After talking to some people who do alot of reenacting and actually practice weapon martial arts of various kinds, I've decided to do change the way I play close combat a bit.

When two characters are facing eachother in close combat, the difficulty to hit is always going to be the other persons skill in whatever weapon they're using (if they're using a close combat weapon, that is. Otherwise, standard rules apply).

This represent the fact that a skilled swordsman (or whatever) is harder to land a hit on than an untrained person, and vice versa.

So say that the PC has one yellow and two green to use their vibroknife.
They're facing off against a gamorrean guard who has three green in using his vibro axe.

The PC's difficulty to hit the gamorrean guard is three purple dice vs his one yellow and two green.
The gamorrean, on the other hand, has one red and two purple against his three green.
Thus making it harder for the gamorrean to hit since he's less skilled than the PC.

Unless I've read the rules wrong, the normal system would just be two purples with various modifications.
That just doesn't seem very realistic to me.

So, what do you think?

EDIT: Furthermore, I won't implement armour defense in close combat, as I've always seen those as the ability for the armour to glance bolts off them. Might change that after testing, though it seems counterintuative that it's harder to hit someone in a bigger and bulkier armour.

If your goal was to make melee and brawl, pointless, you've succeded.

Sure. Something along these lines was tried back in the EotE beta days. The downside is that it made melee much more difficult over ranged combat. Which then caused people to avoid melee in favor of range. Why waste going into melee when you could just stay back and blast with better odds? This was the reason the designers went with the base 2 purple for melee and leave skill to be represented by talents and such.

I'd always use guns. Id never use brawl/melee except to move away and use my guns.

To add to Merc's comments, ones ability to fight in melee and hand to hand is represented by both their skill AND talents. So if a character wants to be better with a sword he'll need ranks in things like parry just as much as skill ranks.

This is actually true for several skill areas, piloting and using the Force also things that will seem kinda limp powered with just raw skill.

Im only a novice in the rules but it does seem as though a shift like this will affect skills and talents meant to enhance brawl and melee later on.

On the NPC side, this is already handled through the Adversary talent. Unless I'm doing it wrong, attacking an Inquisitor will have a base difficulty of RRP. Granted this is likely not as high as his skill, but it keeps the combat from stagnating while also including extra elements of danger.

This might also drag on a fight longer than necessary.

If you must do this, I wouldn't use the opponent's skill as the direct difficulty. As noted above you are jumping way up in difficulty for skilled opponents.

Perhaps 1 difficulty for non-skilled opponents, 2 difficulty for opponents of skill 1 to 3, and 3 difficulty for opponents of 4 or more skill. Or an easier way to say it, -1 difficulty if the opponent is unskilled in melee or brawn, but +1 difficulty if the opponent is an expert (skill 4+).

On the NPC side, this is already handled through the Adversary talent. Unless I'm doing it wrong, attacking an Inquisitor will have a base difficulty of RRP. Granted this is likely not as high as his skill, but it keeps the combat from stagnating while also including extra elements of danger.

Yep Adversary is the tool the OP is looking for. I wouldn't give it to Minions but if you have an especially vicious Rival and definitely a Nemesis just upgrade with the number of ranks of Adversary to simulate their high Skill. But remember you don't do it the other way around so be careful not to over do it.

Also keep in mind that the system is designed to allow PCs to not have to focus primarily on Combat Skills so that they can spend EXP on other stuff. If you start to mess with this you will upset other Skill related parts of the game.

Also keep in mind that the system is designed to allow PCs to not have to focus primarily on Combat Skills so that they can spend EXP on other stuff. If you start to mess with this you will upset other Skill related parts of the game.

^ This too. There would be little point in a PC taking the left side of Sense, or Dodge or any other difficulty-enhancing Talent if they could just oppose with their melee skill.

I might use those rules for emulating another genre and Fictional universe than star wars. I might even use them in specific duel encounters or adventures where those kinds of rules would benefit and emulate the given story. As for Star Wars in general I will be sticking with the original combat rules, which I belive emulates star wars fighting scenes better.

It is an interesting thought though. Doesen't Social encounters already work like this? With opposed checks? Even stealth vs. Vigilance and others. So one could argue that combat role should be just as difficult. In that case I would use the one roll combat optional rules, not to drag out the combat too much

The system is built with 2 distinct mechanics at work : skills and talents.

One thing worth to mention is that the skills make you good at doing something...

- Charm makes other people like you ;

- Deception makes other people believe your lies ;

- Cool helps you keep it under control when stressed ;

- Stealth makes you good at not being seen or heard ;

- Vigilance makes you good at spotting things, like people trying to sneak by you ;

- Coercion makes you good at intimidating people to get what you want ;

- Discipline makes you good at not giving in to people trying to intimidate you.

Now I've highlighted 2 differents sets of skills that do polar opposites : Stealth VS Vigilance and Coercion VS Discipline. It's not because you are good at sneaking around, that you are good at spotting people sneaking around... It's not because you are good at intimidating people that you are good at resisting intimidation.

It's probably the same thing with Ranged(Light) and Ranged(Heavy)... it's not because you are good at shooting somebody that you are also good at evading blaster bolts.

If you want to be good at evading blaster shots, you need to take those talents (that other mechanic) that allows you to do that... like Dodge, Side Step, Sense Defensive Upgrade and Sixth Sense.

Now, with the OPs suggestion, allowing to use Brawl or Melee as difficulty to hit in close combat, then it would make those skills Double Dip skills that would increase both Offense and Defense, unlike every other skills in the game. If you really wanted to make skills the base difficulty for melee combat, then you should add a skill like in SW WEG D6 where they had the Dodge skill and Unarmed Parry skill. Doing so would also double the defense upgrades because now skills and talents would add up to establish the hit difficulty. Making Melee Defense way too good, above everything else...

The original idea might sound good, but doing so would give you a good headache and would certainly cause way more problems then its solves.

Also, having a set base difficulty for Melee makes combat faster and more streamlined.

Adding more layers of rules would bog the system down and slow the pace of combat.... you don't really want that do you ?!?

Anyway... think it all the way through before going with it.

Now, with the OPs suggestion, allowing to use Brawl or Melee as difficulty to hit in close combat, then it would make those skills Double Dip skills that would increase both Offense and Defense, unlike every other skills in the game.

This. We also had some discussion about a houserule like yours, but this was ultimately we convinced ourselves that is is better to leave it as it is.

Of course, your table, do what you want, but you will probably run into problems like this. If you want to add difficulty to hitting a close combat expert in melee I think setbacks in the form of melee defense might prove less problematic in the long run, something along the lines of:

• Rank 0: Nothing
• Rank 1&2: Melee Defense 1 (Having received formal training)
• Rank 3: Diff upgrade once
• Rank 4: Melee Defense 1 and Diff upgrade once
• Rank 5 : Melee Defense 2 and Diff upgrade twice

I haven't tried anything like this, but I think it would be in line with the descriptions of the skill levels (5 being one of the great masters and less "opening pandoras box" than your first approach. This also explodes if you add in Adversary Talents.

All in all I use the standard rules because I'm happy with them.

ed: OR: if you want the fastest approach, just add Disadvantages equal to or (better) half the defenders skill level? Showing that it is dangerous to engage someone who knows how to fight, you can still hit him, but it is much more dangerous/taxing and will result in you being in a worse position afterwards or simply strained. Then I would also add Damage to all the Melee weapons to balance the risk/benefit balance.

Pretty tired so I won't answer all the posts here.

But I will adress the fear that it will lead to only shooting instead.

I don't see it doing that, for two reasons:

1: If you're attacking someone who's using a ranged weapon, the difficulty to hit is the same as it is in vanilla.
2: If someone does attack you with a melee weapon, most of them will be average at best, meaning that if you're a skilled melee practicioner, you'll have an easy time dealing with them anyway.

If I have a choice of attacking a Brawn 3 with guns or hand to hand, even if I'm great in hand to hand why would I want to roll three purple if I can just roll one from short range shooting? Why would anyone choose to get into hand to hand? The problem is no one will want to engage in hand to hand with anyone, it makes even more sense than it already does to stay out of hand to hand and just shoot them.

It also takes the minion groups that have Brawl or Melee and turns them into super Nemeses.

Pretty tired so I won't answer all the posts here.

But I will adress the fear that it will lead to only shooting instead.

I don't see it doing that, for two reasons:

1: If you're attacking someone who's using a ranged weapon, the difficulty to hit is the same as it is in vanilla.

2: If someone does attack you with a melee weapon, most of them will be average at best, meaning that if you're a skilled melee practicioner, you'll have an easy time dealing with them anyway.

Again, this was tried in the beta and it did lead to shooting instead of melee. Why melee when, as noted, you can shoot someone for 1 purple die at short range?

Then what about Defensive Stance and Dodge? You'll have PCs with a rank or two of each, coupled with 5 skill ranks and a good Brawn that will essentially be impossible to hit in hand to hand.

Flip side goes for some Nemeses like a Pirate Cpt that will be a RRRRR to hit.

I have to agree with everyone's comments above... it's a Pandora's box that won't end up where you want it...

Having said that -

What we did in our Conan themed re-skin, which is waaaay more melee/brawl (not to mention combat in general) focused than a typical Star Wars adventure, was add Combat (and Social) Defense, which was based on how far up a Talent Tree the character has gone.

Get three out of the four talents on tier one Talents, add a black die to all attacks against you.

Same for tier two talents (no change)

Tiers three and four get you two black dice (again, added to your opponent's dice pool).

Tier five gets you a red - the same as Nemesis.

It may not sound like much, but it made a big impact during play-testing, didn't add too much dice bloat (which is a real thing, believe me), and never felt unbalanced.

As a GM, it explained adding a setback die or two to a players dice pool, even beyond normal environmental setbacks, and made someone with a rank or two of Nemesis stand out a bit more.

If you really want to change the difficulty of combat, you might want to give something like this a try, without re-inventing the wheel.

Reading some of our answers, I'm left wondering what was the problem the OP was trying to fix.

If he wanted the system to feel more structured and mimic more reality in regards to combat, then maybe it is not the right system for him.

If he felt that hitting in melee was too easy, maybe he should add more environmental elements to add 1 or 2 setbacks, give enemies (beyond Minions of course) some ranks in Adversary.

Anyway...

Skills = to hit

Talents = to dodge

To be an expert, you need both skills and talents... which will then allow you to increase the odds of hitting, and decrease the odds of being hit.

Once you understand that Talents are a core aspect of the game and the other half of your capabilities, it's a lot easier to live with the system.

Reading some of our answers, I'm left wondering what was the problem the OP was trying to fix.

Basically, he's trying to apply realism, but it causes a lot of trouble mechanically. Believe me, I've been in the same boat, but sometimes keeping some balance has to trump reality.

Here's the thing, though: your high Melee skill already helps you defend yourself. Let's break down all the things that help a dedicated swordsman or pugilist.

First off, your Vigilance and Cool help you control the fight, by giving you initiative.

Your talents represent your ability to really push yourself, defensively. Defensive Stance, Dodge and Parry are all exceptional, at the cost of exhaustion.

Your attack skill helps you several ways. First off, dealing damage is just proactive defense. If you score a mess of successes and cut down the bad guy with your vibrosword, that's not just one swing. That's an exchange of blows, back and forth, and he was unable to even challenge your defenses before you brought him down.

Oh, you rolled a bunch of Advantage? Good, why don't you take an extra maneuver to Fight Defensively, or regain some Strain to power your Defensive Stance or Dodge? Tell the GM how you batter your opponent's weapon around, taunting him, and hitting him with extra Setback dice.

You rolled a Triumph? Excellent! Upgrade your opponent's next difficulty. Combined with all those ranks of Defensive Stance, you're making yourself a very dangerous person to attack.

At times, I kinda think of skills as things you've practiced, but not really used in the "real world." A Doctor might have the Brawl or Ranged (Light) skill, but that could mean several things. Perhaps he took a martial arts or boxing class at University, so he got some basics down. He has good technique, and can land a solid hit, but he hasn't gotten in a lot of bar fights, with people genuinely looking to hurt him. Maybe he shot ***** after class to unwind. He's a fair shot, but he hasn't been in a lot of firefights, trying to kill a moving, thinking person who's also trying to kill him. The Hired Gun with all those talents, though, he knows those skills like the back of his hand.

Sure. Something along these lines was tried back in the EotE beta days. The downside is that it made melee much more difficult over ranged combat. Which then caused people to avoid melee in favor of range. Why waste going into melee when you could just stay back and blast with better odds? This was the reason the designers went with the base 2 purple for melee and leave skill to be represented by talents and such.

Wouldn't that only be true if we're talking about a skilled melee opponent, though?

I mean, basically what you're doing by going melee in that kind of system is trading ranged ability for the ability to defend yourself against other melee. If everyone is ranged, then there's no functional difference for you; you're facing the same difficulty as always. And if you DO come across a skilled melee fighter, you've helped ensure your own survival AND given yourself an epic duel to boot. What's not to love?

Well, first off, if he ended his turn in short range of you, he done f-ed up. More likely is that he'll go cover to cover to end in engaged. Suddenly, now you're looking at a red die, more if the GM flips a destiny point or you're using something heavy. Suddenly, the difference between shooting and melee is a lot slimmer, AND you're much more open to HIS melee should he choose to use that 3 brawn.

It doesn't give them any more hitting power than before, AND it works both ways: your melee means that you won't just KO'd by a melee mob.

Really, Ranged has the advantage of being able to do lots of damage, have autofire, and have fairly low difficulties. Letting high melee skills act help in melee defense (which is really only common sense) allows players to specialize without feeling like they're crippling themselves. And the few times they meet an enemy with a similarly high skill, you might as well fire up Duel of the Fates, because it just got real.

Let's talk about super minions...

Minions with listed Brawl or Melee skills. Now under RAW, a pack of 3 minions with 3 Brawn would have an Attack of YYG and Defense of PP. With your rules, the same pack would have an Attack of YYG and Defense of RRP.

Bigger groups mean harder minions to hit... 4 Minions : Attack YYY, Defense RRR ; 5 Minions : Attack YYYG, Defense RRRP... and this keeps going...

Welcome to the world of SUPER MINIONS.

For those epic duels... I think you're wrong about that too...

Here are some random situations...

Players has Brawn 3, Agi 3, 0 rank in Ranged(Light) and 2 ranks in Melee ; the master decided to challenge him with a Melee Rival with Brawn 3 and Melee 1.

Once the Rival is in melee range, dice pool to hit becomes YYGRPP. The player is better of to use a Maneuver to move to Close Range, Draw a blaster and shoot with GGGP difficulty.

Oups...

The GM decides to give the Rival 2 ranks in Adversary just in case they try to shoot him with ranged weapons.

Now hitting him at Close Range would be GGGRP. But hitting him in Melee becose YYGRRR.

Oups...

The GM decides to flush Adversary and give him Dodge instead... but he'll now have to track strain and it can also be used to defend against melee...

Oups...

The GM decides to flush Dodge and give him SideStep instead... now the Rival will have to burn his Maneuver (or 2 strain for a second maneuver) to pull his SideStep. If the Rival always burns a Maneuver to use SideStep, he'll drain his strain and will be easy to kite.

This could go on and on about every possible mix and match.... Ranged will always be the better option unless you stack tons of Ranged Defense to give loads of Setback to ranged attacks... which could be applied to Melee as RAW.

Even if you forced your players into EPIC duels with no ranged weapons available, it would only be long boring fights with rare few hits... you don't want long tiresome fights... you want fast action, quick fights and move on.

Even if you forced your players into EPIC duels with no ranged weapons available, it would only be long boring fights with rare few hits... you don't want long tiresome fights... you want fast action, quick fights and move on.

This. Take a look at Desslok's thread about narrating duels, here. Notice that some very epic battles are finished in 3-6 rounds. Combat is meant to be quick in this system. Upping the difficulty will slow things down quite a bit. Not only will the characters fail more often, they'll generate more threat, which easily becomes more setback dice, and so on.