Hiya folks, been forum lurking here for about a month now, and learned a lot of cool stuff to use as a player and a GM, so I am hoping for some more guidance. I used to be exclusively a DM for years, but school / work / life got in the way, and I havent been able to do it for quite awhile, but we got together and decided id run a 2 player star wars (Me and 2 players). What are some things I need to keep in mind with a small party, or what should I include? I have some specific questions too, aside from any imput yall have.

1. Once the players obtain a ship, should it come with a droid pilot, be it an astromech or PC build droid that levels up as they do?

2. Starting obligation / duty, what is an appropriate number?

3. From what I have seen, on average in combat, is one rival to one player, or one group of 3 minions to 1 player. Is this about right? This is one of the harder things for me to understand because I am much more used to the DnD, Pathfinder, Fate, and Gurps systems where it is more clear how strong something is.

4. Similar to question 1, I have seen some mention of companions. I have seen suggestions of building them as rivals and as PCs. Im thinking I would be the one to control them, in essence so we could have bigger battles instead of always a small skirmish.

Hey there.

Welcome to the forums.

It is perfectly viable to play with just two players (or even one).

Firstly, the smaller the party, the smaller their capabilities. As such the presented challenges have to be appropiate and solvable by just two people (or provide oppertunity for help, if the problem is not within the characters expertise).

Talk with you players about what the focus of the game should be. Like space piracy and therefor ship to ship combat. Or a more focused approach on social interactions, like politics (but not terrible like the prequels ).

I always had an Idea in the back of my head for a Bounty Hunter Dream Tream Duo campaign, for example.

To you questions.

1. From this I assume neither player has focus or even skill points in piloting. You don't necessarily need to provide a pilot droid though, even someone with no skill and average agility may still fly.

again this depends on the focus of the game. A lot of space stuff? A pilot would be handy. Just cruising from planet to planet? Let them do it.

2. The guideline in the EotE CRB says 20 starting obligation per player for 2 player parties. This also allows each to take up to 20 extra obligation. Again, this helps to smooth over the restrictions of only having two people in the crew, by providing more credits and XP.

*edit* Not really familiar with the Duty system from AoG, so I can't really comment on this one.

3. This is indeed tricky, it took me several sessions to feel it out when I first started GMing. You can easily do the same. Start off with some Minions, maybe even individual ones, at least to get used to the combat rules.

If it proves too easy, you can try upping it to a Minion group and a Rival. It definitly took me some time to gauge this correctly and is still tough for me.

I may or may not have recently gone overkill on the Rival to face a newly joined up player that beat the snot out of him.

4. My party has some NPCs in their crew. Some of them I control absolutely.

They also have an Astromech droid though. I usually ask them what they want him to do or they just tell me to begin with. Kind of like a group controlled rival-level PC.

I would say this depends on what feels right to you and your players. Especially with a small party, having a lot of NPC allies around can really bog things down, and may or may not result in the GM solving the players problems half the time.

I've also only been playing this game since january, so I hope this helps a little.

1. Once the players obtain a ship, should it come with a droid pilot, be it an astromech or PC build droid that levels up as they do?

Your call. I think the real question is: Do you want to have space-based vehicle encounter that require a serious pilot?

The way this system works space combat can get a little tricky to plan. One think you need to notice is that "Pilot" Specs have talents that allow the character to enhance the vehicle he's piloting. So a character with Talents like Defensive Driving, Full Throttle, and High-G training can, from the perspective of encounter design, change the stats of the vehicle he's piloting for the better.

So, if you want your space encounters to be fancy and complex, then you'll need to figure something out.

If the players are more interested in the on-the-ground portion and you can do space combat as just the occasional need to man the turrets, a simple NPC pilot with some skill dice and not much else will usually be fine.

2. Starting obligation / duty, what is an appropriate number?

The rulebooks cover this.

3. From what I have seen, on average in combat, is one rival to one player, or one group of 3 minions to 1 player. Is this about right? This is one of the harder things for me to understand because I am much more used to the DnD, Pathfinder, Fate, and Gurps systems where it is more clear how strong something is.

It's a little more complex then this, but for just starting out, this isn't a bad way to think of it. As you play more you'll get the hang of it quick.

The big thing is that Star Wars is a little less combat-driven then the D20 system tends to be, with dungeon crawl as one of it's primary intended play modes and XP rewards based on enemies defeated. With the narrative more in the spotlight, combats in Star Wars tend to be less about providing a combat challenge, and more about providing story points. The shield bunker will be guarded by biker scouts no matter your XP level because the Empire uses scout troopers to run recon and operate field assignments. That's it. It's not like D20 where they'll be upgraded to Darktroopers at some point to allow CRs to match because the game expects those troopers to be stuck in the room of a dungeon, unable to call for help or perform any function beyond standing in that room and attacking any adventurer that enters.

Now, as the GM you can always adjust the details. Four ungrouped scout troopers isn't the same combat-wise as a dozen with a Sgt. and an element on bikes... So if you expect the players to fight their way through them as part of a serious combat, you can ramp it up.

But... you can also build the encounter in other ways...

One group of 3 scouts aren't much of a threat.... but, they make illustrate an imperial presence. Which may be all you need. So what if the players grease em in no time? Yesterday the players thought they were alone, now they know they aren't.

Two ungroupped scouts are almost laughable in combat....but if you change the dynamic, they may be scary as all get out, just not because of their blasters. "Ok... you gotta get past those scouts. If you fire your blasters or slugthrowers, the sensor tower will detect the report and activate an alarm. If the Scouts radio back to base, the alarm will activate. Remember, you've seen AT-STs all over, so if the alarm goes off it's a good bet that's what will show up, and you don't have the means to stop an AT-ST."

4. Similar to question 1, I have seen some mention of companions. I have seen suggestions of building them as rivals and as PCs. Im thinking I would be the one to control them, in essence so we could have bigger battles instead of always a small skirmish.

Depends on what you mean, and what you have in mind. Making them as Rivals, Nemesis, or PCs is ok if it's just one or two guys.

If you want to go big though, you'll actually want minions so the players can use Squad rules ( see AoR GM Kit) which allows you to attach pretty large sized minion groups to the players, enhancing the players survivability and offensive capabilities without bogging down the game with more initiative slots.

4. I suggest having them build a companion, if any of the PCs have a rank in Mechanics and/or Computers. (Use the crafting rules in SPECIAL MODIFICATIONS.)

I ran a 2-PC session the other day and they spent the first hour building and tweaking a combat bot, who then accompanied them on a little romp. They got some personality quirks on their roll programming the droid's brain, and I had a lot of fun tweaking that and keeping the players on their (20) toes.

Hiya folks, been forum lurking here for about a month now, and learned a lot of cool stuff to use as a player and a GM, so I am hoping for some more guidance. I used to be exclusively a DM for years, but school / work / life got in the way, and I havent been able to do it for quite awhile, but we got together and decided id run a 2 player star wars (Me and 2 players). What are some things I need to keep in mind with a small party, or what should I include? I have some specific questions too, aside from any imput yall have.

1. Once the players obtain a ship, should it come with a droid pilot, be it an astromech or PC build droid that levels up as they do?

Players can buy the auto-pilot droid brain from fly casual for their ship, it has two points of piloting, can modded up to rank 4 and can use the agility rating of a player who assists the droid brain. Which means that combat characters with high agility values make the droid brain a perfect valid pilot, just the modding might be expensive if you have no characters with high mechanic skills. (see special modifications for prices for that)

Besides that, remember that you only roll piloting checks for extreme maneuvers. Just landing, traveling out of the mass shadow to make the jump into hyperspace is not worthy of rolling dice. Flying with high speed into a dense asteroid field or trying to get rid of someone who cases you is.

1. pilot isn´t necessary, but it depends on the fokus of your game.

2. 20 starting Obligation + maximum 20 extra (20 xp and 2500 bucks)

3. That is the big question every GM has to find an answer for.

For my two player game in the beginning I just used very small minion groups: like 3 groups with 2 Minions each, Or just one rival,

later on I stacked the groups up when the pcs grew stronger, right now (PCs are around 170 XP and a third player met up with us) I normaly can use 1-2 Rivals and 2-3 Minionsgroup with 4 Members (4 LP, soak 3, lightblasters) at once. As I just recently found out the pcs are a bit out maneuvert when I put the enemys on swoopbikes ... but well it´s always a learning by doing.

4. If you make them companions do it like it feels good to fit in.

The players i mentioned befor found an old abbandonded Asteroidbase and decided to use it as a base. Therefore I let them find people all across that would gladly help them out there.

right now there are two ex-emperial soldiers (one Captain [has 2 talents Field commander & Coordinated Assault] and one Sniper [also 2 special talents True Aim1 and Lethal Blow2 ) Rivals with a Strain limit, a Dathomir witch on rival level with strain and a minion group of 5 Dathomir witch warriors.

If they decide to take one or more of these guys from base into actuall play I play them but always in a more or less passive way, they won´t resolve any problems for the players (like telling them the best way to go into the base and destroy the energyreactor), but they will give hints whenever the SCs are totaly stuck (Like rembering them that he could use his snipescope to observe the room on the other side of the street, or by telling them something important (s)he overheard on the streets like: Hey I think the guards will shift the watch at 9 p.m.)

1) They have their ship, give them piloting or gunnery duties

2) What ever the RAW says,,,, is it about 20 each for 2 players? I'm AFB

3) Start with 3 minions first and slowly upgrade

4) Our Gm threw in some B1 batttle driods. We kept them instead of selling them for comic relief (roger, roger) and 3 NPCs who may or may not stick with us as story dictates - one's a doctor and another is a hired gun for combat assitance