I'm getting a feeling that this game is too easy.... currently, my party just picks fights left, right, and center. Nobody's been knocked out yet but a few have come close, being left with 2 HP or so out of their initial 12 (?) but even then, the encounter is over, that's 2-3 stimpack's worth of healing, then we bug out and a day or so later, we're on another adventure and everyone's on full health.

What are we doing wrong? I have a feeling the GM isn't scaling the enemies to reflect the party strength (we are usually 4, but can sometimes have 5 or 6 players) but I'm not sure.

Granted, the system is quite forgiving with regards to player death (really only on a nasty critical or -2x the max HP), but I just feel like we're breezing through most fights.

Anyone else have this feeling? What can we do to fix this?

I plan to GM in a few weeks and I'm going to be a bit tougher. Play into their backstory and obligations, make the fights longer and tougher, and get them to double-think before drawing blasters.

How many minions are you using? any rivals or nemesis? How long have the sessions been?

Well, "gritty" and "tough" aren't exactly the same. For tougher combat, adding a minion to a group or merely adding a minion group to an encounter can pump it up. Depending on where your campaign is located, you might have issues with local or even Imperial authorities. If the players breeze through a fight but then a dozen enforcers show up to keep the peace, fine them, or even arrest them, then the players might think twice about resolving situations with their blasters.

More importantly, what equipment has been used by the party and the adversaries? Combat (since it's really hard to miss) tends to come down to soak and base damage. If the party is getting off too easily, throw in a few enemies with Blaster Rifles or heavier weapons. Or toss in something with Autofire. That'll drop PCs left and right, even in the midgame.

I've had moments where I've felt the same way, but usually within a session or three I've come to realize it was just circumstantial. Part of the issue, at least with my group, is that we've been gaming together so long that combat flows pretty effectively for the players. A good example from the current game I'm playing in is this...

The party decided to go big-game hunting as a side-thing. We'd just got done setting up a business and dealing with some bounty-hunters. Upon finding the rancor our gunslinger barely managed to damage it, but my Outlaw-Tech/Mechanic's modified blaster pistol was able to hurt it pretty well, so much so the GM though I was using something like a missile or mortar launcher. Now during the fight our melee/brawl guy came close to dying.

Another example was the group fighting a Mad Max style war wagon and outrider vehicles. (The game started shortly after the GM saw Mad Max.) Now a handful of players were like "Well, we'll go down and get into personal combat." The Gunslinger & Marauder came close to death when facing off against 2 or 3 sniper-style slugthrower rifles. So much so that I flipped a Destiny point so the jet-pack wearing gunslinger wouldn't get killed by his fall.

Being someone who prefers a "Grittier" feel in terms of how much damage a PC can take, I feel that this system leans towards that label as opposed to the Life Reservoir of over 100 HP.

One way to up the deadliness is to have your NPCs spend their advantages to crit whenever they can. Every critical injury a unhealed character has suffered adds a +10 to their next critical injury roll. A PC can die on a critical injury result of 141+, regardless of their current wounds.

I'm not using any minions as I'm one of the players. I GM'ed the first game to get used to the system, we had a couple of games with a more experienced GM ran just to get us started, but after that, it was one guy that GM'ed for a good time.

We've been playing published adventures as far as I can tell. I don't really do research because I'm a player and don't want to spoil the surprise, but we did The Long Arm of the Hutt a while back and it was easy.

Thing is, I don't think the GM is pulling any punches. He rolls in the open, so that's not it. NPCs don't really crit very much, but then again I don't know their stats so I can't tell if he's using them correctly. At the very least, I suspect he is using the adventures as written and not adjusting for the PCs.

With regards to critical injuries, I just re-read this section of the book. I thought we were doing healing wrong but we aren't. Sure, crits are painful when they get them and can be scary once the PCs have a unhealed crit or two, but that doesn't really slow them down as much as being at 50% health or lower --- THAT'S when the players start thinking ducking is a good idea. But more often than not, the fight is over at this point.

Has anyone ran an adventure wherein the PCs are still feeling the effects of their gunfight after 2 or 3 sessions? When I GM, I'd like my players to start thinking "hang on a minute... can we sneak past this? Bribe someone? Wait for nightfall or a change in guards?" As it is, we do little-to-no scouting and just walk through adventures.

You can be killed with a single hit if the adversary has the right weapon and/or talent.

Did you start with a lot of equipment? My PC's used their obligation to start with a ton of creds, so they started with really good gear, so I have had to beef up encounters because they are armed and armored really well, but even they have struggled when I throw multiple minion groups at them.

I'm not using any minions as I'm one of the players. I GM'ed the first game to get used to the system, we had a couple of games with a more experienced GM ran just to get us started, but after that, it was one guy that GM'ed for a good time.

We've been playing published adventures as far as I can tell. I don't really do research because I'm a player and don't want to spoil the surprise, but we did The Long Arm of the Hutt a while back and it was easy.

Thing is, I don't think the GM is pulling any punches. He rolls in the open, so that's not it. NPCs don't really crit very much, but then again I don't know their stats so I can't tell if he's using them correctly. At the very least, I suspect he is using the adventures as written and not adjusting for the PCs.

With regards to critical injuries, I just re-read this section of the book. I thought we were doing healing wrong but we aren't. Sure, crits are painful when they get them and can be scary once the PCs have a unhealed crit or two, but that doesn't really slow them down as much as being at 50% health or lower --- THAT'S when the players start thinking ducking is a good idea. But more often than not, the fight is over at this point.

Has anyone ran an adventure wherein the PCs are still feeling the effects of their gunfight after 2 or 3 sessions? When I GM, I'd like my players to start thinking "hang on a minute... can we sneak past this? Bribe someone? Wait for nightfall or a change in guards?" As it is, we do little-to-no scouting and just walk through adventures.

My character is walking around with 4 crits right now. Sounds like your GM is just hand waving stim pack usage and time and calling you healed to fast, plus he may not be following the crit rules correctly because on average 3 advantage should gen a crit with a blaster.

Have two fights in a row with no down time. If you have one fight a session and then break for the 'long rest' that's not much of a challenge regardless of rule system.

One suggestion I might have - hit 'em in the strain management. If they're not coming out of fights gasping for breath, you're not doing it right.

A lot of the problem is probably the use of the published adventures. The recommended number of PCs involved is recommended to be around four, with two players being the probable minimum and 6 being the maximum. If the PCs have great gear, i.e. a jetpack, then adventures for low level PCs like Long arm of the Hutt will be underwhelming for a party of such a high caliber.

As for the grit, this system is flexible enough to run most styles of campaigns, even a Mad Max style campaign or adventure (as seen above). If critical hits aren't potent enough then either you need enemies with low crit ratings, weapons that automatically leave nasty crits like disruptor weapons, or weapons that add multiple +10s to the critical roll.

Just like in a video game if enemies don't scale, then it's not fun for the players. It just becomes a grind-fest. One way to fix this is to throw multiple rivals in instead of minions. You'll find that your players won't be able to plow through them as easily.

I recommend creating your own adventures. With the exception of Beyond the Rim most of the adventures aren't going to cut it for a party such as yours.

The only person who knows your party better than themselves is you, the GM. Ultimately you will find that making your own adventures is superior in almost every way to getting the published adventures. If you have trouble, there are multiple topics on this forum discussing how to home-brew adventures.

Good luck

P.S.,

If fighting is so easy for a group of 6 ragtags, then a way to really fuel up their scheming minds is to introduce another group of six slightly stronger ragtags that get into their business. It's especially fun when the rival team has members that correlate to your team, i.e. smart good guy paired up against the evil genius.

My players tend to think the game is quite deadly. But then I do write my own stuff and adjust the power of the NPCs to match the group pretty much.

EDIT:

Spot on.

As was pointed out, hard and gritty are two different things. If the GM is doing his job, it's relatively easy to get knocked unconscious in this game compared to other systems, but it's pretty hard to actually get killed.

As far as difficulty is concerned, it's almost entirely dependent on the group. If the group focuses on combat, then combat will be fairly easy for them. On the one hand, you shouldn't punish them for excelling, but on the other, the game gets boring if they walk over everything. There's a middle ground somewhere in between escalating everything and letting them blitz through stuff, and I think that's having varying difficulties of encounters, as makes sense for what's going on. Don't throw dozens of stormtroopers at your PCs on some backwater planet just because you think combat has been easy for them.

Imagine if you have an expert slicer in the group. You shouldn't make every computer/security system he comes across a top of the line impregnatrable fortress of cyber security just to challenge him. That's not fair. He should be good at what he's good at. At the same time, if he never comes across the impregnatrable fortress of cyber security, a lot of his talents won't come into play, and he might get bored.

First off, I would highly suggest updating your gaming terminology and methods: there are no "hitpoints," there are wounds and wound thresholds. You accrue wounds as you suffer damage, and they count up. Once you exceed your wound threshold, you are unconscious. Also, you do not die once you reach 2x your wound threshold. You simply stop counting wounds after that.

If you want combat to be a little more deadly, there's a few tips I can offer:

• Remember that stimpacks are a resource, and they can be used up, they are only effective for a limited amount of uses per day, and "restocking" on them is not always possible.
• Stick fast to the one-Medicine-check-per-encounter rule. Down time = one encounter, unless it's a very long down time (days or weeks).
• On that note, keep the action fast-paced. Don't allow for so much down time!
• Introduce more minions, or break up the minion groups a bit so that there are more NPC attacks happening (thus more chances for hits against the PCs)
• Strain is also a great thing to introduce into the equation, and can be just as deadly as wounds when it comes down to it.
• There should be some natural-feeling stress and release to your game, such that there are times when the PCs are really hurting, either in terms of resources or physical wellbeing, but there should also be those times where you let them rest and recoup. So...just make sure you're putting the pressure on, but that you also know when & how to let up.

I plan to GM in a few weeks and I'm going to be a bit tougher. Play into their backstory and obligations, make the fights longer and tougher, and get them to double-think before drawing blasters.

Your insight serves you well! Just remember, know when to let up on the tension.

One suggestion I might have - hit 'em in the strain management. If they're not coming out of fights gasping for breath, you're not doing it right.

Speaking of strain, are you guys doing your maneuvers correctly? Not directed at you Desslok, but it is something they may not be doing correctly.

• Introduce more minions, or break up the minion groups a bit so that there are more NPC attacks happening (thus more chances for hits against the PCs)

And remember, you can always bring in more minion groups if the PCs roll a Despair or enough Threat, or if the NPCs roll a Triumph.

There’s nothing quite like thinking you’ve finally squeaked your way through the fight then to discover that was just the first wave….

You can also use the environment. Put them in a swampy location and give them setback dice for some actions. Put them in dark places. There are many things that you can do to make things more difficult as well as add to the experience.

You can be killed with a single hit if the adversary has the right weapon and/or talent.

In my last session, Jabba the Hutt shot though a Mos Eisley style bar counter top with his blaster rifle, reducing me from full to a third of my total health. And that was the first combat turn! Don't ever underestimate any of your enemies.

The most damage that any of my characters have ever taken in a single shot was always from other players.

Never underestimate what can be done to the players by other players, if they roll a Despair or if you’re too close when the Thermal Detonator goes off.

I have a campaign with only three ganks and they're all murder monsters. They could rip through three minion groups, so I sent a nemesis grade assassin droid with a flechette launcher after them and it nearly killed the party before they brought it down. Two of them nearly died and now they have a mild panic attack if I mention any assassin droids nearby. Especially two of them.

Sounds like the OP's combat encounters contain too much Minion gravy and not enough Rival potatoes and Nemesis meat. Suggest to your GM that me maybe throw in some more Rivals, and give them a few talents each. Also, equipment matters a lot; players that laugh off the puny shots from a blaster pistol will suddenly stop smiling when confronted with a blaster carbine. Talents like Deadly Accuracy, Soft Spot, Anatomy Lessons and the like are great for dealing more damage without having to excessively modify the weapons (that are bound to fall into PC hands afterwards anyway).

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. Give me a few moments to process all of it.

Looks like I'll be GMing sooner rather than later so lots of things to do!

I haven't read the rules that much yet, but I was under the impression that it took a week to heal from a crit?

If not, then maby that's a good rule from now on for this group