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?

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.

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

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.

Wasn't referring to hitting power, was referring to the fact you'll have round after round where no one hits each other. Melee combat will take forever, and regardless of anything else, just stepping back and shooting will always be better, as well as, faster.

You guys are right.

My system would be better off in a game focused on melee combat.

However, it does streamline melee combat.

Just think about it. No extra parry or block skills. No need for points spent in skills that are basically built into swordfighting (just imagine a swordfighter that has no parry or block skills. That makes no sense).

But like I said, it's for another game.

I'm going to have to agree with the majority. While your proposal may be more realistic, it will stretch combats out overlong, and people will favor Ranged over melee.

I realize that per your proposal the difficulty will be easier to hit ranged people, but it will be even easier for them to hit you. They can step back one maneuver and have a one difficulty. Without the potential high damage of melee to balance that out, why bother with a hand to hand weapon.

My pour brawler, who doesn't even have weapons damage to add, would be in even worse shape. She has trouble getting a few points of damage in a fight now, with two Yellows and a green. up her difficulty to similar levels and she'd never get anything through.

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?

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.

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

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.

Wasn't referring to hitting power, was referring to the fact you'll have round after round where no one hits each other. Melee combat will take forever, and regardless of anything else, just stepping back and shooting will always be better, as well as, faster.

Well, some people don't like a duel that lasts all of 3 rounds. Especially in a system where no one hitting each other doesn't mean "nothing happened."

And stepping back and shooting is about the WORST thing you can do if you're already engaged in melee.

I don't know how you think stepping back from melee and shooting is worse. Swing at the higher Difficulty or step back and shoot against one purple.

You guys are right.

My system would be better off in a game focused on melee combat.

However, it does streamline melee combat.

Just think about it. No extra parry or block skills. No need for points spent in skills that are basically built into swordfighting (just imagine a swordfighter that has no parry or block skills. That makes no sense).

But like I said, it's for another game.

Not sure how you think it streamlines combat. It doesn't really change anything about setting up the NPCs which aren't built the same way as PCs, so they only have what few Talents and Skills they need for the moment they exist in the system. Rivals/Nemeses already have a useful Talent to reduce the array, called Adversary.

Again, single rolls in the game don't represent a single attack, but a tally of the outcome of X time (up to about 1 minute per the book).

You guys are right.

My system would be better off in a game focused on melee combat.

However, it does streamline melee combat.

Just think about it. No extra parry or block skills. No need for points spent in skills that are basically built into swordfighting (just imagine a swordfighter that has no parry or block skills. That makes no sense).

But like I said, it's for another game.

Not sure how you think it streamlines combat. It doesn't really change anything about setting up the NPCs which aren't built the same way as PCs, so they only have what few Talents and Skills they need for the moment they exist in the system. Rivals/Nemeses already have a useful Talent to reduce the array, called Adversary.

Again, single rolls in the game don't represent a single attack, but a tally of the outcome of X time (up to about 1 minute per the book).

Streamlines in roleplaying games in general by removing the need for extra skills like block or dodge or parry, when those can just as easily just be rolled into the difficulty of the hit.

Especially in games where a turn is not a second or two, but a minute or two, like EotE.

I don't know how you think stepping back from melee and shooting is worse. Swing at the higher Difficulty or step back and shoot against one purple.

Only that is a BIG problem of the original system in my opinion.

Super Melee assassin wins initiative and moves into engaged ranged with one PC and attacks him.

Said PC takes next slot, moves out of melee, aims, blows a whole in his belly at diff. 1.

Then the whole party opens fire on the assassin and atomizes him.

• Why are there even rules for attacking with a ranged weapon in melee? Why would you ever do that when you can disengage for 1 maneuver and lower the difficulty by one or even two with a ranged (heavy weapon) and also negate the boost die to the melee attacker for attacking with a ranged weapon in melee?
• So far it has happened exactly once that somebody shot into a melee (and funnily enough hit his friend in the back).

My problem with that is, that it is such a strong incentive to do rulewise, that most roleplayers will ruleplay in the situation. Even minion groups can do that to great effect. I wouldn't do that to a PC because it takes the fun out of playing a vibro axe wielding, blood thirsty Trando when nobody ever stays in melee (or has to stay. nobody likes to be in melee, except the guy who started it).

And yes, I am aware you can engage the pc who already had his turn, but if I wanna play strategic combat I have several other systems for that (Imperial Assault, Infinity, Warmachine...) and it really weakens immersion for me and my players.

Force and Destiny trees have reflect or parry, but there is very little that protect a melee expert in EotE or AoR apart from having high brawn or armor. And some assassins will not be Brawn 6 monsters but 2 or 3 but have 4-5 ranks in melee.

I think the OP is having the early signs of a desire for some kind of duelling rules to simulate epic feeling melee battles. FFGSW does a great job of giving the tools to narrate cinematic battles without slowing the pace of the game but unless you are willing to fill in a lot of blanks individual duels can feel a little empty.

I'm still hoping that there will be some kind of official alternate duelling rules for epic melee encounters.

I don't know how you think stepping back from melee and shooting is worse. Swing at the higher Difficulty or step back and shoot against one purple.

but there is very little that protect a melee expert in EotE or AoR apart from having high brawn or armor. And some assassins will not be Brawn 6 monsters but 2 or 3 but have 4-5 ranks in melee.

Dodge, Defensive Stance, Resolve, Durable, Hard Headed, Improved Hard Headed, Coordination Dodge, Distracting Behavior, Superior Reflexes, Pin, Heroic Resilience.

Hardly anything available at all.

You can now add No Escape and Grapple from the Warden spec to this list...

Sure it ain't EotE or AoR, but it does prevent opponents from fleeing from Engaged.

I think melee rules are fine as is. I'll join the chorus of others as to why this proposed change is a bad idea.

If you want epic melee duels, I think there are better ways to go about it. One would simply be to create a special list of threat and advantage uses that are specific to that duel (encompassing both duelling moves and the environment). For others, I look back to D&D. In 2e, there were optional rules for dueling where players would choose their own movement and attack while attempting to predict the same for their opponent, along with skill checks to "read" the enemy. In 4e, we used skill challenges, which could also be easily adapted to SW. Make a Deception check to feint, an Agility check to dodge, etc. Essentially it would be its own subsystem that used skills but was specifically for duels as opposed to trying to shoehorn duelling into a larger combat system that is intended to move quickly with multiple combatants on each side.

There will probably be a Lightsaber dueling rules in one of the later supplements... most probably in the Mystic Career book since it has the Makashi Duelist spec.

They will probably look a little like the Quickdraw showdown rules found in Fly Casual.

Here is a tentative draft of dueling rules...

Step 1 : Face Off

- Lure of the Dark Side : Deception/Coercion check against Discipline (if successful, add Setback to opponent in Step 2)

- Let go of your Hate : Charm/Leadership check against Discipline (if successful, add Setback to opponent in Step 2)

- Know your enemy : Perception/Lore check against Cool (if successful, upgrade Step 2)

Step 2 : Closing In

- Initiative : Cool check with difficulty of Simple based on the results of Step 1

- Strike First : Attack as usual and can use results from table 3-7 from Fly Casual

Step 3 : Combat continues

- Characters can use any action from Step 1 or 2 except Initiative on their turn ; results from table 3-7 from Fly Casual can still be taken.

It's not perfect, but it could be a start.

I thought of doing the same thing with Melee and Brawl when I first started playing as I too was lured in by the thought of titanic struggles back and forth. What I found was the minion problem along with lack of people willing to engage as mentioned by others. Effectively a character with a blaster could handle a certain number of minions with ease before the difficulty became too tough. When the melee rules were altered I found a large disparity between what a character rolling YGG could handle for minions ranged versus close combat to the point where no one would touch close combat. The prevailing theory in the group that tried it was that if a minion group got to melee range you were toast. A couple of observations we had were if you were using just brass knucks or a combat knife it was rare against any of the minions in the adversary decks that you would do enough damage to drop a single minion a round causing the combatants only hope to be do 1 or 2 damage and crit for a kill in the minion group. A minion group of 4 street Toughs had defense of RRR with soak of 4 and 5 WT in close combat while at medium range with much higher damage weapons you were only offsetting PP. As the group of minions were whittled down even at just one Street Tough your range was PP versus PPP for the brawn/melee. Conversely at the high end of the spectrum the nemesis pirate captain in close combat would be RRRR before adding Adversary 2 in melee while RR at medium range. When my melee player realized how much less effective they were it killed the game for them as a social character with no ranks ranged light were scoring better against minion groups than their melee character. In addition, because of the increased rate of failures and despairs from all the added red dice it felt like they prepped their melee weapons by coating them in axle grease as weapons were dropped, damaged, complete miss, etc at a much higher rate than the ranged counterparts. Instead of feeling like Obi Wan in close combat they felt like Joxer the Mighty.

Dodge, Defensive Stance, Resolve, Durable, Hard Headed, Improved Hard Headed, Coordination Dodge, Distracting Behavior, Superior Reflexes, Pin, Heroic Resilience.

How many of those will you give to rival or worse a minion? Kiling himself with strain doesn't help the problem.

How many rounds will that really prevent Arden Lynn from being turned into napoleon blownapart?

I was ranting a bit because creating interesting melee minions/rivals is frustrating. And everything else that's dangerous can almost one shot the less beefy characters.

It has and always will annoy me that you can simply "leave" melee. Walking away from a brawl isn't as easy as walking away from a friend. I'm not advocating for free strikes or opportunity attacks like in other systems, but there could at least be an option for keeping someone in melee with advantages somewhere. (yes, we do that)

You can now add No Escape and Grapple from the Warden spec to this list...

Wow, haven't seen those yet. Making a Coerce check instead of attacking or investing in a 25 xp point maneuver just to keep someone from walking away from a fistfight AND aiming with his gun (most times he will still simply walk away and shoot, and then not get shot in the back).

Reeeeeally not making it better for me

How many of those will you give to rival or worse a minion? Kiling himself with strain doesn't help the problem.

How many rounds will that really prevent Arden Lynn from being turned into napoleon blownapart?

I was ranting a bit because creating interesting melee minions/rivals is frustrating. And everything else that's dangerous can almost one shot the less beefy characters.

I don't really understand what the problem is I suppose, Rival and Minions aren't meant to be super duper challenges. They aren't meant to be anything other than fodder really.

Only numbers make minions tough, so I don't know what interesting equals for you, but minions in the game aren't meant to be real obstacles. So half a dozen armed with shields or whatever to add Setbacks is going to chip away at a PCs ability to degrade them.

A Rival can be set up with weapons/gear to add Setback, and they can have a rank or two of Adversary to add to the PCs problems.

Only Nemeses have Strain and they could of course have ranks of Talents along with Adversary and weapons/gear. They also can heal Strain with Advantages just like PCs so they aren't going to go down quickly.

This gets repeated alot but it always comes back to this issue and others like it. The game isn't designed to be a simulator, it's basic core dice mechanic doesn't work well for that. Every roll of the dice is not meant to simulate every movement and 'action' a character takes.

I know I have 7 PCs at the table at times, but even with 4, I don't want combats to go more than 4 or 5 rounds at most. It just gets boring to keep rolling dice for the sake of rolling dice.

FATE actually does this, and well in my opinion. But it's also built from the ground up for almost everything to be a contest of skill ranks. Melee attackers use their Fight skill to attack, while defenders may use their own Fight skill in opposition or Athletics. Ranged attackers use Shoot, while defenders can use Athletics. Athletics in that game blends SWRPG's Athletics and Coordination skills. To do this in SWRPG, it would require restructuring combat entirely.

Wow, haven't seen those yet. Making a Coerce check instead of attacking or investing in a 25 xp point maneuver just to keep someone from walking away from a fistfight AND aiming with his gun (most times he will still simply walk away and shoot, and then not get shot in the back).

Reeeeeally not making it better for me

The Coercion check is made probably using Scathing Tirade or, if paired with the Aggressor spec, using Terrify. If you roll 2 advantages, then you can trigger the No Escape Talent.

You can also use 2 treat generated from a Discipline check, usually from the Fearsome talent found in both Warden and Aggressor. It really is a good talent to prevent enemies from moving out of Engaged range.

For the Grapple talent, it is a great talent that can be a Game changer with the right character... there are far worse talents for 25xp then this one. This talent can probably lockdown Minions and Rivals alike since they can't use strain to have a 2nd maneuver (so they are either stuck in Engaged range or sacrifice their action to move out of Engaged range.. either way they get the shaft). Combined with Sum Djem, you can lockdown a Nemesis easily since he won't be able to pick up his weapon and them move out of engaged range (max of 2 maneuvers per turn, so he can either use 2 maneuvers to move out of Engaged, or pick up his weapon and be stuck in Engaged range... neither are nice alternatives if you're facing a melee monster).

The system offers many cool combos and synergy between talents to be plenty of fun.

You should try to see farther then your own narrow vision of the rules and their applications.

Wow, haven't seen those yet. Making a Coerce check instead of attacking or investing in a 25 xp point maneuver just to keep someone from walking away from a fistfight AND aiming with his gun (most times he will still simply walk away and shoot, and then not get shot in the back).

Reeeeeally not making it better for me

The Coercion check is made probably using Scathing Tirade or, if paired with the Aggressor spec, using Terrify. If you roll 2 advantages, then you can trigger the No Escape Talent.

You can also use 2 treat generated from a Discipline check, usually from the Fearsome talent found in both Warden and Aggressor. It really is a good talent to prevent enemies from moving out of Engaged range.

For the Grapple talent, it is a great talent that can be a Game changer with the right character... there are far worse talents for 25xp then this one. This talent can probably lockdown Minions and Rivals alike since they can't use strain to have a 2nd maneuver (so they are either stuck in Engaged range or sacrifice their action to move out of Engaged range.. either way they get the shaft). Combined with Sum Djem, you can lockdown a Nemesis easily since he won't be able to pick up his weapon and them move out of engaged range (max of 2 maneuvers per turn, so he can either use 2 maneuvers to move out of Engaged, or pick up his weapon and be stuck in Engaged range... neither are nice alternatives if you're facing a melee monster).

The system offers many cool combos and synergy between talents to be plenty of fun.

You should try to see farther then your own narrow vision of the rules and their applications.

Was going to thank you for the post and your summary of a lot of interaction between talents and the such, but that last sentence killed it. Get of you high bantha maaate

I'll leave it after this (mine) post(ed: I lied), but having to go to such great lengths just to keep someone locked in melee shouldn't be necessary. Thankfully the advantage system is open enough to narrate what you want into the result.

...And that doesn't even come close to wanting a simulating system dear pirate. I agree, combat in this system isn't meant to be twelve rounds long, but 4 PCs shooting at point blank range mostly don't need a second round of shooting. (of course, why shouldn't they, I know. If it were different, that rule system would do a really bad job of simulating reality, or a dramatic/fictive scene...)

On Interesting:

For me it is an incredibly interesting scene if one character is locked in brawl or melee (with an opponent or a monster or whatever you like) and fighting for his dear life and his friend is trying to get a good line up for a shot while they tumble through the room/forest/high grass, forced to decide if it is better to shoot and risk hitting/hurting/maiming/blinding your friend or not to shoot and risk dooming your friend with inaction. Like what's likely to happen in narration (as well as reality).

A scene that is of course narrateble, but in the rules the player can simply hammertime to a few meters away to safety. Which - as I hope is now clearly reasoned - annoys me.

Sorry derroehre, I might have gone overboard with my last sentence... I your last post, I felt that you didn't even try to find a way to make those talents work....
I was kinda pissed when I wrote that... should have been more careful in my reply... didn't mean to be a high bantha

Thanks for the idea of the locked in brawl character with his buddies having to choose to not shoot or risk hitting their teammate... I'll probably pull it off sometime in the future to see what they decide...

But I agree that sometimes, the rules seem to pigeonhole some action and offer no way of escape... like melee minions kiting (move away 2 maneuvers, shoot ; minions loose action to catch up ; rinse and repeat) or knocking down a character to prevent from ever escaping (get up, move 1 range ; get hit, get knocked down ; rinse and repeat)... but I guess that is where you gain experience and plan ahead to prevent those lame turn of events.

One could use advantage or a triumph to lock a character down. Say at a cost of 3 advantage or a triumph you can lock a character you are engaged with in melee. They can break this melee but only if they spend an action instead of a maneuver to get to short range. Thus reducing the disengage and shoot action. It's not always automatic, but a tactic a melee character may want to make instead of spending advantage elsewhere.

I didn't mean to call you a high bantha JP_JP.

One could use advantage or a triumph to lock a character down. Say at a cost of 3 advantage or a triumph you can lock a character you are engaged with in melee. They can break this melee but only if they spend an action instead of a maneuver to get to short range. Thus reducing the disengage and shoot action. It's not always automatic, but a tactic a melee character may want to make instead of spending advantage elsewhere.

That's exactly what I meant. This rule is the one I'm missing in the core rules. We use something like this as guidance:

• 2 adv: may not move away from engaged untill after end of round,
• 3 adv. may not move out of melee until the end of the next round.

Since 3 advantage is already a crit for many weapons I think that seems reasonable (if not weak,a crit can be very powerful) to me. Of course, if a character stays in melee and attacks and rolls 2-3 advantage it is reversed or negated.

It's not really missing, it's an interpretation of the use of Advantages and Triumphs from the chart.

It's not really missing, it's an interpretation of the use of Advantages and Triumphs from the chart.

With the chart itself saying that it's not an exhaustive list, but merely guidelines to help determine what can be accomplished for a given amount of advantage/threat.