I had my team fight against 2 Drodeka and each player almost died after one hit each. Even a pack of 4-5 minions can roll around 3 yellow and 2 green and do double digit damage. I didn't

Only 1 armor per player, and whatever soak their stats and abilities give.

What am I doing wrong?

They call them destroyer droids for a reason, right?

But they are only rivals. And it's not just them, even a team of minions seem like they can be deadly.

How much xp do the PCs have awarded so far and what are they?

Large groups of minions can be deadly, with the right weapons. That is something you can use to your advantage, if you’ve got a bunch of lightsaber-wielding Jedi-types running around.

However, if your party isn’t that strong, then maybe make the minion groups a bit smaller.

The nice thing about minion groups is that you get to choose how you want to tailor their size. You might have a larger/more dangerous group going against the party tank, while a smaller/less dangerous group goes after the technician.

With Droidekas, yeah — I ran a game last night with some pretty experienced lightsaber-wielding Jedi-types, and the droid never got an autofire activation to occur even once. Yet, on several different occasions, a single shot almost completely wiped a PC — and different PCs each time.

With a lot of hard work, the whole group managed to take down one droideka, but it took seven or eight combat rounds to do it. And lots of use of stimpacks, medical skills, Jedi-types using Reflect talents, etc….

They’re called Destroyer Droids for a reason. They are heavily armored, hard to kill, and capable of doing a whole crapload of damage.

Yep. Combat is harsh in this system. But healing is quite easy to come by, and combat isn't the only way for PC's to interact with the world.

when designing encounters think of a couple of things:

• If minions dont list the skill then they get no upgrades, so this can be a good way to give the PC's a sense of fighting lots of enemies without slaughtering them.
• Have environmental effects, everywhere. smoke, steam, wind, dark, hot, cold, loud noises, flashing lights, low gravity, high gravity, difficult terrain, crowds of NPC bystanders. all of these should give varying levels of Setback to combat checks, making hitting harder and harder.
• most sane people don't fight to the death, if they see a couple of buddies go down they may just tap out straight away.
• have some combats geared towards the PC's strong areas, to give them a sense of accomplishment. eg they have lots of long range or extreme range weapons, then start the encounter at long.
• start the threats small, then if things are too easy flip a DP mid encounter to introduce reinforcements.
• Use the Chase rules for a sense of action with less of a sense of death.

theres a lot to go into, but thats some basics

theres a lot to go into, but thats some basics

I have run out of positive votes for the day, so I literally cannot like this post enough.

But I do.

Combat isn't really that harsh when you think about it.

Actually, if you think about it, it is not as deadly as reality:

"Minion" type characters like stormtroopers, clones, battle droids, and rebel soldiers generally go down after one hit.

A stun blast from a stormtrooper took out Leia in one shot, at the beginning of a New Hope.

Obi-Wan killed Grievous in one shot

Han killed Greedo in one shot

Jango killed Coleman Trebor in one shot

Or get into the Clone Wars TV show:

Fives was killed while wearing laminate armor in one shot

Savage Oppress killed Master Halse in one hit from his ax thing

Cad Bane killed that Gran Senator in one shot

Aurra Sing killed Ponds with one shot

Even Piell was killed by an Anooba relatively quickly

Pong Krell was killed in one shot

Note that none of these kills were done by a Lightsaber.

Also, considering all the shots that the stormtroopers miss, it certainly wouldn't be unrealistic to create a house rule of:

Shooting at short range is two difficulty,

Shooting at medium range is three difficulty

Shooting at long range is four difficulty

Shooting at extreme range is five difficulty

Ok, should have clarified, Harsh compared to other systems in other settings. Your spot on that it mimics Star Wars movies very well, and i like it. Its easy to get knocked out, but actually takes quite a bit to die.

Remember that exceeding every PC's wound threshold doesn't kill them all, it just lets you throw them in prison and run an escape adventure...

Also, considering all the shots that the stormtroopers miss, it certainly wouldn't be unrealistic to create a house rule of:

Shooting at short range is two difficulty,

Shooting at medium range is three difficulty

Shooting at long range is four difficulty

Shooting at extreme range is five difficulty

I think the fact a group of 5 minions still only do as much damage as a single rival is the systems way of representing the terrible accuracy of Stormtroopers.

Compare the base damage of a weapon with the WT of an average player.

If the player isn't a combat character, make sure the ratio is below .5.

This shows the relative difference in scale of damage between Ranged: Light and Ranged: Heavy weapons. Gunnery based weapons are another tier and vehicle-scale weapons are an order of magnitude beyond that.

If you don't want your average non-combat guy being dropped in one hit, don't shoot at them with anything requiring Ranged: Heavy or above.

If you don't have combat focused PCs, don't focus on combat. Give them a few sessions to build some xp and depth before you spool up combat encounters as much.

If you do have combat, PCs opting for rifles starting out ups their lethality quite a bit and if they get the drop they can typically dish out decent damage.

Stress that it's not a dungeon crawl and not every group of opponents need to blasted to atoms. Running away is both a viable option and what we see Star Wars heroes doing more often than not.

They all have 200-300 Xp, I will have to check to see the exact amount.

They all have pretty strong weaponry, and they usually try a diplomatic solution and fail (even with really good pools). Mainly their cool and vigilance suck so they don't always do will in initiative checks. They are really good at group stealth (thanks to a Bothan) so they frequently avoid combat or get a surprise attack.

I'm also allowing them to have 2 pieces of armor as long as they can justify it, and I frequently have the NPCs do other things besides attack. At least 1 player almost dies every combat.

How many PCs? How many opponents? What kinds of opponents? At 300 xp they should have a pretty broad selection of weapons beyond just pew pew that can end things quickly. Does anybody bother to use Stimpacks?

And "dies" is a misnomer. One player exceeding their WT (getting dropped) is something that -should- happen almost every combat, assuming the enemy focuses fire.

Unless they're combat-focused characters, most careers should be easily dropped with 2 solid hits. This is a feature, not a bug.

I'd like to see options other than "capture incapacitated PCs and then they have to escape"...

Why not cut their throats, loot their corpses? Because its not good for the story? Well, neither is staying to fight when fleeing would be a better option.

Stupid is as stupid plays.

How many PCs? How many opponents? What kinds of opponents? At 300 xp they should have a pretty broad selection of weapons beyond just pew pew that can end things quickly. Does anybody bother to use Stimpacks?

They mainly have pew pews.

It's 3 PCs and 1 NPC.

Niman/politico, Heavy, and Pilot. (The NPC is a droid mechanic, there to be dues ex).

They will be buying stims but didn't really have any before.

As for enemies they have gone up against varried forces. Anywhere from 1 strong Nemesis to numerous minions.

You had them fight a very combat focused encounter and they really aren't set up for it. That's the chief problem. I'd say the results of the encounter are exactly what I'd expect. So tool down the lethality of what they are fighting and/or encourage them to both broaden the lethality and utility of the weapons. Even just everyone carrying and applying a couple stimpacks after those hits changes the dynamics of that fight.

You had them fight a very combat focused encounter and they really aren't set up for it. That's the chief problem. I'd say the results of the encounter are exactly what I'd expect. So tool down the lethality of what they are fighting and/or encourage them to both broaden the lethality and utility of the weapons. Even just everyone carrying and applying a couple stimpacks after those hits changes the dynamics of that fight.

2 of my party members have insane weapons, so they tend to deal 10+ damage every attack. They had a couple of stems but decided not to use them because the Drodikas did around 14 damage on hit and I didn't even use linked or many of their other abilities.

They killed the Drodikas in about 3 hits each but would have been completely wiped out if I hadn't changed a couple of the drodeka stats.

What's their Soak and Wound Thresholds?

If they have accumulated that much XP you may not be giving them enough money to get decent gear. At that stage superior Armor mod, implant armor, crafted armor,

can give +3 soak for some maybe 15000 credits. Soak vs weapon damage is the easiest way to determine how lethal the combat will be. If your entire party is soak 3 then your average heavy blaster riffle is going to cut them down very quickly. But increase their soak to 6 and the combats will be a little more balanced.

Without much referral to the other posts in this thread, I have had a similar question from one of my players. Aren't Wounds thresholds rather low?

The question came from a player who is used to playing games like Dungeons and Dragons 3.x or Pathfinder, prefers fighters and barbarian characters, and dislikes rolling the hit dice when leveling up his characters because he might roll low numbers. One of the few times he 'tried something else', he tried D20 Modern at character level 10 or so, where the characters still had about 60 or 70 hitpoints, and pistols only deal 2d6 damage.

My answer then was to point out how this game system is way different. Not just because of the dice. But also in Soak actually stopping damage point-for-point. Or defense actually adding negative dice to the dice pool. Or spending advantages on things other than simply increasing your current Strain threshold again and again, and again and again, and... You get the point. We have yet to see if the player got it as well. Cover is your friend. Armor doesn't stop you from being hit in the same way AC does in D&D. And not charging into every fight is actually an option.

But they are only rivals. And it's not just them, even a team of minions seem like they can be deadly.

Don't have my book within arms reach, but don't they have linked (or something) on their guns? From what I remember, Destroyers will MESS you up.

Good thing the one we had to fight we were able to disable with treachery instead of overwhelming force.

Don't have my book within arms reach, but don't they have linked (or something) on their guns? From what I remember, Destroyers will MESS you up.

Yup, and those cannons do a base damage of 12 points, when they hit. So, roll a few extra successes, and you’re doing 15-16 points of damage to the PCs, and if they don’t have much Soak, then they may go down in one shot — without requiring the activation of Linked.

Just be glad they didn’t give the Droideka the heaviest Gunnery blaster weapons that do a base damage of 15, or give them autofire.

Good thing the one we had to fight we were able to disable with treachery instead of overwhelming force.

Yup, they’re tough buggers, with 8 Soak. Most blasters will do little or no damage to them, even if you do hit. And IMO, the shields should do more than add just two setback — a lot more. But then they’d just be crazy deadly because you could never hit them, much less hurt them.