Has anyone else come up against the same problem as me?

Stun of any kind is lethal against minions because they don't have any strain to take the damage as, so it instantly becomes wounds. In the first session (the Perlemian Haul) my players just stun grenaded the bridge, taking out all of the minions, half killing the second in command and neutralising the captain for a few rounds...

Then last night in their next adventure they used stun setting on their blasters to drop Imperial Naval Troopers and Stormtroopers like it was no problem. Even when they missed, they were spending advantages to dish out strain and taking them out without even hitting them! I put in a Stormtroopers sergeant at one point to try and slow them down but that only took 4 rounds once they discovered a fusion cutter is f*****g lethal in combat (ignore 10 points of soak, meaning three hits and he dies).

I found myself, at technically their own suggestion, putting an assassin droid in against them which almost killed them before I got them to notice the restraining bolt attached to it and they shut it off.

This is ridiculous. All they need to do is take cover and shoot at mooks until they've advantaged them to death before launching at anything bigger with fusion cutters and carving it up like day old ham.

Does anyone have any workarounds for this? I don't want to just pit them against nemesis level opponents all the time as that would end up being lethal, but I want them to have a bit of a challenge.

TYIA.

What book is the Fusion cutter in? Also, under what circumstances did they get it? That could be some kind of adventure to earn the favour of whoever they got it from. Other than that, throw something with Sunder at them, 3 Advantage can wreck a piece of gear. Or just say that the authorities are starting to take a disliking to them and their fusion cutter rampages

It's in the gear section of the main rule book and they got them when making their characters. The droid has one built in to aid with mechanical repairs (and now ganking opponents) and one of the other players has one as when he made his character he had a dot in mechanics and nothing to spend the credits on so just got it.

A couple of points here:

First, you can't use Advantage to inflict strain on someone. You can use Advantage to recover strain for yourself, and you can use an opponent's Threats to inflict strain on that opponent.

Second, against Rivals and Minions, stun are no more or less debilitating than regular damage. Both are affected by soak (except for the Stun active quality) and are applied to the same pool of wounds.

Third, the stun setting on blaster weapons reduces the range to Short by default, regardless of the weapon's listed range. Which means your PCs are going to be standing where people can hit them very, very easily.

Krieger22 is pretty on point. I'll only add a few points.

Even though stun is mechanically treated like wounds for Rivals and Minions, you have every reason to only incapacitate them. Since they are not dead, they could come to at any moment. Usually at a time most inconvenient for the PCs.

Secondly, the fusion cutter is only intended to be used as a tool. It was given a weapon profile incase a player wanted to use it in a pinch. When used in this way, it should be treated as an improvised weapon. Which means it will automatically generate 1 or more threat - depending on the size of the improvised weapon. Improvised weapons will completely break with just 2 uncanceled threat.

The only real place I've noticed this issue is when stun damage is used against PCs. Because Toughened provides twice the numerical benefit of Grit, it's very easy for combat PCs to end up with WT > 20, but very hard to do the same with ST. Of course, Force and Destiny does provide us with an armor attachment that increases ST by 4, and this is practically a must-have for combat characters in the eyes of most of my players. The much cheaper and easier to install energy dispersion system increases Soak by 2 against attacks that target ST. This latter only costs 500 credits and every stormtrooper should seriously consider it.

I've never had stun damage be a real problem. Soak works normally against it, so there's no real difference. It's shorter range means it's generally at a disadvantage.

The only real annoyance about taking stun (strain) damage is that you can't cure it with a stimpack.

The only real annoyance about taking stun (strain) damage is that you can't cure it with a stimpack.

Once again, that's something far more likely to come up when PCs take stun damage than when NPCs take it.

Cool, thanks for the support guys.

The fusion cutter rules specifically give its combat stats and doesn't say it is an improvised weapon...

Seems we got the advantage spend on strain wrong, this will not happen again

Cool, thanks for the support guys.

The fusion cutter rules specifically give its combat stats and doesn't say it is an improvised weapon...

Seems we got the advantage spend on strain wrong, this will not happen again

What's the range on a fusion cutter? I would have thought it was Short at best and probably more likely Engaged. Either would limit it severely in my games as a weapon and Engaged would make it a dangerous but unideal melee weapon. Once you start adding Mods to weapons, that Fusion Cutter isn't going to look as good in comparison. (I can't imagine it has many hard points for customization).

@Vinush It is your table and your game.

That being said, look at the fusion cutter; is there any melee weapon that does what it does for its price?

Do you think the Devs meant for one of the best killing devices to be so cheap and have no drawbacks?

There has been no official errata, but several podcast interviews have had them acknowledge it should be improvised at least.

Just because there are no written rules, doesn't mean you have to keep playing with a disrupting game element.

That is why we have GMs.

Cool, thanks for the support guys.

The fusion cutter rules specifically give its combat stats and doesn't say it is an improvised weapon...

Seems we got the advantage spend on strain wrong, this will not happen again

What's the range on a fusion cutter? I would have thought it was Short at best and probably more likely Engaged. Either would limit it severely in my games as a weapon and Engaged would make it a dangerous but unideal melee weapon. Once you start adding Mods to weapons, that Fusion Cutter isn't going to look as good in comparison. (I can't imagine it has many hard points for customization).

It's an improvised weapon with a range of engaged.

Cool, thanks for the support guys.

The fusion cutter rules specifically give its combat stats and doesn't say it is an improvised weapon...

Seems we got the advantage spend on strain wrong, this will not happen again

What's the range on a fusion cutter? I would have thought it was Short at best and probably more likely Engaged. Either would limit it severely in my games as a weapon and Engaged would make it a dangerous but unideal melee weapon. Once you start adding Mods to weapons, that Fusion Cutter isn't going to look as good in comparison. (I can't imagine it has many hard points for customization).

It's an improvised weapon with a range of engaged.

Okay. Well in that case I would wonder why the Stormtroopers aren't making more use of their RANGED attacks when some lunatic with a fusion cutter comes running at them. Either way, there are better melee weapons out there. I'm picturing someone swinging around a fusion cutter and saying to themselves: "I want to be a Jedi soooooo bad".

Stun of any kind is lethal against minions because they don't have any strain to take the damage as, so it instantly becomes wounds. In the first session (the Perlemian Haul) my players just stun grenaded the bridge, taking out all of the minions, half killing the second in command and neutralising the captain for a few rounds...

[Emphasis mine]

Just a note on the wording of this passage in the OP: Minions & rivals don't have to die from stun damage. The GM can rule that they're incapacitated/knocked unconscious/whatever based on what the story needs or what makes sense in the context for the encounter.

Mechanically, they're out of the fight either way, which seems to be the major issue you had (and has been addressed in the posts above), but they're not necessarily dead, either.

Are Force-user (read: Jedi) Rivals just sort of meh, then? I might obviously be missing something, but between not having Strain to flip black pips to white pips, and not having Strain to use various "lightsaber tricks" (Parry and Deflect both come to mind), I don't think they'd be very competitive, even against "regular" Rivals, who are more likely to take cover, and shoot from a distance, possibly less likely to have "iconic abilities" that consume Strain, instead of getting hurt. I accept that other Rivals are equally limited, but I'm not if, in my head, it feels like they would be.

I had a pointless thought of trying to make little "Rival write-ups" for fun, variations of some of my favorite Companions from SWTOR, in the event one ever wanted to be escorted by a lackey, and while I know "Companion Elara" can't just heal you constantly, like she would in a video game, she CAN shoot a pistol, and wear heavy armor, just fine. It's "Companion Kira" that makes me stare, and maybe cry, because she can't Parry or Deflect, even with a DB Lightsaber, nor will her powers be so likely to work, and screwed if they don't. Certainly not something most people intend, and there might be a different way to "acquire hirelings", anyway, but I thought of these characters, and how they feel sort of like little, half-character add-ons, anyway, and so like Rivals, compared to you, but if they won't work well, especially the Force-users, it might not be worth the time.

Rivals can use strain fueled abilities, they just pay for it in wounds.

The era the game is set in, Dark Times or Early Rebellion, I would be surprised to encounter Force using rivals. They feel like nemesis level NPCs to me.

Yeah, what Tear44 said: Just make them nemeses. The criteria for defining an NPC as a nemesis or rival is *really* hazy.

Okay. Just, the way I think of the SWTOR companions seemed more like what i think of as an underling, but a capable one, rather than something you would engage, possibly on equal footing, which is what I imagine a Nemesis to be. As for the setting, I'm a firm believer in seeing how well the rules for this one, limited time-frame can extrapolate to the other, more interesting ones. I'm not trying to just dis the movies, as I really like many of them, and Star Wars is one of my favorite things, but the movie frame is boring, to me, mostly because it is so "you know what'll happen; unless you say "the Rebels didn't win at Yavin", there's a well-known structure that the other settings have less of, and the movies frame got chosen because the game wanted a no Jedi Star Wars, so that the rules would work, before the Jedi screwed them up, which is this frame, only. I'd guess they also got hinted about the EU purge, and that left only the movies, and some meh cartoons. I like to think I can still use KOTOR, Legacy, NJO, and a few other "things I know well" bits of SW in things I'd run, and with considerably less "you guys can work, but twithin these constraints, for continuity", or "you're on your own; the Rebellion got burned. Can you succeed where the movie characters failed?"

There, I am now done with my fanboy rants, and I apologize for doing that. I'm getting back into SWTOR at the moment, and remembering all the KOTOR goodness, and that made me think of Kira, Elara, and a few other of the folks who can follow you , in various stories, in that game. I wasn't sure if this game actually had rules for followers, since no one is a dedicated Crime Lord, on paper, so I was uncertain if they might be more frequently done as Rivals (lesser standing than you, and dependent on you, but certainly able to help in a specialized way), or of they would be like Nemeses (not the full character build, but run just like one, if maybe only slightly inferior to a player character). Someone like Elara, or even M1, might make it "just a Rival class", with medical skills, combat, or such not using too much strain, but any Force-using Rival class would have a heart attack trying to do half the things anyone who uses a lightsaber uses it for, or even making sure that their limited Force dice can pull off acceptably often. I think I'd make them Nemeses, as well; I just didn't want them to seem "more than they really were", to others who maybe played. Oh well, thanks much. If I actually throw something together, I'll probably toss them up, so people can rate them.

It's probably better to think of Nemeses as NPCs that use the full set of rules, where Rivals still used modified rules.

I'm getting back into SWTOR at the moment, and remembering all the KOTOR goodness, and that made me think of Kira, Elara, and a few other of the folks who can follow you , in various stories, in that game.

I would very roughly* put the NPC categories into TOR terms as follows:

• Normal or Weak -> Minions; These are canon fodder, not really dangerous but annoying in groups
• Strong (Silver star) -> Rivals; Stronger, you not their presence but don't need to use any special tactics
• Elite or Champion (Gold/+) -> Nemesis; These foes will make you consider your tactical plan for more than 5 seconds.

I would rank a companion as at least an Elite, which would be a Nemesis, even though the terminology is odd for an ally.

Except for T7. That droid is useless.

One of my favorite cartoons of all time.

Ah, I rather like T7...um, yeah, I have Kira follow my Guardian around, even if Doc would be better, because I like her, and he's an ass. I am inclined to agree with you, though they do then hit you with a wrench in the end dodgeball game of the Knight story, where T7, and only him, can be critical. I don't want to spoil it, for people who haven't read ahead, or actually finished that line (I still consider it the single best one, based on what you do, vs some of the others; I'm looking at you Trooper and Agent.) Anyway, since T7 is a stand-in for T3, who got ****** in the book, and R2, who won't exist for millennia (actually NOT T3, just in a different chassis), I'd use him for the same stuff I did T3; skill monkey. Nemeses seem to have a limited allowance of Talents, somewhere around two, if not including Adversary, and even the F&D Inquisitors are seemingly expected to fight players with only two talents under their belts (some may be ranked up), where players might have a dozen, but Nemeses seem to have a huge allowance for Skills, and T3 could bear any armor, while T7 had his special shield, so I'd set them up as a defense-capable skill engine, something to escort to the terminal, like a slicer, while you cover it. In SWTOR, yeah, I really didn't care for T7, as a minion, though he was fun to have around, interaction-wise. Sorry, that was a lot of needless SWTOR blabber.

Admittedly, the nomenclature is a bit tricky. "Rivals" were originally called "Henchmen".

HENCH4LIFE

high-five if you get the reference.

High fives? Shouldn't that be high twos? Go Team Venture!

EDIT: I seem to have been Albino Ninja'd by Kaosoe.

Are Force-user (read: Jedi) Rivals just sort of meh, then? I might obviously be missing something, but between not having Strain to flip black pips to white pips, and not having Strain to use various "lightsaber tricks" (Parry and Deflect both come to mind), I don't think they'd be very competitive, even against "regular" Rivals, who are more likely to take cover, and shoot from a distance, possibly less likely to have "iconic abilities" that consume Strain, instead of getting hurt. I accept that other Rivals are equally limited, but I'm not if, in my head, it feels like they would be.

There is nothing stopping you giving Rival's a strain threshold, in fact in the write-up about Rival's in the Antagonists section it does say that the GM can choose to track strain for certain Rivals if they choose.

Also, not every force user the player encounters is necessarily an inquisitor; especially as the rebellion picks up pace and Luke particlarly becomes a major player in the galaxy I can imagine the emperor setting a program to fast train force senstives to try and stem Jedi. These can consist from anything to inexperienced inquistors, or his cohort to soliders trained to be particularly efficient/independent. Sure, tradictionally many of the major shakers in the galaxy have been force users but it can be quite easy to intersplice some lesser ones that have been condictioned to act as counter insergants. Gand Findsmens are one fantastic example of a tradition completely unrelated to either the Jedi or Sith that use their talents to track their query or an object through ritual.

Remember Rivals get to play with Talents!

I seperate them from a story point of view in the campaign:

Minions: Individually unimportant.
The name of every thug in the minion group is completely unimportant. Cantina Thugs, Stormtrooper, etc.

Rivals: Individually interesting.

Has a name, some relevance in the story/scene. Might be the biggest thug in the room, the barkeeper or some sort of dealer that is somewhat relevant at the moment. Possibly disposable or made up on the fly.

Nemesises: Personally very interesting.

Will leave a lasting impression on the players or has been built up for some time. The swoop gang leader, system crime lord or moff/governor.

But sometimes the players don't know if someone is a Rival or a Nemesis or he/she/it will be "upgraded" during the campaign.