I am slowly prepping to do the Jewel of Yavin. The race is what I am having trouble with. I know that the PCs can obtain a Storm IV Cloud Car, but I don't feel if every racing team should have the same vehicle. I need help on deciding where I can find different airspeeds to fit the other teams. I want the feel of the original pod racer scene. Also, I know there are three main teams other than the PCs, but I was wonder how anybody was handling the other generic racers. I find it hard there are only 4 airspeeders in this race.

It's an elite race, for celebrities. That's why there are only 4 teams. Every team has the same type of vehicle to even the odds - it is really the skill that counts, since every vehicle the same (with only small modifications). It also makes the race faster (real time-wise) and other players (not the PC pilot) can roll dice for other teams.

I found it easier to not have the PCs in the race at all. They can spend the time coming up with a lower profile way of getting into the gala.

Just do what george did for the podrace: describe them differently.

"All the pods seem bigger then yours. The red one piloted by the gran has fancy vanes on the engines and an enclosed cockpit, the yellow one with an ewok climbing in looks to have a double turbine and ejection system, the green one even has to little engines to augment the main ones. Then you see sabulbas pod. A hulking orange and black beast with intakes over two meters tall, the low thumping of its engines shakes the ground beneath it leaving a faint ripple pattern in the sand."

Side topic: Mind those laser cannons. They can easily blow another car out of the sky in one shot with just a few successes and 2 advantages. I suggest replacing them with autoblaster so winning the race doesn't boil down to a single (un)lucky dice roll.

1. There are more than 4 teams in the race. Per the "Sabotage!' section it mentions most other racers fall somewhere in between the two. Meaning the other racers do not have a high security, but are not totally unguarded. It also states that there are two communal berths for racers to make use of, but generally these are populated with teams not expected to finish in the top bracket.

2. So, I state again for ideas on how to incorporate the other generic racing teams. Leaving them out is just unrealistic since they are mentioned in the book. So, they have to be factored in as an accident or something else could hinder one of the named teams.

3. All the cloud cars are not the Storm IV Cloud Car. These are the cloud cars used specifically by the Wingard, It even states that in the core rulebook. Plus, the description of the Stormhawks suggests that there air speeder would be maxed out on hard points do to the fact that they spend more money than they could possible win which suggest more than 30,000 credits in upgrades. The Carbine team I can see have ion weapons as there gunner loves to attack, but does not want to destroy. Finally, Tarryn Rayzer air ship is plagued with substandard equipment making it to be worse than the Storm IV Cloud Car.

4. So, it is definitely not an elite race for celebrities with 4 teams only. Skipping around the race in general is goofy as one or two rolls & an exchange of cash for fake tickets sounds extremely boring. And last, describing the vehicles differently is a cop out as they are blatantly different when reading the adventure.

5. I created this thread to get good ideas and not to find ways to get around the problem. The race needs more explanation in this aspect & I know I cannot be the only one who thinks this.

Side topic: Mind those laser cannons. They can easily blow another car out of the sky in one shot with just a few successes and 2 advantages. I suggest replacing them with autoblaster so winning the race doesn't boil down to a single (un)lucky dice roll.

Yeah, as I wrote in my post-tJoY post, I replaced them with heavy reapeter blasters (personal scale) and allowed fractional Hull Treshold, i.e. each car had ~40ht. So shooting was dangerous (crits!), having extra armour point (but slower car) mattered etc. etc.

1. There are more than 4 teams in the race. Per the "Sabotage!' section it mentions most other racers fall somewhere in between the two. Meaning the other racers do not have a high security, but are not totally unguarded. It also states that there are two communal berths for racers to make use of, but generally these are populated with teams not expected to finish in the top bracket.

True enough, but the other teams are basically fluff. The four main teams that are outlined are the ones with any real hope of winning, even if that does take extraordinary amount of unusually good luck.

So, what I’d be inclined to do is to equip all the other teams with slightly downrated unarmed Cloud Cars with regards to how they are statted out, but then flavor them in description to be however you want.

There are more than just two participants in the Podrace, and each one of the pod racers looks unique in terms of their equipment, the driver, etc…. But how many pod racers do you remember well enough to recall their names and descriptions, beyond Anakin and Sebulba?

With regards to game mechanics, all the other pod racers might be equipped and statted out identically, and everything else comes down to how they get described. They’re window dressing, but it’s up to you to make that window dressing look and sound interesting.

if i was doing it, i would get rid of the cloud cars. and instead use some other air speeders with similar stats, maybe minor tweaks that would give boost dies for certain actions or mods that would give a bonus talent to the pilot/gunner

Cloud cars are iconic.. but stupid

Maybe just have the background racers treated as a minion group? Start with 5 of them but have them crash, blow-up, break down etc on despair / high threat rolls. That should add more colour to the race without significantly increasing the number of rolls. I might use this idea when I run this one, with the 4 players who are not in the cloud car each running one named team and me as GM running the minion group of racers.

Or, stat up another team or two of your own and throw them in.