I have considered changing the cost of autofire to be 2 advantages for the 2nd hit, 3 for the 3rd, 4 for the 4th, etc. So to hit someone 4 times, you need 1 success plus 9 advantages. Jury rigged still reduces all hits to 1/2/3. I've been thinking about it, because, like others, I am finding autofire wipes an encounter in 2-3 rounds, unless they are facing vehicles or rancors.

The player in question and I have decided on some new rules to try tonight regarding autofire. He wants to try a 2 auto-fire successes per target (so 3 hits max). I stipulated that to make sure that damage wasn't easily sustained by splitting it amongst other targets that he must add a black dice for every other target he hopes to hit with auto-fire.

We are going to try this out and see what happens. My only concern is that if he has extra unspent advantages after doing his 3 hits, that he can still spend that on other things to grant bonuses and crits, thereby still giving him a lot of power.

That doesn't really do much to negate the power of autofire. Three hits of a 13 damage weapon will still wipe out anything it touches in one go. And one setback for every OTHER target is fairly paltry.

Like I mentioned above, upgrading the roll difficulty for every extra hit they want to try for work fairly well. Use the Despairs on jamming/running out of ammo. The first one or two upgrades don't decrease the odds of success THAT much, representing controlled bursts. Longer attempts will be a greater risk for greater reward.

Quick thoughts without reviewing previous posts:

"Auto Fire" in the real world is most effective in short bursts. Spraying a large area conceivably could hit lots of targets, but the chance of a hit goes significantly down. So, ask the shooter how many targets he is trying to hit before the dice are rolled. This places a limit on the maximum number of targets that Auto Fire may be activated against. Then you are able to apply the appropriate number of bad dice you are adding (type by whatever fits your liking, 1 per target) based upon how much the shooter is "spraying and praying".

Also add -1 Range when on Auto Fire? This could also help limit the number of targets. Then add the Heavy Blaster Pistol disadvantage (found in its description) that increases odds of out-of-ammo results but only when making an Auto Fire roll. I've made this a quality of "Ammo Hog" in my house rules.

My game has a member with Jury-rigged autofire, 13 minimum damage, and the bantha scope for good measure. It's a beast. He's a beast. And it's pretty much the end of any opposition I throw them up against.

Their first encounter using it was during the "Dead In the Water" adventure. A group of rogue protocol droids entered the bridge via the main turbolift, and were instantly slaughtered as he did 4 auto-fires to the group. "Raining Hell" was how i described it, as droid parts exploded across the air and floor.

As awesome as it is in practice, it really is a GM's worst enemy. This player is a one-man army, and the other players pale in comparison when it comes to damage.

Some will argue "but don't forget the extra purple dice!", to which I say... well if I add that to a character's dice pool who is shooting at short range... that's 2 purple dice. And considering that this player has minmaxed his character, his dice pool is pretty much only in his favor. And of course by the time his turn shows up he usually has and additional 4 blue dice waiting for him via other player's actions. It's an absolute mess.

For the next session after that I upped the HP on a lot of the droids. It made the fights last a little longer, but it doesn't do anything to make the other players feel like they are contributing to the battle. If anything it just makes it worse for them in particular just to give the 1 broken player a bit of balance.

Unfortunately the only true way to balance it is at the source. I'm cursed with players who don't like to be "nerfed". Having a discussion with them about what I feel is broken and how I'd like to fix it usually just ends in bitter arguments. Since its in the rules and hasn't been a subject of any kind of errata then it must be legit and stay, so they believe.

If I were to fix it I would say that the only way to make it work is to increase the amount of advantages needed to trigger it. Or apply a sort of diminishing returns effect where every additional hit does less damage. I don't even understand how it makes sense that two completely different blaster bolts do the exact same amount of damage on two different targets. I mean do they both hit in the exact same vital area on both targets each and every time?

Auto-fire also has the game harming effect that it completely eliminates the need for the player to ever choose "Crit" as an option. Critting in Star Wars is a very important element to the game due to its influence on the story. But why maim the recurring villain when you can simply reduce him to jelly with three jury-rigged auto-fires instead of applying a single crit?

It's actually kind of insane that Crit is worse than Auto-Fire, and even on average without Jury-rigging, Crit costs more advantages so theoretically it should be better.

Crits need time to stack before they start to have major effects, so really the best way to compare it to auto-fire is damage to damage. While crits do not outright do "damage", they do auto-kill a minion. Let's say your standard Stormtrooper minion has 5 hit-points and a soak of 5. The crit essentially does 10 damage. An un-modded auto-fire could easily do 12.

No, sir. I don't like it.

Interesting.We played the same adventure, but to be completely honest, a autofire weapon would have been more or less useless. We were already in the hangar when the droids activated, eliminated a group of 15 or so in one shot with the ion cannons of one of the ships in the hangar while our astromech decompressed the whole hangar. Two other groups went down when we just did an EVA and cut is in with ligthsabers, throwing ion grenades into groups of droids.

And the final fight was basically just two concussion grenades into the bridge. The cleanup against defenseless droids was done afterwards with an autofire rifle, lightsabers. So yeah, my character did mostly just handled the extra vehicle activity, but the character with the auto-fire rifle did not do much either. It not like that rifle would be doing anything out of the extra-ordinary.

A few months later we did run into three inquisitors and I can tell you that auto-fire would not have cut it to the slightest with those guys, not only because hitting would have been a real problem, but as well because of reflect. That disrupter which had been basically useless for 3 months at the other hand … lightsabers are really no good against jurry rigged disruptor rifles. Those inquisitors got disarmed pretty messy and pretty fast if you get my drift. Those enemies are a use-case for critical hits instead of just a steady stream of pew pew.

And speaking of streams of medium damage pew, pew pew: 13 Minimum damage is literally no getting through the soak values of heavy armored characters. I definitely prefer the solid 17 minimum damage with 6 pierce of my sniper-rifle or the incredible deadly crits of a vibro axe or disruptor or the combination of solid min-damage, breach and huge crit potential of lightsabers in a lot of situation. Autofire has clearly its use-cases as well, especially against large and spread out groups of rivals which will not all just die to "last man standing" or blast weapons, but by no means it is the weapon to rule them all. If there is a weapon to rule them all then this is the medium laser cannon and even that one has a few issues.

Edit: By the way, a weapon meant to crit you are talking about advantage cost of 1 and that is without jury-rigging as well. A decent crit-build reaches usually quite easy the simple joy of 150+ results. Vicisious, lethal blows, auto-advantages and a crit rating of 1 add all up to very consistent deadly critical hits. The face of a GM who sees is nemesis all go down based on single-hit critical results can be surprisingly desperate.

That doesn't really do much to negate the power of autofire. Three hits of a 13 damage weapon will still wipe out anything it touches in one go.

13 damage will not even get pass the soak value a 250 xp wookie marauder I build a few weeks ago. Any decent force user has a decent chance to kill his attacker in one go thanks to the iirc improved reflect power. Our murder bot will feel a light pain of 6 damage. That can be literally patched up on the fly.

I have not build my own force characters, but iirc the inquisitor rules give them usually 4 points reflect and a soak for 5 or so. Those might feel a slight burn from such a hit … or nothing at all. And that is a build with low soak value, you can build them a lot nastier, Imperial Valor, high end equipment, maxing brawn and combat skills. Heck even something as simple as a magna guard will ask for more if you hit him which just three 13 damage hits. Or better such a murder bot will start to give you more afterwards.

Speaking of Magna Guards and auto-fire weapons. They have the Pin talent, which allows them to immobilize their target. Good luck with shooting your auto-fire rifle when engaged with something like that.

Nemesis with Supreme Armorer Master is all I have to say to Crit monsters

Nemesis with Supreme Armorer Master is all I have to say to Crit monsters

Yes, combine with unmatched heroism, a high soak, a few ranks in dodge and reflect + improved reflect. Still gets killed by a ataru striker in one turn or the heavy laser cannons of that paranoid ace which always brings the heavy guns.

Still, it is really a good base for a very defensive monster which is laughing at the usually "op" tricks, perfect for as base for a bodyguard for the real villain of the story.

The essence of the game mechanics is that you need to be a monster with thousands of XP to not have any big weaknesses. A group which covers many different strategies will always have the right tools for the job, while a group which runs with just crit weapons or just auto-fire weapons, etc can be brought easy to their limits by simply not playing to their strengths.

Spot on.

One of the many signs of a good GM is that you get to have your cake and eat it most of the time, just every now and then it's made with cyanide.

That doesn't really do much to negate the power of autofire. Three hits of a 13 damage weapon will still wipe out anything it touches in one go.

13 damage will not even get pass the soak value a 250 xp wookie marauder I build a few weeks ago. Any decent force user has a decent chance to kill his attacker in one go thanks to the iirc improved reflect power. Our murder bot will feel a light pain of 6 damage. That can be literally patched up on the fly.

I have not build my own force characters, but iirc the inquisitor rules give them usually 4 points reflect and a soak for 5 or so. Those might feel a slight burn from such a hit … or nothing at all. And that is a build with low soak value, you can build them a lot nastier, Imperial Valor, high end equipment, maxing brawn and combat skills. Heck even something as simple as a magna guard will ask for more if you hit him which just three 13 damage hits. Or better such a murder bot will start to give you more afterwards.

Speaking of Magna Guards and auto-fire weapons. They have the Pin talent, which allows them to immobilize their target. Good luck with shooting your auto-fire rifle when engaged with something like that.

Just out of curiosity, how are you creating a character with 13+ Soak?

Nemesis with Supreme Armorer Master is all I have to say to Crit monsters

Yes, combine with unmatched heroism, a high soak, a few ranks in dodge and reflect + improved reflect. Still gets killed by a ataru striker in one turn or the heavy laser cannons of that paranoid ace which always brings the heavy guns.

Still, it is really a good base for a very defensive monster which is laughing at the usually "op" tricks, perfect for as base for a bodyguard for the real villain of the story.

The essence of the game mechanics is that you need to be a monster with thousands of XP to not have any big weaknesses. A group which covers many different strategies will always have the right tools for the job, while a group which runs with just crit weapons or just auto-fire weapons, etc can be brought easy to their limits by simply not playing to their strengths.

I agree that a clever GM will see the weak spots of a group and use them and that this game offers several different strategies for attack (like you highlighted with Crit vs Auto-fire).

But I think you also highlight how overpowered Auto-fire can be when you suggest giving a Nemesis' body guard a Signature Ability and very high Soak as a "good base" to start from.

I guess 4+str to start then +1 str implant / +1 dedication to str and then +1 implant armor and crafted 4 soak armor then 2+ ranks of enduring and armor master. Hard to do with 250xp without oodles of credits and a high INT crafting buddy. The 350xp Wookie in my game has 11 soak but his 4+ranks in parry and 3+ reflect probably do alot more for him.

But I think you also highlight how overpowered Auto-fire can be when you suggest giving a Nemesis' body guard a Signature Ability and very high Soak as a "good base" to start from.

Ironically, this is not to protect against auto-fire, but against crit builds. As mentioned our last encounter against inquisitors ended with them getting disarmed by a disrupter in single shots. And our murderbot with the disruptor rifle does not even has a complete crit build, which was the main reason they he needed a second hit on each to kill them. That suggest bodyguard build is mainly against crits and not auto-fire. You know, that funny thing which requires you to do one point of damage and one advantage to kill a target on a single hit.

I guess 4+str to start then +1 str implant / +1 dedication to str and then +1 implant armor and crafted 4 soak armor then 2+ ranks of enduring and armor master. Hard to do with 250xp without oodles of credits and a high INT crafting buddy. The 350xp Wookie in my game has 11 soak but his 4+ranks in parry and 3+ reflect probably do alot more for him.

Something like that, we have a 5/5 mechanic character in the group and some characters broke the 500 xp mark a while ago, so I added cybernetic arm and leg, a cybereye, 2 ranks in enduring and a custom combat armor with soak 4. Basically the one goody in equipment to compensate that the rest of the group is already swimming in credits.

Plus that wookie marauder has last man standing, so large groups of minions are a non-issue with her anyway. The 250XP was chosen as base as the character was supposed to be a suggestion build for another player who wants to switch characters. Leaves room for customisation without compromising the basic idea of the build. A badass wookie cyborg who can tank with unmatched protection and giant soak value, deal giant critical hits and rampage through minions with last man standing and her vicious vibro axe .

Parry and reflect are in general great choices, but not on this specific build which has as biggest weakness just 9 strain. 20 WT, but just 9 strain. Energy Dispersion System helps to protect that even better, but still that is a giant weakness in the build and is inviting for a knockout from a doctor in one hit. I like characters with weaknesses. *g*

Oh and for heavy combat you could use an armor set with cortosis, superior and kiirium coating. Auto-fire energy weapons do not like those mods especially as the soak against blasters adds up with each hit and cortosis is neutralizing the option for pierce and breach to counter the heavy armor.

Spot on.

One of the many signs of a good GM is that you get to have your cake and eat it most of the time, just every now and then it's made with cyanide.

Might I have your permission to sig this, good sir?

Crits kill bosses. Autofire kills everything else AND bosses. If you want your big boss to survive a few rounds and actually get that great monologue you wrote for him off - build them SUPER tanky.

Crits kill bosses. Autofire kills everything else AND bosses. If you want your big boss to survive a few rounds and actually get that great monologue you wrote for him off - build them SUPER tanky.

Or just stop building villains who have a great and silly monologue and instead build one which will not engage at close range with his enemies and has some bodyguards. Jabba Desilijic Tiure dies in 2 or 3 rounds to a unarmed Leia because he is a stupid. Don't build your villains to be jabba, aim for Thrawn and turn it down a notch or two afterwards to give your group some opportunities to outsmart the enemies still.

Thanks for the feedback.

While that particular Signature Ability could be used to deal with the Crit killer it seems like overkill. Squad rules or Imperial Valor are very suitable and standard options in this case. The Crit killer will typically get one hit. These options deal with that nicely because that one hit is diverted to a mook.

Unmatched Heroism (or even Fated Duel) seems better at dealing with auto fire because it forces the attacker to target the "tank" repeatedly.

I don't think I'd ever give an NPC a Signature Ability though as that's stepping on the toes of the players too much.

Still, I think this is an indication of auto fire being too good (especially at 1 advantage to activate) while the system has introduced good and simple ways of dealing with Crit killers that don't totally unbalance or distort an encounter (squad rules and Imperial Valor).

I'm enjoying the discussion. I wish some of the splay books would discuss these issues in detail.

Spot on.

One of the many signs of a good GM is that you get to have your cake and eat it most of the time, just every now and then it's made with cyanide.

Might I have your permission to sig this, good sir?

Sure!

Thanks for the feedback.

While that particular Signature Ability could be used to deal with the Crit killer it seems like overkill. Squad rules or Imperial Valor are very suitable and standard options in this case. The Crit killer will typically get one hit. These options deal with that nicely because that one hit is diverted to a mook.

Squads and imperial valor require engaged range. Engage range means you give the crit monster a late initiative slot and just throw in a few grenades first. Minions do not survive this, so squad rules help much less than they do against auto-fire and imperial valor is only effective if the meat shields are actually strong enough to take those explosives. If they can take a bunch of explosives in a row then they can take autofire as well. If they can not, we are back to signature abilities and/or Supreme Armorer Master.

I totally get that auto-fire can be a strong option, but you never really explained at which point this is a problem especially compared to other strong options. As impressive as it sounds to hit 5 guys for 13 - soak damage minimum damage, hitting 15 minions for 100 overall or throwing explosives into squads or doing a dual-wield lightsaber combination for about 80 damage with breach on top of it … we really have tons of options to do massive damage.

I am a little puzzled how you always fall back to auto-fire when other examples are given. One-shotting nemesis characters with critical hits is not a sign how strong autofire is. And I am puzzled how you take everything said always as confirmation how strong auto-fire really is.

You can't wipe out minions grouped with an NPC as a squad with a grenade. One hit means a single minion can die; the normal rules for killing minons don't apply.

Thanks for the feedback.

While that particular Signature Ability could be used to deal with the Crit killer it seems like overkill. Squad rules or Imperial Valor are very suitable and standard options in this case. The Crit killer will typically get one hit. These options deal with that nicely because that one hit is diverted to a mook.

Squads and imperial valor require engaged range. Engage range means you give the crit monster a late initiative slot and just throw in a few grenades first. Minions do not survive this, so squad rules help much less than they do against auto-fire and imperial valor is only effective if the meat shields are actually strong enough to take those explosives. If they can take a bunch of explosives in a row then they can take autofire as well. If they can not, we are back to signature abilities and/or Supreme Armorer Master.

I totally get that auto-fire can be a strong option, but you never really explained at which point this is a problem especially compared to other strong options. As impressive as it sounds to hit 5 guys for 13 - soak damage minimum damage, hitting 15 minions for 100 overall or throwing explosives into squads or doing a dual-wield lightsaber combination for about 80 damage with breach on top of it … we really have tons of options to do massive damage.

I am a little puzzled how you always fall back to auto-fire when other examples are given. One-shotting nemesis characters with critical hits is not a sign how strong autofire is. And I am puzzled how you take everything said always as confirmation how strong auto-fire really is.

I am not taking everything said as confirmation of how strong auto-fire really is. There are a lot of other good damage options but I'd argue none as good (or as easily available) as auto-fire. My point was that I think the system already has some decent ways of dealing with PCs which do a lot of damage (or Crit kill) to single targets. You raised some interesting counter points - and how effective groups will soften up NPC groups with grenades or explosives - but I still think that overall auto-fire is more powerful and flexible option - it can do a lot of damage to a single target (mitigated by high soak as you point out) but it can also spread out a lot of damage across many foes (though one way in which auto-fire is not very flexible is that it's easier to get a lightsaber or vibro weapon into more places than an auto-fire rifle).

I'm puzzled how your scenario's work out when they seem to involve Auto-fire for 13 damage minimum vs other options which hit 15 minions for 100 overall (is this soaked as Blast should be?) or involve two lightsabers doing 80 damage (how is dual wielding a lightsaber doing 80 damage? Ataru Striker with Linked X?). It seems like you're comparing an average auto-fire build against other more advanced damage builds. I guess you play at totally different XP levels than I'm used to so these examples seem way out there to me while auto-fire is viable at character creation.

I agree with your overall point that different PC builds require tuning challenges to their abilities and weak spots. But I see auto-fire as harder to deal with than the other damage options but you seem a lot more experienced with high level play than I am so I'm just trying to understand where you're coming from.

The 100 overall are from one case when we just blasted a minion group away with planetary scale weapons in a hangar. So yeah, those 100 were before soak, ramming the ship afterwards into the minions helped to clear them too.

For the lightsabers you guessed right, a dual wielding ataru striker with a saber swarm and hawk bat swoop to proc multiple hits via linked.

As mentioned in the other post, in many regards auto-fire is inferior to other high damage options, easier to deal with, but it is indeed a cheap, easy to acquire, solid and balanced options. High soak values certainly hinder autofire weapons the most as the soak is applied multiple times and the pierce options are often limited for those weapons. More specialized solutions proofed in our group so far superior. We have autofire weapons, but we really have rarely the chance to use them and half the time they proofed ineffective, especially the automatic pistols. A lot of those issues are related to the situations we ended up in, so your milage may vary indeed, especially if your group is not building for other options like the mentioned explosives, lightsabers, gunnery weaponry, etc … if they just specialise for those autofire guns then naturally those become the only problem to deal as the other options indeed require xp to put into them to be effective.

You can't wipe out minions grouped with an NPC as a squad with a grenade. One hit means a single minion can die; the normal rules for killing minons don't apply.

As all minions in a group are in engaged range to each other you will not do one hit, but multiple hits thanks to blast. Why should this not apply? You seem very certain about that, so I would like to see a source.

At least when fighting Imperials, try to remember you're fighting professional soldiers, who know how to deal with an enemy using an LMG, er, autofire weapon. Grenades, two guys putting down suppressive fire on the autofire while another team moves to flank. Or, you know, the classic, call for more firepower. Your guys have a tricked out heavy weapon. They have the might of the Imperial Army just a comlink away. The heavier the weapon, the more counter fire comes your way. Pretty quick, the floor will be rattling from the approaching walkers, and the windows will be shattering from the sonic booms of those TIE bombers. Forget nerfing, it's the law of unintended consequences that is your friend. The more firepower you bring to the party, the greater the threat your enemy perceives, and the more firepower THEY bring.

Smart rebels are the ones that don't draw too much attention. The guys that blow up Death Stars do that aplenty

Two guys laying down suppressive fire while a third guy flanks? One good Auto-fire attack might just wipe them all out.

Grenades? Many Auto-fire weapons will waste you well before you ever get within range. Besides that, a blaster rifle is usually superior at dropping a single well-armed person than most grenades under this system.

More firepower? Sure, but it's not always available, and it usually takes some time to gather when it is available. Sometimes the Auto-fire heavy will wipe out the baddies before they even get a chance to call for back-up.