Just throwing this out for comments but it bothers me a little that the damage system doesnt allow for someone getting grazed, nicked or taking a flesh wound.

Base damage plus successes guarantees substantial damage in every case so when does a blaster shot just graze the hero or a vibroblade swipe nick him across the cheek or what have you?

I realize Soaking can reduce the damage of course but only to an extent, when faced with a nasty weapon your going to get hurt regardless, there doesnt seem to be a chance to just get 'winged' a little.

I dont know, shouldnt there be a chance that an attack does Strain damage instead of actual injury in this case? Maybe damage could be varied on a hit as in other systems? (ie. Blaster Pistol does 1d6 instead of base 5)

It seems odd that every hit is a solid on contact.

Each hit doesn't represent a solid contact. If you have taken wound damage it doesn't really mean you have necessarily taken a full on it. Full blooded hits are represented by Critical Injuries, not wound damage.

Every hit does Wounds, but you don't really have "solid on contact" unless you get a critical hit (including exceeding WT).

Just throwing this out for comments but it bothers me a little that the damage system doesnt allow for someone getting grazed, nicked or taking a flesh wound.

A solid hits are what the crits are. Wound damage is not necessarily the character being shot. Think of it like . . . okay - think of the Truck Chase from Raiders. Indy is trading blows with the Nazis, getting dragged under the truck, thrown through windows and so on and so on. That's all wound damage. The Nazi Boss who crawled along the outside of the truck and shot Indy in the arm? That's a critical hit.

So wound damage is shrapnel, near misses, glancing blows from blasters, "I Aint Got Time To Bleed" and jumps through fire with a big ol' lung full of smoke. Crits are "You shot him in the chest. He falls down and struggles to his feet again".

You could always use strain to represent nicks and glancing blows. A failure with 2 disadvantage, for example, could easily represent this like so: "The shot doesn't hit, solidly, but grazes your arm...take two strain." Especially since strain will eventually incapacitate a person. Strain damage, while non-life threatening, can overwhelm a person. And since these nicks and grazes are also non-life threatening, it could make sense to represent these, mechanically, as strain damage.

I'll second the notion that wounds are more abstract. I'll also second the notion that Strain is a good representation for nicks

Finally, Soak takes care of the rest. A nick could be a 7 damage hit against a soak 4 or 5 target. Or a nick could just be a complete miss that resulted in mitigated damage to the target.

The dice are there to get the story moving, but the GM should add color and depth to the action.

Yes, I understand that Wounds are in the line of Hit Points and represent many things, including the character's luck running out and the eventual man stopper wound approaching. Its the predictability of it that bothers me a bit.

I shoot at a minion, he has 7 WT and Soak 1. My blaster has damage 9. If I hit him, he's dead (or out) period, no chance of just winging the guy.

Same situation with an already wounded Nemesis. If hes down below the base damage of my weapon, one more shot puts him down... I can call it as clearly as Babe Ruth's homer. Turn it around and if its the PC that is in this situation you know you have to run as you cant risk being hit even one more time.

Im not going to fiddle with it for a while, or perhaps ever, as Im still a novice with the system but a range of damage would seem to be a simple fix and provide some of those "I got him! Oh crap, seriously? A 1! **** this is one tough little mook!" moments.

Hmm, reading above and elsewhere just now it seems perhaps the 'color dice' could be used to present some variation. Perhaps a successful hit with a threat could drop the damage a point or two as an option, or maybe trade those wounds over to strain hits instead.

I roll 3 successes with my blaster for a total of 8 wounds, but I also roll 2 threat. The GM rules after 2 are removed for Soak that 2 of the wounds are Strain instead and the remaining 4 actually go to my wound threshold.

Interesting idea.

Running around with 1 Soak (naked with Brawn 1?) and facing a weapon that deal 9 damage is a recipe for disaster...at least for the 7 WT 1 Soak guy. Now, if he's facing a holdout blaster, he's got a better chance. Facing a weapon the equivalent of a blaster rifle might be a little rough. A solid hit will probably kill him, absolutely.

If your GM wants to say that some Wounds are Strain instead, that's up to him. But getting shot with a laser not wearing any protection should probably mess you up, pretty good.

I actually like this system much better than recent SWRPG system, where it takes 40 blaster bolts to down someone.

Well we are just starting up our campaign but after oh, $300 or so in books I really hope it all balances out when actually playing! Funny how one little negative impression can kill a system.

Well we are just starting up our campaign but after oh, $300 or so in books I really hope it all balances out when actually playing! Funny how one little negative impression can kill a system.

Yeah. I'm still hesitant to play Savage Worlds, even after several session under my belt. My first few games were quite frustrating.

What were you fighting that had 1 soak? If I recall, of the published NPCs, only the Twi'Lek Dancers ran around with one soak. Minions tend to have about 3-5 soak. And they should be fighting in a group. So even if 1 drops (narratively), the group keeps on pounding.

But to be fair, minions are meant to hit hard and fast before dropping quickly. So in the end, there might be your disparity. Rivals and Nemesis are usually much hardier.

An instakill like you described can be narrated as the character taking a critical injury in one shot. A few here like to think of wounds as physical strain or physical stress, rather than outright injuries. It could be bruising, pulled or strained muscles, grazes, light cuts and nicks, light burns (from a blaster), and so on.

We've started only last month as well with EotE.

Don't let your soup get salty from a first impression.

It can be a pretty lethal game when non-fighters have to go up against a seasoned Bounty Hunter for example.

But from what I gathered thus far it's all about how you set up an encounter.

I also like to think that a successful hit is not the result of a single attempt of an attack.

When you go into movie mode, there is blaster-fire going on all around, with only so many finding their mark.

Also, long and grueling battles are exhausting. You can apply Strain to the PCs after the fact, representing cuts and bruises that were most likely ignored by the recipients due to adrenalin until that point.

It is all about narrative. EotE especially is a very narrative driven game and imo isn't all that crunchy.

I roll, I hit, I do demage, they roll, they hit back, they do damage - is the death of all combat fun.

It's not only the narrative surrounding the battle but also the dice mechanics themselves wich lets you add a lot of colour, beyond the typical success/failure states.

So, while it doesn't have explicit rules for nicks and grazes, it is absolutely in your power to have them affect your players in ways that go beyond numbers.

Yes, Im staring to get the feeling a little playing around with the dice and a bit of imagination is the way to handle this. It might draw the ire of a hard ball player if his obvious kill shot gets called off into a glancing hit by a particularly creative interpretation of the dice but that might be the best way to handle it.

Yes, Im staring to get the feeling a little playing around with the dice and a bit of imagination is the way to handle this. It might draw the ire of a hard ball player if his obvious kill shot gets called off into a glancing hit by a particularly creative interpretation of the dice but that might be the best way to handle it.

Right, an overwhelming amount of Threat or even Despair on the dice can make even a successful attack carry dire consequences.

While there are powerful combinations, stat- and talentwise, even players who love to min-max would do well to just let themselves be swept by the narrative more often than not.

That is not to say that you shouldn't also let them have their moment once in a while, when they find themselves in a situation where they can exercise overwhelming power.

As with most things, it's all about balance.

As others have mentioned going above an NPC's Wound Threshold does not require that the target die (however it is often easier to go that route with Minions etc.) it merely represents that that NPC is out of the fight. You can narrate this any way you want.

More importantly an Attack is not one shot but the result of around a minute's worth of combat, that's two commercials and nearly four times as long as the average American brushes their teeth, so the target may very well have taken several grazes before going down (or running or however you narrate the fight). If you want a more per-shot/swing combat system you will have to do some serious adjustments to the damage/defence balance.

When you are just starting this system it's important to reinforce this around a minute concept, especially if you are coming from D&D and such, because so much of how the combat rules work are based on this paradigm and will often not make sense without it.

If somebody hits you with a vibrating axe of doom and you survive, I assume it was a grazing blow. No mortal would truly be able to survive a solid hit from one of those things.

Minions are supposed to drop like flies. It's meant to represent these cinematic moments from 80's action movies.

Heck, you can kill them by shouting at them if you have Scathing Tirade!

That said, I don't think Soak is perfect. If your Hired Gun is Soak 7 or 8 naked out of the shower, it can get silly:

"I keep stabbing him but he just yawns and goes back to sleep!"

But they chose set damage for a reason, and mostly it works okay. Some people house rule that 1 dmg (or Pierce rating) always gets through regardless of Soak.

Just curious. Ive heard the old adage that "a round of combat involves multiple shots, swings and blows by both sides", yet seldom have I ever heard an exchange like this at the gaming table.

GM: Ok, its Malcom's turn to act.

Malcom's Player: Ok, I throw out a volley of shots at the group of guys near the door.

GM:Good deal, they are returning same, the air if filled with the hum and zip of blaster bolts, the wall behind you is pocked with misses. Roll your dice.

Malcom's Player: I get a... ok, umm, yeah! I hit for 11 damage!

GM: Awesome, several of your shots glance off one target or another's armor or splatter against the crates they are using as cover but a couple get through to one guy over on the left. You see him go down clutching a scorched arm!

Technically this is the way combat in a system like this is suppose to go but is hardly ever explained that way.

From what I understand, the narrative descriptions are not left entirely to the GM. In several ways this game encourages the players to add in their descriptions of things. It's very rare that a player in my groups ever does but I continue to encourage it, for I am new to GMing and cannot think of some neat cool thing to say for every single description of every attack.

Technically this is the way combat in a system like this is suppose to go but is hardly ever explained that way.

Agreed. As much praise as S. Stuart and the writing team deserve they aren't, objectively, exceptionally good at explaining their mechanics or being terribly consistent.

Im just saying that regardless of how combat is supposed to work, in practice its always a "I shoot at this guy. You hit him for 3 points of damage" type thing. Nobody ever or rarely considers your "attack" to be several shots, swings or what have you. They certainly don't imagine you were being shot at too during your turn or were perhaps picking different targets, moving around, etc.

I rather like the idea and plan to try and run my Edge of Empire combats just that way after a bit of explaining to my players but as said, Ive never seen it done.

Do you think this aspect of the game warrants its own thread? How the flow of combat is supposed to go rather than the "you swing you miss" old standby?

Well, we don't want to derail this thread so yeah, by all means make a new one. It would be great to get advice on how to encourage a more narrative view of dice adjudication during structured play.

The way I do it is to describe the opponents actions that way. "The Stormtroopers fire barrage after barrage, blaster bolts whiz around you, then you feel the heat, pressure, and pain as a shot grazes your arm..."

Keep describing attacks this way and you find people pick it up faster.