Everything is in the title!

The slicing part is only one bit. What are they slicing? A bank? Hospital records? Military or governmental database? Ship computers? Private systems? Personal computer of a Hutt crime boss? The other members of the party may need to cause a distraction, hold off security, prep an escape plan, or pilot a getaway vehicle. A system might need two people working on it, the slicer (who knows what needs to be done) and somebody else to press buttons when directed. Maybe some vital mechanical device or life support system is failing and the other players need to keep it working while the slicer does their job.

In the movies we often saw R2 doing computer stuff (slicing) while the other characters are shooting or getting crushed by trash compactors. If you combine slicing encounters and combat encounters it can give the slicer, who may not be a skilled combatant, something to do during the encounter that doesn't feel like a waste of an initiative slot. I know when we first played Edge the medic character felt like they didn't have anything to contribute in the rounds before their allies started getting shot up.

Try making them opposed by a system admin of security system. Instead of just "slicing" the terminal with a pass/fail present a sequence of challenges that must be overcome. Figure how many rounds of combat the the group will be fighting or otherwise engaged and plan accordingly. So if the group will take roughly three rounds to hold back the troopers perhaps the slicer needs to crack a login sequence, bypass a firewall, and then access and retrieve the plans for the super weapon. Also while slicing on triumphs I allow the slicer to find a juicy bit of data that he can sell later.

I tried a similar situation during a space combat where there were not enough positions for every player that night. The "face" of the group instead had to deal with a "social" combat in the form of a suicide bomber hiding in the group of folks they had just liberated from a detention center. The players seemed to like the extra effort and it gave tension to the group as the face did strain damage each round in attempting to talk down the guy wearing 5 proton grenades in the back. The rest of the group was busy fighting off a swarm of Ties and escaping.

I've had situations where the slicer character, as mentioned by others here, helped in combat from afar. Slicing into a terminal to control machinery or droids in the area of the battle, for instance. You could also have them at a comm running an op as the info guy/gal, the one in everyone's ear. Maybe rolling lots of knowledge/computers checks to get the others through locked doors, figure out what kinds of chemicals are in those containers over there and if they might be useful, etc etc.

Have you seen Swordfish? How about a PC has to prove his ability at slicing under pressure for the party to get their next job.

Or how about Starfall and Specter? There's some awesome Hacker/Slicer supporting the team scenes in those.

Codebreaker doesn't require a computers check, just that a code be attempted to be broken. It can be used with Knowledge skills, Astrogation, even Perception at a stretch. So how about Da Vinci Code style cryptic ancient code breaking. Or some kind of Toumb Raider ancient codes on walls code breaking? Indiana Jones?

What if the party find a type of Rosetta Stone or Enigma Machine that they need to use to translate ancient data code to run or emulate on modern computers, perhaps the only computer they have capable of doing this is the Astrogation computer, so they have a much harder time of making jumps until it's finished. The data file leads them to remote planets with ancient installations filled with unknown knowledge or powerful artefacts. An Inquisitor is racing them all over the galaxy trying to beat them to the next clue.

I found the best thing to do is to give them an "Acid Burn" to their "Crash Override". A slicing Nemesis with comparable skill. Have them interact with each other through terminals and cameras. Rub it in the PCs face when the nemesis foils them. Ham it up.

I often find it interesting that slicing is regarded as a one roll challenge, but defeating the flunkies that guard the computer terminal could take a dozen rolls. Without turning this into an overly complex scene, I'd likely use something like the Racing rules but change the associated skills. I'd likely give the computer some Strain to overcome and likely some security protocols that would make things more difficult for the slicer. Utilizing this, I'd drop the PCs into the normal encounter structure and just cut back and forth as initiative slots come up. I see the challenge here as keeping the story motion fluid - too much detail into the slicing and we bog down, not enough and the slicer feels like they wasted a bunch of XP.

The problem of the hacker guy's mission coinciding with the run & gun team is an old one, and I first encountered it back in the Cyberpunk 2020 days. Thankfully in this system we don't have a separate mini-game that the slicer plays while everyone else twiddles their thumbs. Good luck!

I found the best thing to do is to give them an "Acid Burn" to their "Crash Override". A slicing Nemesis with comparable skill. Have them interact with each other through terminals and cameras. Rub it in the PCs face when the nemesis foils them. Ham it up.

Awesome references.

d20radio's blog posted an article about this that might help you out.

I found the best thing to do is to give them an "Acid Burn" to their "Crash Override". A slicing Nemesis with comparable skill. Have them interact with each other through terminals and cameras. Rub it in the PCs face when the nemesis foils them. Ham it up.

The slicing Nemesis will be a Shard who acts like a very sophisticated security system of a prison complex.

Have the slicer do a helping from afar role. While the players are sneaking/shooting their way around a bad guy base, let the slicer stay at a computer access terminal assisting them in ways such as:

Opening doors

Looping security cameras

Shutting down enemy droids

Shutting off a trash compacter!

Finding useful information about the big bad villain

Sabotaging the base (if the base is in space)

My co-GM and I created this for the mission where the party's main headquarters was attacked by the Empire. The rest of the party was definitely in the mix, as they had to keep the Computers expert safe from advancing stormtroopers, an ISB agent, and 2 Inquisitors.

Buffer Brawl

This simulates the struggle between the PCs and rogue enemy hackers attempting to access Broker data. Attacks are made via the Computers skill, which do strain damage to the opposing side. While the Computers checks aren’t actually doing damage to the participants, the strain inflicted simulates the stress of opposing hacking attempts.

• Strain per attack = Intellect + each success pip.
• Soak = Willpower
• Hackers have already introduced a rogue program, requiring an active defense of the system.
• Only one PC can actively participate, but another PC can offer the assist maneuver
• Difficulty set at hard. Checks are competitive.
• Focused programming maneuver: adds boost to next roll, can take two strain to add
• additional boost.
• Triumphs: See existing EotE crit table and adjust as you see fit. Be creative!
• Double Despair: “out of ammo”. The PC is locked out of the system for a turn.
• Enemy slicer has rank in “Fire Wall”, creating an adversary upgrade
• Exceeding strain threshold forces the PC to make a Discipline or Cool check to recover strain. If this fails, the PC has been confounded by the enemy hacker and can only watch in frustration as data has been accessed.
• Transfer and delete: Imperial hacker has one free upgrade.
• PCs have to be actively fighting the hacker or he will access the data. “Are you willing to step away from the computer knowing that an enemy slicer is engaged?”

Imperial Slicers: one with 4 Intellect, the other with 5 intellect. Open percentage roll and highest roll gets the tougher opponent. Once parties are decided, the main Computers proficient PCs will roll.

• 4 intellect: Natural Slicer,
• 5 intellect: Natural Slicer, Master Slicer