Hello,

Can anyone tell me the intended experience level for Mask of the Pirate Queen?

Is it starting characters ? Or more experienced?

My Characters have about 200 earned XP each. How much would I need to tweak Mask to make it work?

Haven't read deep into it but it says starting or advanced characters in the book

Haven't read deep into it but it says starting or advanced characters in the book

Yeah, it's pretty much applicable to any group...which is kind of symptomatic of my main gripe with the system: there's very little incentive to actually work within the system to improve.

I mean really, when we can get hard stats for opponents, and those stats are suitable as an opponent for anywhere from starter characters to experienced veteran characters, where's the benefit of experience? I guess I just thought the margin between "hey, you're a rookie with a knack for something" and "you're among the best in the galaxy at the thing" should be a little (okay a lot) more significant in terms of actual capability.

That said, though, it does make things very easy for new players and (especially) GMs putting together adventures.

Short version: If you have players, MotPQ is suitable for them.

Haven't read deep into it but it says starting or advanced characters in the book

Yeah, it's pretty much applicable to any group...which is kind of symptomatic of my main gripe with the system: there's very little incentive to actually work within the system to improve.

I mean really, when we can get hard stats for opponents, and those stats are suitable as an opponent for anywhere from starter characters to experienced veteran characters, where's the benefit of experience? I guess I just thought the margin between "hey, you're a rookie with a knack for something" and "you're among the best in the galaxy at the thing" should be a little (okay a lot) more significant in terms of actual capability.

That said, though, it does make things very easy for new players and (especially) GMs putting together adventures.

Short version: If you have players, MotPQ is suitable for them.

That's a fair complaint, but it's easy enough in this system to scale up difficulty by adding black or red dice, increasing minions, etc.

I mean really, when we can get hard stats for opponents, and those stats are suitable as an opponent for anywhere from starter characters to experienced veteran characters, where's the benefit of experience?

I can't see how you'd arrive at that conclusion. There are pointers in the modules for dealing with a more advanced group and how to scale up the opposition. They don't take a one-size-fits-all approach.

EDIT: the alternative in game mechanics is to make some opposition pretty much "off limits" and some opposition a known cakewalk. I'll take this low power curve over D&D-type kobold-immunity any day.

From just a read-through I'd say it would be quite a challenge for new characters unless they are very cautious. However, with 100 or so XP, well-allocated, they should do alright. It's easy enough to scale up if it proves too easy.

Fair enough. You're certainly entitled to your opinion every bit as much as I am mine.

It just strikes me more as if the MO within the system is "tweak on the fly as needed" as opposed to actually accounting for such things.

Some may certainly prefer it that way, but I definitely was more of a fan of a less free-wheeling approach to scaling difficulty in past systems.

Not a huge deal, just my personal take.

I haven't read Pirate Queen, but I'm currently prepping Chronicles of the Gatekeeper. It gives base stats and then recommendations on how to upgrade badguys if your heroes are more advanced.

I think the game DOES handle gradiations in power fine and high-level / low-level work in the system. The weakness is that it's very difficult to work out how tough someone is in comparison to the PCs. I look at Pirate Captain in the EotE book and is that a Nemesis that will flatten the PCs? Or be a push-over? I honestly have a lot of trouble knowing.

As one of my players often says, "There are dice involved. We're screwed."

I often spend an hour or so during the week before a session that I expect a combat encounter to run a mock battle. Not much changes from week to week regarding the PCs' combat abilities, and only one of the three is considered a "tank".

They fare consistently well against two to three minion groups of mooks, or two Storm Trooper minion groups, with either two rivals or one rival and one nemesis. I know if I really want to challenge them it'll only take one more minion group to put them on the back foot, and two to overwhelm them.

Barring dice.

As others have said, make eyeball comparisons of opposition dice and you should come close enough to equity. There are too many variables to expect " perfect" parity.

Haven't read deep into it but it says starting or advanced characters in the book

Yeah, it's pretty much applicable to any group...which is kind of symptomatic of my main gripe with the system: there's very little incentive to actually work within the system to improve.

I mean really, when we can get hard stats for opponents, and those stats are suitable as an opponent for anywhere from starter characters to experienced veteran characters, where's the benefit of experience? I guess I just thought the margin between "hey, you're a rookie with a knack for something" and "you're among the best in the galaxy at the thing" should be a little (okay a lot) more significant in terms of actual capability.

That said, though, it does make things very easy for new players and (especially) GMs putting together adventures.

Short version: If you have players, MotPQ is suitable for them.

They can't say that adventure X is for a group with Y XP due to the fact that how the players spend their XP determines where they are good. You don't have guaranteed stat bumps at X,Y,Z XP unlike in Pathfinder/D&D. What is fine for a starting character that focused on combat may be deadly to a character with 1000XP that is out of their element (focused solely on non-combat choices and has never changed from the holdout blaster with no mods that they started with).