Hey

I dont like how the rules for stun damage (damaging strain) are currently in the game, as it's far a better tactic to just shoot to stun instead of lethal, as long as you have the range. I know, its been said on the forums multiple times.

Also, i think winning a fight using stun weapons should be a lot harder than using lethal fire. Lethal fire should be feared, not the other way around.

Im considering this:

Stun weapons do not damage strain.

Instead, a new "stun damage" is tracked, following the same rules for stun settings currently in the manual (range, no crits, etc).

When "stun damage" equals or surpasses current remaining wounds, you are "disoriented" (1 setback dice to everything).

When stun damage also surpasses current remaining wounds + current remaining strain, then you are knocked out and out of the fight.

What's the expected result:

- For minions and rivals it changes nothing. They are still as easy to knockout as to kill. If the enemy had important information that you absolutely wanted and is integral to the story, it should have been a nemesis anyway.

- For nemesis(es?), it is now twice as hard to stun them rather than kill. You want your enemy alive, you have to work for it. You may employ a tactic to wound a nemesis a little and then apply stun settings in hope of making the job easier, probably while you are running to short range. Of course, you run the risk of killing the target, as it should be. You seriously handicap yourself by trying to stun.

- For players, they should have less fear of incoming strain damage. They can use more of their strain as a resource, knowing that a sudden stun rifle bolt is not going to incapacitate them for good when they suffer 7 points of damage at once.

Any comments? Anything that im missing here? One thing i noticed is that stun damage now is either kept up, or worthless. This also makes stun grenades basically useless against nemesis enemies.

I dunno, with most weapons being limited to short range on stun setting, it seems like there are lots of ways that lethal damage would be scarier than stun in the rules as written.

OK please explain this one to me because I don't get it.

Most Nemesis (and player characters for that matter) have a Wound Threshold and Strain Threshold within 2 or 3 points of each other. Ones that don't are usually super-high BBEG endgame boss types that can be customized and have whatever thresholds the GM says they have, easily exceeding 20.

So... aside from known broken combos like Marauder/Doctor, what's the issue? It seems like a lot of work for 3 points...

Not to mention that the by far most numerous enemies any players are likely to encounter, minions and rivals, don't have strain thresholds at all. So shooting them with stun weapons is exactly the same as shooting them with regular weapons, only you handicap yourself to short range only. Soak and all other modifiers apply the same in all cases, so there's absolutely no difference.

If you seriously have a problem with your players stunning every nemesis you throw at them, just give your NPCs a higher strain threshold than wound threshold and maybe add a couple of ranks in Resolve. Not to mention stuff like Second Wind and Intense Presence, which lets characters recover strain as an incidental.

I'm afraid I agree with everyone else in that I don't see the merit to this house rule. It introduces a lot of extra bookkeeping without introducing anything new, fun, or easy compared to the RAW.

It's actually good that people shooting to stun is just as scary as people shooting to kill, because fighting at all is supposed to be scary. Sure, if you're taking strain damage that means you can't spend strain as freely to make maneuvers and use talents, but if you're taking wound damage you could die. Character death is permanent in this game. That's pretty scary.

Plus, stunning the PCs and taking them prisoner, and the fact that this makes the game more interesting, lets good GMs avoid the dreaded TPK. Your rules don't change any of this for the better. I'd say you lost me when you admitted it in your first point: "it changes nothing."

The problem is two-faced i think.

I recently ran an encounter where players burned some 4-6 strain trying to follow an enemy.

When they finally found him hiding behind a corner, their strain levels were really low.
Now, it might be metagaming or not, but the most effective tactic for the lone enemy was to shoot to stun.
I don't want to get involved into the metagaming discussion where we argue whether NPCs know or not that after someone runs after you and is fatigued, they have better chances if they shoot to stun or not.

But the fact that the best tactic was to shoot to stun is just... wrong to me.

I want to correct that, not only from a balance perspective, but from a narrative one.

Stun should be used, in my opinion, at great disadvantage if you need to capture someone. No other cases.

The problem is two-faced i think.

I recently ran an encounter where players burned some 4-6 strain trying to follow an enemy.

When they finally found him hiding behind a corner, their strain levels were really low.

Now, it might be metagaming or not, but the most effective tactic for the lone enemy was to shoot to stun.

I don't want to get involved into the metagaming discussion where we argue whether NPCs know or not that after someone runs after you and is fatigued, they have better chances if they shoot to stun or not.

But the fact that the best tactic was to shoot to stun is just... wrong to me.

I want to correct that, not only from a balance perspective, but from a narrative one.

Stun should be used, in my opinion, at great disadvantage if you need to capture someone. No other cases.

Yeah, it does sound like meta gaming was the real problem (but maybe not...).

But since that's not the discussion you want have, lets review the scenario to make sure that you were using the right rules correctly. After that we can see if some minor tweaks will fix your issues as opposed to a complete overhaul.

1. How did you run the chase? Were you using the chase rules? Or were you using normal movement? (This may be the true problem right here)
2. What was the actual cause of the loss of strain?
3. Were you using things like Advantage to recover strain?
4. Was the Nem in question properly statted for this role as a chasee? Athletics, Coordination, Shortcut?

Answer those, and then we'll have a better idea where the problem may actually be...

I dunno, with most weapons being limited to short range on stun setting, it seems like there are lots of ways that lethal damage would be scarier than stun in the rules as written.

In my games, Stun has issues that are adressed through Role Play. If you infiltrate an enemy strong hold stunning everyone you come across, unless you spend time to tie them up, they come back with reinforcements later. If you spend time to bind them, you need to carry enough binder cuffs and gags for everyone. If they don't wake up until after your mission, well, you just made yourself a whole bunch of enemies who'll come hunting for you later for revenge. There are plenty of Role Playing reasons for PCs to not use Stun.

As for the house rules presented, I think they are overly complicated and also don't mirror events in the movies. For better or for worse, in the movies stun weapons take down in a single hit. In the current game rules, for most targets it's about the same to one-shot with stun as well as leathal. These rules would make it nearly impossible to simulate the events in the movies and take down a fleeing Politico with a single stun shot.

Don't forget that ST can be recovered during combat. If the PCs don't down their target in a single turn, then the target can spend advantages to "heal" back some ST.

The problem is two-faced i think.

I recently ran an encounter where players burned some 4-6 strain trying to follow an enemy.

When they finally found him hiding behind a corner, their strain levels were really low.

Now, it might be metagaming or not, but the most effective tactic for the lone enemy was to shoot to stun.

I don't want to get involved into the metagaming discussion where we argue whether NPCs know or not that after someone runs after you and is fatigued, they have better chances if they shoot to stun or not.

But the fact that the best tactic was to shoot to stun is just... wrong to me.

I want to correct that, not only from a balance perspective, but from a narrative one.

Stun should be used, in my opinion, at great disadvantage if you need to capture someone. No other cases.

What was the narritive there? Was the enemy just trying to escape? Did this guy not want murder on his hands, so he'll use stun? Does he want to prove a point that no one should follow him or risk death, so he'll use lethal damage? What's his motivation?

If you feel that stun should only be used to capture someone, was they fleeing enemy trying to capture the PCs? No? Then lethal should've been used.

Do you play with everyone knowing everyone else's WT and ST? We play with those being a secret. If a character wants to see if someone has low WT or ST, beyond basic description of "he looks winded", then a Medicine check is in order for an action. A fleeing bad guy doesn't have time to evaluate the threat the PCs pose and how injured/winded they are.

I'm going to agree with most of the others in that I don't entirely agree that this is necessary.
First strain while harder to raise than WT just isn't as deadly. Ie you likely won't die because an enemy firing strain rp wise is doing so to incapacitate a foe, not kill them and on top of that it doesn't crit you once you exceed it. Second for NPC's you can make their stats whatever you want, so giving them a decent strain threshold is not difficult in the slightest if the PC's are exploiting trying to do strain over wounds and even then minions and rivals don't even get a strain threshold anyways making doing strain damage against worse than doing lethal (since it removes exceeding threshold crits and lowers your range to short while still damaging the same pool as lethal would). Lastly there's the simple fact that advantage and triumph can be spent to recover strain meaning unlike wounds which require a medical check that can only be done once in an encounter or bacta which starts to loose effectiveness the more you use it in a day, strain can constantly be regenerating making it's pool effectively larger than the wound pool and better yet you can get talents like resolve (which lower the strain you suffer every time you suffer it voluntarily and it's ranked) and Rapid recovery which after an encounter ends removes extra strain from you where as with wounds after an encounter you heal nothing just for ending the encounter.
Lastly if your players all have low strain thresholds, either encourage them to not completely ignore the talents that increase it or WP at character creation or just don't jump the strain damage gimmick on them where it doesn't make sense story wise. The enemies don't necessarily "know" they have a low strain threshold, the only time they should even be bothering to use that type of damage is when they want to incapacitate the players instead of kill them. Any time an enemy wants to kill them they should be using lethal not using strain simply because it's easier because that's metagame thinking for the character and as a GM your goal is just to tell an engaging story, not to munchkin and win.

Now all this said if your table is having an issue with it that none of these considerations fix then that's fine, go ahead and house rule it, it's all about having fun and every group is going to have different likes/concerns with the rules after all. I'd recommend talking openly to your group about your issue, the potential changes, and see what they have to say.

A small suggestion, make that Stun setting Ignore Soak BUT increase difficulty to hit by one. Even add Imprecise if isn't enought.

If it works tell me, I have to test it yet a bit more

What was the narritive there? Was the enemy just trying to escape? Did this guy not want murder on his hands, so he'll use stun? Does he want to prove a point that no one should follow him or risk death, so he'll use lethal damage? What's his motivation?

Exactly - story should dictate mechanics. A couple of games ago, my group almost got TKOed by some Mandolorians - who normally would be shooting on kill - because they were shooting on stun to find out who the hell was infiltrating their base and it's tough to interrogate corpses. If it had been any other circumstances, it would have been red bolts all the way - and the fight would have been very different.

So I suppose the easy solution here is go with what's logical, not what's game mechanically efficient. No house rule needed.

I'm betting we're gonna find out he was using normal movement rules. So a lot of characters were taking Actions, a Maneuver to move, and spending strain to move again or take another Maneuver.

Switching to the Chase mechanics pretty much resolves that since movement is factored in separately.

I'm of half a mind with the OP about Stun. I don't think the solution offered is a good one because it's a bit fiddly but I understand the reasoning behind it.

What I've done in my new game is remove the Stun setting on all off the shelf Blasters and made it a Mod with the Limited Ammo Quality. I've also added Stun only weapons so a PC can carry one if they choose to (I never really liked the ret-conning of adding Stun to all Blasters after the Original film in the EU and RPGs). After a Thread I began a while ago I've also added a Practice setting for Blasters that brings the Damage down to 0 + Successes and no Criticals to emulate what we've seen in Rebels and things such as those Lightsabre practice balls.

The result so far has been good as the Player's now discuss whether or not to Stun an NPC for capture or not rather than use it to meta-game an NPC out of the fight.

I'll try to answer some points

Yeah, it does sound like meta gaming was the real problem (but maybe not...).

But since that's not the discussion you want have, lets review the scenario to make sure that you were using the right rules correctly. After that we can see if some minor tweaks will fix your issues as opposed to a complete overhaul.

1. How did you run the chase? Were you using the chase rules? Or were you using normal movement? (This may be the true problem right here)
2. What was the actual cause of the loss of strain?
3. Were you using things like Advantage to recover strain?
4. Was the Nem in question properly statted for this role as a chasee? Athletics, Coordination, Shortcut?

Answer those, and then we'll have a better idea where the problem may actually be...

No chase rules. It wasn't really a chase, more something like trying to corner an enemy using a city map and trying to stop him. I had to track separate movement and location of everyone involved, so no chase rules this time around.

However, my point is not that one: the point is that if you see a person that is winded and fatigued, you have better odds of downing him if you shoot to stun.

Now, i have not used the tactic because it sounded cheesy and unrealistic to me.

But i cannot ignore the fact that it was the better tactic to use.

I know the game is narrative and all that; i am not an adversary GM, actually the story is really important to me and im not in any way trying to "win" (like you could win at a tabletop rpg)

After hundreds or thousands of years blasters being around, EVERYONE that had a few battles would know to shoot to stun if someone is winded and in range under current rules.

I don't like that, because its not how imagine the universe to work. I want rules that respect how the universe is supposed to work.

Except maybe minions, i'm playing NPCs in every rpg game i DM as living, normal, sentient people with goals and motivations. They are not stupid automatons. Everybody with training can figure out if an enemy is winded/fatigued (low strain) or wounded and clearly unable to evade the next shot (low wounds).

The PCs figured that out in 2 sessions. The rest of the universe can't figure that out in thousand of years? It simply doesnt work for me.

What was the narritive there? Was the enemy just trying to escape? Did this guy not want murder on his hands, so he'll use stun? Does he want to prove a point that no one should follow him or risk death, so he'll use lethal damage? What's his motivation?

If you feel that stun should only be used to capture someone, was they fleeing enemy trying to capture the PCs? No? Then lethal should've been used.

The enemy wanted to survive. The rules say that the best way to survive someone that is visibly winded/fatigued is to shoot to stun, not to kill.

He was a soldier, he'd know that. So he should have been smart and use stun, even if it made no sense in universe.

In this case, the rules do not accurately represent what happens in the universe, so i want to change them.

A small suggestion, make that Stun setting Ignore Soak BUT increase difficulty to hit by one. Even add Imprecise if isn't enought.

If it works tell me, I have to test it yet a bit more

I don't know, looks more complicated than my method. I can think of many different ways this can go wrong. For example, you could trade 10+ points of soak of an Hutt, while taking +1 difficulty for stunning him? And avoiding all those wound points? I'd go for it. Legends would spread "shoot to stun if you are fighting an hutt". Doesn't work.

That's what im looking for: problems with my house rules that can make things not work, or better houserules to better represent that you are at severe disadvantage when trying to stun, and should in no case be more effective, or even on equal footing, than standard lethal fire.

I don't see any problem. Nemesis should stun them all then walk away. If it works he can return another day. And maybe your players will learn that spending advantage is a viable course of action.

I don't see any problem. Nemesis should stun them all then walk away. If it works he can return another day. And maybe your players will learn that spending advantage is a viable course of action.

Agreed, the Nemesis is trying to escape, not kill everyone on the planet.

So, let him do the natural thing, and escape. He runs away to fight another day.

Maybe he even loots the PCs stunned bodies, before he leaves.

Is just a consideration but, in movies/series we see people, even with armor, hit with blaster fire that have two possible results: Die, or just a scratch BUT, with stun, if there is hit ALWAYS you get a KO (not counting the Ezra first version of his stunning slingshot.

Is just a consideration but, in movies/series we see people, even with armor, hit with blaster fire that have two possible results: Die, or just a scratch BUT, with stun, if there is hit ALWAYS you get a KO (not counting the Ezra first version of his stunning slingshot.

Can't really go with movies about "death" from being shot as these are the same idiots that think getting stabbed in the gut is an instant killer, as opposed to just a very slow and painful way to go.

Is just a consideration but, in movies/series we see people, even with armor, hit with blaster fire that have two possible results: Die, or just a scratch BUT, with stun, if there is hit ALWAYS you get a KO (not counting the Ezra first version of his stunning slingshot.

Can't really go with movies about "death" from being shot as these are the same idiots that think getting stabbed in the gut is an instant killer, as opposed to just a very slow and painful way to go.

You also can't tell if those guys who got hit were actually killed or just went into shock and were helped soon enough after the battle that they recovered. So someone doesn't necessarily have to "survive" an encounter with the PCs to come back as a nemesis.

Now, it might be metagaming or not, but the most effective tactic for the lone enemy was to shoot to stun.

"Hey, those guys look exhausted. They should go down easy with stun."

Metagaming is such a boogeyman on RPG forums. Playing to stats usually is also playing to narrative, unless those stats have no narrative impact or effect (which is a whole other problem).

Kallabecca I doesn't understood the sentence fully meaning,but I supose that the idiot word there is just an expression that I don't get and it isn't an offense, so, ignoring the idiot part XD the general sensation, as I mentioned is that (based on scenes from movies/series):

- With Blaster you can get a scratch or get KO (dead or not, doesn't care so much, if the GM is a good person you only will be captured, if not KO=death XD)

- With Stun (without count Ezra first version of the Slingshot) you always get KO.

Did I miss something?

Kallabecca I doesn't understood the sentence fully meaning,but I supose that the idiot word there is just an expression that I don't get and it isn't an offense, so, ignoring the idiot part XD the general sensation, as I mentioned is that (based on scenes from movies/series):

- With Blaster you can get a scratch or get KO (dead or not, doesn't care so much, if the GM is a good person you only will be captured, if not KO=death XD)

- With Stun (without count Ezra first version of the Slingshot) you always get KO.

Did I miss something?

Hollywood writers/directors are the "idiots" I was referring to. You can't use what you see in the movies to gauge what should happen in the game as the people who write/direct the movies don't seem to have any real clue about just what does or doesn't kill a person, like the aforementioned gut wound. They either go one way, the slightest scratch kills you, or way too far the other, like they've been slamming each other into walls and kicking/hitting each other for the last 30 minutes and all that is wrong is their hair got mussed up.

Ok get it. Yep, you are absolutelly right. As I mentioned in another post, some movie/serie events cannot be explained (or hardly) by rules or mechanics just because are "plotish hollywoodian scenes" XD if they are taken so strictly.

Thanks