Here's an interesting question for you GMs... I asked some more specific questions on the Force & Destiny forum, so this will be more general.

Have any of you used an Inquisitor in combat against your players? If so:

-How did it go?

-How did the party make up affect the encounter?

-Any general tips on using Inquisitors well?

I've tossed a couple Inquisitors at my party and have faced off with an Inquisitor in a friend's game, with some interesting results.

For a Knight Level demo session, the party had little trouble keeping the Inquisitor (Warlord template) off balance, and forcing him to burn through strain to use Reflect or Parry against their attacks. And I not included a couple minion groups and a dual-wielding Rival to help split the party's focus, I've no illusions this Inquisitor would have been toast a lot faster.

For my Force and Destiny campaign, I pitted the party against a Sith Juggernaut that was a brute in melee, but that Adversary 3 did very little against the Gand Seeker/Hunter and his Heavy Blaster Rifle; had the player remembered that he could have used Intuitive Shot to generate either successes or advantages on a ranged attack roll, the BBEG of the adventure would have been dropped on the Gand's first attack against the guy, since this Nemesis was pure beatstick with no thought given to dealing with ranged attacks other than a high soak value. Even then, I had a bunch of minions (skeletons animated by lingering malevolence of the Sith Juggernaut) to keep it from turning into an utter dogpile. The one PC that's something of the party's lightsaber expert didn't fair so well, but by the player's own admission he hadn't really been focusing on his ligthsaber expertise.

I did use a couple different Inquisitor builds in some combat-grind sessions during the active period of the FaD Beta, and whether they took strain from using Parry/Reflect or not made a huge difference in tackling this foe.

In the two encounters where I was the one facing off against an Inquisitor, the first time around was a straight-up one-on-one fight... and I only survived by bailing before I could be pushed over my wound threshold. Second time around, I had a little extra help from a couple other PCs, and my character decided to fight less like a Jedi and more like the street rat he'd started out as back in the days before the Force and Destiny Beta was even officially announced. That fight went a lot differently, due to the guy not having Reflect and taking an Armor-Piercing Grenade to the face as well as being caught in the blast radius of some proton grenades before my character swung in for the rematch.

One thing I certainly noticed was that if the Inquisitor isn't paying a strain cost to use Parry or Reflect, especially if you gave them both talents, then said Inquisitor becomes a nightmare to take down unless the PCs are wielding vehicle-scale weapons. Even with a base soak value of 3 (Brawn 2 plus armored clothing), being able to negate 7 points of damage from either a melee attack or a ranged attack at will is a huge deal, since that's 10 points of damage that the PCs have to overcome with every single attack. Using Breach and Pierce weapons helps a bit, but not that much since Parry/Reflect reduce the damage before soak is applied, and thus bypass Breach/Pierce. But if the Inquisitor has to spend strain to use Parry/Reflect each time, then the fight becomes more manageable as they're likely to burn through their strain in a hurry if the PCs manage to start ganging up on the Inquisitor.

And, like everybody else in the system, even the lightest planetary-scale weapon cuts them down with a single hit no matter how badass they think they are.

Interesting... My mental notes for my games are as follows:

-Let them have their 2nd turn and ignore strain costs (if up against a crowd).

-Don't let planetary weapons get involved, unless inevitable.

-Staging is everything. If the party is powerful, use a lot of backup and minions. If the party is lacking in power, give them an out so they can retreat. If you want your villain to live, give them an out.

Also, have you used Fear before a duel with an Inquisitor? Making people roll against Fear the first time seems like it could reduce the party's effectiveness, and then a rematch means nobody has to roll.

In my experience, Fear doesn't really do all that much overall. Generally, it's a Setback die or maybe an Upgrade on a few actions along with a bit of Strain. All of these effects makes perfect sense, and I'm not a fan of systems that have fear cripple characters, so this is a good middle ground.

True, it doesn't do much, but having Fear affect some low power players during an early duel could make the Inquisitor seem very ominous and powerful. Like Darth Vader on Cloud City - Luke gets in a few good checks and kicks Vader off a ledge, then nicks his shoulder, but overall, Luke is fighting a losing battle because Vader is way out of his league.

I converted the WEG Otherspace module for EOTE and we used the fear rules very effectively.

That was a special case though. We have not used fear in any other scenarios.

I actually just threw one at my group this past weekend. I used the Investigator skills, stat array with 5 brawn and 3 willpower (4 in int but that didn't come up). Reflect is great for the two snipers we have, then crippling blow is an insidious thing - 1 strain each time they move can be a spectacular way to rock them on their heels, especially if he disengages after every attack

For the others, I gave him Unleash and the presence trait which gives the 2 automatic threat on skill checks (I assumed this included combat). He went toe-to-toe with the party's pugilist doctor (~175 xp after creation) and the strain generated was a huge issue.