Everything Houseruled and Homebrewed

By RodianClone, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

I want to hear about anything you have homebrewed or houseruled for your game! Be it canon, planets, gear, skills, npc/adversary talents, aliens or how minions work.

If you have made something new for your game, changed or made a rule, I want to hear about it!

Got a ton. I've shamelessly pilfered from these forums.

I like the Auto fire one about tying total number of hits possible with an unmounted Auto fire weapon to the PCs Brawn.

I think it was whafrog who has the kind of passive Perception check where he has people roll a check at the beginning of the session. I do that with an average difficulty and record the results. That's for the non active spotting of things, tripwire, photo on shelf, etc.

Medicine I have a ton, to raise the value of the skill.

-Need Medicine to run a Bacta tank.

-No unskilled assists on critical heal checks.

-Gotta have 2 PCs with Medicine for Hard difficulty and above crits.

-Can't heal Daunting crits and above in the field.

-Have to heal crits in order of severity.

-Can use a Stimpack to wake someone from a Strain KO and put them at their threshold, counts as a Stimpack use.

Computers I am expanding, but the one for now is I assign a Firewall value to some systems and that acts as Soak a Slicer must overcome to force entry into a system.

Social checks I am considering a Soak value possibly as well based on the defending characteristic. Most skills are too easy or not worth really focusing on as opposed to combat, it's just score a Success and you are set. So I like a Soak value to increase the motivation to really focus on a social skill.

Strain recovery. I'm trying to make Strain more of a resource to be managed properly, and thereby increase the desire to flesh it out with things like Grit, Resolve, Second Wind etc. I allow the typical recovery stuff, but a 'short rest' (30-60 mins, I'm still deciding) the PCs can make another simple Discipline/Cool check, anything they are down at that point they are just down until they sleep/24 hours. Gonna come up with drugs a medic might administer or some kind of combat rations to help with that and as items they can find/buy.

I'm going to have surprise, fail the Perception check and get it in the face for one round. I also am well aware of the threads about Cool/Vigilance for initiative, and I do understand the difference between the two, I just don't care for it. So I just let my PCs pick whichever of the two they want to use for initiative as I don't see the need to so over-complicate it personally.

Got group skill checks where multiple skills are required simultaneously for a situation, and possibly even duplicate skills.

I have set down some guidelines for re-rolling and character deaths/retirements.

I've added an xp cost to the attachment/modification process because I feel the whole system is kind of cheap and doesn't really impose that feeling of a cost on players by only requiring credits. I also think it is too divested from the skills/specs as well. That kind of segues into another thing I'm doing with a group spec.

The group spec is an idea I've had kicking around awhile and it kind of goes along nicely with the homestead rules in regards to a designated group career skill based on homestead/business type. They buy into the group spec tree, can designate two skills known within the group as career skills for everyone and PCs can train it up to whatever level the designated 'trainer' achieves. There is one path for gear where a group designated 'armorer' can offer some sort of simple upgrades to items for xp and credit cost. Doing one for group 'moves'/talents, another for contacts I think, and I am thinking maybe vehicles, although we don't do a lot of ship/vehicle stuff so that may be a waste.

The economy and value of credits is borked imo in the game so I just do some blanket math to have it make more sense. Vehicles cost 10X the listed price, ships cost 100X the listed price. Mods scale similarly. Before the gotcha guys go into spasms I award credits scaled as well. The price comparison between gear and ships makes zero sense, there would be no reason to build ships at those listed prices.

One houserule that some people use with good results is that talents that remove setbacks also add boosts if there is no setback to remove.

Oh many people forbid the juryrigged+autofire combo or limit it with the "Rambo rule" that 2p51 mentioned above, otherwise it gets game breaking very fast.

In general, try doing a forum search for "houserules" there was a lenghty thread about it not so long ago.

The Jury-Rigged Talent cannot be used to modify weapon or armor qualities lacking a rating, such as Auto-Fire.

I'm in the process of making Slicing a much more active ability, including (as 25P1 is doing) soak values and firewalls, as well as more gear for slicers to use.

Edited by Simon Retold

One houserule that some people use with good results is that talents that remove setbacks also add boosts if there is no setback to remove.

Oh many people forbid the juryrigged+autofire combo or limit it with the "Rambo rule" that 2p51 mentioned above, otherwise it gets game breaking very fast.

In general, try doing a forum search for "houserules" there was a lenghty thread about it not so long ago.

I do the 'Remove'thing also but I bill the PCs a Strain per Boost.

A few from mine:

- When shooting a ranged weapon into a melee with an ally, the GM can opt to spend any Despair results on other things, and is not beholden to having the ranged attack automatically fail and hit the ally instead.

- When attacking, the player has the option to forgo damage and instead have a successful attack trigger a weapon quality whose effects do not already require a successful attack roll (such as Autofire and Blast). This way, a PC can attack with the intent to Disorient, Knockdown, or Sunder, and in the cases where a quality can be triggered multiple times (such as Knockdown or Sunder), each success past the first counts as an additional activation.

- I've replaced the Shii-Cho Knight from Force and Destiny Beta with a tweaked verson of the spec, one that offers two ranks of Reflect at the cost of two ranks of Parry and some re-shuffling of the spec.

I only have one house rule I use currently.

- a non torrent mounted vehicle weapon used against a personal scale target requires a piloting check before the weapon can be fired. This check utilizes the targets agility in place of the vehicle's speed when determining the difficulty of the roll.

Other people prefer to use a conversion of 5 between planetary and personal scale, but I feel that planetary scale weapons should be devastating just very difficult to use against people.

Also please note that torrent mounted weapons act normally being able to fire within their arch since they are controlled by the gunner and not fixed by the vehicle.

I have a 3 part series in development involving former Senator Bail Organa and some consequences of his death by the Death Star. The First Part deals with a will that had been set up on Christophsis, the government of which gave him dual-citizenship for his humanitarian efforts on Christophsis during the Clone Wars. The PCs will be sent in as legal representatives of Leia Organa since she herself is occupied with the Rebellion after destroying the Death Star. The Second Part deals with the aftermath of a sudden appearance of Imperial Forces. The group will be the choice of trying to run, trying to hide, or trying to form a resistance on Christophsis. The Third Part is dependent on the choice taken for the Second Part.

Here our own :D Most of our changes are Canon focused.

1 - Discarded Hiperdrive class and the security one and added max jump and comms range band. "Plot Speed".

2 - Lightsaber: Breach X (Can beat any known non-energy based material).

3 - No Cortosis existance because seems that there isn't any material capable of stop a lightsaber or resist it (exceptions, Zillo Beast hide and "dark magiks" weapons). UPDATE: Kanan Shoulderpad on Rebels season 2 and Vader 6? We are reconsidering this.

4 - Weapon rarity for ion weapons is now 8+ and ion weapons aren't "common" anymore.

5 - Difference between Vehicle Scale (or light armored) and Starships Scale(or heavy armored). x5 and x10.

6 - Modified stats from:

AT-ST → HT 8

7 - Force Support: Each additional assisstant let exchange 1 generated pip to the main user [LS ↔ DS]. The rest of cooperation rules still applies.

8 - Improved Evasive Maneauver: Speed 5+ → 2 Upgrades, 2 Downgrades to Attack

9 - At the space, if the target computer fails, the impact difficulty is selected from the highest from the difference of Silhouette and Range.

10 - Shields (Personal, Vehicle and Space)

They have a value called Shield X: X adds Failure to the attackers roll that is only applied if weapon BASE damage is equal or less to (NEW) Shield Power value. If the base damage is higher, then just add Setbacks as usual. Considering time limitations for Shields.

11 - (Non-Canon) Brawn only adds half of its value (rounded down) to Soak. Armors have higher values and the final result is almost the same. Talents and the rest still the same. This way, a Stormtrooper 5 Soak (Actually 3 Brawn, 2 Armor) still get 5 but formula changes (1 from Brawn and 4 from Armor; or less). This way, you have a wider variety of armor values, from 1 to 6 or more, and some "weird" Soak monster effects are nullified. No more nearly-blaster-immune naked strong wookies.

12 - OPTIONAL: Character creation and progress based on "pick what you need". Just justification and common sense.

13 - (Still considering this one. This was created pre Soak modifications) Stun weapons mode ignores Soak but increase by 1 difficulty.

14 - In case that you only play with one player, roll 2 Force Dices (+Paragon Bonuses) to calculate Destiny Pool. Game seems that is focused to 2+ players.

Edited by Josep Maria

What we've done so far:

There's no SuperiorTM gadget you can screw on top of your gear to make it better. An item is either inherently superior, or a trained craftsman has to do the upgrade, involving a check.

An action and up to two manoeuvres is what a PC is entitled do; anything else is left to GM's discretion, such as the well discussed three-manoeuvre-turn. But, I never allow more than two moves per turn.

Hardpoints are not the ultimate limit for upgrades: Those are what a regular guy can do to their gear without messing it up. Everything else is free for argument, similar to Superior.

When a character is aiming at an opponents body part, I will give the attack an appropriate quality to trigger.

As one of the PC's unique characteristic is Astrogation, we overhauled the travel rules completely: They're now based on distance, location and quality of the astrogation data for starting and arrival point and the travel route. Then, you can make your calculations in advance to help with the actual jump later.

I adapted the old WEG trade rules for the smuggler, because he's quite an ELITEist.

The gambler got his own more elaborate Sabacc rules: You're now going to roll the force dice twice; once for the initial hand, once for the changes, with a round of betting in between.

At the moment I'm working on starship construction rules, as the Tech's motivation is to build a ship from scratch.

I often hybridise skills with other than the standard characteristics, depending on the situation: Piloting (Int) for identifying ship types etc.

Players may use Destiny to have lethal crit rerolled.

Oh, and increases in Brawn and Willpower DO affect Wounds and Strain. So that not everybody will begin with a pair of threes.

Edited by Grimmerling

Combat Wounds

  • Characters (except minions) do not fall unconscious after passing threashold, instead they may continue to act normally, but suffer a critical with any hit.

Cover

  • Defence (Setback Dice) granted by Cover adds to defense gained by other sources.

Initiating Combat

  • If both parties are aware of each other, in combat range, and not hostile; the party initiating combat gains a blue die to initiative checks.
  • If one party successfully performs an ambush (is aware of the incoming enemy, prepared and not detected prior to initiating combat) perform the following:
    • Roll an opposed Cool vs. Vigilance check.
      • Success grants a Blue to Initiative, with an additional blue per two additional successes
      • Two advantage may be spent to gain a free maneuver before combat. Unspent Advantages carry over to the Initiative check
      • Triumph may be spent for a top initiative slot, or for a free action (just action, not full round) before combat, or positively affect the battle.
      • Failure has no effect.
      • Three disadvantage may be spent to gain a black die to the initiative check
      • Despair may be spent to lose your free maneuver in the first round, or negatively affect the battle.
    • The ambushing party gains one blue die to initiative (regardless of roll outcome)

Integrated Grenades

  • If a character with a readily accessible grenade and is within grenade range of the target, they may spend to advantage to activate the grenades Blast quality at their target's location. This uses up the grenade.
  • Grenades may still be use as per standard rules.

Pallets and Packaging

Note: Multiple packaging methods may be used on the same items, but they do not stack; only the best reduction is used.

  • Boxing Up: Using Plasti-board boxes and foam available on any civilized world, items are stacked for shipping.
    • Encumbrance of a box is calculated by adding together the encumbrance of all contained items, dividing by ten, then rounding up to the nearest whole number.
    • Boxed items gain a blue die to resistance rolls against becoming damaged.
    • Boxing items costs 25 credits per point of encumbrance of the box.
    • An additional blue die for resistance by doubling the price of the box, or two for tripling.
    • All boxes have a cumbersome rating equal to their encumbrance.
  • Pallets: Pallets are specifically designed for load lifters, and to be easy to secure in cargo holds.
  • Each pallet may contain between 50 and 100 encumbrance of items.
  • Items under 5 encumbrance must be boxed first. (See above)
  • Each pallet is 5 encumbrance and cumbersome 10. It cannot be lifted by less than 2 size 1 individuals.
  • Pallets may only be used in cargo vehicles.
  • Creating a pallet costs 50 credits.
  • A shipping container may hold up to 500 encumbrance of items.
  • Each shipping container is encumbrance 25. It cannot be lifted by less than 2 binary load lifters.
  • Extremely cumbersome, each vessel may only hold a fixed number of these containers, even if it has cargo room left.
  • Shipping containers are vehicle scale, and have an armor value of 1, and 3 hull points.
  • Shipping containers cost 1,000 credits each.
  • Small Shipping Containers: These containers are 6x2.5x2.5 meters and designed to be used with large machinery and stacked in massive bulk freighter holds.

Personal, Vehicle, Massive Scales

  • Personal Scale: Operates as written.
    • Breach: Breach(1) is now defined as Pierce(10).
  • Massive Scale: Operates as current vehicle rules.
  • Vehicle Scale: A new scale partway in between Personal and Massive. Most things (except some creatures) size 2, 3 or 4 use this scale.
  • Damage Scale: Vehicle scale weapons, hull and armor operate on a 5 to 1 ratio with personal scale, and on a 1 to 2 ratio with Massive scale.
  • Brawn: Droids and other creatures using standard attributes only use brawn for skill rolls; it is not applied to encumbrance, damage or soak.

Extended Obligation Rules

  • Both the Flaming Cantina (ship) and TLB (group) can accrue Obligation, as separate entities (in our most recent adventure, the Obligation is on the ship, not so much on the company)
  • These will get added to the Obligation listing as two separate entries
  • If at the start of a session either one of these gets rolled, all PCs suffer a -2 Strain penalty for the session. This represents the fear and stress that our (collective) livelihood is being threatened and that we should address it.
  • Unlike personal Obligation, both these new Obligation entries can be reduced to zero. (Personal Obligation can/should never go below 5 points.)
Edited by Quicksilver

In my game I would let a cyborg or droid character have more than one pair of cybernetic arms(and maybe some other types of cybernetics). I don`t even know if that is a houserule, but I think it is. They still can`t get more than 7 in a characteristic from cybernetics and gear(or anything).

The economy and value of credits is borked imo in the game so I just do some blanket math to have it make more sense. Vehicles cost 10X the listed price, ships cost 100X the listed price. Mods scale similarly. Before the gotcha guys go into spasms I award credits scaled as well. The price comparison between gear and ships makes zero sense, there would be no reason to build ships at those listed prices.

I can't speak about everything, but the costs of the frieghters is pretty accurate based on a 1c = $1 scale IMO. My dad drove long haul truck for years and a new truck & trailer will run between $100K to $150K for a basic model and more for the fancy ones. A handgun goes for around $600-ish. So I can't say that I've seen anything that outright throws me for a loop, but I haven't looked at costs for anything Sil 5 and up FWIW.

Edited by Ahrimon

I use ships and aircraft for ships in the game, as a more accurate comparison as semi trucks do not have navigation systems, weapon systems, flight controls, airtight environmental systems, etc.

A semi would be a ground vehicle/speeder as in a A-A5 in EoE which lists as 10,000 credits, so x 10 would be 100,00cr = $100,000.

Edited by 2P51

We just have different points of view. To me, the star wars universe has been sitting on this advanced tech for so long that it's old hat. They've been rolling off the assembly line so long that they're not that expensive. To me, a real world plane or boat is a low demand, expensive peice of equipment so it doesn't translate well. I was at Cabellas, a popular US outdoor retailer for our foriegn friends, and a new ~20ft fishing boat was around $25k to $35k. A pontoon boat was easily $40k. I recently worked with a Beachcraft King Air 350, a small twin engine, 6-8 seat aircraft, who's retail price was around $2m. It wouldn't come close to the utility of a YT-1300.

But if it works for your game, enjoy. :)

A simple pound for pound comparison shows the economy to be borked. Take the YT-1300, essentially a C-27, so about 38000 pounds, works out to a pound of ship is worth 3.63 credits. A blaster rifle, 900 credits, about 10 pounds, a pound of blaster rifle is worth 90 credits. That's using perfectly reasonable weights for the two and two pieces of tech from that universe. The one that is infinitely simpler in design and to manufacture, as well as, even more ubiquitous, is almost 25 x the value. No one would build ships, there's no money in it. The economy in the game is borked.

  • A PC may spend a Destiny Point after a roll to convert 5 Advantage into a Success.
  • A PC may spend a Destiny Point to force a reroll on a lethal critical hit.
  • In order to use a Destiny Point, you have describe what happens and say a line! It can be simply, "the Force is with me" or "It is my destiny!" or it can be anything! This also applies to the GM.
  • If you want to pass a long a Boost die, you have to provide a narrative description describing what happened.
  • A Nemesis or anyone with Adversary 2+ can choose to take a full second activation (resetting skills & talents) at the end of the initiative order.
  • The PC always has the option to use Obligation as a resource in order to acquire an item or find a buyer for an item he wishes to sell (At the GM’s discretion). The point to credit amount is determined by the situation and the GM.

  • I give the players the option of using a Triumph to find random loot, from my loot table, if they can't think of anything else. I've been running modules and they are pretty light in terms of loot and cash payouts, so my group uses triumphs for loot at least 50% of the time. http://community.fan...e/#entry1043657

  • The Maximum range that a vehicle can be seen by the naked eye in planetary scale is based on the silhouette; 2 or less Close, 3-4 Short, 5-6 Medium, 7 or more Long.

  • The maximum range of sensors that can be installed on a vehicle is based on the silhouette ; 1 Close, 2 Short, 3-4 Medium, 5-6 Long, 7+ Extreme.

Pretty good rules ianinak but I personally would reduce Advantage cost to 3 instead 5.

A simple pound for pound comparison shows the economy to be borked. Take the YT-1300, essentially a C-27, so about 38000 pounds, works out to a pound of ship is worth 3.63 credits. A blaster rifle, 900 credits, about 10 pounds, a pound of blaster rifle is worth 90 credits. That's using perfectly reasonable weights for the two and two pieces of tech from that universe. The one that is infinitely simpler in design and to manufacture, as well as, even more ubiquitous, is almost 25 x the value. No one would build ships, there's no money in it. The economy in the game is borked.

Not really. You're forgetting about any fixed costs behind the scenes, like workers, tools, etc... that all add to the cost of making something. There might be a lot more small and fiddly bits in the blaster than in the ship on a pound for pound basis that takes more time/effort to put into place.

A simple pound for pound comparison shows the economy to be borked. Take the YT-1300, essentially a C-27, so about 38000 pounds, works out to a pound of ship is worth 3.63 credits. A blaster rifle, 900 credits, about 10 pounds, a pound of blaster rifle is worth 90 credits. That's using perfectly reasonable weights for the two and two pieces of tech from that universe. The one that is infinitely simpler in design and to manufacture, as well as, even more ubiquitous, is almost 25 x the value. No one would build ships, there's no money in it. The economy in the game is borked.

Let's look at a pound for pound comparison in the real world.

AN AK-47 assault rifle costs about $800 and weighs about 7 pounds, so a little more than $100 a pound. A new semi can run about $100,000 and weighs about 10,000 pounds, so about $10 a pound. In our world, the one that is infinitely simpler is ten times the price per pound. It's not 25x, but it's still a significant difference.

I weigh important tasks heavier so that they require more successes to succeed. I don't do this often; in fact it's meant to replicate the drama of combat, sans weapons. I'm fond of portraying a scenario where your party is fighting stormtroopers and they have to roll dice for 30 minutes, but slicing the terminal they were guarding, the one that controls life support for the entire colony - well, that only takes one roll and you're in control of the whole shebang. That seems off to me. It can add gravitas to certain situations if used sparingly and appropriately.

Presently I'm thinking over a method of modifying the personal-versus-vehicle scale damage using a vehicle's Armor rating to determine how much personal scale damage can get through. The trick will be to make it crunchy enough but not too crunchy while still allowing for players to blast speeders and lob grenades and expect results like we have seen in nearly every canon source. It might be as simple as dividing the Damage result by the Armor rating, which is of course less simple than the 10X RAW and the 5X popular house ruling. This would only apply to personal scale damage against vehicles and not the reverse.

Both of these ideas need some playtesting, it's one thing to conceptualize it and another to see how it interacts with the story.

Edited by themensch

We added and still analyzing a few more houserules. Force focused in this case. Suggestions welcome :D

  • Foresee - Control Upgrade ( new Control on Third Row 15 XP)

    • Instinctive Navigation: When making an Astrogation check, the Force user may roll a Foresee power check as part of his dice pool. He may spend FP to gain Success or Advantage (user’s choice) on the check.

  • Commits as Incidental.

  • Force Support: Each additional user rolls his/her Force Rating as an Action and can add so many "pips" as his/Her FR as a maximum value. The rest of cooperation rules still the same. (Thanks for the suggestions of some forum members ;) )

  • One with the Force (Incidental, Out of turn): Let exchange FP (LS ↔ DS) at a cost of Strain 1 per point and Ranks to Discipline as a limit. (Similar to On the Edge but with Ranks limitation but with a no "tainted" perspective).

  • Reflect instead reduce damage adds Failures.

Also we are considering some kind of personal energetic shields that have "Wounds" and regenerate X "Wounds" per round. Still analyzing.

Edited by Josep Maria

Career 'linked' trees.. I'm thinking of allowing linked Career trees to be cheaper in XP cost,,,, first choice ie Technician/Mechanic as primary choice - buy the next tree Outlaw or Slicer at Double XP,,, then Slicer or Outlaw at two and a half XP,,, all other skill trees at triple,.,,, only because I think the RaW makes the extra stuff way too expensive.it's a work in progress, and the players are willing to wing it in their favour or not as the game progresses.. dunno... I'm still thinking about it ;)

FUN FIRST, RULES SECOND.. give or take

Edited by DidntFallAsleep66

An idea for Knight level play to make force powers make sense to a certain degree. I want to get other's opinions on this before actually tossing it into use.

If you are Knighted (by whatever Jedi thingy you follow), you may access the basic level of all force powers but at a cost:

spend 1 light side destiny point (disturbance in the force) gain 1 strain (hard for them to use)

or

spend 1 dark side destiny point, gain 3 conflict.

What do you guys think? It only allows access to the basic level of the power, cannot go further than that.

I would not allow a PC to spend dark side destiny points. Even dark side Force users use lightside Destiny Points. It's pretty clear that the dark ones are for the GMs use and the light ones are for the players use.