Hi.

I am a fairly experienced GM with other games, but am starting a FAD campaign on Saturday for the first time. One thing has me baffled: soak. It seems like character damage maxes out around 6-8. How can anyone defeat something like an Acklay that has a soak of 14?

Thanks.

Get a bigger gun. Or a lightsaber. Damage is always at least 1 over the listed damage of a weapon, because you add successes to the damage. And then you start applying things like weapon qualities (Pierce and Breach) and talents that might modify damage.

A basic lightsaber alone, with a "mere" 6 damage, will ignore 10 levels of soak.

It's not capped. Note base damage on a weapon will show either + or no +.

If it's a + (typically Merle weapons) then you add your brawn.

With either you also gain +1 damage per success not cancelled by failures rolled.

Note as well certain talents, attachments and their mods also can increase damage and pen. On that note you have pen/breach which allow you to ignore points of soak.

Lastly next to nothing you run into should have that much soak unless your trying to attach a vehicle.

Pay attention to critical. A success can still allow someone to crit and cause problems

Lightsabers will ignore 10 points of that soak. Heavier blasters such as Heavy Blaster Rifles or repeating blasters can easily land a hit with just a few successes.

It's also worth mentioning that Rancors and Acklay are there to really challenge your players. They're the dragons of the your typical party. Though, a more min/maxed group may have a far easier time with them.

It seems like character damage maxes out around 6-8. How can anyone defeat something like an Acklay that has a soak of 14?

Those are pretty low damage numbers, since a blaster rifles does 9 before successes are added. A melee fighter with a Brawn of 4 and a vibrio-axe does 7 before successes, and the axe ignores some soak. It's true not every group will have those weapons (or be good enough to use them effectively), but you wouldn't sic an Acklay on a group of smugglers with light pistols...or you could if you knew they were smart enough to run

Plasma shell assault canon ... just sayin'

AoR page 422...

Pay attention to critical. A success can still allow someone to crit and cause problems

Don't forget at least one point of damage needs to get through to cause a critical injury, so in the example listed above, you need to do 15 damage.

Hi.

I am a fairly experienced GM with other games, but am starting a FAD campaign on Saturday for the first time. One thing has me baffled: soak. It seems like character damage maxes out around 6-8. How can anyone defeat something like an Acklay that has a soak of 14?

Thanks.

Just in case you don't know, after rolling the dice on a combat check, and canceling out opposing results, count up the net successes. These get added to the damage of the attack.

Then, many gns in the game have a high damage value, typically Ranged(Heavy) and Gunnery weapons, but some Ranged(Light) weapons do as well.

Melee and Brawl weapons have a damage code of +X. You add X to the wielder's Brawn to determine the weapon's base damage. So, high Brawn characters can reach some nice damage codes with weapons like vibroaxes and vibrogreatswords and outlaw tech blast knuckles.

There are two weapon qualities for these kinds of situations: Pierce and Breach. Pierce X ignores X ranks of Soak. Breach Y ignores Y*10 ranks of Soak.

On top of that, there are talents. True Aim can really improve the deadliness of ranged attacks. Feral Strength and Frenzied Attack similarly improve melee attacks. Deadly Accuracy is a great one as well.

Lastly, like mentioned, adversaries like Acklay are dangerous, and fighting one is meant to be an epic showdown. So things like missile tubes and thermal detonators might make an appearance.

This is great advise. I appreciate all of the responses.

I actually have the opposite problem. At low levels I have to watch my balance carefully to keep my players from going down to fast. A starting character usually has 12 to 14ish wound. And a soak of 3 or 4.

Blaster Pistol does 6, plus a couple successes = 8. Minus a soak of 4ish. That's 4 through. Three to four hits and they're down. That's not even bringing in rifles or vibro axes.

We're just finishing up a campaign where the characters are at 800ish earned exp, and starting a fresh 0 xp game. I'm having to very consciously tone down my badguys. Thugs once again have truncheons or maybe a vibro knife and light or regularl blasters. The big bad might have a rifle or a Vibro Blade.

I actually have the opposite problem. At low levels I have to watch my balance carefully to keep my players from going down to fast. A starting character usually has 12 to 14ish wound. And a soak of 3 or 4.

Blaster Pistol does 6, plus a couple successes = 8. Minus a soak of 4ish. That's 4 through. Three to four hits and they're down. That's not even bringing in rifles or vibro axes.

We're just finishing up a campaign where the characters are at 800ish earned exp, and starting a fresh 0 xp game. I'm having to very consciously tone down my badguys. Thugs once again have truncheons or maybe a vibro knife and light or regularl blasters. The big bad might have a rifle or a Vibro Blade.

Stimpacks?

To give some benchmarks...

Typical human is soak 2-6, armor dependant. Without accounting for talents.

Wookie brawler from hell can push soak up to around 15.... 6 points of brawn natural, 7th from cybernetics, 5 from Enduring talent, 1 from Armor Master, 2 from armor), and have a WT above 20 with Brawn 6 and a few Toughness feats. But that's insanely focused builds and over 400 XP.

Small weapons typically do base damage of 4; most pistols are 5-8 (average is 6.07 for Blaster and 5.9 for slug) on the data I've got, longarms 8-10, (Blaster average 8.9, Slug 8.2), and repeating blasters average 11.

Pretty typical hits are 2-4 successes.

A few templates have more than 6 soak, but the majority don't. So even a typical joe (stat two skill 1) with a knife has the potential for 4 hits and a 3 base, for 7 damage, so just about every weapon has some potential against all but the most focused soak builds.

Also, most PC's and Rivals have WT's above 10, so a single rifle shot doesn't usually drop them; it often puts them above half WT taken, but it's the crits that really hurt.

Against minions, a rifle usually drops one, on a good shot two. Plus crits. I've seen a good hit take out a 8-minion squad in one attack (Autoblaster - damage 11, player rolled 8s, 3a, and 3 Triumphs AFTER cancellations. Two hits for 19, doing 14 each to the ST's... so 28 minion WT gone - that's 5 and part of a third, then the three crits drop the rest of the squad.

And soak is heavily ignored by Jedi.... As mentioned previously, they get toignore 1 point of vehicle armor or 10 points of character soak... and a base damage of 6-12, plus successes as usual... I've seen a sith with saber cut down a raging wookie.

So, Revanari, don't worry much about it. Between crits, the ability to pile up blue dice with feats, and that every success adds to the damage... the trick will be not overdoing it.

(Best hit I've seen was in a lightsaber plus 11 successes... doing 20 damage and ignoring 10 soak. And doing a +80 crit...)