd find it weird if every encounter included a doctor who's cracking his knuckles and ready to get in there. Like several of the complaints/comments in this thread, it starts feeling contrived when you start designing several encounters towards challenging the Marauder.

It's not that hard to make an encounter that challenges the marauder. The hard part is doing it in such a way that doesn't just kill the rest of the party if he goes down too. The extra challenge is being able to do it regularly without feeling contrived. Which, I think GMs should let the marauder shine more often than not in combat and not stress out too much about challenging them.

Last night I did find a great way to challenge a marauder, I rolled doubles on his Obligation. Nothing like spending a night with only 5 strain.