Hello:

Starting my first campaign of EotE soon.

I have a question on personal weapon ranges. Does the value listed in the weapon's schema indicate the maximum range possible for that weapon? Or is it a maximum effective range? Or something else entirely.

So, for example, a hold-out blaster has Range: Short. Does that mean it can never be fired at something in a further range band? Or it can but suffers penalties? etc. etc.

I have not found a simple answer to this question upon my first reading of the rules. Thanks.

Maximum range from the start with a vanilla weapon, so you can't shoot beyond the range normally. Attachments can increase some weapon types maximum range (marksman barrel), and the Sniper Shot talent allows you to fire beyond those ranges as well.

Thank you for the quick response.

Got a couple more for you.

I'm thinking of starting off one of my players with something like the Personnel Carrier or Trast Truck. While looking at this, I was trying to design a combat encounter around it, predicting its durability and expected damage, etc.

I realized, with 0 Armor, it seems like it is no more resilient to damage than the average character. In fact, it's less so. Is that right?

The personnel carrier, for example, has Hit Threshold of 8 and Strain Threshold of 4. That means it is weaker than the average starting character, who has a soak value of 2-5 (depending on stats and armor) and usually at least 11 wounds. Is that right? because while I understand that a truck is not made of indestructium, it seems it should be harder to destroy than the average soft tissue biped in heavy clothes.

The "smallest" vehicle damage item seems to be the Auto-blaster, which has damage of 3. It's vehicular damage (planetary scale), though, which means its 30 damage if fired against man-sized creatures, right? So the next item "down" from there, would be the Heavy repeating blaster, crew served, human scale weapon system, which is 15 vs. people, and, presumable, nothing vs. vehicles? So, if I wanted to customize 1 of the hard points of the personnel carrier with something like a light repeating blaster mounted weapon system (ie, making a light assault vehicle out of it), can I do that? is it still considered a hard point usage? Does it use ranged-heavy or gunnery at that point?

Do I understand this all right?

Vehicle trauma is also multiplied by 10. So the personnel carrier has the equivalent of 80 wound. So enemies will have to wear that down over time, and have to do 10+ damage per attack to harm the vehicle. Speaking of which, the two vehicles you've mentioned, I think, boil down to a delivery truck and a van.

One of the biggest problems we have, unfortunately, is personal scale to vehicle scale combat doesn't scale well at all. The HRB should do decent damage to light, unarmored vehicles, although it might take a while. But any vehicle scale weapon is going to be a nightmare against PCs, especially early on, but the HRB will also work as a pretty good anti-personnel weapon. If you want to mount that on a truck, just follow the usual rules for mounting a weapon on a vehicle. The skill would be Gunnery, as even the personal scale version of that weapon uses Gunnery.

Does that answer your question?

Ahhhh...yes. I see where I went wrong. Vehicle Hit Threshold (HT) also scales up x 10. Got it.

You do mention that they have to do 10+ damage per turn to harm the vehicle. Where/how did you calculate that? If a foe with a blaster pistol hits the vehicle for 6 damage, and the vehicle has 0 armor (ie, no "soak"), wouldn't it just have 74 "wounds" left at that point? (ie, converting it to the human scale?)

Ie, Armor (Soak) of 0 x 10 (planetary scale) is still only 0, so there would be no damage mitigation, even against personal scale weapons.

Well, I suppose you could count it that way, however, p. 234 of the EotE core, under "Starships, Vehicles, and Scale:"

"...a man-sized blaster rifle would need to deal ten points of damage to a starship to inflict even one point of damage to it."

Ah. Ok. So the inference being that against personal weapons, all vehicles can be considered to have a soak value of 10, but unless they have actual armor of 1 (or higher) they have no mitigation vs. planetary scale weapons. Would that be a correct summary?

Edit...actually it would be a soak value of 9. 10 points of damage vs. a starship = 1 pt of hull damage = 9 soak (10-9=1)

Sounds about right.

The simpler way is that 10 points of personal scale damage is equal to 1 point of vehicle scale damage. It could be argued that over 10 damage, but under 20 damage, is still only 1 point of vehicle scale damage.

Likewise, a vehicle weapon doing 4 damage against people will convert to 40 damage against their would threshold.

Ah. Ok. So the inference being that against personal weapons, all vehicles can be considered to have a soak value of 10, but unless they have actual armor of 1 (or higher) they have no mitigation vs. planetary scale weapons. Would that be a correct summary?

Edit...actually it would be a soak value of 9. 10 points of damage vs. a starship = 1 pt of hull damage = 9 soak (10-9=1)

Vehicle scale is always a factor of 10 vs. Personal scale. 10 personal damage converts to 1 vehicle damage. 20 personal damage would convert to 2 vehicle damage. 11 personal damage would not convert to 2 vehicle damage.

Makes sense, guys, thanks for the responses.

Ah. Ok. So the inference being that against personal weapons, all vehicles can be considered to have a soak value of 10, but unless they have actual armor of 1 (or higher) they have no mitigation vs. planetary scale weapons. Would that be a correct summary?

Edit...actually it would be a soak value of 9. 10 points of damage vs. a starship = 1 pt of hull damage = 9 soak (10-9=1)

more correctly...

VehicleDamage = PersonalDamage /10 (drop fractions).

PD to VD:

1-9 = 0

10-19 = 1

20-29 = 2

30-39 = 3

40-49 = 4

50-59 = 5, and so forth.

Best single hit I've seen was in the 20's... and wouldn't have hurt a tie fighter, because the 2 vehicle damage is eaten by the armor.

Oh, and note that pierce is vehicle scale... lightsabers' pierce 1 means they ignore the first 1 armor or 10 soak.... And, thanks to that, I've seen a fighter damaged by a 21 damage on a lightsaber hit.

Oh, and note that pierce is vehicle scale... lightsabers' pierce 1 means they ignore the first 1 armor or 10 soak.... And, thanks to that, I've seen a fighter damaged by a 21 damage on a lightsaber hit.

Slight correction — Lightsabers have Breach, not Pierce. Breach 1 is like Pierce 10. Breach 2 is like Pierce 20.

Ok another batch of questions:

1. Incidentals, Manuever, and Actions: Can they be taken in any order? And can you break them up? For example, could you take 1 manuever, combat action check, and then a 2nd maneuver? I don't find anything which constrains the ordering.

2. When spending triumph and advantage, can you trigger the same thing more than once? It specifically mentions that you can for recovering strain, but not the other items. Can you trigger 2 crits, for example, if you roll 6 advantage? (Assuming you have a weapon with crit rating 3) Can you hand out multiple boost dice to friends with those advantage?

1. Yes. Aim has caveats, but barring specifics there is no order imposed.

2. -You add +10 for each crit activation. 1 crit per hit.

-You can split up Boost dice amongst people for the various options, next to act, anyone, etc. Letting them stack on one would be a GM call.

1. Yes — any order, so long as you don’t exceed the established maximums like no more than two maneuvers per round, etc….

2. Most things that can be triggered multiple times will say that they can be triggered multiple times.

With regards to crits, Sam Stewart from FFG has clarified a maximum of “One crit per hit”. So, if you’ve got enough Advantage to trigger a second crit, then what happens is you still roll once on the table and you just get an extra +10 to the roll. That’s usually not considered to be that useful, so I think most people will try to find something else to do with those extra Advantage.

With regards to Triumph, there are some specific things that you can trigger with two Triumph that you cannot trigger with just one — like completely destroying someone’s weapon.

With regards to handing out boosts, the rules are pretty specific and clear, but I wouldn’t want to try to summarize them here. Best to read the rules as they are in the book, so that I don’t accidentally give you a wrong impression.

Each item can only be selected once, including handing out boosts.

Speaking of Ranges...

When you switch a weapon to Stun, the range is reduced to Short.

Can this range be modified by Sniper Shot, or anything else?

GM's call although the book under Stun says it can't be increased, so I'm thinking not.

Speaking of Ranges...

When you switch a weapon to Stun, the range is reduced to Short.

Can this range be modified by Sniper Shot, or anything else?

I think this one would be a GM call, and largely comes down to how you think that the weapon operates when set to stun.

Do you get a nifty blue circle going out and hitting people, like we’ve seen used in ANH on Leia and in TCW when they were trying to stop Ahsoka from escaping? If so, then I’d say that there’s probably no way to increase the range on those stun blasts.

In contrast, maybe this other weapon does stun damage in a different way, and so what you see is a blaster bolt that is still the same shape as the normal bolts, but a different color — you could go with blue or green, or whatever you want. In that case, it might make sense to be able to extend the range on those stun blaster bolts.

I can see arguments on both side of that discussion, so I think it would be up to the GM to decide which way they want to go.

Ok, as always, thanks for the answers. Now a bunch of new questions that popped up when my buddy and I tested this in light of our first gaming session coming up tomorrow night. (Can't wait!)

1. Does advantage do anything for you on initiative checks? Can you spend it as normal for boosts and such, despite not having entered combat yet? Tiebreakers for initiative?

2. Barring talents, some of which I know affect this very thing, does getting "surprise" or attacking foes who are "flat-footed" (D&D term there) give you any other bonuses?

3. Who spends disadvantage, relative to the roller? Is it always the foe of the person rolling? So, for exmaple, if as GM, I roll a net surplus of 2 threat, does the player-character against whom I rolled that threat get to spend it?

4. When Rivals or Minions gain wounds as a result of converted strain (as, per RAW, they do not suffer strain normally), does it get mitigated by their soak? (Ie, if a player rolls a bunch of advantage and wants to pile it on as strain, does it get converted to wounds? If so, does it get subject to their soak rating?) If it doesn't, it seems like an easy way to kill minions and rivals off without actually (potentially), even hitting/hurting them.

5. Is there any mechanism akin to "readying your action" or your initiative placement? Can characters adjust their initiative placements differently each round?

6. Do Tie Fighters (or any other snubfighter operated by what would normally be a minion), also get affected by the rules for Minions?

As always, thanks for the answers and information!

1. Advantages are tiebreakers in initiative checks, if I remember correctly.

p. 205 EoE CRB Step 5 in resolving a combat check.

These aren't RAW, but:

1. I let people spend Advantage instead of breaking a tie

3. I let the players decide what to do with any Threat I roll