Josep beat me to the idea. >.<

While reading through my thought was to add failures based on shield strength and keep the "shield power" idea by simply having a Shield Reserve (SR) which gets marked off. In an example like OP's 3 soak/10 SS shield, the shield turns off after the 4th shot, so simply giving it Shield 3/SR 4 would be equivelent for what I was cooking up. Whenever you take a hit, reduce damage by 3 and mark off a SR box (on a ficticious gear stat card). This is where my idea ends for static (read: personal scale) types of shields.

In a dynamic setting like OP's ship shields, then there are two ways to play it. You can keep using a fixed 1 shield hit = 1 SR marked, regardless of the Shield value of any given arc (with the logic being the shield still took a hit and is drained regardless of how much shield is in the arc). For example, say you assigned Shield 1 to an arc. You get hit so 1 less damage is taken and 1 SR would get marked. If you had instead assigned Shield 4 to the arc and got hit then 4 less damage would be taken and 1 SR marked. With this take it falls on the operator to make smart placement decisions which optimize the shielded amount to Shield Reseve marked ratio.

A different and more forgiving take is similar to OP's rules earlier in the thread. The operator assigns Shield X to the arcs, then takes hits. One Shield Reserve (from a larger pool than the above) is marked for each damage shielded. Since players need to keep track of how much gets absorbed (as opposed to just "did I get hit?") for marking off SR this is a little more bookeeping than the first take.

Related topic: When I read through it seemed like they sent two different messages for ship defenses. The text for defense on p. 226 reads, "Defense reflects a ship or vehicle's ability to completely deflect or reduce the damage of incoming attacks or collisions though use of deflector shields, point defense systems, raw speed, or other, more esoteric, technologies." From what I understand, a TIE fighter is supposed to rely on its slim profile and speed to avoid hits, yet the TIE does not have defense. The stat blocks seem to imply Defense = shields, when the text state it's not limited to shields.

Incorporating rules like the ones in this thread shift shields to having more consistency (good), but also allow for more variable defensive concepts (tie speed and profile, point defense weapons, those weird gravity warping 'vong things) to be reflected in setback dice.

Indeed. Shields should be a consistent form of protection, not an unreliable variable that setback die end up being.

After arguing with my player we found an alternative of the Shield -> Failure rating.

A Shield only adds X Failures with a Weapon Damage value equal or inferior to a defined number. We used the same Setbacks values and we transformed it to Failures. For example:

A Droideka's shield adds 2 Failures to every weapon with a base damage of 10 or inferior. With weapons with superior base damage the Failures doesn't apply.

Opinons?

Pondering this, I've decided I don't mind how personal shields work in this game. It's the droidekas and vehicle shields that bother me.

A Droideka's shield adds 2 Failures to every weapon with a base damage of 10 or inferior. With weapons with superior base damage the Failures doesn't apply.

All too complicated. If you want a Soaky mechanic, give the shields Soak 10, and the Cortosis quality. The Cortosis quality gives them immunity to Sunder, Breach, and Pierce. Done. (If you have to think of it as a new quality, copy and paste the Cortosis quality in your head and give it a new name, say, Droideka Shield, with the exact same benefits.)

That's at least closer to what the shields actually do than the Defence mechanic, and avoids extra strain and failure counting.

The problem with "super soak" is that doesn't emulate movies. I'm aware that complicate things a bit, but here is the "simulation vs speed" preference. For example:

If you just add Armor/Soak you will be immune to "small" weapons (up to blaster rifles) and become REALLY resistent against heavier weapons like heavy blaster rifle and even light repeating blaster (and the heavy too).

If you use this other method you can have the effect that we see in movies that Droidekas are IMMUNE to blasters and rifles but they "easily" fall down with repeating ones.

No Strain or other facts to consider just "Failure add" and "Up to X Damage". I think that the small effort can compensate if you want to emulate movies/CW. If do you want to put limits like time or max rounds do it freely

Josep, while I think you do have a workable idea, my problem is that adding Failures makes you miss, when you should not have missed.

Yes, adding Failures does reduces damage, but it also causes you to miss.

Let me explain why I get this impression:

SWRPG is not like D&D. In D&D a successful hit roll means that a character not only hit , but also got passed the armor. To put it another way, in D&D, a failed hit roll does not necessarily mean the character missed. It could just as well mean the characters just did not cause enough damage to get passed the armor.

SWRPG is different. If the hit roll fails it means the character really missed with the shot (or swing, whatever). The shot actually went passed the target, and could actually hit something else. A successful hit roll, on the other hand, means that you definitely connected with the target (unfortunate exception is when rolling a despair and your target is engaged with an ally).

In addition, the extra successes that add to damage, in SWRPG, simulate a shot that not only hit, but also hit in a sensitive spot (head shot, etc). This is all good, and makes a lot of sense.

True to being a fairly accurate simulation of combat, and unlike D&D (although the simple, and ancient, to-hit rule in D&D is very dear to me), armor only comes into play in SWRPG if you actually hit.

Now I can imagine a sniper that says: "I never miss" and really means it. After all, with 4 or 5 ranks, high agility and an accurate weapon, plus aim, etc. your chances of success can be 80-90%. And, frankly, this is quite realistic for an important character in the film world in which SW is set.

And for such a sniper it is not going to make any difference whether he takes aim at a barn door, or a droideka: he is going to hit them both! And while he may not do any damage to the droideka, it will certainly not be because he missed!

But if the droideka's shield is simulated by adding Failures to the roll, then 4 or 5 Failures would be enough to make even the best sniper in the galaxy actually miss most of the time.

Now I know you can narrate the miss anyway you like. The narrative goes: well, he did actually hit, but just did not penetrate the shields. But, everywhere else, the game mechanics are actually giving a different message. And, it is still officially called a miss.

And I believe this is enough to leave players with the impression that they are actually missing. At least, I think, that is what sticks in your mind.

Nevertheless, if your players do not have this problem, as I said above, the rule is quite workable. Maybe I am not imaginative enough, and that's why the mechanic leaves me with the impression I describe.

Anyway, sorry, I have offered no constructive suggestions in this post (maybe later), but I felt that was important to explain...

The problem with "super soak" is that doesn't emulate movies.

I agree, as I said in the other thread about this, I'd rather simply make a droideka immune to anything smaller than vehicular weapons or a missile. But for those who prefer a Soak & Armor approach, the Cortosis quality gets a lot closer.

I feel I must correct you again, failure can mean glancing or deflection not just missing. If that was intended you wouldn't see setback dice on armor, sheilds, or things like defensive and deflection, it's a mix between missing, glancing, etc.

Not to mention if it was just outright missing then any failures generated by those setback dice would be useless since it would either miss or it would hit with that kind of absolutist take. Yet that's not the case, those failures still effectively lower the damage potential even if struck

Yes, but they don't do it nearly enough. And thus its a very bad way of representing shields. Especially when shields in fluff basically means "can't be hurt with your piddly little blasters".

Yet, when PCs finally safe up enough to get one of these legendary personal shield generators, its a total waste of credits. When really they should be given a powerful, albeit unreliable, method of personal invulnerability. And it should also provide a means to make big baddies actually big and bad.

Sure, you can use narrative means and GM fiat to make the baddies shields super strong, but our poor PCs are shut out by the basic rules. Basically there is no point for PCs to ever get personal shields as the rules currently stand. And thats in my opinion quite sad.

My method fixes that by making shields much stronger and worthwhile. And sure, while its up a character could easily be untouchable by most weapons. But shields go down fast and so its only temporary invulnerability that can be worn down by concentrated fire, exactly like shields in the fluff.

Yep, that was that I want to say. A Failure doesn't necessary mean that you miss the hit. It's like a martial artist, he doesn't always evade hits, cinematically block and parry some hits.

So, Shield = Failure and "Up to X Base damage" do you consider that it's too complicated or the effort its good because emulates well?

Suggestions please (Remember that in my case I'm looking for movie emulation)

Dark B. I have to disagree. Glancing or deflection blows are quite well simulated by soak. There is no need to interpret a miss as a glancing or deflected blow, because soak explains this well enough.

In fact, sometimes this is the only way to understand soak, because how else can we explain how an unarmored character with Brawn 6 can just ignore the damage from a blaster pistol?

Yes, setback dice are used to simulate (force field) Shields, but this is exactly what I think is a bad rule. On the other hand, setback dice to a wonderful job of simulating adverse conditions (e.g. smoke, darkness, heavy terrain, cover, etc) because Setback dice make it more difficult to hit, and also make it difficult to make an exceptionally good hit (i.e. reduce the number of successes).

On the other hand, taking a look at the F&D rules, the new ability Parry, is almost exactly what a force shield does.

Here is the description:

"When hit by a melee attack, suffer 3 stain to reduce damage by 2 plus ranks in Parry".

So a force fields (as described by Baddy here) is almost identical using the force to Parry a blow. The effect is the same, with the difference that the one is using technological powers, and the other is using force powers.

This makes a lot of sense to me, and should not unbalance the game (if designed correctly) any more than the Parry ability does.

Suggestions please (Remember that in my case I'm looking for movie emulation)

Even if you don't buy my hit/miss argument, there is another problem with adding a number of failure to emulate shields.

The problem is that such a shield can be just as affective against starship/vehical fire as it is against light arms.

Just imagine this: Anakin sitting in the Naboo starfighter takes aim at a droideka. He rolls 4 successes (in other words, normally a very good hit), but the droideka (whose shields add 4 failures, for example) is unaffected by the blast of the starfighter.

Meanwhile a sniper armed with an air rifle manages 5 success on the hit roll and takes out the droideka.

Now you could argue that Anakin missed and the Sniper hit. But it is clear that using the spaceship's guns did not give Anakin any kind of advantage.

In other words, Shields of this type are just as effective (as far as their effect goes) against starship fire as they are against light weapons. Which, I believe, is wrong.

Setbacks seems a "variable" as fog (sometimes works sometimes not) but with shields, as far I can remember, Droidekas are immune (unless you do some tricks like enter the shields and shoot) to almost all blaster fire, but they are "instant" destroyed with weapons like light and heavy repeating blasters, and vehicle weapons of course.

Imagine that you create Droidekas with Soak 10. Ok, virtualy immune to almost any type of blaster fire BUT it will also have a LOT of resistance to light/heavy repeating blaster that clearly beat them up.

An easy solution to that its make that Droidekas only have 4 or 5 Wounds, so, even with high Soak they can be destroyed with one or two "gatling" lucky hits.

By other side with the Shield X (X = Failures) with the "Up to X BASE damage", you probably solve that. For example:

A Droideka have a Shield Rating (SR) or 3/10. That means that adds 3 Failure to every weapon with base Damage of 10 or inferior. This way a Droidekas in nearly immune to blaster fire, but can easily destroyed but heavy fire. If someonw with a base damage blaster 7 hits a Droideka even with the 3 Failures, you can interpretate that as he/she made some strategy to destroy the droid. Remember that a combat scene/round isn't just a 6 seconds blaster fire exchange.

I haven't read the whole thread yet, but what came to my mind when I read about the different opinions on having additional soak values vs. Shields using setback dice.

It would also be possible to create a shield mechanic in such way, that a shield provides a certain amount of setback dice. For example 3. For when the setback dice show failures that were used to cancel out successes of an attack, the shield will lose one setback die, so the next attack will only have 2 setbacks.

In case an attack isn't creating enough successes to be successfull or all successes were canceled by difficulty or challenge dice, the shield wasn't triggered and thus it doesn' t lose any setback-capacity.

With this approach you could simulate a shields with different strengths, that can be penetrated and that can collapse when under heavy fire. At the same time you use the game mechanic that were intended for shields in the first place. Keeping track of shield capacity is easy.

Recharge rates of shields could vary, from fully recharged each session, one (or more, depending on quality) setback recharges per encounter.

Negative aspect of this approach is, that you will have quite a few setback dice in the check. some talents on the other hand can reduce this amount, wich will give certain characters an edge against shielded oponents.

Honestly, if I were to do it to emulate the droideka in the movies, I'd have an ability called Shields.

Shields (a maneuver action to activate the shields and have a +20 to soak, shields can not be active during movement, a triumph or despair may be used to deactivate the shields for the remainder of the scene)

This makes them pretty immune to small arms but still susceptible to vehicle weapons. And you can always narrate a lucky hit or well thought out one.

Dark B. I have to disagree. Glancing or deflection blows are quite well simulated by soak. There is no need to interpret a miss as a glancing or deflected blow, because soak explains this well enough.

In fact, sometimes this is the only way to understand soak, because how else can we explain how an unarmored character with Brawn 6 can just ignore the damage from a blaster pistol?

Yes, setback dice are used to simulate (force field) Shields, but this is exactly what I think is a bad rule. On the other hand, setback dice to a wonderful job of simulating adverse conditions (e.g. smoke, darkness, heavy terrain, cover, etc) because Setback dice make it more difficult to hit, and also make it difficult to make an exceptionally good hit (i.e. reduce the number of successes).

On the other hand, taking a look at the F&D rules, the new ability Parry, is almost exactly what a force shield does.

Here is the description:

"When hit by a melee attack, suffer 3 stain to reduce damage by 2 plus ranks in Parry".

So a force fields (as described by Baddy here) is almost identical using the force to Parry a blow. The effect is the same, with the difference that the one is using technological powers, and the other is using force powers.

This makes a lot of sense to me, and should not unbalance the game (if designed correctly) any more than the Parry ability does.

I don't think it's a bad rule at all. I agree that force feild certainly seems a bit weak but I don't think potential failure are that bad nor that defense is that bad.

The reason is there's a difference between how tough the armor is (soak) and if it's surfaces will cause something to skim off it. Ie if a curved pauldrin is struck with a blade the blade might turn aside and slide along it, how thick or tough it is doesn't really matter here as much as it's shape and structure. The more accurate an attack the less likely this is to happen becasue if the blade is poised to strike it at exactly the right angle then it's not going to be turned aside as much by that (ie if no failures are generated by the setback dice provided by the armor / This would be viewed as the blade or bullet hitting directly with it's strike point at a flat angle rather than slightly tilted to the side of an armors curve which would cause it to shift forward momentum off to the side) however if it's turned aside even a little (somet failures generated) then it will loose kinetic force, the rest will have to penetrate through the thickness/rigidity of the armor in question (soak).

Physics wise it makes perfect sense. Again though I'm not defending how weak the personal force field is, just the mechanics behind defense.

In the end the difference bewteen adding a big flat soak and defense is defense adds more excitement and variability where as just more soak removes a lot of that chance aspect and makes it more "how much damage do those deal? Oh ok I have nothing to worry about I'll just walk in and absorb almost every shot".

The reason is there's a difference between how tough the armor is (soak) and if it's surfaces will cause something to skim off it. Ie if a curved pauldrin is struck with a blade the blade might turn aside and slide along it, how thick or tough it is doesn't really matter here as much as it's shape and structure. The more accurate an attack the less likely this is to happen becasue if the blade is poised to strike it at exactly the right angle then it's not going to be turned aside as much by that (ie if no failures are generated by the setback dice provided by the armor / This would be viewed as the blade or bullet hitting directly with it's strike point at a flat angle rather than slightly tilted to the side of an armors curve which would cause it to shift forward momentum off to the side) however if it's turned aside even a little (somet failures generated) then it will loose kinetic force, the rest will have to penetrate through the thickness/rigidity of the armor in question (soak).

Physics wise it makes perfect sense. Again though I'm not defending how weak the personal force field is, just the mechanics behind defense.

The setback dice on armor do a great job of simulating the effect you describe. Armor not only absorbs blows but, if well constructed, armor can turn blows away.

In the end the difference bewteen adding a big flat soak and defense is defense adds more excitement and variability where as just more soak removes a lot of that chance aspect and makes it more "how much damage do those deal? Oh ok I have nothing to worry about I'll just walk in and absorb almost every shot".

And this may be the reason why the designers decided not to use a further soak type value in order to simulate Shields.

Well even if my shield gives me flat extra soak, I'm not going to walk out into the room and expose myself. Personal shields can't take that many hits before they go down.

They're basically a "get out of jail free" card for a couple rounds.