WARNING MAJOR SPOILERS.

I ran through the game recently with a group. We got to Malefax, and my players rushed in. Then, in two hits, Malefax was below zero, without even hitting the PCs, because 3 of them were wielding lightsabers. VERY anticlimactic.

If I had screwed my head on straight, I could have used destiny points to make it more difficult to hit. HOWEVER, that was in one round. In three rounds, they still would have annihilated them.

Are lightsabers too powerful? How do you deal with Breach 1 for a nemesis? He has 4 soak and it didn't matter because 10 soak are ignored.

Thoughts and feelings on having 2 or 3 characters wielding lightsabers, even if they are "nerfed" from EotE or AoR.

Can Malefax use the Parry talent, or does he have the Cortosis quality?

I don't have the Beginner Game yet, pretty sure I'll pick it up this week though! Looking forward to running it soon. So this heads up really helps.

Can Malefax use the Parry talent, or does he have the Cortosis quality?

I don't have the Beginner Game yet, pretty sure I'll pick it up this week though! Looking forward to running it soon. So this heads up really helps.

He doesn't actually, for either. 4 Soak (3 Brawn + 1 Soak from Robes), uses an Ancient Sith Sword that does +2 Damage or a Blaster Pistol, has 2 stimpacks, and his Force powers are Sense (up to long range base power) and Move (up to medium range base power). He's got 2 Rival adversaries sporting Blaster Pistols as well.

Basically, the issue is that the encounter is made to work with the lowest recommended number of players playing the characters that are the worst at combat (Belandi, a healer with a Blaster Pistol, and Dao, a melee character that sports a walking stick), and definitely is a bit of a challenge for them. But it obviously doesn't include any recommended suggestions for more players, or really if more than 1 character grab a lightsaber user, which makes everything drastically easier. So don't worry, you probably ran the encounter as intended.

As for suggestions on how to fix the encounter in the future. It depends on how you want to do it, either by boosting his forces or himself. Maybe giving him Parry ranks for every character with a Lightsaber past the first (so 4 characters, 3 with lightsabers, would be 2 ranks in Parry, and would let him cut melee attacks down by 4 base damage) if you just want to make him more formidable. If you'd rather make his forces stronger, maybe up them to Heavy Blaster Pistols, and add an additional Mercenary if you've got 4 PCs. I'd pick one or the other, it might be too much for the PCs to use both suggestions.

Potential Spoilers below - if you are not a ref you are advised not to read this post.

The only thing with this is that you will likely have to improve the Fallen Jedi in the follow on adventure Lure of the Lost since he is supposed to be harder than Malefax and the fight versus him should be harder than versus Malefax.

It could still work, though an alternative way would be to give Malefax Adversary 1 and/or spend destiny points to upgrade the difficulty. If you were to add the Adversary trait I would also give his boss at least the same if not Adversary 2.

I like the idea of giving him a number of ranks in parry depending on the number of lightsaber users. I would shy away from giving him cortosis gear for a few reasons. From a player's perspective, it feels like cheap move. When Malefax is defeated, it will also give your players access to a very nice piece of armor.

Finally, wasn't the Cortosis armor attachment not included in the Force and Destiny beta? I recall the quality exists but I don't remember any mods that allowed you to add it to your gear.

Yeah, the "BBEG" fights of both this and the EotE Beginner Box adventures were pretty anti-climactic. Granted, I've not run the FaD adventure yet, but even with just two PCs with a full-blown lightsaber, I saw Malefax as written going down hard, since it'd just take two decent hits with a Breach 1 weapon to drop him like a sack of spuds.

I've made notes to give him a rank in Adversary and two ranks in Parry to help improve his survivability in combat should I run this adventure using the pre-gen PCs. I am planning on running this adventure (incorporate elements from Lure of the Lost as well) as a launch point for a new FaD campaign that I'm starting up once the core rulebook comes out, and based on the PCs thus far (none of whom have a ligthsaber) I'll probably be good with just giving Malefax a rank in Adversary and maybe a minion group for some extra support.

Thanks for the tip. I gave him a level of Adversary and a little kick to his initiative roll to get in the fight early (it says he is warned if there is a fight on the bridge I think). We had 5 PCs so they were always going to win the fight.

Spoiler:

I had Malefax hold their mentor hostage and threaten to kill her which neutralized their combat strength and made them come up with an alternate solution.

The one they came up with was pretty awesome.

Malefax held Romund over a jagged column and threatened to drop her if they did not leave. One PC activated jump and made a tough skill check to grab her out of the air. Pretty epic. Then they toasted Malefax pretty easily but it lasted a good number of rounds with Adversary and Destiny point spends. But Pon is a beast.

Edited grammar slightly.

Why not downgrade the PC's sabers? Take away breach and say they are damaged? It encourages them to go seek better weapons and could create quests down the line.

Or alternately give Malefax his own lightsaber...

Why not downgrade the PC's sabers? Take away breach and say they are damaged? It encourages them to go seek better weapons and could create quests down the line.

Or alternately give Malefax his own lightsaber...

I think giving Malefax his own lightsaber is too much, because it's not always a guarantee that you'd be running this adventure with a lightsaber-wielding character; the players could very well go for the three PCs that don't have lightsabers.

Like I said earlier, the "boss fight" in the Beginner Box adventures tends to be pretty anemic in terms of degree of challenge. The bounty hunter at the end of the EotE "Escape from Mos Shutta" adventure has a tendency to go down fast once the Wookiee closes into striking distance, or if the Twi'lek bounty hunter has a chance to unload a shot or two into the guy with her rifle. The AoR one only avoided that by having the BBEG fight be a vehicle combat, with the main bad guy in a scout walker and the rest of the PCs on speeder bikes.

But you also need to consider that for some groups, this could very well be a one-shot and that they never pick up those characters again, so letting them have basic lightsabers with Breach 1 probably isn't too big of a deal from a design stand-point, as the Beginner Box is generally meant to teach the fundamental rules and let the players have fun being awesome. The again, the downloadable Nautolan Warrior is a beast with a Brawn of 4, giving him a very healthy dice pool for his lightsaber attacks during the boss fight, where the other saber-users only have a 3 in their governing characteristic.

Dono has a point. On both sides of the argument, the point of the end-boss fight for this adventure is to have a memorable encounter. I've only glanced over the encounter, but maybe there's a way to really make the fight exciting without beefing up Malefax.

For this sake, I will refer back to "The List" from Order 66. Specifically, the point about interesting environment pieces. Have Malefax be unreachable at first. Maybe he activates a cool environmental hazard to slow the progress of the PCs or to give himself a minor advantage. For threats on his part , advantages on the PCs part, or simply clever thinking, they can manipulate the environment to work to their advantage.

The lightsaber duels in both the PT and OT are memorable not just because of the emotional dialog or the clash of laser swords, but also for the cool backdrops and how they affected the fight.

Kaosoe's got a valid point about how the encounter is presented.

If it's a straight-up fight that makes little to zero use of the terrain and with little to no interference being ruin by the mercenaries, then yeah Malefax is probably going to be slaughtered.

Unfortunately, the encounter set-up itself doesn't give a new GM a lot of advice on how to avoid that sort of thing, making it likely that the final combat is going to devolve into a straight-up slugfest between Malefax and any PCs who are wielding a lightsaber. So in that regard, beefing Malefax up a bit is probably the best option, with a rank in the Adversary talent (upgrading difficulty of any combat checks targeting him by one) and a rank in Parry probably being sufficient to make him last more than a couple rounds.

why don't you just add hitpoints such that it takes them 10 rounds to widdle him down? character generation rules be damned! in my D&D campaigns I learned the hard way when I put together 4 lvl 4 thugs for my 3 lvl 1 PCs to deal with (when I say deal, I mean they were supposed to talk to them, but if they fought they *should* have lost), they killed them all in 2 rounds. and those lvl 4 thugs were SUPPOSED to be so tough even if the PCs fought them, they would lose and the thugs would tell them where to go anyway. but since all the thugs got killed, there was no one left alive to inform the PCs, so I stopped the game at that point and told the PCs "well congratulations, you killed the guys that were supposed to tell you where the goal was, now what?" what I should have done was added HP to the thugs every round until the players exhausted themselves and stopped fighting.

how this works for you is guage how much effort the characters are putting in (how much strain have they spent, how many other resources have they spent? and keep adding HP to the badguy until they are at the point where they have spent enough effort for it to be "wow this guy isn't a pushover" then stop adding HP by the time they spend enough resources that its a "wow this guy is tough" situation, by that time he should have enough HP left for 1-3 hits.

I also handwaived his HP so that combat flowed through two full rounds, and the players each got to strike against him. It was incredibly cinematic and everyone got to go twice.

why don't you just add hitpoints such that it takes them 10 rounds to widdle him down?

If that works for your group then fair enough but I would walk away from any table if I found a GM doing this. It takes away any real sense of player agency, when all you need to do as a GM is to add the Adversary talent and spend destiny to upgrade the players difficulties.My own group were still fairly quick to take Malafax down but with the Adversary talent it was more of a challenge.

As to vital information, I try never to have any situation where there is only one way to get the data that they need. Leave alternative ways, if they know they need data then they will often find another way but if they don't know then provide more than one source.

why don't you just add hitpoints such that it takes them 10 rounds to widdle him down?

If that works for your group then fair enough but I would walk away from any table if I found a GM doing this. It takes away any real sense of player agency, when all you need to do as a GM is to add the Adversary talent and spend destiny to upgrade the players difficulties.My own group were still fairly quick to take Malafax down but with the Adversary talent it was more of a challenge.

As to vital information, I try never to have any situation where there is only one way to get the data that they need. Leave alternative ways, if they know they need data then they will often find another way but if they don't know then provide more than one source.

this was D&D d20 there is no adversary talent it was 3.5 so there werent even talents at that point. besides i never did it, im just saying i think its what i SHOULD have done.

also I dont game with those guys any more because they thought they were on the sluggfest train, any character put infront of them was someone they needed to slug to death. none of them stopped rolling dice long enough to say "what do we need?"

why don't you just add hitpoints such that it takes them 10 rounds to widdle him down?

If that works for your group then fair enough but I would walk away from any table if I found a GM doing this. It takes away any real sense of player agency, when all you need to do as a GM is to add the Adversary talent and spend destiny to upgrade the players difficulties.

How is adding to a Nemesis' Wound Threshold taking away player agency?

why don't you just add hitpoints such that it takes them 10 rounds to widdle him down?

oriondean, on 22 Jul 2015 - 4:01 PM, said:

how this works for you is guage how much effort the characters are putting in (how much strain have they spent, how many other resources have they spent? and keep adding HP to the badguy until they are at the point where they have spent enough effort for it to be "wow this guy isn't a pushover" then stop adding HP by the time they spend enough resources that its a "wow this guy is tough" situation, by that time he should have enough HP left for 1-3 hits.

If that works for your group then fair enough but I would walk away from any table if I found a GM doing this. It takes away any real sense of player agency, when all you need to do as a GM is to add the Adversary talent and spend destiny to upgrade the players difficulties.

How is adding to a Nemesis' Wound Threshold taking away player agency?

The suggestion was not simply adding wounds, it was effectively deciding how many rounds you wanted the bad guy to last and not having him fall over until that time has passed, irrespective of how well the Pc's do. That most definately takes away player agency.

Preliminary Qualification: It behooves the GM and players, in any circumstance, to make full use of the narrative nature of the game and the length of combat turns in creating a truly fun and memorable scene (and thus, an excellent gaming experience). So rather than treating combat rounds as a handful of seconds for a swing of the laser sword or a couple shots of a blaster, you can narrate an entire minute's worth of activity, where you're thrusting, parrying, dodging, angling for better positions, forcing your opponent into a corner, and all the while bantering. This should be your first response when checking why you're having such an underwhelming combat encounter.

But if this isn't your problem, then I think it's totally cool to change stuff around mid-encounter. However, I think there's a fine line to tread. I'm working with the following assumptions:

1) The GM defines the game world.

2) The game world should respond to the actions of the player characters. (This is player agency at its most basic inception)

3) Star Wars is, at its heart, a cinematic setting of Space Opera.

4) Therefore, adapting certain game mechanics on the fly, as a response to player character actions, and especially with sensitivity to the cinematic nature of the setting, is actually part and parcel of player agency.

Qualification A) I don't say this to give GMs an excuse to screw over their players, but rather to empower GMs to make calls that make their games more fun. And not that a GM should just change stats all the time, willy-nilly, but very sparingly, when it makes the game more satisfying experience for all involved. I have not done this in years, but I still reserve the right to do so. In any case, I would say that, if you're in the middle of the game and you realize you've statted him way too weak, it's still okay to pump up his Wound Threshold or Soak value (as long as you're doing it to make it a fun time for everyone involved, and the players don't know, and you're not doing it just to screw the PCs over).

Qualification B) There are times that I have purposefully decreased an NPC's Wound Threshold to allow him to die. I would argue that this is also okay, and does not mess with player agency, but rather is the heart of player agency: when the PC makes a truly awesome combat check, and he's like just a wound or two away from killing the big bad guy, and the GM is like "uhhhh...you grazed his torso. Next player!" Nah. Take the guy down: the player rolled awesome and narrated awesome; the game world's response should be equally awesome.

Qualification C) I regularly bring in reinforcements, or delay them, if I think the combat is going too quickly or taking too long. I don't see how that's any different from simply adding to an NPC's Wound Threshold.

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TL;DR:

There is a very blurry line between player agency and GM fiat, and it's gonna be different for every group, but if the players are having fun, then you know you're doing something right.

I don't understand why the PCs have full lightsabers anyway. A standard character can't get access to them so why these beginning characters?

I'm about to run this adventure in the near future and I'm anticipating my players having lightsabers as I'm running 'Lessons from the past' (F&D core rulebook) and then 'Hidden Depths' (F&D GM kit) first. I'm fully anticipating needing to bump up the villains in 'Mountaintop', mainly Malefax. As has been previously mentioned here, I don't want to give Malefax a lightsaber or expensive armour.

My question is... could Malefax in some way protect himself from lightsabers using the 'Move' force power? For example, a PC swings at Malefax only to have Malefax use the force to stop the PC's attack mid swing? I guess this would sort of be like a force block or shield. FYI... this wouldn't make Malefax invincible, just increase the difficulty (?) to hit him. I think Malefax will still get pawned taking on three PC's with lightsabers, but as a GM I'd still like to have a dramatic fight.

Semper Fi

I don't understand why the PCs have full lightsabers anyway. A standard character can't get access to them so why these beginning characters?

Because the Beginner Box is essentially a one-shot demo for the system. Play it once, maybe play the online follow-up adventure, and that's about it.

Plus, for some time now Force and Destiny has been vaunted as "the book where we can finally play Jedi." And one of the most iconic elements of a Jedi to the masses is the lightsaber. Thus, the pre-gens are going to have full-blown lightsabers since they're not constrained by the rules that regular characters made using the FaD book are.

If it's a straight-up fight that makes little to zero use of the terrain and with little to no interference being ruin by the mercenaries, then yeah Malefax any Bad Guy ever is probably going to be slaughtered.

That's pretty true of every encounter in the entire range. Saber fights will almost never last more than 4 or 5 rounds, so if you don't make the most of that time, if you just trade blows back and forth without any color, it'll be boring and short.

I'm about to run this adventure in the near future and I'm anticipating my players having lightsabers as I'm running 'Lessons from the past' (F&D core rulebook) and then 'Hidden Depths' (F&D GM kit) first. I'm fully anticipating needing to bump up the villains in 'Mountaintop', mainly Malefax. As has been previously mentioned here, I don't want to give Malefax a lightsaber or expensive armour.

My question is... could Malefax in some way protect himself from lightsabers using the 'Move' force power? For example, a PC swings at Malefax only to have Malefax use the force to stop the PC's attack mid swing? I guess this would sort of be like a force block or shield. FYI... this wouldn't make Malefax invincible, just increase the difficulty (?) to hit him. I think Malefax will still get pawned taking on three PC's with lightsabers, but as a GM I'd still like to have a dramatic fight.

Semper Fi

Semper -- you'd need to upgrade Malefax's Force powers to enable this I think. One option would be to increase his 'Move' capability to enable him to pull something out of a character's hand. And/or give him the ability to use Move as an offensive weapon (e.g. tossing a player out of range). Given the Force levels of starting characters, beefing up Malefax's Force talents could be a way to provide more cinema and make the fight harder. I, literally, just went through this fight today on a Play-By-Post campaign and Kaveri used her blaster rifle with six (count 'em, six) successes to drop him. He'd taken some previous damage. Overall he lasted a couple rounds. Having been through the fight, I'll definitely be looking to upgrade the difficulty on the guy deeper down in the temple when they get to him.

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, the dice just don't help.

Can Malefax use the Parry talent, or does he have the Cortosis quality?

Finally, wasn't the Cortosis armor attachment not included in the Force and Destiny beta? I recall the quality exists but I don't remember any mods that allowed you to add it to your gear.

I'd have to go back and beef up on what cortosis is and does. But given the flexibility of RPGs, you could always reskin cortosis "armor" as some cybernetic "cortosis subdermal armor"?

Just early morning non-caffeinated rambling there - don't shoot the messenger!

I like the idea of Adversary and/or Parry X - will look those talents up and decide how to apply to Malefax vs. 5 PCs.

I had the same problem with the ending being quite short and easily won (I know it's a beginner game and leading up to the bigger baddy in lure of the lost).

However I'm going to be GM for a new campaign with different people and reflecting on what happened last time, I'm thinking the wandering guard should spot them, causing Malefax to be alert and more prepared. (Quite like the suggestions regarding holding Romund hostage). But I'm not too sure how I feel about changing his stats to make Malefax more difficult? I'm swaying more toward adding an extra guard or something tho.

What seems best? I know there's differing opinions but changing the stats to then have to change the stats of the lure of the lost villain seems a bit much