Well, my party just popped 1000xp earned (yes that is over a year of weekly 6 hour sessions). Still not seeing any major issues balance wise.

Yes the combat characters are really good at what they do (and have picked up secondary specs, like our assassin droid / mechanic). But so is the pilot/slicer and the scout/ninja and the talky character that can buy your speeder off you and then sell it back to you for a profit.

But it is all good and cinematic fun.

I suppose I am lucky in that my players have stopped going "up" and are going "wide" in their characters abilities.

If you have a doctor in your group, then try have him get pressure point and abuse it. That aside I agree that the system was created with the built in balance of the dice themselves being balanced to perfection. They just made defensive talents a bit too hard to get enough ranks of and a bit too expensive to use. Other than that, the game has a great balance, apart from the insane pressure point exploit.

Are you telling me you don't know how to deal with that problem? Try and do that to a storm trooper. who is shooting you from across the room. Or through a small shooting port. It is a freaking Brawl check. How many doctors do you think are going to be running around with a 5 brawn? And even if they do have that,... a storm trooper or whatever placed in an inaccessible location renders the power moot. A simple application of the Order 66 podcasts "The List" solves the problem,

have targets at long range.

Use Elevation.

Have things for skillful characters to do to effect the encounter.

You think the ability is broken. I think you have just been doing poor encounter design and allowing a one trick pony to run roughshod over you.

You should have some guys the medic can use pressure point on. But there should also be bad guys the medic can't deal with be it range, inaccessible location, etc.. There should be things that play to everyone's strengths and things to challenge them in their weaknesses. Things that would as a team will be easy to solve and things that allow the players to be bad ass. And some things that are difficult to deal with because no one has that problem in their wheel house.

All of these things don't need to be in every encounter. but they should all be considered for every encounter. And you should occasionally have encounters that just simply make the characters look really bad ass. Because that is part of the fun.

Are you telling me you don't know how to deal with that problem? Try and do that to a storm trooper. who is shooting you from across the room.

My Wookiee Marauder/Heavy/Doctor would be happy to do that, if he wasn’t jumping across the room with his Grav Belt and slicing you in half with his heavily modified pair of vibro-axes. Oh, and for a Stormtrooper, he’s just as likely to want to rip your head off as anything else. But he’d be happy to abuse the Pressure Point talent, given the opportunity — like against a Rancor or a Lylek or a very heavily armored Shell Hutt.

He is at least multi-talented when it comes to brawl-related attacks.

Or through a small shooting port. It is a freaking Brawl check. How many doctors do you think are going to be running around with a 5 brawn?

Small shooting port? That would be no problem for my Wookiee to throw in a grenade, or to let his Klatooinian Heavy use his automatic grenade launcher — or his LRB on auto-fire.

And even if they do have that,... a storm trooper or whatever placed in an inaccessible location renders the power moot. A simple application of the Order 66 podcasts "The List" solves the problem,

have targets at long range.

Use Elevation.

Have things for skillful characters to do to effect the encounter.

A single Stormtrooper is not a threat for my Wookiee. A squad of Stormtroopers is not a threat. A Regiment of Stormtroopers, backed up by AT-PT, AT-ST, and AT-AT walkers, now that’s getting into threat territory.

You think the ability is broken. I think you have just been doing poor encounter design and allowing a one trick pony to run roughshod over you.

Pressure Point can definitely be abused. But a Hired Gun/Heavy with decent weapons using auto-fire is a much bigger problem when it comes to doing damage in combat.

You should have some guys the medic can use pressure point on. But there should also be bad guys the medic can't deal with be it range, inaccessible location, etc.. There should be things that play to everyone's strengths and things to challenge them in their weaknesses. Things that would as a team will be easy to solve and things that allow the players to be bad ass. And some things that are difficult to deal with because no one has that problem in their wheel house.

All of these things don't need to be in every encounter. but they should all be considered for every encounter. And you should occasionally have encounters that just simply make the characters look really bad ass. Because that is part of the fun.

Throw a variety of problems at your players, and try not to let yourself get bogged down into any one type of solution for everything that gets sprung.

I agree, that’s definitely good advice.

Are you telling me you don't know how to deal with that problem? Try and do that to a storm trooper. who is shooting you from across the room.

My Wookiee Marauder/Heavy/Doctor would be happy to do that, if he wasn’t jumping across the room with his Grav Belt and slicing you in half with his heavily modified pair of vibro-axes. Oh, and for a Stormtrooper, he’s just as likely to want to rip your head off as anything else. But he’d be happy to abuse the Pressure Point talent, given the opportunity — like against a Rancor or a Lylek or a very heavily armored Shell Hutt.

He is at least multi-talented when it comes to brawl-related attacks.

Or through a small shooting port. It is a freaking Brawl check. How many doctors do you think are going to be running around with a 5 brawn?

Small shooting port? That would be no problem for my Wookiee to throw in a grenade, or to let his Klatooinian Heavy use his automatic grenade launcher — or his LRB on auto-fire.

And even if they do have that,... a storm trooper or whatever placed in an inaccessible location renders the power moot. A simple application of the Order 66 podcasts "The List" solves the problem,

have targets at long range.

Use Elevation.

Have things for skillful characters to do to effect the encounter.

A single Stormtrooper is not a threat for my Wookiee. A squad of Stormtroopers is not a threat. A Regiment of Stormtroopers, backed up by AT-PT, AT-ST, and AT-AT walkers, now that’s getting into threat territory.

You think the ability is broken. I think you have just been doing poor encounter design and allowing a one trick pony to run roughshod over you.

Pressure Point can definitely be abused. But a Hired Gun/Heavy with decent weapons using auto-fire is a much bigger problem when it comes to doing damage in combat.

You should have some guys the medic can use pressure point on. But there should also be bad guys the medic can't deal with be it range, inaccessible location, etc.. There should be things that play to everyone's strengths and things to challenge them in their weaknesses. Things that would as a team will be easy to solve and things that allow the players to be bad ass. And some things that are difficult to deal with because no one has that problem in their wheel house.

All of these things don't need to be in every encounter. but they should all be considered for every encounter. And you should occasionally have encounters that just simply make the characters look really bad ass. Because that is part of the fun.

Throw a variety of problems at your players, and try not to let yourself get bogged down into any one type of solution for everything that gets sprung.

I agree, that’s definitely good advice.

You are not a one trick pony But you can still be shot by one group of stormtroopers while dealing with the first group of storm troopers. I am also sure that multiple groups of 10 storm troopers would be dangerous. 4 yellow 1 green can hurt. My point was that if you can't figure out how to deal with a brawler the problem is not the talent but the person setting up the encounter. Same can be said for the Hired Gun/Heavy...Like say setting things up that an autoblaster is completely inappropriate and thus the heavy needs to leave the big guns on the ship.

Daeglan. As a GM I can simply announce that all players die. But if you want your game to make sense and conform to some kind of game logic instead of just a whim, then pressure point is incredibly unbalanced. That's a simple fact of the numbers and mechanics of that ability. Of course as a GM you can just rule that it doesn't work or 1000 storm troopers dance laser jitterbug. But that's not game mastering. That's giving up game mastering and just doing whatever.

The art of game mastering is creating the story within rules that makes sense and creates some predictability for players. Like when I kick a ball it goes flying. There has to be an internal logic and the rules must be able to stand on their own to some degree, or they're pointless.

And the rules governing pressure point are pointless. The talent as written is so easy to abuse and waving your god complex game mastering tactics will not change that - it will only shift gameplay in a silly direction, that neither I nor my players enjoy.

The rules must work. Pure and simple. And the rules for pressure point do not.

So you admit you can't manage to handle a simple brawler. Pressure point just allows you to stun people. Someone with a heavy repeating blaster is far far worse.

If you think about it. How is pressure point any worse than a fully modded lightsaber?

I would be much more concerned about someone with Last Man Standing or a mid-level Marauder. Both deliver a far worse beatdown than Mr Spock's Vulcan Nerve Pinch.

Pressure point can do a maximum of Brawl successes+5 no soak. With 5 yellows in Brawl and 5 ranks in Medicine you will have the highest probability of rolling 4 successes and a .001 chance of getting 12 with a 6 brawn and 5 in brawl. So worst case scenario 17 strain to 1 person. And more likely doing around 9 strain.

And really this talent is on the healer who most likely will be spending their time healing the party. Hardly scary. i would be far more worried about the PCs taking the ship and blowing away the opposition with laser cannons. 60-120 damage is far far worse.

It amazes me how many people worry about little things like pressure point and Move when a pilot with a ship or a heavy with a heavy repeating blaster can more easily deal far far more damage without the XP investment needed.

Pressure point can do a maximum of Brawl successes+5 no soak. With 5 yellows in Brawl and 5 ranks in Medicine you will have the highest probability of rolling 4 successes and a .001 chance of getting 12 with a 6 brawn and 5 in brawl. So worst case scenario 17 strain to 1 person. And more likely doing around 9 strain.

So, another factor here is whether or not this talent can be used in combination with Two Weapon Combat. If so, then you could double the amount of damage done.

And, of course, all this damage completely bypasses Soak, and so now it does become possible to take out a Rancor, Lylek, or heavily armored Shell Hutt in one round.

And really this talent is on the healer who most likely will be spending their time healing the party. Hardly scary.

Maybe. Or maybe the Wookiee Marauder decides that he needs to become the group Healer, because the player for the Two-One-Bee doc-bot is no longer around, and so that important capability has been lost.

i would be far more worried about the PCs taking the ship and blowing away the opposition with laser cannons. 60-120 damage is far far worse.

It amazes me how many people worry about little things like pressure point and Move when a pilot with a ship or a heavy with a heavy repeating blaster can more easily deal far far more damage without the XP investment needed.

As abusive as my Wookiee Marauder can be with Pressure Point, I have to completely agree with you on this. There’s nothing like a YT-2400 with dual Medium Laser Cannons firing at ground targets.

And those AT-ATs that would be a serious threat for the PCs on the ground are just sitting ducks for the YT-2400 flying around behind them, because the AT-ATs can only fire forward and move so slowly.

Been there, done that.

Pressure point can do a maximum of Brawl successes+5 no soak. With 5 yellows in Brawl and 5 ranks in Medicine you will have the highest probability of rolling 4 successes and a .001 chance of getting 12 with a 6 brawn and 5 in brawl. So worst case scenario 17 strain to 1 person. And more likely doing around 9 strain.

So, another factor here is whether or not this talent can be used in combination with Two Weapon Combat. If so, then you could double the amount of damage done.And, of course, all this damage completely bypasses Soak, and so now it does become possible to take out a Rancor, Lylek, or heavily armored Shell Hutt in one round.

And really this talent is on the healer who most likely will be spending their time healing the party. Hardly scary.

Maybe. Or maybe the Wookiee Marauder decides that he needs to become the group Healer, because the player for the Two-One-Bee doc-bot is no longer around, and so that important capability has been lost.

i would be far more worried about the PCs taking the ship and blowing away the opposition with laser cannons. 60-120 damage is far far worse.It amazes me how many people worry about little things like pressure point and Move when a pilot with a ship or a heavy with a heavy repeating blaster can more easily deal far far more damage without the XP investment needed.

As abusive as my Wookiee Marauder can be with Pressure Point, I have to completely agree with you on this. There’s nothing like a YT-2400 with dual Medium Laser Cannons firing at ground targets.And those AT-ATs that would be a serious threat for the PCs on the ground are just sitting ducks for the YT-2400 flying around behind them, because the AT-ATs can only fire forward and move so slowly.Been there, done that.

A double lighsaber or duel wielding lighsaber....

Still do not see the problem. Lightsabers bypass soak too. I just do not see the problem with the talent.

A double lighsaber or duel wielding lighsaber….

That’s exactly where my Wookiee Marauder was going next. He had just started down the Force Sensitive Exile path, when the game got put on hold.

Still do not see the problem. Lightsabers bypass soak too. I just do not see the problem with the talent.

IMO, it’s still a problem, but it’s a small problem.

But nothing like using shipboard weapons on ground targets.

Of course this all assumes that the PC's ever get high enough in level to become the kind of headache that Game Officials new to a new system dread.

I dunno if this has been brought up previously but man oh man is combat in this game lethal. Between the relatively low Wound Thresholds compared to base damage of common weapons that even experienced characters have to work with and the somewhat strange behaviors of the dice people and starships/vehicles/fighters can be rendered to zero WT in a screeching hurry.

And then we get to the next problem with the game - the writers/devs seem extremely reluctant to say that 0 W.T, means irrevocably dead. There's a not-so-subtle pressure on the Game Official to activate some hand-wavium and contrive to keep the characters alive - which is a bad, bad idea.

It doesn't matter whether your game is crunch or fluff-heavy, operatic or gritty. You must MUST draw a hard, solid line between "Character Living" and "Character Dead, hoist beer, shed tear then make up new character". Because if you don't do that, then it can lead to table arguments and bad feelings when the G.O. actually DOES rule a character dead. This is an always do in game design, not a subjective preference.

A corollary to this problem is "What happens when a spaceship or vehicle not on the ground loses all its W.T.?" The game once again makes "suggestions" where it should make rules. If a ship isn't rendered utterly destroyed when all W.T. is gone then when? If it is, how do you handle escape pod use? If the ship has no ejection system or escape pod does that mean the character-pilot/crewmember dies too? Under what circumstance DO they die then if the answer to that question is no.

I have said it before and I will say it again - clear and concise rules that can only be changed by GM Fiat or full-table consensus or ruleset revisions don't start arguments, they stop them by externalizing decisions that would otherwise run the risk of upsetting players. Nobody needs to be told the Golden Rule, everyone knows the Golden Rule. And leaving the Game Official to sort out really important rules isn't "putting power in the hands of the play group", it's creating a mechanically half-assed game.

And then we get to the next problem with the game - the writers/devs seem extremely reluctant to say that 0 W.T, means irrevocably dead.

Well, technically, 0 WT means "perfectly healthy", because you count up from zero...

But going by your meaning, the writers/devs are extremely explicit about saying that it doesn't. Exceeding your WT only means you're incapacitated. Even if you exceed two times WT, you're not dead, you just stop counting. Only the last ranks on the critical chart lead to death. It's worth noting that each hit after you've exceeded your WT is an automatic critical, and each critical you've received adds +10 to the roll, but it's still relatively hard to kill a PC in this game. So this...

I dunno if this has been brought up previously but man oh man is combat in this game lethal.

...is simply not true.

Of course this all assumes that the PC's ever get high enough in level to become the kind of headache that Game Officials new to a new system dread.

I dunno if this has been brought up previously but man oh man is combat in this game lethal. Between the relatively low Wound Thresholds compared to base damage of common weapons that even experienced characters have to work with and the somewhat strange behaviors of the dice people and starships/vehicles/fighters can be rendered to zero WT in a screeching hurry.

And then we get to the next problem with the game - the writers/devs seem extremely reluctant to say that 0 W.T, means irrevocably dead. There's a not-so-subtle pressure on the Game Official to activate some hand-wavium and contrive to keep the characters alive - which is a bad, bad idea.

It doesn't matter whether your game is crunch or fluff-heavy, operatic or gritty. You must MUST draw a hard, solid line between "Character Living" and "Character Dead, hoist beer, shed tear then make up new character". Because if you don't do that, then it can lead to table arguments and bad feelings when the G.O. actually DOES rule a character dead. This is an always do in game design, not a subjective preference.

A corollary to this problem is "What happens when a spaceship or vehicle not on the ground loses all its W.T.?" The game once again makes "suggestions" where it should make rules. If a ship isn't rendered utterly destroyed when all W.T. is gone then when? If it is, how do you handle escape pod use? If the ship has no ejection system or escape pod does that mean the character-pilot/crewmember dies too? Under what circumstance DO they die then if the answer to that question is no.

I have said it before and I will say it again - clear and concise rules that can only be changed by GM Fiat or full-table consensus or ruleset revisions don't start arguments, they stop them by externalizing decisions that would otherwise run the risk of upsetting players. Nobody needs to be told the Golden Rule, everyone knows the Golden Rule. And leaving the Game Official to sort out really important rules isn't "putting power in the hands of the play group", it's creating a mechanically half-assed game.

reaching wound threshold is not dead. It is unconscious. It is really easy to knock people out. while being hard to kill. as death requires 150+ crit

Also you count up not down. So everytime you take wounds you add it to your total. When that number is greater than your threshold you are incapacitated. Not dead. Game works better and is easier to understand when you count wounds in the correct direction.

I dunno if this has been brought up previously but man oh man is combat in this game lethal.

...is simply not true.

IMO, Obvious Troll is … Obvious.

A corollary to this problem is "What happens when a spaceship or vehicle not on the ground loses all its W.T.?" The game once again makes "suggestions" where it should make rules. If a ship isn't rendered utterly destroyed when all W.T. is gone then when?

Same as a character and wounds, a ship is destroyed when the critical effect says so.

A corollary to this problem is "What happens when a spaceship or vehicle not on the ground loses all its W.T.?" The game once again makes "suggestions" where it should make rules. If a ship isn't rendered utterly destroyed when all W.T. is gone then when?

Same as a character and wounds, a ship is destroyed when the critical effect says so.

Which the Devs reiterated on tonight's Order66 podcast. Easy to disable ships hard to outright blow them up. Though likely NPC ships will blow up far more often as it is dramatic. PC ships get disabled unless the crit says otherwise. And the first 4 are unlikely to cause a ship to blow up with out a weapon with the vicious quality.

...Though likely NPC ships will blow up far more often as it is dramatic...

And to prevent the PCs from opening "Crazy Pash's" used starfighter and flightsuit emporium. "Pash Messani here. Come on down and check out the deals on these great Z-95 Headhunters. Our prices are insane! Fun for the whole family. Bring the kids to pet our Wookie. Just 3 parsecs off the Corellian Run in the Lothal system." ...wait, where is that? Oh, that's another thread.

Yeahh....maximum wounds is unconscious...so...Bob gets all his wounds depleted and then he's knocked out and the guy(s) trying to kill him see he's slumped over so they just shrug their shoulders and walk away...nobody EVER walks up and puts a few blaster bolts into Bob to make sure...

But you say that in such cases he'd end up just taking successive really nasty crits until Bob's dead...which honestly doesn't change my central point. If successive attacks are likely to do sufficient damage to kill someone and you don't need that many of such attacks to get it done, all you've done is needlessly complicate a straightforward process.

A corollary to this problem is "What happens when a spaceship or vehicle not on the ground loses all its W.T.?" The game once again makes "suggestions" where it should make rules. If a ship isn't rendered utterly destroyed when all W.T. is gone then when?

Same as a character and wounds, a ship is destroyed when the critical effect says so.

Which the Devs reiterated on tonight's Order66 podcast. Easy to disable ships hard to outright blow them up. Though likely NPC ships will blow up far more often as it is dramatic. PC ships get disabled unless the crit says otherwise. And the first 4 are unlikely to cause a ship to blow up with out a weapon with the vicious quality.

It's not "hard" to blow them up if all you need do is shoot them a few more times.

It's not "hard" to blow them up if all you need do is shoot them a few more times.

That's very true - but why are they shooting a few more times, if there's other active combatants to take your attention? There are certainly times when it's appropriate/necessary to make sure your target stays down, but a threat that's been neutralized buys you more time to deal with still actively engaging combatants.

So - sure, sometimes a player will go down by themselves and you honestly can't think of a reason not to kill them. It happens, oh well, make it advance the story.

But if they're with the group, short of a TPK there's other stuff to do that makes sense than focus fire on the cripple, be it an incapacitated character or a wrecked ship.

Once the battle is over, well... now you have time to take prisoners for ransom / interrogation!

But you say that in such cases he'd end up just taking successive really nasty crits until Bob's dead...which honestly doesn't change my central point. If successive attacks are likely to do sufficient damage to kill someone and you don't need that many of such attacks to get it done, all you've done is needlessly complicate a straightforward process.

Well, sure, if you've staged it so that the entire party is unconscious, then you can skip the details, "fade to black", and inflict whatever lethality dose you want. The assumptions about the lethality of the game are based on the idea that the GM isn't going out of his way to kill off the PCs, and that the players might change tactics once things start to go poorly to prevent downed allies from getting hit further.

...all you've done is needlessly complicate a straightforward process...

As a GM I like that complication, I don't see the negative.

Yeahh....maximum wounds is unconscious...so...Bob gets all his wounds depleted and then he's knocked out and the guy(s) trying to kill him see he's slumped over so they just shrug their shoulders and walk away...nobody EVER walks up and puts a few blaster bolts into Bob to make sure...

But you say that in such cases he'd end up just taking successive really nasty crits until Bob's dead...which honestly doesn't change my central point. If successive attacks are likely to do sufficient damage to kill someone and you don't need that many of such attacks to get it done, all you've done is needlessly complicate a straightforward process.

You are thinking of wounds wrong. You are thinking they are actual hits on the characters. They are not. that is what crits are. Wounds are the near misses we see heroes in movies take. the scratches, grazes etc. With crits being the stuff that actually connects with the PCs. So you can wear down a pc and grind their body down and that crit from exceeding their wound threshold took them out of the fight. Stim packs give you the pep to keep going. But to deal with real damage(crits) you need a doctor.

If you think pressure point can only do 17 damage and most likely 9, then you have no idea. Combine it with different talents and you're easily looking at trwice that. And then compare to NPC strain thresholds - which is also a factor in determing how much one point of unsoaked strain damage is worth