My players are looming into the 600-700XP range, and it's made them a force to be reckoned with. Because of this, I'm having to get creative in order to make adversaries who are challenging. One of them, the current Big Bad™ that they haven't yet run into, is a cybernetic-enhanced Hutt who is a bit of a melee monster. Playing around with special abilities that are just his, I've come up with the following three-tier Talents.

Satisfying Crunch

Once per round, may spend or on a successful Melee or Brawl check to ignore half the target's soak.

Satisfying Crunch (Improved)

A second may be spent to make the Satisfying Crunch effect persistent until the end of the encounter.

Satisfying Crunch (Supreme)

May spend generated from a successful melee or brawl attack on a character affected by Satisfying Crunch (Improved) to permanently reduce the soak value of a character's armor by 1. When a piece of armor has its soak reduced to 0, it is damaged beyond repair. This effect can stack multiple times.

Is this... too mean? Vicious?

Why not make it more like Sunder, but for armor? That would make it so you only need a single talent and the majority of the system for handling the damaged item would already be covered by existing rules? All you'd need to add is the damage steps.

Maybe:

Step one Add setback to all Athletics, Coordination, and Combat checks as it flops around uncomfortably

Step two Remove 1 soak to a minimum of 0 If the armor provides no soak improvement remove 1 defense

Step three remove all soak and defense bonuses

Step 4 destroyed.

Because of this, I'm having to get creative in order to make adversaries who are challenging

Does the adversary have to fight them? Directly? What if this nemesis was able to buff its own troops while debuffing the PCs?

My team isn't quite that far along but I'm interested to know what challenges you're facing at that level. Seems like they could fight a pack of Rancors before breakfast.

Why not make it more like Sunder, but for armor? That would make it so you only need a single talent and the majority of the system for handling the damaged item would already be covered by existing rules? All you'd need to add is the damage steps.

Mostly because I want the aspect of it ignoring soak involved somehow. The whole idea was for the strike to crunch through armor and still do massive damage.

That said, the idea of Sunder rules for armor would be awesome.

My team isn't quite that far along but I'm interested to know what challenges you're facing at that level. Seems like they could fight a pack of Rancors before breakfast.

One of these players (with a different character) managed to one-shot a rancor (the one in the core book) when he was at about 300XP, soooo... yeah. The current group might just be able to take out a pack of them as written. My rancors now have multiple levels of Durable and boosts to both WT and ST to keep that from happening again.

Why not make it more like Sunder, but for armor? That would make it so you only need a single talent and the majority of the system for handling the damaged item would already be covered by existing rules? All you'd need to add is the damage steps.

Mostly because I want the aspect of it ignoring soak involved somehow. The whole idea was for the strike to crunch through armor and still do massive damage.

That said, the idea of Sunder rules for armor would be awesome.

Have you considered Pierce? That's the way it's most commonly done.

Or Breach.

Have you considered Pierce? That's the way it's most commonly done.

Or Breach.

Yes. But it's an effect I didn't want with every hit.

Have you considered Pierce? That's the way it's most commonly done.

Or Breach.

Yes. But it's an effect I didn't want with every hit.

So...

Penetrating strike: Spend X Advantage to give the attack Pierce 3

Smash: make a Hard whatever check, spend triumph to give the attack breach 1. (Note it's breach 1 anbd not +1)

My team isn't quite that far along but I'm interested to know what challenges you're facing at that level. Seems like they could fight a pack of Rancors before breakfast.

One of these players (with a different character) managed to one-shot a rancor (the one in the core book) when he was at about 300XP, soooo... yeah. The current group might just be able to take out a pack of them as written. My rancors now have multiple levels of Durable and boosts to both WT and ST to keep that from happening again.

One wonders just what he used to one-shot a rancor at 300XP. Maybe there's 2 sides to this problem here.

I think the scale of your talents is off. The basic version is better than Supreme, because you're cutting the target's entire soak in half...and that includes their basic soak from Brawn. The Supreme version doesn't seem that effective, not for 2 Triumphs when you could crit or sunder instead. No Nemesis is going to last enough turns to make -1 Soak mean anything.

I'd just give the weapon Sunder and be done. Or if you want it specifically against armour, then have the talent reduce the cost of multiple sunders on the same hit, e.g.: 2A for the first, and 1A to move the object one step closer to being destroyed. Unless I'm calculating wrong, you'd need 5A on the first hit to completely break the armour.

It sounds like you need to run a good ole-fashioned "capture the PC's and thrown them in prison" game...that will make them give up all of their gear and money then plan their escape and have to work to regain everything back. That or scale back on XP rewards...and like themensch mentioned, if they can one-shot a rancor at 300xp then something is amiss and probably needs to be adjusted. Just my $0.02...

One wonders just what he used to one-shot a rancor at 300XP. Maybe there's 2 sides to this problem here.

A Marauder, a vibro-ax, and an utterly amazing critical roll.

A critical roll at 95 with three ranks of Lethal Blows and a vibro-ax with the default Vicious 3. Total: 155. And since the stock rancor lacks any mitigation for this, down he went.

One wonders just what he used to one-shot a rancor at 300XP. Maybe there's 2 sides to this problem here.

A Marauder, a vibro-ax, and an utterly amazing critical roll.

A critical roll at 95 with three ranks of Lethal Blows and a vibro-ax with the default Vicious 3. Total: 155. And since the stock rancor lacks any mitigation for this, down he went.

Hm, I have a wookiee marauder with a similar axe modded to only need one Advantage to crit. I'll keep this in mind.

I think the scale of your talents is off. The basic version is better than Supreme, because you're cutting the target's entire soak in half...and that includes their basic soak from Brawn. The Supreme version doesn't seem that effective, not for 2 Triumphs when you could crit or sunder instead. No Nemesis is going to last enough turns to make -1 Soak mean anything.

I'd just give the weapon Sunder and be done. Or if you want it specifically against armour, then have the talent reduce the cost of multiple sunders on the same hit, e.g.: 2A for the first, and 1A to move the object one step closer to being destroyed. Unless I'm calculating wrong, you'd need 5A on the first hit to completely break the armour.

The difference is that the Supreme version is permanent, where the base version ignores half Soak for that attack only. And I'd still have to houserule Sunder so it could affect armor, which still doesn't give the effect I wanted.

Hm, I have a wookiee marauder with a similar axe modded to only need one Advantage to crit. I'll keep this in mind.

See? Nothing amiss there. Just a pretty amazing roll. Still, the idea that a rancor could be taken down so carelessly struck me as wrong, and I've had to make a lot of adjustments just to get

It sounds like you need to run a good ole-fashioned "capture the PC's and thrown them in prison" game...that will make them give up all of their gear and money then plan their escape and have to work to regain everything back. That or scale back on XP rewards...and like themensch mentioned, if they can one-shot a rancor at 300xp then something is amiss and probably needs to be adjusted. Just my $0.02...

Oddly enough, this is exactly what I'm doing tonight. *chuckles* GMTA?

One wonders just what he used to one-shot a rancor at 300XP. Maybe there's 2 sides to this problem here.

A Marauder, a vibro-ax, and an utterly amazing critical roll.

A critical roll at 95 with three ranks of Lethal Blows and a vibro-ax with the default Vicious 3. Total: 155. And since the stock rancor lacks any mitigation for this, down he went.

Must have been a pretty brawny wookiee and a lot of successes to get past all that soak in order to apply the critical injury.

Must have been a pretty brawny wookiee and a lot of successes to get past all that soak in order to apply the critical injury.

12 soak = no joke

Must have been a pretty brawny wookiee and a lot of successes to get past all that soak in order to apply the critical injury.

Brawn:4, Melee: 3. Aimed once. Two ranks of Frenzied Attack upgrades the roll so it's vs. . The vibro-ax has Pierce 2, which means he only has to go through ten soak. Brawn 4 + 3 damage from the vibro-ax means he only needs to deal a single point of damage and to pull off the critical strike.

I swear, it feels like you guys are trying to find a flaw in my reasoning. It's not there. The rancor, as written in the book, is designed to be tough for starting characters . Any combat character with the right talents will burn right through it.

Must have been a pretty brawny wookiee and a lot of successes to get past all that soak in order to apply the critical injury.

Brawn:4, Melee: 3. Aimed once. Two ranks of Frenzied Attack upgrades the roll so it's vs. . The vibro-ax has Pierce 2, which means he only has to go through ten soak. Brawn 4 + 3 damage from the vibro-ax means he only needs to deal a single point of damage and to pull off the critical strike.

I swear, it feels like you guys are trying to find a flaw in my reasoning. It's not there. The rancor, as written in the book, is designed to be tough for starting characters . Any combat character with the right talents will burn right through it.

Tone is impossible to read on the internet. My post was an offhand comment. No nitpicking was intended.

I swear, it feels like you guys are trying to find a flaw in my reasoning. It's not there. The rancor, as written in the book, is designed to be tough for starting characters . Any combat character with the right talents will burn right through it.

Nope, I just find it alarming. I was going to have my PCs fight a cyber-modified rancor as the culmination of a second act in a story, now I'm glad I didn't. Given they are similarly experienced and equipped, that could have been one heck of a disappointment. I'm glad I opted for swoop chase that ended in a crash and gladiatorial combat in an active podrace track instead.

Thanks for breaking down the rolls for me, it'll help with my future prep.

Dang! I always imagined that with the high soak and wound threshold it would be more difficult...I didn't think of the vicious and lethal blows stacking that much! It's hard to fathom hitting a giant beast like that with 1 blow dealing a single point of damage, but like you said the reasoning is there with the high crit roll and added benefits! Now I have to start thinking about watching out for this sort of stuff, my players are reaching the ~250 XP territory and at 20-25 XP awarded per session, they can be up to where your guys are pretty quick!

Not that it helps you now, but I usually add 2 setback dice to any melee attempts against a Rancor due to the fact that the only targets you have to hit in engaged range are the feet and fingers due to the massive size.

Alternatively, you can just choose to use the Rancor stats as written being for a young Rancor and then consider the adult Rancor to be "planetary scale" like a vehicle. That would shut down one shotting it for sure. After all it *is* the size of an AT-ST.

I swear, it feels like you guys are trying to find a flaw in my reasoning. It's not there. The rancor, as written in the book, is designed to be tough for starting characters . Any combat character with the right talents will burn right through it.

Nope, I just find it alarming. I was going to have my PCs fight a cyber-modified rancor as the culmination of a second act in a story, now I'm glad I didn't. Given they are similarly experienced and equipped, that could have been one heck of a disappointment. I'm glad I opted for swoop chase that ended in a crash and gladiatorial combat in an active podrace track instead.

I do find the critters in this game generally disappointing. Ferocious things should get a couple of initiative slots and/or have attacks that affect more than one target.

Yes, I know you can apply extra initiative slots to any nemesis, but that's too arbitrary/hand-wavey for me, it should be built into the spec.

I do find the critters in this game generally disappointing. Ferocious things should get a couple of initiative slots and/or have attacks that affect more than one target.

Yes, I know you can apply extra initiative slots to any nemesis, but that's too arbitrary/hand-wavey for me, it should be built into the spec.

At least the good ol' "claw, claw, bite" would make something like a Rancor effective again. I agree this shouldn't be confined to nemeses alone. I guess the narrative style of play would be to include multiple attacks in one description with the roll dictating the damage from all of them, but that really defangs creatures that any being in their right mind would avoid.

There's nothing wrong with the rancor that can't be fixed by applying the Nemesis Initiative talent and about 10 ranks of Durable.