Just out of curiosity? How can someone get YYYYGG??? I get 5 Ranks, but that would get you 1G not 2. So she would have 4INT and 5 ranks?? That would be YYYYG...and if she gets her 5th point in INT then it would be YYYYY.

She gets YYYYGG for 6 in Int and 4 in the skill that uses Int. It confused me for a while too but then I realized the max characteristic for a PC is 6.

Personally I wouldn't have done this to a character I'd play. It makes you a one trick pony. I prefer a more balanced approach.

Honestly, its pretty easy to become a multi-trick pony with a high intellect. Medicine, mechanics, computers, and the knowledge skills all use intellect. Unlike the social skills or combat skills, all 3 of those serve a very distinct and separate purpose. Assuming this character is a technician, with 50 XP she could be rolling the same dice pool on mechanics, less if she has any ranks in it already.

Communicate with the player....the hell you say

I'm new. Sorry.

Btw, I love hearing my reader say "tongue sticking out". I don't know why but it always makes me chuckle. I think the image in my head must be a lot funnier than what the emoticon actually looks like.

Glad to make you chuckle I was wondering how the screen reader would read it.

Take a look at what they do with Stargate SG1. Sam is an amazing computer person who has to solve incredibly difficult tachnical problem. Daniel has to solve problems involving language and culture and Teal'c Is muscle and knowledge of how Go'uld operate and O'neal is leadership and tactics

Sometimes sam just solves things quick and sometimes she has to really work for it and fail a couple times.

How did she get up to 6 Intelligence? Through buffing intelligence up to 4 at character creation, then after nearly a year of play, buying dedication and getting a hold of a cerebral implant.

How did she get up to 6 Intelligence? Through buffing intelligence up to 4 at character creation, then after nearly a year of play, buying dedication and getting a hold of a cerebral implant.

could be 2 dedications or a 5 then a dedication.

How did she get up to 6 Intelligence? Through buffing intelligence up to 4 at character creation, then after nearly a year of play, buying dedication and getting a hold of a cerebral implant.

could be 2 dedications or a 5 then a dedication.

Not that those other ways are not viable.

Someone who puts all that into a skill/attribute combo is telling you that they don't want to fail at something. Finding bigger things to get 50/50 odds rolls isn't going to make them (or you) happy.

That's fine, though, because you have a literal galaxy of other options to challenge a player outside of tough rolls. If the challenge in your game comes from low-odds dice actions, then you are always going to run into these issues. Instead, make the game about tough character choices. Those always work regardless of what skills a PC has.

Han Solo's story isn't about how great a shot or pilot he is. It's about how he has to choose between looking out for himself and helping/trusting his friends.

Look at your player's Motivation and Obligation, and then make them choose. Sure they may be the best slicer out there, but will they use that skill to forge a new identity for a friend on the run, or instead alert the Hutt and pay back that huge favor they owe?

Doc, you raise a very interesting point.

This game doesn't rely on success, you can actually fail and still have a good time. In fact some of the best action in Star Wars is of the things going wrong.

The trouble is players and Game Masters are often coming from games where there is just a single success or failure, this game has three axis of success, Success/Failure, Advantage/Disadvantage and Triumph/Despair.

Just as a completely throw it out there thought: Would we avoid these issues if we created 2-3 characters per player at the start of a campaign, threw them on the table and asked each player to pick one?

Opps

If they gripe about unfair, i would tell them it was their choice to make the character this way... perhaps you should have made a better rounded character.

If this happens, DBAD. Offer them a chance to shift some xp around so they can make a more-balanced, more-fun character.

True, also I have had players in general not like how a few things work on their character, esp if it is a new Specialization we have not use before. I sometimes have let them slightly edit how their character is tweaked.

Or if the character just accepts that some things are going to go wrong with them designing a one trick pony, that is fine. I recently made a ranged tank/damage dealer in Soldier Sharpshooter/Commando. However, the concept for this character to not really be good at anything else.

My players frequently do stuff like this on purpose for story and character reasons. I currently have a player in my Cowboy Bebop style game that is playing a little person, so I am coming up with some amusing mechanics for him involving setback dice. It really boils down to are your players really "role-players" or winy MMO players who are trying to "win" the game.

I've always thought that the maximum dice was 5 and that any more upgrade greens to yellows.

I think you should find reasons to upgrade the difficulty. Not enough that they fail but so you can get the occasional despair. Things like needing to do 3 things at once, network spiders, alien computer systems, and of course destiny points can all upgrade the difficulty. I wouldn't try to make it so difficult that they might fail at a task. Their skill is too high for that to happen besides really bad luck.

I've always thought that the maximum dice was 5 and that any more upgrade greens to yellows.I think you should find reasons to upgrade the difficulty. Not enough that they fail but so you can get the occasional despair. Things like needing to do 3 things at once, network spiders, alien computer systems, and of course destiny points can all upgrade the difficulty. I wouldn't try to make it so difficult that they might fail at a task. Their skill is too high for that to happen besides really bad luck.

The maximum skill rank is 5. With cybernetics you can get a characteristic up to 7. This combination would lead to a pool of YYYYYGG. There is no hard cap on dice pools because there is a cap on the things that create the dice pool. You always take the highest number in green dice, then upgrade a number of them to yellow using the lower number.

the maximum characteristic without cyberware is 6. the die mechanic starts to get goofy at 6 so that is where they capped it in most cases.

Computers can be guarded. Let's see how this expert slicer does against a few droids with basic rifles. And if you want to get nasty...there are plenty of foes that Intellect can't deal with.

If she is so awesome her fame (or her alter ego, like L from Death Note) will spread one way or another, so she should be receiving a lot of contracts to do impossible computer stuff. Make the game about it in a coulpe of session and just let her rock on the regular check on the others. She shouldn't be always facing epic computers but when she does make sure it's worth.

Read I, Robot from Isaac Asimov. The main characters are always facing daunting tasks with robots and computers. Can serve as inspiration.

I can empathise with your situation as I have a slicer in my game that has a very similar dice pool (*waves at MKX if he is out there!*).

My 770xp character has (YYYYG) in computers, this is slander sir!

Mind you, it also doesn't deal out 70pts of damage in one rifle burst with an agility-5, skill-5 like half of the group seems to do and causes much larger amounts of immediate lamenting. (I am so going to break some guns when its my turn to GM again)

Anyway.

GM's, haul out those Red's, you're not going to stop anything with the good old purples and you should be expotentially increasing the difficulty for some things which are worthy of the characters skills at attempting. If the characters aren't being challenged, then they get less xp for doing a blue milk run which carries very little risk of failure.

Heap on the challenges with plenty of black dice and reds, get jiggy with the dark side points and make it harder, the problem I guess for a lot of people adapting to this system is that by its nature its not exactly as 'friendly' to newer GM's as there's no 'challenge ratings' alongside certain NPC's and monsters and not a lot of guidance to 'how' to stage your adventures over time in conjunction with a campaign over time.

That does require a fairly fine grasp of both your characters and their abilities, when in doubt, be a bastard and just ramp things slightly above what you think they can handle and rely on PC's to do what they do best- ruin all your plans

Besides, its actually hard to kill a PC, its much easier to knock them out, bust a few things and sometimes make them run away. But actual death is fairly and fortunately rare in a system like this which doesn't always have a binary result to a dice roll.

I totally agree with the sentiment that challenges should increase as the players get better. Otherwise, the game gets pretty boring. However, I think the narrative should drive the difficulty. I don't think that, just because the PC spent a ton of XP raising their computer skill, every single computer in the galaxy should be created and secured by a similarly expert NPC. If the PC wants to hack into something benign, the roll shouldn't become harder just because they got better.

This is similar in combat as well. Just because your PCs are capable of handling it doesn't mean that there should be Legendary Half-Dragon Werewolf Lords of Legend by the side of the road waiting to ambush the PCs and steal their cash. It means the PCs that get ambushed on the side of the road by random thugs just deal with the random thugs without a combat and move on. The hard combat encounter comes after they've passed by the random thug ambush and are now assaulting the ancient black dragon's lair or the evil king's keep or whatever.

In my opinion, challenging higher powered PCs requires raising the stakes in the story, not just with the mechanics. If the PCs are content to do the same old safe supply runs dealing with the same low-level thugs from week to week and ignore the GM's calls to greatness, they'll stop getting XP. If you go hide in the desert for nearly 20 years (in canon anyway), you're a lot less capable of fighting the man who's been hunting people down and blowing up planets for that same time even if at one point he was your student.

So, instead of raising the difficulty of every computer check, I'd just let him hack into whatever he wants until he gets somewhere that it makes sense to be a higher difficulty. For example, with a starting character, your party of starting characters is on the run from an Imperial patrol because you just blew up a minor relay station to cut power to an Imperial base for a time while your allies make an assault. Just as you feel you've lost them, you realize that there's a storefront with a security camera looking right at you. You decide to hack into the security system of the random storefront to ensure there's no video evidence. That's probably a hard check (PPP), probably quite difficult for a starting character.

Now, consider after that incident you've played for two more years and gained 700XP. Destiny brings you back to the same planet during your adventures. You've just come face to face with an Inquisitor, killing him in the process. You're now running through the streets to get back to your ship fleeing an Imperial patrol. Just as you feel you've lost them, you realize there's a (different) storefront with a security camera looking right at you. You decide to hack into the security system of the random storefront to ensure there's no video evidence. The GM says to roll RRRRPP. Why? Because the characters are higher level and the GM wants to challenge that YYYYGG character. What would the GM have assigned if no one had been raising their Computer skill for the past 2 years? Probably PPP. Of course, if your battle with the Inquisitor had occurred inside a secure Imperial facility on Coruscant and you had decided to hack the Imperial security network to delete video footage, then go for the RRRRPP and drop a destiny point on it while you're at it.

The point is just that things don't get harder as you get better at them. The whole point of getting better at them is so they get easier *and* so you can attempt more difficult challenges that you would have had no hope of accomplishing in the past. I'm not saying that you need to continue to constantly throw low-level challenges at your players for them to overpower or that you should throw overpowered challenges to completely roadblock and/or kill your players just because it would "make sense" (though it's totally okay to throw relatively overpowered challenges at the characters so they're forced to take a less obvious route or, even better, come up with any number of ways themselves to deal with the challenge other than brute-forcing it).

I'm just saying that an increase in difficulty shouldn't be contrived; it should be based on what fits with the narrative. This means that if a group of starting players decides to fight Darth Vader, they're going to lose. Similarly, this means that if a group of Darth Vader-killers decides to hack into someone's lunchbox to steal their ham sandwich, it should probably be pretty easy. If you find yourself thinking that the difficulty of this roll would be far easier had no one in the group raised that skill at all for the entire course of the game, it should probably stay easy. If it's the sort of roll that's hard no matter who is trying it, then by all means bust out the red dice and spend a destiny point. Raise the stakes in the narrative to challenge tough PCs with tough rolls; don't just run the same low-level game and tack on a bunch of red dice.

N.B. that this advice should be tempered by the sort of campaign you're running to some degree. If the goal is to keep doing the same stuff for the entire campaign, then rolls might get harder as you go just to keep them challenged. But, if that's the case, I'd say slow down the XP or just tell them not to raise their skills. Let them develop more diversity instead of spending XP to become an expert at something just to have it countered by arbitrary difficulty increases.

Oh, and to answer the OP more directly, challenge YYYYGG with RRRRPP and spend a destiny point. When the PCs say that isn't possible, tell them that's what they should expect when they're hacking the Imperial security network to delete Grand Moff Doldi's report about finding rebels on Yavin, trying to plant bad blueprints in the Death Star's computer system, attempting to access Darth Vader's medical records, or whatever. It's opposed by the Computers check of the officer who secured it. Make the narrative fit the difficulty and the players shouldn't feel you're treating them unfairly.

I have one problem in my group and it is a singular character who has min maxed the entire use of XP in order to maximise the pool that she rolls on pretty much every important check she makes (intellect based character) that no matter what I do...I cannot challenge the character at all.

YYYYGG is the dice pool I am up against most and tonight she got 3 triumphs on one roll. It's getting to the stage where I can't potentially make anything bad happen related to computers or mechanics because success us gaurenteed 99% of the time.

However if I dare increase the difficulty to a Formidable, Daunting or Impossible check. I get an earful about its unfair and in any way not possible.

Don't challenge them. Shame them. When a computer check comes up just narrate the players success and don't even stop the game. When they ask why they aren't rolling tell them there's no point, you don't want to slow the game down, and you want to move on to other players that actually have some level of failure and a point to rolling dice. Boredom should do the rest for you.

This may not be for everyone, but a lot of games get more broke as time goes on and characters get more powerful, so we have kind of just dumped XP awarding in a normal way.

Honestly my players and I will frequently change campaigns and settings every 3-10 sessions (we only play once a month or so remotely). We have kind of given up on this whole "Improving over time Idea" and are more into a "telling and experiencing stories" mode. What this has led to is I just let them build their character as per the rules... then add 100 or more XP (In the new Cowboy Bebop game we are going 150). There is not really any XP awarded.

If we get to a critial point where we finish a major story arc and everyone wants to keep going onto a new story with same characters, we award some XP to upgrade things. This amount might be based on someone saying "I would really like enough to this and that". Depends.

We have found that when the characters are not challengable, there is no real fun. It just becomes fish in a barrel and dull.

I have one problem in my group and it is a singular character who has min maxed the entire use of XP in order to maximise the pool that she rolls on pretty much every important check she makes (intellect based character) that no matter what I do...I cannot challenge the character at all.

YYYYGG is the dice pool I am up against most and tonight she got 3 triumphs on one roll. It's getting to the stage where I can't potentially make anything bad happen related to computers or mechanics because success us gaurenteed 99% of the time.

However if I dare increase the difficulty to a Formidable, Daunting or Impossible check. I get an earful about its unfair and in any way not possible.

Don't challenge them. Shame them. When a computer check comes up just narrate the players success and don't even stop the game. When they ask why they aren't rolling tell them there's no point, you don't want to slow the game down, and you want to move on to other players that actually have some level of failure and a point to rolling dice. Boredom should do the rest for you.

Not sure if that's shame. Were it me playing the character, my goal would be that most computer rolls are just assumed to succeed. I obviously don't speak for all gamers here, but for me, the goal isn't to roll a bunch of dice and tell all my friends about the huge number of successes I got. The goal is to be such a badass techno-wizard that I can crack all but the most secure computers in the most secure facilities...and then it's only because I can't physically get in to stick my scomp link into them. Saying that I automatically succeed and continuing on with an engaging Star Wars story is literally the purpose of maxing out a skill like that...for me anyway. I do know a bunch of people in the "roll a bunch of dice and tell all my friends about the huge number of successes I got" camp...so who knows!

I may have missed this someplace, but such a skill level may mean lots of advantage and triumph, but what about Despair? No matter how good a slicer might be, the presence of red dice means that despair will be coming up more often. Use that to narrate what happens next. While she may be successful, and should be the despair results don't cancel, and they can make things really interesting. It could be dangerous countermeasures that inflict physical damage, they could be an unexpected tracer program that means the slicer needs to get out of dodge FAST before Stormtroopers show up, which will require lots of other skills other than slicing. There's all kind of ways it can be made interesting, just make sure there are red dice in the pool, and flip destiny points to do it if need be.

One thing to remember is that for all skill rolls a good rule of thumb for challenging a player is match the number of dice they are rolling with purple dice. tweak from there up or down depending on how hard you want it to be. Add setback based on environmental problems.

I have one problem in my group and it is a singular character who has min maxed the entire use of XP in order to maximise the pool that she rolls on pretty much every important check she makes (intellect based character) that no matter what I do...I cannot challenge the character at all.

YYYYGG is the dice pool I am up against most and tonight she got 3 triumphs on one roll. It's getting to the stage where I can't potentially make anything bad happen related to computers or mechanics because success us gaurenteed 99% of the time.

However if I dare increase the difficulty to a Formidable, Daunting or Impossible check. I get an earful about its unfair and in any way not possible.

Don't challenge them. Shame them. When a computer check comes up just narrate the players success and don't even stop the game. When they ask why they aren't rolling tell them there's no point, you don't want to slow the game down, and you want to move on to other players that actually have some level of failure and a point to rolling dice. Boredom should do the rest for you.

Not sure if that's shame. Were it me playing the character, my goal would be that most computer rolls are just assumed to succeed. I obviously don't speak for all gamers here, but for me, the goal isn't to roll a bunch of dice and tell all my friends about the huge number of successes I got. The goal is to be such a badass techno-wizard that I can crack all but the most secure computers in the most secure facilities...and then it's only because I can't physically get in to stick my scomp link into them. Saying that I automatically succeed and continuing on with an engaging Star Wars story is literally the purpose of maxing out a skill like that...for me anyway. I do know a bunch of people in the "roll a bunch of dice and tell all my friends about the huge number of successes I got" camp...so who knows!

All RPG characters have a shelf life. If your player rushed to max a specific aspect of their character out then they're reached the end of the shelf life for the character. You say the character whines about any attempt to build a dice pool to challenge them so the only options are, don't bother and just skip those checks with them, encourage them to branch out in a different direction with the character development, retire the character and roll a new one, or just let them roll the huge dice pools that constantly succeed and move on.

I may have missed this someplace, but such a skill level may mean lots of advantage and triumph, but what about Despair? No matter how good a slicer might be, the presence of red dice means that despair will be coming up more often. Use that to narrate what happens next. While she may be successful, and should be the despair results don't cancel, and they can make things really interesting. It could be dangerous countermeasures that inflict physical damage, they could be an unexpected tracer program that means the slicer needs to get out of dodge FAST before Stormtroopers show up, which will require lots of other skills other than slicing. There's all kind of ways it can be made interesting, just make sure there are red dice in the pool, and flip destiny points to do it if need be.

The entire point of this topic is that when the GM attempts to create harder checks, that might involve red dice, the player vocally complains with a woe-is-me attitude saying the difficulty is too hard.

To the original poster... just curious, but how much XP are you awarding per session?

How bout stress or fear? I'm sure it would be much harder to slice a door open when being fired at by stormtroopers, or that rancor is charging the group down.

I wouldn't throw fear around often, but you got to use it. Reread that section of the book. Think of it this way, would that heavily armored trando cleaning his claws of blood with the hair of the Wookie he just eviserated scare you if you were there? Try fixing that swoop bike then.

I'd use stress much more often, specially when you are talking bout brainy characters who read all bout the gundarks mating ritual. However it's a different situation all together when you are in the field staring at a gundark while it's, well you know. Those extra little arms are used for something.

So now that you have a good way to increase the difficulty of those "easy" checkx, you'll have to figure out a proper punishment when they eventually fail on a despair. I'd suggest something that will make them pause the next time they grab the dice for another "easy" check. IE Using the first example ubove (on a despair) failing to slice open the doors while getting shot at. Perhaps an innocent little twi'lik child gets killed falling into the players arms as collateral damage. It would not have happened if you could have gotten the doors open and drawn the fire fight away from the public. If that sort of thing works for that player.