Hello

My friends and I recently started playing EotE and are still learning everything as we go. I've done some research on aiming but all I found was old discussions on what players thought it meant at the time. I wanted to know if the devs released info clearing things up? I have a few questions if anybody can let me know the answers.

Lets say I aim then attack I would get 1 blue dice. Then next round would the aim carry over so if I aim again would i get 2 blue dice or would I lose the aim from the previous round since I attacked and get 1 blue dice again?

Would suffering strain to activate a skill or get another maneuver break aim? (This is the major topic on most posts I've read)

If aim isn't broken from suffering strain to activate a skill or get another maneuver. Would a dodge break aiming? Aiming says "any additional maneuvers or actions before his next combat check" Dodge is a incidental & incidentals don't count as a maneuver or action.

IM certainly no expert but once you fire a weapon the recoil typically spoils your aim. In the game I read you can even aim twice for two boosts but once you fire, Id say its gone.

Lets say I aim then attack I would get 1 blue dice. Then next round would the aim carry over so if I aim again would i get 2 blue dice or would I lose the aim from the previous round since I attacked and get 1 blue dice again?

No. The boost you get from aiming is only good until you make your attack. You can aim twice then attack on the same turn by taking the strain penalty, or you can aim once for a maneuver on one turn then aim again your next turn then attack to get two boost die.

My personal opinion is if you do anything - dodge, sidestep, whatever - you break your aim. I'm not sure that's RAW, but it's how my table plays it.

Hey there and welcome to the forums!

I personally don't know about official clarifications on Aim, but I'll spout my opinion anyway.

To my understanding a single Aim maneuver only applies to the following attack, wether that attack happens in the same or the next round.

(For example prepping and aiming a Rocket Tube without taking strain, and then fire it next round the aim would still apply)

So taking a shot consumes the aim, and you would have to aim again to benefit from it for another shot.

You can also take the Aim maneuver twice with suffering strain, granting 2 Boost dice.

I wouldn't say that suffering strain breaks aim per se, but it depends on the maneuver. Aim would have to be executed before the shot.

If you apply logic, when you aim first and then go prone with a second maneuver, it would break aim in my opionion, thus you would go prone first, and then aim.

It really depends on context, does the character or the target move in any way between aiming and taking the shot? If yes I would say aim is lost.

Hope that helps.

You have to attack after aiming. You can carry an Aim to your next turn as long as you do nothing else and aren't effected, forced to move or wounded for example.

You can't trigger any other maneuver between aiming and attacking.

This is a wierd concept to get your head around. So in enssence, if you have a player you aimed and fired in a round, since he took an action then his aim would therefore be interrupted for the next round. So that Aim that he already used can't carry over to the next round, because he took an action. Now if he had only used a maneuver to aim, then the Round ended, then at the start of a new Round, he Aimed again (or not) he could get a Two Boost (or One) on his next Attack, since there was no interruption between the Aiming and the attack.

A lot of the other stuff boils down to semantics. To me Dodging is indicative of a concentrated effort to get out the way of something. In this game, the Talent allows you to do in this as incidental as you are a trained combatant, but you are still getting out of the way of something, therefore messing up your aim. For me, the two Aim maneuvers have to happen in a row with nothing else between them. They can be in the same round, or be spread between two rounds. To me, it doesn't make much sense as you are trying to line up a shot, then jump around or do whatever and still be able to have that line up on a target.

So I don't know if I'm really in accordance with RAW, but I feel I am going with RAI.

Thanks for the replies.

Ok, that makes sense that once used it don't carryover just wanted to make sure.

The way I was looking at aiming is you look down the sight as you don't aim at any specific target and a incidental is a "Minor movement" moving a small amount while looking down the weapons sight would be doable. maybe not all incidentals or skills that would be considered a incidental would work.

Another question.

Is there a way to gain more dice in a skill without increasing that skills characteristics?

Example:
Bob has 3 Brawn Which gives his melee 3 green dice but Bob upgraded the green dice to yellow. Can Bob rank his melee again but since his Brawn is 3 and his melee is ranked to his Brawn would he get a green dice? Then if Bob raised his Brawn would then increase the green from the rank to a yellow?

Any official way or is this more up to the GM?

You compare Skill and applicable Characteristic attached to that Skill. Bigger one is dice pool size in Green dice, smaller number is number of Green dice removed and converted to Yellow, unless a PC only have raw characteristic, in which case it just remains Green dice. Dunno exactly what you're asking, but I think that covers it.

No. The boost you get from aiming is only good until you make your attack. You can aim twice then attack on the same turn by taking the strain penalty, or you can aim once for a maneuver on one turn then aim again your next turn then attack to get two boost die.

You could, however, aim in one turn and attack in the next. So - assuming that nothing disturbs you while you are aiming - they do carry over in a manner of speaking.

Right. That's what I was getting at in the second scenario I mentioned, but I could've been a bit more clear.

You compare Skill and applicable Characteristic attached to that Skill. Bigger one is dice pool size in Green dice, smaller number is number of Green dice removed and converted to Yellow, unless a PC only have raw characteristic, in which case it just remains Green dice. Dunno exactly what you're asking, but I think that covers it.

So what your saying is if you have 2 brawn and 5 ranks in melee then you would start with 5 green dice then upgrade 2 of them to yellow.

You compare Skill and applicable Characteristic attached to that Skill. Bigger one is dice pool size in Green dice, smaller number is number of Green dice removed and converted to Yellow, unless a PC only have raw characteristic, in which case it just remains Green dice. Dunno exactly what you're asking, but I think that covers it.

So what your saying is if you have 2 brawn and 5 ranks in melee then you would start with 5 green dice then upgrade 2 of them to yellow.

Yes. If you flipped it and had 5 brawn and 2 ranks in melee, you'd get the same result.

Is there a way to gain more dice in a skill without increasing that skills characteristics?

Buy some attachments that grant the accurate quality.

The accuracy attachments will give boost (Blue) Dice,

Then of course the GM can add boost dice for a possitiv situation like sneaking up from behind or coming chargin in from above.

Also some Talents give boost dice for special situations, like when attacking a victim that hasn´t acted this fight or is disoriented. that way there can be a lot of blue dice in the calculation (maximum yet was 7 on my table...)

You compare Skill and applicable Characteristic attached to that Skill. Bigger one is dice pool size in Green dice, smaller number is number of Green dice removed and converted to Yellow, unless a PC only have raw characteristic, in which case it just remains Green dice. Dunno exactly what you're asking, but I think that covers it.

So what your saying is if you have 2 brawn and 5 ranks in melee then you would start with 5 green dice then upgrade 2 of them to yellow.

This step in the book, while it is clear, is often overlooked. They could have done something to make it stand out more perhaps. There was an awesome PDF file that was floating around back in the day that broke down the dice mechanics into a wonderful easy to understand way. I have looked for it it the link section, but I can't find it in there anymore.

But yeah, like it was already said, you just take the higher of the two dice pools, and that is the green one, and the smaller one is the turns that number into yellow.

----So if people had a 2 Agility and 4 Ranged light, I don't know if they were just following the upgrade rules to get three yellow? Starting at two yellow for the 2 Agility, then add a green, upgrade once, add another green, add the final green for the second upgrade. For a total of three Yellow??--- Wow...

Here you would have four green dice, then upgrade two of them to yellow. For 2Y 2G. I think that is better than rolling 3Y.

I can see that if people are misunderstanding this concept and not building the characters skill pools right, the difficulties could be thrown off then. I do think FFG really messed up when naming the dice!! That does not help in this misunderstanding!!

But that is why I use Oggdude's Character Generator, it's free, and it does all this for us, and it even shows automatic Boost Dice, and Setback Die removal of certain skills.

How I thought it worked was the characteristics determined the green dice pool and the skills determined how many of the green dice got upgraded to yellow. which in a way it does till your skills are higher then the characteristic that's used for the skill the it switches.

Wow, this is really getting over complicated.

The bigger number of the two is how many greens you get. The smaller number is how many of those greens turn into yellows. Easy peasy.

But that is why I use Oggdude's Character Generator, it's free, and it does all this for us, and it even shows automatic Boost Dice, and Setback Die removal of certain skills.

The generator is super helpful for this, among other things.

The only problem is sometimes you want to use a non-standard Stat/Skill combo.