All I'm saying is that Armor and Shields shouldn't apply Defense Bonus, and all other sources should stack. Nothing else really changes.

In other words:

Other than that, Mrs Lincoln — what did you think of the play?

If you change two of the most basic things about how armor and shields work, you can’t really follow that up with “Nothing else really changes.” The technical term for that is “Non sequitur”.

Feel free to make whatever changes you want in your game — it is your game, after all.

But the FFG developers have spent years trying to achieve an optimal balance of all the components that go into their official version of this game, including many components that have not yet been published. If you’re going to throw out two fundamental assumptions upon which a lot of the rest of their work depends, you have to decide how you’re going to handle the consequences. And you have to consider at what point you’re no longer playing something that can be called by the same name.

However, at the end of the day, it’s still your game and you should run it the way you want.

I'm not saying I am going to run with it. And I'm not suggesting anyone else has to - so I don't know why people get so defensive when someone brings up the holy rules into question like the devs are infallible. They might have spent a long time developing the system, but we've all spent a long time playing games in general. And... conventions are conventions. We're not morons.

Personally, I tend to play games as vanilla as possible, specifically because I don't want to deal with the headache involved with keeping up with Houserules and how they may or may not effect things I wouldn't consider. For instance, in my campaign, there is no Force. Yet the rules account for the Force with Force Points and Destiny Tokens. Those things are simply too ingrained in how stuff works to not have them, regardless of there being no narrative Force present.

To be fair, I mean, the game functions as is. It's pretty great. Because Defense is represented as a SBD and the nature of how those work, this entire topic isn't nearly as "open/shut" or binary as it is in other games, and I can personally deal with the narrative structure of the dice on this topic a lot easier than I can in other games. It's not like the whole thing is totally broken. This is actually one of the best systems I've ever played with. Choosing which source of Defense to use is just a minor inconvenience to logic flow, because... well... that's just stupid to have to do, really, and it's not the first game I've had to deal with this silly convention. I mean... I can over look it. But it would be nice to not have to for once.

I'm simply suggesting that the theory of how basing Armor in Defense (or AC in other games) is a functionally pointless convention in principle. Others have suggested that Armor redirects or deflects attacks which accounts for them functioning in the Defense score. I disagree with the perspective, because Armor doesn't function unless YOU are hit. So whatever features, however it's designed, whatever it's supposed to do... it doesn't do anything unless a bullet, a sword, a fist, a Tuna, SOMETHING makes a successful hit on your person.

Look at it this way:

If you shoot me with a BB gun at 15 ft. - then... okay. If I put on a Flak Jacket, and you try again - that Flak Jacket doesn't suddenly make me harder to hit, or somehow make you forget to aim. In RPG's... it does.

If you swing a baseball bat at me and hit me - okay. If I fully deck myself out in some nifty plate mail, and you try again - the plate mail doesn't suddenly make me harder to hit, nor does it effect your ability to swing a bat at a huge metal thing. In RPG's... it does.

It's non-sense. I don't understand how this is a hard concept to wrap the mind around, really...

If you shoot me with a BB gun at 15 ft. - then... okay. If I put on a Flak Jacket, and you try again - that Flak Jacket doesn't suddenly make me harder to hit, or somehow make you forget to aim. In RPG's... it does.

Now I shoot you in the face with that BB gun. Your issue is to deal with the abstraction. And in RPGs is a broad overgeneralization because this whole armor makes it harder to hit is a very american, very dungeon and dragons centric trope.

There are tons and tons of RPGs which simply do only make armor give you some form of soak. And ironically the equivalent to your flak jacket example would be the padded armor, which gives zero defense and two points of soak. Same for stormtrooper armor ;-)

The amount of armor with zero defense outnumbers those with defense rating in this system and those with defense value reduce the target silhouette in many cases or have reflective properties, like the personal deflector shield which adds 2 points of defense, lightsabers which add a few points, etc

You need literally to fire or hit past those things to apply damage, not through them, not gonna happen that your shot pierces that lightsaber blade or gungan energy shield.

And again, it is not about being harder to hit, it about harder to hit in a effective way. I mean sure, a guy with a tower shield is for sure easier to hit, but not hitting that shield and actually hitting the man is harder. Making a good cut against platemail is not really gonna happen. And getting past a shield in melee is in general btw hard, those weapons are indeed crazy good defensively.

There are for sure other systems to deal with this, making all combat checks opposed or competitive for example is a very common way to do this, whoever wins that check, deals damage in melee and defensive gear adds soak and boosts to those checks. Easy peasy, I like the agone, per aspera and ubiqui systems for handling those stuff that way. FFGSWRPG is going for a more abstract way and includes those factors directly into the dice pool, it even includes options for counter attacks via difficulty upgrades. A despair in melee attack usually does not mean that slip on a banana, but that your opponent did something to you, something bad and hurtful, like for example kicking your legs away and making you go fall flat prone on your ass.

And btw, if you have any doubts about shields making it harder to hit, feel free to visit your local hema group and just try to hit someone with that baseball bat when he is using a shield. Not gonna happen, especially when you have to keep away from his 110cm steel at the same time

Look at it this way:

If you shoot me with a BB gun at 15 ft. - then... okay. If I put on a Flak Jacket, and you try again - that Flak Jacket doesn't suddenly make me harder to hit, or somehow make you forget to aim. In RPG's... it does.

If you swing a baseball bat at me and hit me - okay. If I fully deck myself out in some nifty plate mail, and you try again - the plate mail doesn't suddenly make me harder to hit, nor does it effect your ability to swing a bat at a huge metal thing. In RPG's... it does.

It's non-sense. I don't understand how this is a hard concept to wrap the mind around, really...

It's harder concept to wrap your mind around if you haven't worn armor or researched the experience of those who have.

I know I'm not the only one on these boards in the former camp (we have plenty of ex-military on here who could likely speak as well as I can), but your examples are terrible, but for different reasons.

You seem to have trouble with the abstractions upon which games like RPGs are based, so let's skip over your fallacious suggestion that the rules ever suggest that armor makes someone "forget to aim". Let's instead talk about the physical realities.

To your BB example: Armor can serve to absorb force or redirect it. A flak jacket does a little of both, but it's basically a 2 Soak Catch Vest or Padded Armor, with no Defense. It was designed to absorb ballistic (more or less blunt) trauma. Combined with an average (2) Brawn (let's assume your Brawn is average) it should consistently stop or mostly mitigate the effect of a Slugthrower Pistol (4 damage, +1 for the Success). Looks like the system works as intended and should work in practice. A strange choice of hypothetical, then.

To your baseball bat example: As a variety of sources will tell you, and as I can say from personal experience, blunt force travels very well through plate armor, so if anything you could think of getting a bonus to do damage (though not to hit), maybe giving a baseball bat Pierce 2 against plate. In any case, let's call it a Gaffi Stick. The good news is that plate armor typically creates glancing surfaces that deflect the force of a blow, which might give you a chance at literally avoiding any damage. And plate armor is represented by what's worn by the game's only "knights" (the Star Paladins from Nexus of Power): "reforged star armor". Look at that: a little soak (2) and a little defense (1). That defense STILL has a 1-in-3 chance of doing nothing to stop the blow (blank sides), and might not even lessen the hit (Threat coming up, instead of Failure).

A lot of folks have already said this in this thread: play with the rules that make you happy. But do it intelligently.

Remember we are still talking int the abstract for this systen one roll in this system does not equal one hit nor does one lot of damage equal one hit either , unless the narrative justifies it to be so. A shot or a hit on your armor can break through the armor to cause dmg , it can bounce off the armor due to lack of momentum, it can glance off the armor, in the case of energy blasts it can be deflected or dispersed by the material , it can be any or all of these and more soak is how much is mitigated amongst the hit or hits from the roll, and defense is the amount that glances off, is deflected /reflected/ dipersed or just outright blocked.

Dont over think it we are dealing with abstract figures using a narrative system in a made up world if you want life like look up a system called phoenix command and have a go at navigating its dmg charts.

Even the system itself is based on cinematicism (think I just made a new word there... go me), and when has the cinema been realistic. Bullet shots knock people off their feet by a couple of yards , cinematic that may be, but if that was real life the same kick back would be felt by the shooter(according to Newtons laws)

One easy way to handle this would be to treat personal defence dice the way you treat starship defence dice: there's a hard cap of 4 setback dice for defence, regardless of sourse. As for boost dice, I have a rule at my table that each player can only pass along AND benefit from one "give a boost die to the next active character" and one "give a boost die to a specific character" options on the table.

I agree on both accounts.

If you shoot me with a BB gun at 15 ft. - then... okay. If I put on a Flak Jacket, and you try again - that Flak Jacket doesn't suddenly make me harder to hit, or somehow make you forget to aim. In RPG's... it does.

Now I shoot you in the face with that BB gun. Your issue is to deal with the abstraction. And in RPGs is a broad overgeneralization because this whole armor makes it harder to hit is a very american, very dungeon and dragons centric trope.

There are tons and tons of RPGs which simply do only make armor give you some form of soak. And ironically the equivalent to your flak jacket example would be the padded armor, which gives zero defense and two points of soak. Same for stormtrooper armor ;-)

The amount of armor with zero defense outnumbers those with defense rating in this system and those with defense value reduce the target silhouette in many cases or have reflective properties, like the personal deflector shield which adds 2 points of defense, lightsabers which add a few points, etc

You need literally to fire or hit past those things to apply damage, not through them, not gonna happen that your shot pierces that lightsaber blade or gungan energy shield.

And again, it is not about being harder to hit, it about harder to hit in a effective way. I mean sure, a guy with a tower shield is for sure easier to hit, but not hitting that shield and actually hitting the man is harder. Making a good cut against platemail is not really gonna happen. And getting past a shield in melee is in general btw hard, those weapons are indeed crazy good defensively.

There are for sure other systems to deal with this, making all combat checks opposed or competitive for example is a very common way to do this, whoever wins that check, deals damage in melee and defensive gear adds soak and boosts to those checks. Easy peasy, I like the agone, per aspera and ubiqui systems for handling those stuff that way. FFGSWRPG is going for a more abstract way and includes those factors directly into the dice pool, it even includes options for counter attacks via difficulty upgrades. A despair in melee attack usually does not mean that slip on a banana, but that your opponent did something to you, something bad and hurtful, like for example kicking your legs away and making you go fall flat prone on your ass.

And btw, if you have any doubts about shields making it harder to hit, feel free to visit your local hema group and just try to hit someone with that baseball bat when he is using a shield. Not gonna happen, especially when you have to keep away from his 110cm steel at the same time

I would agree with the shields, I suppose. I mean, originally, I was thinking about it in a way that it's usually considered part of the Armor category. Classically, that's what they were. But in the modern era, it's been known to be more like a Weapon with an inherent Defensive Quality. And, I suspect it should be reflected as such.

A Personal Shield Generator, though. Ehhhh... it's not exactly like the old Sword and Board kind of thing. But, whatever, I'm not going to get that technical with this.

I understand FFG:SW is based in the abstract. I even mentioned it as such. And really, it's why I'm more forgiving of this particular system than I am in other systems. I mean, the dice alone - even if you're hit... there is still Threat to consider, Despair potentially... I mean, it accounts for a gray area that a typical binary dice system doesn't account for. So, it's less an issue in this game.

The only thing that bugs me is the Defense stacking. Even in the abstraction, standing in Cover should not have anything to do with your Armor. But mechanically, it just does. And... that's unfortunate. Not to mention however else one manages to obtain Defense.

But, whatever. Like I said, it's just a pet peeve. I still don't see how Armor as a deflective or redirective tool adds Attack Avoidance when the target being attacked is wearing it. I mean... you're going to feel something. And in my book, that something is damage. At the very least, it's strain.

None of the arguments raised in this thread in favor of Armor's association with Defense really stands outside of the narrative (abstraction as you put it.) And even without the abstraction, the arguments don't really stand. And when the abstraction can't discern between Cover and Armor... then it just kind of fails in general. Its only saving grace is the dice mechanic and the gray area that it provides. But in principle, Armor should be based purely in Damage Reduction, because that's all it does.

Unless Armor can somehow perform it's function without suffering from a successful hit... then there's really no point in trying to defend the convention as far as I can tell. I'm not trying to be a jerk about it, but that's just the simplicity of how things work.

Look at it this way:

If you shoot me with a BB gun at 15 ft. - then... okay. If I put on a Flak Jacket, and you try again - that Flak Jacket doesn't suddenly make me harder to hit, or somehow make you forget to aim. In RPG's... it does.

If you swing a baseball bat at me and hit me - okay. If I fully deck myself out in some nifty plate mail, and you try again - the plate mail doesn't suddenly make me harder to hit, nor does it effect your ability to swing a bat at a huge metal thing. In RPG's... it does.

It's non-sense. I don't understand how this is a hard concept to wrap the mind around, really...

It's harder concept to wrap your mind around if you haven't worn armor or researched the experience of those who have.

I know I'm not the only one on these boards in the former camp (we have plenty of ex-military on here who could likely speak as well as I can), but your examples are terrible, but for different reasons.

You seem to have trouble with the abstractions upon which games like RPGs are based, so let's skip over your fallacious suggestion that the rules ever suggest that armor makes someone "forget to aim". Let's instead talk about the physical realities.

To your BB example: Armor can serve to absorb force or redirect it. A flak jacket does a little of both, but it's basically a 2 Soak Catch Vest or Padded Armor, with no Defense. It was designed to absorb ballistic (more or less blunt) trauma. Combined with an average (2) Brawn (let's assume your Brawn is average) it should consistently stop or mostly mitigate the effect of a Slugthrower Pistol (4 damage, +1 for the Success). Looks like the system works as intended and should work in practice. A strange choice of hypothetical, then.

To your baseball bat example: As a variety of sources will tell you, and as I can say from personal experience, blunt force travels very well through plate armor, so if anything you could think of getting a bonus to do damage (though not to hit), maybe giving a baseball bat Pierce 2 against plate. In any case, let's call it a Gaffi Stick. The good news is that plate armor typically creates glancing surfaces that deflect the force of a blow, which might give you a chance at literally avoiding any damage. And plate armor is represented by what's worn by the game's only "knights" (the Star Paladins from Nexus of Power): "reforged star armor". Look at that: a little soak (2) and a little defense (1). That defense STILL has a 1-in-3 chance of doing nothing to stop the blow (blank sides), and might not even lessen the hit (Threat coming up, instead of Failure).

A lot of folks have already said this in this thread: play with the rules that make you happy. But do it intelligently.

I don't think it's a matter of having worn armor or researched those who have, really. I think you're trying to appeal to some authority of knowledge that doesn't really matter here.

It's Armor. If you don't hit it, it doesn't do anything. In an RPG, there is a To-Hit roll, and then there is a Damage Roll. The To-Hit Roll is either yes or it's no. If it's no... then nothing happens. Which means that Armor hasn't done anything. But in the mechanics... apparently it did do something.

The only way that makes sense is when you consider the narrative (the abstraction as you put it.) I'm all for good abstraction. But when there's a problem with the mechanics like Cover and Armor (two completely different things) being associated to the same Stat, and they don't stack... something needs to be adjusted. And since Armor technically shouldn't be associated with Defense in the first place, it seems to me that it should be altered. This way, you don't have to worry about the issues with Stacking things.

That's really all I'm trying to say.

♫ This is the thread that never ends. Yes it goes on and on my friends... ♫

I can see where some people are coming from, given the irrational rationale for Attack and Damage in an RPG.

Some GMs try to get really in depth with their description of combat. Far more than just dice versus stats, they get into the cinematics of combat and describe how one shot narrowly misses, or another shot glances off the armor, and some shots strike true. Other GMs just look at number vs number and anything that isn't a hit is assumed to be a miss. The shot goes wide, the end. Even if you're a flat footed, plate armored dwarf, and the attack missed by 1 point.

Looking at combat in D&D, your defense is a combination of your Dexterity allowing you to avoid the hit, and your armor preventing the damage. I've always tried to keep those 2 numbers distinct in my mind when GM'ing, and if an attack exceeds your Dex but not your armor, then the attack still hit but the armor absorbed the damage. If an attack doesn't even meet your Dex, then the attack missed completely.

In that same regard, the SWRPG Defense would present the Dexterity avoidance side, and the Soak would reflect the armor absorption side. If your Defensive Lightsaber / Shield is able to fend off the incoming blaster bolt, then there's nothing impacting the armor or your body. If it does impact the armor, then you only take damage if the armor doesn't absorb it all.

In which case, I agree with the folks saying that armor should add to Soak, and not to Defense. Blaster bolts glancing off laminate, knives sliding off leather jackets... those are just ways to describe the armor soaking all the damage before your Brawn had to soak any of it. If your Parry / Reflect / shield / cover wasn't able to prevent the strike from landing, the armor is going to try and prevent bodily harm. So once the attack gets past the Defense, some measure of the potential damage is Soaked up by your armor and natural endurance, before finally counting as Wounds.

In that same regard, the SWRPG Defense would present the Dexterity avoidance side, and the Soak would reflect the armor absorption side. If your Defensive Lightsaber / Shield is able to fend off the incoming blaster bolt, then there's nothing impacting the armor or your body. If it does impact the armor, then you only take damage if the armor doesn't absorb it all.

Now that you mention it, I think Skill Monkey had a great episode on reading dice results, and paying close attention to where things came from.

So, if your only Success came from a blue Boost die, then the way to narrate that scene would be to focus on how important that boost was.

If your only Threat came from black Setback dice, then the fact that you’re suffering strain (or whatever) is solely due to the environmental effects that resulted in the setback.

I think this process is very much in the same vein as what you have described, and I think a better understanding of this would likewise help Raice.

The more you understand about where what result came from, the better you can narrate the outcome.

Any news and update on the situation from the Devs ??

Are they at least working on this issue?

Thanks

No. I'd imagine it would be an article announcement if they launched some kind of errata or pass through the rules, and I wouldn't expect that to occur until the base line is all out.

Roger thanks for the update !

"Show first unread post"

A nice feature with some nice bugs.

Defense is a joke IMO, I had a character hit 1k xp and had all the tasty armor talents and never had those defense die work for me.

Most of your soak is based on your ability to fist fight with t-rexs naked, armor doesn't help all that much. Thankfully, the easiest way to survive a shootout is to not get sucked into them.

Defense is a joke IMO, I had a character hit 1k xp and had all the tasty armor talents and never had those defense die work for me.

Most of your soak is based on your ability to fist fight with t-rexs naked, armor doesn't help all that much. Thankfully, the easiest way to survive a shootout is to not get sucked into them.

As myself and others have noted here and elsewhere, YMMV.

I've had defense dice prove a major factor in whether a PC of mine got tagged, especially melee defense (Thank you multiple ranks in Defensive Training!). And I've had defense dice do zilch, including seeing one fellow player in a game I was in have the same luck as you've had with them while another player's bacon was constantly saved by that one extra failure that came up more often than not for her; and since the GM did his dice rolls in the open, was easy to see when those setback dice had an effect and when they didn't.

I can see the devs' concern about having too many sources of defense pile up, melee defense especially now that there are a number of weapons that provide the Defensive quality. And maybe that's part of the delay in getting an updated ruling on defense stacking, is trying to find that happy middle ground between making it useful and keeping things from getting out of hand.

I've had defense dice prove a major factor in whether a PC of mine got tagged, especially melee defense (Thank you multiple ranks in Defensive Training!). And I've had defense dice do zilch, including seeing one fellow player in a game I was in have the same luck as you've had with them while another player's bacon was constantly saved by that one extra failure that came up more often than not for her; and since the GM did his dice rolls in the open, was easy to see when those setback dice had an effect and when they didn't.

I can see the devs' concern about having too many sources of defense pile up, melee defense especially now that there are a number of weapons that provide the Defensive quality. And maybe that's part of the delay in getting an updated ruling on defense stacking, is trying to find that happy middle ground between making it useful and keeping things from getting out of hand.

When we didn't read the rules properly and had armour defensive ratings stack, our melee jedi had a shield (def 2), armoured clothing (def 1), and a deflector shield (def 2) he'd turn on for serious fights. Def 5 is almost impossible to hit! There was a slight problem there too in that the shield is supposed to be able to run out... which seems like a great way to spend Advantage on a missed hit. Except with that much defence, you get no net success *or* advantage.

More reasonable when we stopped stacking armour, but if you drop stacking entirely then he's on 2.

(One thing I'd like if they do redo the system and fix dodge would be a way to specialise for advantage vs specialising for success- so you wouldn't end up with these 'can't win at either' situations.Tthey had that in WHFRP3e with the Reckless vs Cautious stances, but like everything in that system they overcomplicated them :/)

Defense is also a defense against being critically wounded, as those injuries could really bring someone down, even if the wounds don't.

Had one wookie marauder/medic with a soak of just 6 (ahahahah) and could regenerate more then his life total in a combat check. A recent session he squared off against an assassin alone (we had got spilt up after a double trumph on a droid check voided the casino to space, forcing us all to dash through various entrances). The assassin staggered him in the first round for 1 damage due to poison and the next critted him, the crit that came up was "the end is nigh", thus paralysis we were able to hear his final moments gurgled over a comlink as he tried to hold his throat together unsuccessfully. Ironically being staggered for two rounds killed him.