Howdy!

According to RAW (EotE pp 226) no defensive zone on vehicles may have more than 4 points of defence, so there's a cap on 4 setback dice per zone (derived from defence! Other sources of setback dice is in addition of course).

How do you interpret this rule? I mean, there's a 3 adv result that can provide +1 defence (to one zone arguably) for 1 round (if you're liberal enough to apply that from personal combat to vehicle combat, and just for the sake of argument, let's say it's kosher), would you allow this to break this cap? What about talents?

Would you apply a similar 4 point cap to personal defence?

Personally, I ignore it. I also ignore the stacking rules for armor and cover. It's entirely too easy to get hit by a character that's decently skilled in this game as it is. Allowing additional setback dice for defense only partially mitigates that.

Hi Jeger!

The hard cap from shields source is 4 BUT maybe if it came from other sources can be "Stacked". I would consider the same restrictions with Armor and Cover. Probably consider those Setbacks from Shields as the same value that armor gives.

House-rulings aside and less than interesting just now, we also know that multiple sources of defence do not stack, per RAW EotE pp 207 (whether you chose to ignore this in your own game or not isn't relevant, yet).

Now, of course Defence isn't the only source of Setback dice. So far cover, armour, shield, defensive/deflection qualities all provide defence - and some talents. Cover gives you defence, same with armour, whereas the def/def qualities provides a +X bonus to relevant defence, same with Sixth Sense and Superior Reflexes, Defensive Training (see F&D can't recall page number) on the other hand has similar wording to cover, you "gain" defence (or is it the defensive quality it provides?), hence it replaces existing defence (or defensive?) if better - unless I don't remember correctly (and I may). There may be other talents too, but basically the wording: gives/gains will replace any worse defence value, whereas improves + or add, will, yes, well, add to existing defence value.

Other things that provide setback dice would be concealment (not cover) from darkness for instance, fear, unsure footing, wind, illness, poison, diarrhoea, pain, critical injuries and so on and so forth. These are Setback dice, but not derived from a Defence source - and while setback dice no matter where they come from work in the same way and look identical, there is a difference in the rules about this, Defence dice (to call them something else) are treated differently from Setback dice, as you can only have 4 defence dice in each zone of you vehicle, but there's as far as I know no RAW limit on the number of Setback dice you can add to a pool. So Defence dice ≠ Setback dice. Since these other setback dice are not defence dice, they stack with defence - I'd assume.

Depending on how one plays the game and all, experience will differ. But so far I've not felt the big need for increasing defence a lot more.

Josep: if I understand you correctly I don't think that's the case. Defence is described not only as shields, but any technology that reduces the likelyhood of damage and critical, i.e. by adding setback dice.

Now, I think defence 4 is copious for any individual PC or starship to reduce the probability being hit, or at least damaged much. It's not guarantee, but then it wouldn't be fun, would it?

So, my perspective isn't that this cap is a problem, I wonder if it's reasonable to apply it to personal combat to, if anyone here think its RAI, RAW, both or neither.

I would say, probably not, mostly because of the differences in how vehicles get their defense and how personal combatants get their defense. Ships come preloaded with defense, often, and there is only two methods of increasing it: shield generator attachments or the Defensive Driving talent (which I don't think is ranked). Compare personal defense, where there are more ways to raise it. Putting a cap on personal defense might make some armor, talent or weapon become useless if it increases beyond the cap (so a PC won't be getting the benefits they spent credits or XP on).

But the few instances that it would take to hit or exceed 4 Defense anyway is a pretty hefty investment. At least an expensive and illegal piece of armor, and investing in a handful of specs.

First: Defensive Driving is ranked, not that it changes much. Not that many instances of it as I can recall.

Fair point, slap on personal deflector shield and a riot shield and you have defence 4... or if you have 3+ ranks in defensive training - replaces or adds defensive quality on melee, brawl and lightsaber weapons with rating equal to ranks in talent, just checked F&D - and you're at 5 defence... Hm. Ah well. I'll think this over some more.