Hi,

I just ran my first session this weekend and it went great!

But two rules questions did pop up. We couldn't find easy answers, so I thought I'd ask the community.

1) Damage from a weapon.

Imagine a player rolls an attack. He is using a weapon with a damage rating of 5.

If he scores 1 success and 0 failures, does his weapon do 5 damage or 6?

Does it take 1 success to make the weapon do damage, then additional ones add more damage? or does the first success do both activate the weapon damage and add to it?

Can a weapon ever do it's base damage?

2) Stun weapon, unarmed damage

When using shock gloves (Stun 3), is the damage calculated at Brawn+3 (converted to strain) or just 3 Strain (no Brawn)?

Thanks so much for any advice you can offer.

-Jon

1) 6. All successes that aren't cancelled by failures add to damage.

2) I believe you do regular punch damage (Brawn) and if you generate 2 advantages you can activate the shock part (3 stun that bypasses Soak).

Can a weapon ever do it's base damage?

Not with a normal attack, no. This is one of the unintuitive aspects of the system that confuses everyone when they hear it for the first time.

If a weapon has a damage rating of 5, then the smallest amount of damage it will ever actually inflict on an attack is 6 (the base damage plus 1 point from the success required to hit in the first place). In practice, all attacks inflict at least base damage plus 1.

But sometimes weapons will inflict damage through means other than an attack roll, and their base damage might be used in these cases. Weapons with the Burn quality, for instance, will inflict their base damage (and only their base damage) for a number of rounds after the initial attack if the Burn quality is activated. But even these weapons still inflict base damage plus successes on the initial attack itself.

Can a weapon ever do it's base damage?

There are special talents and effects that allow a weapon to do it's base damage, but during most conventional attacks the weapon will always do +1 damage minimum because of the required single success to hit.

Can a weapon ever do it's base damage?

Not with a normal attack, no. This is one of the unintuitive aspects of the system that confuses everyone when they hear it for the first time.

Speak for yourself

I've seen that confusion plenty. I think I found it clear at first myself, but I can understand how it can be misread or seem ambiguous.

For me the weirdest thing is how, on literally every single attack my players make, I have to remind them to "add the base damage to the number of successes you got" and tell me what the damage is.

They tend to tell me how many successes they got on the roll... and then I remind them... EVERY TIME ... to "add the base damage to that number".

I don't know why it's a sticking point, but I think next time we have a combat I'm going to have to make a specific point of mentioning this before we start.

1) Check the early Order 66 podcasts where they talk about this.

As I understand it the first success only means you've hit and every success after this adds to the base damage so as the podcast mentions you could just rule the base damage is actually at 1 less so you can add any successes left after deducting any failures rolled so a single success means you've done base damage and 3 successes means you've done base damage +2.

As I said check the Order 66 podcasts for more information on this.

2) I assume as its a stun weapon all damage inflicted is Strain but according to the book (Edge version) there are two types I'm assuming Stun Setting allows for the damage to be all the stun whilst the other only inflicts Stun damage equal to the Stun rating like Stun 3 for shock gloves if I read that correctly so your normal damage remains unchanged but lets see if anyone else can expand on that...

1) Check the early Order 66 podcasts where they talk about this.

As I understand it the first success only means you've hit and every success after this adds to the base damage so as the podcast mentions you could just rule the base damage is actually at 1 less so you can add any successes left after deducting any failures rolled so a single success means you've done base damage and 3 successes means you've done base damage +2.

This is NOT correct. The previous explanations were correct.

The fact that you rolled one or more successes means that your attack hit. You count the number of uncancelled successes that you rolled and then add that number to your weapon's base damage. The result is how many points of damage the attack does.

EDIT: This sounds a bit blunt, definitely not trying to be rude. I just wanted to clarify the rules. Thanks!

Thanks for all the info so far. It does seem that most agree that it's (weapon damage) + (all successes). I definitely see that, but yeah, it just caught us by surprise as being slightly non-intuitive. That's any easy fix!

As far as the shock gloves go, is it agreed that it's (Brawn) + (3 strain)?

Thanks so much,

Jon

Almost all weapons do base damage + sucesses.

Shock gloves do your brawn + successes wounds minus the opponents soak and then 3 strain that is not soaked.

To be clear, your brawl check must have resulted in 2 net advantage to activate the 3 stun damage in the case of the shock gloves.

1) Check the early Order 66 podcasts where they talk about this.

As I understand it the first success only means you've hit and every success after this adds to the base damage so as the podcast mentions you could just rule the base damage is actually at 1 less so you can add any successes left after deducting any failures rolled so a single success means you've done base damage and 3 successes means you've done base damage +2.

This is incorrect, and I believe the Order 66 Podcast later issued a correction.

According to the official FAQ :

Q: If I succeed on a combat check with only one [success], do I still add +1 damage?

A: Yes. In both personal and starship combat, all [success] (that aren't canceled by [failure]) add damage to the attack.

This is the official stance on it. Obviously, go with whatever works best at your table.

As far as the shock gloves go, is it agreed that it's (Brawn) + (3 strain)?

From the core rulebook:

When making an unarmed combat check using Brawl, the character's attack has a base damage of his Brawn rating, a range of engaged, a Critical Rating of 5, and the Disorient 1 and Knockdown qualities. Finally, when making a Brawl attack, the attacker can choose to deal damage to the target's strain threshold instead of its wound threshold, still reducing the damage by the target's soak.

Unlike other weapons, Brawl weapons augment this basic attack. Brawl weapons can add damage to this attack (as indicated in the Brawl profile on page 166), and may have an improved Critical Rating and additional weapon qualities. When using a Brawl weapon, the user can choose to use its Critical Rating instead of the standard Brawl Critical Rating. He also adds the additional weapon qualities to the qualities already provided by the Brawl attack. If the weapon provides an improved version of an existing quality, the character uses the improved version.

So, a pair of shock gloves does damage equal to brawn and still crits on five advantages. You can choose to activate the Stun quality on two advantages. Let's say we have a hypothetical brawler with a Brawn of 4 and shock gloves.

Our hypothetical brawler makes a Brawl check against an engaged target that results in one uncanceled Success and two uncanceled Advantages. This means our brawler's attack will deal 5 damage to the target's Wound Threshold or Strain Threshold, (brawler's choice) minus the target's Soak. With the two Advantages, the player can choose to activate the Stun 3 quality, which inflicts 3 damage to the target's Strain Threshold, bypassing soak.

I hope that clears things up for you.

Edit: Typos and clarity.

Second Edit: Remember that unless otherwise stated, item qualities activate on two Advantages. For the Stun quality, the number next to it indicates the amount of damage inflicted when the quality is activated.

Back in the beta for EtoE, the first success was to hit, then all successes after that added to damage. (This is actually still how I play, so in my games a weapon can do its base damage).

Now it is every success not canceled adds to the base damage. That result then has the "soak" of the target removed from it, and the remainder applied to wounds.

Back in the beta for EtoE, the first success was to hit, then all successes after that added to damage. (This is actually still how I play, so in my games a weapon can do its base damage).

Now it is every success not canceled adds to the base damage. That result then has the "soak" of the target removed from it, and the remainder applied to wounds.

It wasn't just the Beta. It's that way in the EotE CRB too - maybe they changed it in the Errata, though? I just read it the other night as I was checking the differences between EotE and AoR. I don't remember where exactly it states it... but it's in there. As sure as I'm writing this to you... I read it.

Either way, in the AoR CRB pg 217 it states differently plain as day: All Uncancelled Successes count as bonus damage.

Honestly, I don't know that I like this rule change. The benefit of having 1 Uncancelled Success is the fact that you get to do any damage at all. It is what makes the difference between Success and Failure. There's no reason to apply an added positive effect to something that is already providing the player with a positive effect.

I'll probably house-rule it to be the way it originally was. I like it better that way.

Even in the Beta for EotE, it was the wording of uncancelled successes. This hasn't changed in years, only been clarified. Weapons in EotE beta got a rewrite to reduce their damage a bit (most lost 1 or 2 points of base damage).

So, if you hit, you'll do at least Base Damage + 1...

Our hypothetical brawler makes a Brawl check against an engaged target that results in one uncanceled Success and two uncanceled Advantages. This means our brawler's attack will deal 5 damage to the target's Wound Threshold or Strain Threshold, (brawler's choice) minus the target's Soak. With the two Advantages, the player can choose to activate the Stun 3 quality, which inflicts 3 damage to the target's Strain Threshold, bypassing soak.

I hope that clears things up for you.

It really clarified things for me; hope the OP got the same.. Thanks!

For a time, my group said if you rolled successes enough to cancel all the failures that you hit, doing the base damage of the weapon with every extra success was added to the base. So 1 success and 1 failure was like a grazing hit for base damage. This was mostly because there were SO many misses in the early days of our characters and fights took forever for us. We eventually grew out of it.