Hmmm.

Then let me ask a question of everyone who keeps repeating: "Just be a better GM and challenge only the Soak Monkey".

I’m not saying that. I’m saying that if you’ve got a Soak Monkey, then they are there for a reason and they expect to have to tank a lot of damage, and if you do want to challenge them then one way to do that is to give them opponents who will focus on them and send a lot of damage their way. But that’s not the only way.

Do you do this with other characters? Do you go out of your way to make Social encounters harder only for the Face? Is it harder to fix things only when the Mechanical Wizard is in the scene? Do things become easier for the other characters who aren't specced for those duties?

When the GM is figuring out how hard some roll is going to be, certainly one of the things they should consider is how good the character is at doing these kinds of things. That’s not the only factor, but it should be considered.

Now answer this: If you don't make it easier (IE it's either a static check or you've tailored the numbers for the Best Guy to be doing it), how often does a failed Social encounter end in TPN (Total Party Naptime)? Or a failed Mechanics check? Or a failed Knowledge check?

Failed checks are actually when the fun really begins. You get to try to figure out what the fallout might be, and how that could potentially be resolved. The GM and the players are supposed to be working together to help tell an interesting and fun story, and situations where everyone is completely successful all the time aren’t very interesting.

In our game, all of our best and most interesting moments have come when someone flubbed a roll and then we had to figure out what came next.

Failed checks are actually when the fun really begins.

Maybe for the GM, but as a Player my favorite moments are when "the plan [finally] comes together".

Which is a bit after every thing fell apart and I'd have to scramble to improvise a new plan and then that fell apart and then somehow we pulled it out of the fire and then it all comes together and I can lean back and try to take credit for all the good luck...

Though yes, I agree, constant success is boring story.

Failed checks are actually when the fun really begins.

Maybe for the GM, but as a Player my favorite moments are when "the plan [finally] comes together".

As a character, my favorite moments would be when the plan comes together.

But as a player, I know that things are more likely to get interesting when there are failed rolls that have to be explained.

I’m not the GM, so I can’t speak for what his perspective is.

I’m not the GM, so I can’t speak for what his perspective is.

Now it's when the Players realize their characters are in completely over their heads and they start thinking very hard and very fast about how to turn the tables. Or maybe exactly which direction to run away to...

However, and I will kick this ball around once more:

What about non-Combat participation? Does everyone have to be involved? Why? Why not?

(My reasoning being: Combat tends to involve all the PCs, even the non-Combs, to the extant I never just sat out with my combat incompetent Techie, I always found someway to help, even if it was just drawing stun volleys for a round. However I see the tendency to allow the Social and Intellectual inept to sit it out when not faced with combat.)

To answer the question myself: Everyone will be involved in every encounter in some way. Unless they are physically not there, they will be rolling something. Fighty McSoakface will have to roll Cool to not do or say something dumb and make the Face's job harder (and if he rolls well it'll make the Face's job easier with Boost dice!).

I'm not sure how to make the non-Techie help in Tech related issues... but I'll think of something. Probably have them roll some off skill to not do ... something, or hold a part maybe. Eh, I'll figure out at the time, that's what I'm best at.

To answer your question, yes I have played a non-combat character who had sat out of combat a few times. He would go find a place to hide and let the combat folks do their thing. I'll admit it's a rare thing to do, but I've done it. One of my favorite combats was when the party's Politico and Pilot sat in the security office watching the combat guys fight on the viewscreens. We took bets on who would kill more droids and found some refreshments.

As for Fighty McSoakface not being involved in the socal checks. Is this a place where I get to say "GM better and learn to challenge those socal characters"? It would totally be within their rights for a GM to increase/upgrade difficulty or add setback when the burly fighter type is standing in the same room.

The following would be approperate from the bad guy.

"I thought we were going to sit down and and discuss things like adults, but you go and bring your thug with you. Deal's off."

Roll an upgraded social check to try to convince the bad guy that McSoakface is a friend and not just hired muscle who came to just break thumbs until you get what you want. Add a setback because that ax looks scary.

For the Tech, there's plenty of times where someone strong would actually be helpful. I believe there are even examples in the book about a strong person holding on to a sheet of metal for the Tech to weld into place.

It's hard to come up with reasons for McSoakface to be an issue in some skills, such as medical and computers. One thing you could do is this. Someone with a high Brawn should stick out in a crowd. If you try to do anything and not be noticed, like slicing into a computer from a public place, having McSoakface standing buy would draw unwanted glances. The example above, the character being viewed as a tough guy thug, could work for medicine or any other social check. Just having the guy standing around would make people nervious and could add setback dice to any roll. Try to heal someone? Add a setback because they are scared of the combat guy. Doing streetwise to find out information? Add a setback because the big guy is scary. (Which really, this could be extrapolated to any combat character walking around with a big gun. It's just that a high brawn makes a character noticible without any equipment.)

The other reason is when one character doesn't fit with a party, which is something that can happen in every game. If one character is on a radically different power level it can start to zap the fun away for the group.

This is why I keep pushing buttons in this thread. This was a problem in my last game. One guy was twice the Soak, twice the Wounds, and almost as much Strain as the rest of the party.

The game didn't become "unfun" for us*, but it became ... tiresome. Either combat was a gimme because, Soak Machine! Or it would be really tough. I'm mean really tough, like "We made a poor choice picking a fight with a Star Destroyer" levels of tough (probably because that as a fight we were meant to avoid, and often ended up running away from). Or it was fairly contrived in order to press the Soak Machine but not make it a TPN if he fell.

For me, this falls into the social contract for gaming. If a group isn't working well, if people are frustrated, then change something. If I make a character that's way too powerful in comparison to the rest of the party, I'll either start making choices as the character gains XP to even out the power level or I'll ask to retire the character. Unfortunetly this choice sometimes needs to be made and/or some people don't want to make the choice.

I'm actually in that situation right now. I made a sniper character that can one-shot just about any enemy we come across. That was the goal for my character, and now that I can do it I see that it's frustrating my GM with encounter design. We start up close for me to get shot, the Marauder slices them up. We start far away for the Marauder to have trouble getting to combat, the sniper shoots them up. Right now I took over running the game to let the GM play while I run Arda I, but after that I need to decide if I want to bring the sniper back or create a new social character, which is something the group is missing.

As for Fighty McSoakface not being involved in the socal checks. Is this a place where I get to say "GM better and learn to challenge those socal characters"? It would totally be within their rights for a GM to increase/upgrade difficulty or add setback when the burly fighter type is standing in the same room.

And I disagree with this "kneejerk" reaction.

Did the party come inappropriately dressed (deadly weapons when such is frowned upon, heavy armor to a negotiation between 'gentlemen', etc), then yeah, make the check harder straight out.

But because Scary McMurderKill is standing there? No, that's where he gets a check to properly comport himself. Cool to not give someone the scary looks or what have you. He becomes integral, not "just another Setback Die" (unless he totally flubs the roll).

Okay, sure, if he has a Reputation of flipping his **** and berzerkerganging... then obviously the party came dressed inappropriately if it's meant to be a peaceful Social Encounter (unless Mr. Beserkiller is in manacles).

And in those situations I'd have the Face (or whomever has the Ettiquete skills) make a roll to know going in if they're "dressed for success" or if "Killer McBiteface" should stay behind (and use the results to help set the next roll with Bs and Ss).

Skill stacking for the win!

It's hard to come up with reasons for McSoakface to be an issue in some skills, such as medical and computers.

Not just the Combat Grunter, what about the Unsocial Techie in the Social Scene? The Face during a repair montage?

In my group we mostly had the crew split up if a particular scene was going to be a long one that not everyone needed to be in. Techie and Droid fixes the ship, Face goes looking for a new contract, Thug 1 and Thug 2 go hit a bar for a good time brawl, etc.

Yes, we liked to split the party. We were a menace. A menace!

(but somehow almost always were regrouped in time for combat. hmmm....)

For me, this falls into the social contract for gaming. If a group isn't working well, if people are frustrated, then change something. If I make a character that's way too powerful in comparison to the rest of the party, I'll either start making choices as the character gains XP to even out the power level or I'll ask to retire the character. Unfortunetly this choice sometimes needs to be made and/or some people don't want to make the choice.

Yeah... the social "contract" was missing with the Combat Puncher in the last game. He was a new guy to the group and we included him because he's the nephew of of our Star Wars addict, was in town for college the last few years, and hadn't found a stable gaming group (he's a Pathfinder fan).

In other games his "I'll just make a Combat Jock" wasn't as much an issue, it's harder to break GURPS in this way for one, and two, we were playing fantasy and post-apoc. Both genres lent themselves better to the Combat Guy.

Also I ran those campaigns and everyone made characters that were at least semi-competent in combat, so our Combat Guy didn't become overpowering (in a few cases he was actually a bit under powered).

As for Fighty McSoakface not being involved in the socal checks. Is this a place where I get to say "GM better and learn to challenge those socal characters"? It would totally be within their rights for a GM to increase/upgrade difficulty or add setback when the burly fighter type is standing in the same room.

And I disagree with this "kneejerk" reaction.

Did the party come inappropriately dressed (deadly weapons when such is frowned upon, heavy armor to a negotiation between 'gentlemen', etc), then yeah, make the check harder straight out.

But because Scary McMurderKill is standing there? No, that's where he gets a check to properly comport himself. Cool to not give someone the scary looks or what have you. He becomes integral, not "just another Setback Die" (unless he totally flubs the roll).

Okay, sure, if he has a Reputation of flipping his **** and berzerkerganging... then obviously the party came dressed inappropriately if it's meant to be a peaceful Social Encounter (unless Mr. Beserkiller is in manacles).

And in those situations I'd have the Face (or whomever has the Ettiquete skills) make a roll to know going in if they're "dressed for success" or if "Killer McBiteface" should stay behind (and use the results to help set the next roll with Bs and Ss).

Skill stacking for the win!

I'll agree that this shouldn't be a kneejerk reaction, and it shouldn't be used in every encounter, but it's something to think about. I don't know about other groups, but I feel like my GM doesn't ask how we dress and act enough when we're on civilized worlds. It's worth a question and if a character is wearing something out of line, such as guns on a peaceful world or cut-off sleaves to a fancy dress party, then there should be concequences.

I get nervous when talking to or around a cop. Just seeing the gun and knowing the authority they have puts me on edge. I also get nervous when walking alone on a dark street and am passed by what looks like a big tough guy. Both of those situations would give me setback dice. Perception can be a lot of things too. The BBEG wants a no weapons allowed convercation. The punch-bot marauder comes along. The BBEG can see that the marauder is a big tough guy and that would put him on edge. How about a shopkeeper who has been mugged a few times? A big tough guy walks into his store. The shopkeeper could be on edge and not want to talk to the party, granting setback dice, because he sees the big guy as a potential threat.

I guess what I'm saying is that one of the "fixes" for Marauder encounter design is to present encounters that encourage the Marauder to design a more balanced character instead of one that is only good at fighting.

I will say that splitting up in this game is a lot easier than in a lot of other games I've played. I'm not sure why it is, possibly because D&D encounters are balanced for a full party, but for once I'm not afraid to split up the party. So, If you want to have your combats and not worry about balance, then split the combat guys off to have them fight while the non-combat guys accomplish the mission. (Slicing into imperal computers, stealing stuff, causing distractions, and convincing incoming bad guy reinforcements that they aren't needed.)

So, we all pretty much know that the high soak of the marauder makes some work for the GM. You'll notice that most encounters in published adventures don't have opponents that are up to the task of challenging a specialized marauder with soak 8 or higher and that's a conservative soak.

So how to design an encounters that won't kill your non marauder characters, but will make things fun for the Marauder. First, i suggest that if you are new to GMing EotE, do not allow your players to take a marauder, especially if the player is good at min/maxing. This is just my opinion. So take it or leave it. Most of these ideas i gleaned from the numerous other threads on this forum.

First add this house rule. A successful combat attack always does 1 point of damage regardless of the opponents soak.

Most marauders are going to be wookies or trandoshans.

If your marauder is a Trandoshan have him/her pursue Jagannath points. So throw targets out there that are worthy of the Trandoshan's time and earn him some good Jagannath points. Meanwhile have the minions engage the non-maraduer members of the party.

Environment is important when challenging your marauder. Use the terrain. Since marauders are melee specialists they have to close with their opponents. Something that can be hard to do if your opponents are in elevated positions that are hard to get to. Just be careful because if your opponents are on higher ground this could affect the non-marauder party members as well. Fight on moving speeders etc..

Set pieces. Even though your marauder can soak just about every weapons base damage in the game, put items in your encounter that can explode or possibly cause other types of damage like gases. Maybe these are in sealed containers that when hit by blaster weapons begin to leak causing variable effects: explosions, gas leaks, carbon freeze, chemicals interacting etc. Make the marauder think before he acts or just surprise him for charging in.

Use Gimmicks. Gimmicks are what most people in these threads recommend. Things like stun setting, unique talents combos or other nasty devices. Most opponents don't carry these types of items or have these unique talent combinations. So use them sparingly or the Marauder is going to get bored/upset and so will you. Stun setting is used to capture opponents and most opponents won't switch to it unless they have a very good reason. This is a metagame technique where someone tries to target strain instead of wound threshold. The only time i tried this in my game was when a bounty group tried to capture the maruader alive. It works, but its cheese if you ask me and the situation should warrant it. And above all don't have doctor evil enter a melee to use pressure point on him. No doctor in his right mind would ever do something so stupid and the only reason to do this would be metagaming in my book. Doctors are smarter than that. Now, if doctor evil gets cornered by the marauder all's fair.

Use bigger weapons. Know your marauders soak and hit him with some big weapons early on so that his WT makes fighting a bit riskier for him after hes done dealing the with the big weapon.

Throw some big beasties at the marauder to make the combat challenging and interesting.

Protect your Nemesis from the marauder, last thing you want is the groups arch enemy going down in one shot because the marauder hit him for 14 points of damage and did two criticals. This can happen even with adversary stacked on your nemesis. Remember what i said about Jagannath points. Doh!

Let the marauder massacre from time to time. It's going to happen, some brazen minions are going to piss off the wrong guy and not realize their mistake until its to late. You need to do this so the bad guys can realize that death with a vibro-stick is coming their way.

These are just some of the ideas i used in my own game. Just be very careful as a marauder can tip the balance of combats both ways. If he goes down you will quickly find the rest of the group is in serious trouble, because your big bad or your gimmick or challenge is to much for them. It's a careful balancing act and it doesn't always work out the way you want it to either. Just make sure your group has plenty of destiny in the pool in case the marauder does go down, because they'll need it.

The marauder will make work for you. You will have to modify most combat encounters in the published modules to accommodate a heavy hitter. I had to do this for every encounter in Beyond the Rim save the Cyber-nexu encounter.

Ultimately the marauder in my game swapped out for a politico and once that happened i removed the marauder specialization tree from play. The game is going much smoother now for everyone, and there is much less work and worry for me.

Finally i will say: I don't like the soak machine it's just really unrealistic to have one guy who can shrug a heavy blaster, and it breaks the immersion of the game for me.

Hope some of this helps with your encounter design and high soak marauders.

Naleax

I guess what I'm saying is that one of the "fixes" for Marauder encounter design is to present encounters that encourage the Marauder to design a more balanced character instead of one that is only good at fighting.

I've already given my advice way back at the beginning, but thought this should be addressed...

Finally i will say: I don't like the soak machine it's just really unrealistic to have one guy who can shrug a heavy blaster, and it breaks the immersion of the game for me.

Wrong way to play the Soak mechanic: "You got hit square in your bare chest by a blaster bolt, but somehow are miraculously still standing! 2 Wounds for you." This can lead to it being immersion-breaking.

Characters with a higher Soak can ignore the pain from wounds that might otherwise be too painful or debilitating for other characters. They might also be used to fighting, and might know how to roll, block, dodge, or otherwise stay out of the way of hits that might take down the inexperienced character.

Lastly, a blaster bolt that doesn't take a character down should usually be described as "grazing" or some variation thereof.

Again I really think people are just missing the insane usefullness of minion groups. They don't require gimmicky equipment or talents and can dish our large amounts of damage against big targets and lower damage against smaller targets with absolutely no meta game thinking.

An example:

Let's say you have 4 players. Your big soaky marauder, a smuggler with some combat experience but not his focus, and a mechanic and doctor with little or no combat focus being more focused on their professions.

So they piss off the wrong crime lord and are attacked by a group of thugs, let's say 8 since they want to just overwhelm the party (all minions). They surround the party as they step out of alleys (all selerate groups) and combat ensues.

So let's say for this hypothetical they're not even trying to kill the pc's, they just want to tough them up a bit and teach them a lesson so they're armed with something simple, a truncheon (damage 2+, crit 5, engaged, disorient 2). They seperate evenly (worst case for taking down the soak character) and start attacking with 3 brawn (GGGPP). So when they hit most of the party in big deal because they're not that strong but they quickly are going to realize one of the PC's likely isn't flinching when/if they hit (6 damage minimum since it's 2weapon+3brawn+1netsuccess). So what do they do? Well they gang up on him of course, even if it's only half the group that rolls gone from (GGGPP) to (YYYPP) and if more jumped in then all the better for hitting while the rest of the party is still dealing with just the standard (GGGPP).

Note this is with 0 amazing gear, fairly weak opposition and no special talents or traits which they might be packing a few of normally if they're litterally street toughs who's only job is to rough house problems.

Are there going to be situations where the soak machine is going to walk through some opponents and laugh? Sure and that SHOULD happen just like there should be some mechanic checks the technician can breeze through and some social encounters the face should be able to dazzle everyone with because not every encounter needs to be a threat but when you want to run more important ones the tools are very easily there for you to access

So, we all pretty much know that the high soak of the marauder makes some work for the GM. You'll notice that most encounters in published adventures don't have opponents that are up to the task of challenging a specialized marauder with soak 8 or higher and that's a conservative soak.

8 is a conservative soak? When people say things like this I really feel like we're playing totally different games. 8 is not a conservative soak even for a Marauder.

Let's break this down.

Trandoshans and Wookiees start with Brawn 3. If the player spends virtually all of their experience increasing Brawn, they may start with Brawn 5 at most. If they do that, then they're stuck with a single characteristic at 1 and everything else at 2.

Obviously for the sake of the thread, they will take Hired Gun - Marauder. At most they've got 15-25 xp to spend if their GM allows them to take max Obligation for extra XP. They aren't getting to Rank 1 Enduring with that. With the money they've got the max armor they're starting the game with is likely armored clothing or laminate, at best. They probably won't get laminate, since the min-max best method is max XP with Obligation instead of credits. As such, they'll probably have Heavy Clothing with it's +1 Soak.

So, a brand spanking new Trandoshan Marauder has Soak 6 at best. That's tough, yes, it is, but it's hardly undefeatable.

Now, let's move on to the campaign.

The PC with the Trandoshan Marauder happily spends every XP he gets trying to claw his way to Rank 1 and Rank 2 Enduring as fast as he can. That will take him 110 xp which is somewhere around 6-8 sessions depending on how generous the GM is.

Finally, he hits your 'conservative' Soak 8. Sure, he got here by forsaking everything but Marauder talents on a beeline to Soak 8, but he's there. His skills aren't good, he's only good at Brawn skills, but boy can he take a hit. Sure, a minion group is going to bog him down for a long time, since his damage is crap, but whatever. He's an "impenetrable" Soak 8.

4 sessions later he finally has Rank 1 Dedication, Brawn 6, and Soak 9. But, let's say he picked up some Laminate Armor or actual Battle Armor and has Soak 11. No matter that it cost 2,500 to 5,000 to get it when everyone else is fine with Armored Clothing and is spending their coin on tricked out blaster modifications and excess gear.

Sure, 10-12 sessions in, a Marauder can hit the 'conservative' Soak 8 and probably get past it. Never mind that he can't do anything else EXCEPT take damage. That is almost literally all he can do. He's not great at Melee, since he ignored Frenzied Attack, Natural Brawler, Lethal Blows, and Feral Strength. His Athletics is probably mostly based on his Brawn 6, so he doesn't have much chance of Triumph. He has crap all for Skills, since he's still sitting on what he got for free from character creation, and all his other characteristics are mediocre at best.

Great, now this guy can Soak 11 points worth of damage. That's a lot. He's also going to be a total failure when it actually comes to hurting the opponents he's fighting. If they have Soak 4 or Soak 5, typical for combat minion groups, they're going to shrug off just about everything he's slinging, since he won't be getting a lot of extra successes. Hope he gets lucky on his advantage dice, since he doesn't have much chance of rolling Triumphs,

You know what would brutally massacre this Soak 11 'unbeatable' Marauder? A Marauder with a more even distribution of skills and talents. A Brawn 4 Marauder with a few ranks in Frenzied Attack and a high Melee skill can throw 4-5 GOLD dice into any single Melee check. Then, they can reroll it if they need to with Natural Brawler.

You want a dangerous Marauder? A Marauder with Brawn 4, Rank 2 Frenzied Attack, Rank 4 Toughened, Melee 4, Rank 2 Feral Strength, Knockdown, Rank 2 Lethal blows, and Vigilance 2 with a Will of 3 is a lot more dangerous. He's going to hit more, hit harder, and he's going to have the Triumph to disarm, knockdown, and manhandle the Soak 11 monster like a punk.

Yes, you can build a 1 trick pony that's not good at anything but taking damage. I'm not convinced anyone is actually doing this.

I've already given my advice way back at the beginning, but thought this should be addressed...

Finally i will say: I don't like the soak machine it's just really unrealistic to have one guy who can shrug a heavy blaster, and it breaks the immersion of the game for me.

Wrong way to play the Soak mechanic: "You got hit square in your bare chest by a blaster bolt, but somehow are miraculously still standing! 2 Wounds for you." This can lead to it being immersion-breaking.

Characters with a higher Soak can ignore the pain from wounds that might otherwise be too painful or debilitating for other characters. They might also be used to fighting, and might know how to roll, block, dodge, or otherwise stay out of the way of hits that might take down the inexperienced character.

Lastly, a blaster bolt that doesn't take a character down should usually be described as "grazing" or some variation thereof.

Oh trust me, i know about abstracting "damage", but rules as written, and many blaster shots are going to miss even though the roll might result in success because soak exceeds damage. There's a million ways you can abstract it, block, dodge, tumble etc, but when a surprise blaster pistol shot to the back at point blank can't even singe the marauder using rules as written It just doesn't make sense. That to me is immersion breaking.

So, we all pretty much know that the high soak of the marauder makes some work for the GM. You'll notice that most encounters in published adventures don't have opponents that are up to the task of challenging a specialized marauder with soak 8 or higher and that's a conservative soak.

8 is a conservative soak? When people say things like this I really feel like we're playing totally different games. 8 is not a conservative soak even for a Marauder.

Marauder has access to Enduring twice in the tree. Armor can give two soak. Brawn four isn't that hard to start with.

Enduring 2 + Armor 2 + Brawn 4 = Soak 8

Only costs 110 XP if you're going straight for the Endurings plus only 40 XP to bump Brawn from 3 to 4. Pretty easy to do.

Edited to add:

I think this character is pretty decent for this XP expense. Can start with 2 ranks in Melee for free, so attacks are YYGGPP. Frenzied Attack to turn it to YYYGPP. Toughened twice for extra wounds. Leathal Blows to make those crits hurt more. Feral Strength to make each hit hurt more too. Pretty focused on only melee combat, sure, but for only 110 XP in talents it's pretty decent.

Which, Jamwes, is my whole point. You can get it if you got straight, and ignore all other useful Skills, Talents, and Specializations. Will most Marauder hit 8? Probably. Is it going to happen overnight? No. And they spend credits and experience points to get that.

Nor is 8 or even 10 soak that hard to surpass do to successes adding extra damage, and that's on top of potential damage increasing talents, pen, etc

Yeah your not going to be one shoting or dealing devastating hits without some big guns but your certainly can hurt and wear them down without even resorting to extreme opposition.

So, we all pretty much know that the high soak of the marauder makes some work for the GM. You'll notice that most encounters in published adventures don't have opponents that are up to the task of challenging a specialized marauder with soak 8 or higher and that's a conservative soak.

8 is a conservative soak? When people say things like this I really feel like we're playing totally different games. 8 is not a conservative soak even for a Marauder.

To me 8 is a conservative soak for a marauder, thats pretty much what i dealt with from day 1 since the player picked up some laminate armor. 10 and higher soak after taking the 2 enduring talents not so conservative which is what i dealt with about 6 adventures in.

On damage. A beginning marauder with brawn 5 has 5 ability dice in melee combat. If he takes melee once for his career and once more for his specialization skills he has 3 ability dice and 2 proficiency dice in his melee attack pool. Melee attacks are an average check so that's 2 difficulty dice. That's an insane roll just to start with. Were not even talking about using destiny to upgrade. So not only is he a soak monster but he's going to pretty much kick anyones arse in melee combat at game 1.

We are playing totally different games. We have different players. You and i are probably totally different GMs and were probably playing totally different adventures. About the only thing that remains the same are the rules and 8 soak is possible to acquire with a starting marauder. Yea he might be a one trick pony, but oh well that's what the player created and wanted.

I'm just posting my experience and ways i dealt with it.

Nor is 8 or even 10 soak that hard to succeed do to successes adding extra damage, and that's on top of potential damage increasing talents, pen, etc

I don't know how that is. In my experience playing with a group of 5 other players more than 2 or 3 successes is a pretty rare thing for a group who is 11 sessions in. Most combat skills are around 2 proficiency dice with some agility scores at 2 or 3, but we're also pretty liberal with the setback and boost dice to.

But honestly its a rare moment when someone is getting 2 or 3 success. On average i would say 1 or 2 successes is the norm. When the maruader was around it was insane, he was rolling 3 ability and 2 proficiency at the start of the game and his successes racked up to 3 or 4 with a lot of advantage and at times triumph. He was often using advantage to do criticals to opponents.

Nor is 8 or even 10 soak that hard to succeed do to successes adding extra damage, and that's on top of potential damage increasing talents, pen, etc

I don't know how that is. In my experience playing with a group of 5 other players more than 2 or 3 successes is a pretty rare thing for a group who is 11 sessions in. Most combat skills are around 2 proficiency dice with some agility scores at 2 or 3, but we're also pretty liberal with the setback and boost dice to.

But honestly its a rare moment when someone is getting 2 or 3 success. On average i would say 1 or 2 successes is the norm. When the maruader was around it was insane, he was rolling 3 ability and 2 proficiency at the start of the game and his successes racked up to 3 or 4 with a lot of advantage and at times triumph. He was often using advantage to do criticals to opponents.

Anyways it's not really that hard do to the listed minion example above, aiming, etc one just need use the existing rules. Sure the opposition isn't going to be popping out that damage all the time but just look at some of the gear, a minion group of just 4 with even a measly 3 in a stat shooting at medium range can generate up to 6 successes optimally more if you do a larger group and throw in any boost die for the weapon being accurate, gear, having the high ground, expendature of advantages from former rolls, use of destiny points, etc.

Let's look at even basic weaponry: a light repeating blaster has 11 damage and 2 pierce meaning even on a basic hit against a player with a wooping 13 soak it will do, minimal, one damage.

The heavy blaster rifle is another example doing only one less without the pierce but gaining auto fire. I mean there's no shortage of weapons that do 9 or 10 base damage alone which means a few successes, a single talent, or a single decent mod and you can get through that soak relatively easily (you won't be doing much but the soak machine won't be invincible)

As for talents you have (and mind you this is just the core book) barrage (+3 damage at certain ranges), dead to rights (destiny point for +1-3 damage, possible +4 with cybernetics), dead to rights improved (+1-6 damage, +7 with proper cybernetics), deadly accuracy (+1-5 damage), feral strength (+ranks damage), etc etc

I've said it before and I'll say it again the tools are all there at your disposal if you really want to bring the hurt down for a tough encounter, it's just that your average thug or bruised won't stand much of a chance on his own against a soak machine, he's either going to need several buddies to gang up in a group or individually be packing some talents (and most individuals might be rivals, or nemesis the second of which is justified in having good talents and fear if their combat centric equal to if not exceeding that of the player)

I've already given my advice way back at the beginning, but thought this should be addressed...

Finally i will say: I don't like the soak machine it's just really unrealistic to have one guy who can shrug a heavy blaster, and it breaks the immersion of the game for me.

Wrong way to play the Soak mechanic: "You got hit square in your bare chest by a blaster bolt, but somehow are miraculously still standing! 2 Wounds for you." This can lead to it being immersion-breaking.

Characters with a higher Soak can ignore the pain from wounds that might otherwise be too painful or debilitating for other characters. They might also be used to fighting, and might know how to roll, block, dodge, or otherwise stay out of the way of hits that might take down the inexperienced character.

Lastly, a blaster bolt that doesn't take a character down should usually be described as "grazing" or some variation thereof.

Oh trust me, i know about abstracting "damage", but rules as written, and many blaster shots are going to miss even though the roll might result in success because soak exceeds damage. There's a million ways you can abstract it, block, dodge, tumble etc, but when a surprise blaster pistol shot to the back at point blank can't even singe the marauder using rules as written It just doesn't make sense. That to me is immersion breaking.

Wrong ways to adjudicate Soak, #2: NPC sticks gun to PC's head. PC does nothing, tells the NPC to go ahead and shoot. NPC pulls the trigger and watches in amazement as the blaster bolt is inexplicably absorbed into PC's skin.

Common sense should be exercised in all situations. Perhaps Soak isn't something that is inextricably tied into the core of who a character is, but is simply an abstract mechanic informed by any number of factors. Maybe a blaster bolt should just kill a character in a given situation, regardless of other mechanics that could be applied.

How is anyone getting Soak 8 at character creation? No starting character can have any characteristic higher thank 5. The cheapest Soak 2 armor is Padded at 500 credits - no small price at character creation. A Brawn 5 Marauder will start the game at Soak 7, and, unless they take on more Obligation at the GM's discretion, they have no weapons or equipment except the Padded Armor.

I can't imagine a player making that choice.

If anyone is letting a player begin at Brawn 6 or giving them Implant Armor at character creation, that's an issue that has nothing to do with the RAW.

Along the original posters line of thought, but reversed somewhat.

Has anyone thrown a soak heavy marauder at their party, and if so how did your party handle the marauder rival or nemesis?

Naleax

I agree staring with that high soak isn't really possible if you're following the raw starting alloance exactly, that aside I think we shouldn't so much focus on what characters are starting with but how to deal with what they can reasonably get in the long run as that's what youre bound to be dealing with more often.
As noted there are tons of ways from gear, to mods, to pen, to talents that can get above a moderatly high soak value, one thing I realized I forgot to include though was spending advantages. If we take a little trip over to page 206 of the core rule book yet another option you can use is that if you're soak machine is getting those last few pionts keeping him from getting hurt from his armor you CAN damage it as per chart 6-2 shows.
Under the segmant of said chart you may spend 3 advantages to, and I quote:
"When dealing damage to a target, have the attack disable the opponent or one piece of gear rather than dealing wounds or strain. This could include hobbling him termporarily with a shot to the leg, or disabling his comlink."
One might include chipping off a soak from his armor do to repetative shots to it. Now given this isn't something I'd use often in fact only very rarely, but if your soak machine is going through combat after combat just willingly leting every shot glance off his armor then eventually it's going to loose some structural integrity and possibly even break if he keeps that kind of reckless behavior up.
Similarly the chart shows you can not only add boost dice to allies (thus upping their potentiental to get more successes and thus more damage/accuracy) but you may also spend any triumps to upgrade the targets next check entirely. Not a huge boost but it's one more tool in the GM's back of tricks to give them just that little extra "umph" that's needed to really make the difference between the soak machine being invincible to suddenly suffering some wounds.

I agree staring with that high soak isn't really possible if you're following the raw starting alloance exactly, that aside I think we shouldn't so much focus on what characters are starting with but how to deal with what they can reasonably get in the long run as that's what youre bound to be dealing with more often.

As noted there are tons of ways from gear, to mods, to pen, to talents that can get above a moderatly high soak value, one thing I realized I forgot to include though was spending advantages. If we take a little trip over to page 206 of the core rule book yet another option you can use is that if you're soak machine is getting those last few pionts keeping him from getting hurt from his armor you CAN damage it as per chart 6-2 shows.

Under the segmant of said chart you may spend 3 advantages to, and I quote:

"When dealing damage to a target, have the attack disable the opponent or one piece of gear rather than dealing wounds or strain. This could include hobbling him termporarily with a shot to the leg, or disabling his comlink."

One might include chipping off a soak from his armor do to repetative shots to it. Now given this isn't something I'd use often in fact only very rarely, but if your soak machine is going through combat after combat just willingly leting every shot glance off his armor then eventually it's going to loose some structural integrity and possibly even break if he keeps that kind of reckless behavior up.

Similarly the chart shows you can not only add boost dice to allies (thus upping their potentiental to get more successes and thus more damage/accuracy) but you may also spend any triumps to upgrade the targets next check entirely. Not a huge boost but it's one more tool in the GM's back of tricks to give them just that little extra "umph" that's needed to really make the difference between the soak machine being invincible to suddenly suffering some wounds.

Now that's a good idea Dark Bunny Lord and one I never even considered. I agree with you that it should be used rarely. Another trick in the bag.

And remember minions and rivals are supposed to be speed bumps between the party and the nemesis.