I am the GM, but I also want player views on this.

My group is only 3 and sometimes 4 people, and I haven't made my own adventures yet. I have run two adventures with them, both of them we just did a marathon session and completed the beginner game in two sessions, and completed a adventure called "Bendu's Shadow" ( http://thompsonpeters.com/eote/modules/bottom of the page.) in one session. Over both adventures, it seemed that we had very little problem with strain. It never got near the threshold, always about 4 off. It was strange, cause I thought strain would be hard on the players. Should I use threat on strain more rather than boost/setback dice?

What are your thoughts?

I am the GM, but I also want player views on this.

My group is only 3 and sometimes 4 people, and I haven't made my own adventures yet. I have run two adventures with them, both of them we just did a marathon session and completed the beginner game in two sessions, and completed a adventure called "Bendu's Shadow" ( http://thompsonpeters.com/eote/modules/bottom of the page.) in one session. Over both adventures, it seemed that we had very little problem with strain. It never got near the threshold, always about 4 off. It was strange, cause I thought strain would be hard on the players. Should I use threat on strain more rather than boost/setback dice?

What are your thoughts?

If you want them to rack it up you can.

I think you'll find as PCs advance and gain more Talents that burn it, they can end up getting on the wrong side of it as well.

I posted in the Stimpack thread about using the alternate combat rule idea in the GM section to add more combats in a given session without adding a lot of table time, as a means of causing PCs to accrue more Stain, Wounds and Criticals.

Well, players have some control over their strain, right? Like, they can choose whether or not to spend it under certain circumstances.

If that didn’t happen in your games, then maybe you want to think about taking things up a notch where the players do have to start worrying about that problem. Maybe they still don’t exceed their Strain Threshold, but they have to work at it a bit harder.

Strain is certainly a helluva lot easier to both accrue and recover than wounds are, so no amount is too little IMO.

If you find it a little too underutilised in your games, try pitting the PCs against some adversaries with stun weapons such as CorSec officials or Slavers.

Its a game mechanic you can use as a focal point of some sessions, but just take a side line in other sessions. High strain sessions can add a lot of tension to a social encounters, as well as time dependent sessions.

1. Putting encounter time pressure on the PC group will require them to use 2 maneuvers in a round more often.

2. Setback are a great source of Threat, and Threat is a great way for you to control encounters. If you are heaping strain on them they either have less strain to spend or less Advantage since it's the most common way to recover strain.

3. Some environments can give automatic strain for certain tasks, such as swimming across fast rivers.

4. Stun weapons, weapons with stun settings and Brawl fights can be a great way to start a session. getting their current strain up quickly before giving them pressure situations (such as a chase, time dependant task or social encounter) can be very tense, with them constantly on edge.

Edit: whoops! Didn't answer the actual question. No there is no necessary level of strain, it's just another game resource for Players and GM's to use as a narrative tool. It's the one easiest to recover and easiest to use, but if you don't want it to be a significant factor in a session then just don't put pressure on them in that way.

Use the tool to tell a story, don't let the tool dictate your game.

When you have Force-sensitives, they will be using strain almost constantly to use all the DS points they keep rolling on their Force dice. Especially with only one or two dice.

That's when those 'recover strain' talents come in handy.

Strain is meant to be a player resource they can use up - this gets more apparent when they start picking up higher-level Talents too.