Misc rules queries

By LithiumBlossom, in Game Masters

I've been playing Star Wars Roleplaying for over a year now and have been enjoying the overall experience. However there seems to be some recurring queries which I can't seem to settle on an answer for.

1) Can designated uses of Boost and Setback dice be reversed? It seems consistant with how other dice are used in the game but there is no explicit mention of being able to do this. So many talents and gear effects are precisely worded enough to make me wonder if this is deliberate for game balance reasons.

Eg) A Wampa gains 2 Boost dice to stealth tests in the snow. Could I translate that to the player adding two Setback dice to their roll?

2) Hull Points are worth ten points of personal scale damage. Does this need to be dealt all in one go or can it accumulate?

Eg) A Blaster is fired at a speeder bike and deals six damage and then another five. Would this remove a Hull Point or would ten damage need to be inflicted in a single shot?

3) Can Advantages and Threat generates in contested rolls be spent for other uses or is it all spent determining results? Are they only spent in a direct tie or are they free to use in any way?

Eg) An X-wing pursuing a TIE Fighter gets 2 success and three Advantages while the TIE only gets 2 successes and two Advantages. Would that give the X-wing three Advantages to spend or just one?

Thanks for your time.

1) Normally I'd say no, but I usually like the player to roll their dice...so in this case I might have them roll the PC's Perception vs the Wompa's Stealth, in which case I would convert the boost to setback. Note that the positive dice are a little more positive than their negative equivalents, so it's not an exact conversion.

2) I would round everything down, IOW, you'd have to get over the threshold of an armour point to do damage. If a speeder has 1 armour, and you do 19 damage, nothing happens.

3) Contested rolls are rolled as positive dice vs negative dice, you don't have both parties rolling positive dice. So the X-Wing pilot would be rolling their positive dice against the TIE's positive-dice-turned-negative. Eg: if the TIE had a pool of YYG, the PC would be rolling against RRP. This way you just cancel success/failure and advantage/threat normally.

2) Agree with Frog, but important note is that unlike personal scale where Wounds need to be inflicted to allow a Crit, against vehicles you only need beat the Armor. So while the blaster might not be able to inflict any Hull Trauma, it could still generate a Crit, thus causing "damage" (also why using a disruptor on a light vehicle can be pretty sweet.)

Made a slight error. I meant to refer to Competitive checks where the results of the rolls are compared to each other. Things like chases and initiative.

Made a slight error. I meant to refer to Competitive checks where the results of the rolls are compared to each other. Things like chases and initiative.

In those cases I believe the advantage are simply tie breakers. I usually allow Triumph to do something beneficial though...