Regardless of how it is narrated the stormtroopers in the case I described did as much damage as a result of their own actions as the PC did as a result of theirs. In fact the stormtroopers own action has the same effect mechanically as turning a blaster pistol on themselves. The very fact that strain causes as much damage as threat rolled and bypasses soak, you would be better off forcing the stormtrooper through checks for skills they don't have as this will cause more DMG to them than some of the better blaster rifles.

Sounds like good tactics to me. "****, our little blaster pistols barely do anything to their armor! Let's lead them through this deadly swamp/heavy traffic/droid factory and let their own screwups take them out!"

Any with own screwups you mean occasional throwing them down into chasm when they attack you, leading them into flying through an asteroid field or making them do complex jumps or simply decide to break the chase. I think I saw all those a series of movies, if I just could remember the name of the series.

scnr. But yeah, I agree, it good old cinematic, narrative style to show how badass the character are when they deal with environmental problems which kill lesser people downright. The chances of survival are …

Any with own screwups you mean occasional throwing them down into chasm when they attack you, leading them into flying through an asteroid field or making them do complex jumps or simply decide to break the chase. I think I saw all those a series of movies, if I just could remember the name of the series.

scnr. But yeah, I agree, it good old cinematic, narrative style to show how badass the character are when they deal with environmental problems which kill lesser people downright. The chances of survival are …

Or how about you are captured and defeat your opponent with his own perception check as he trys to pat you down for weapons. As a GM you can still narrate the cool stuff young describe ,there is nothing stopping that but giving the players the tactical choice to cause strain DMG takes the decision off the GM when there is so much other cool stuff you can do with it.

My point is this, the major difference is that using threat this way is significantly more powerful than success from the players checks. Again this makes the player's successes second fiddle to your opponents threat rolls. At the end of the day its up to you how to play it but IMO threat shouldn't be more powerful than success when it comes to damage

Or how about you are captured and defeat your opponent with his own perception check as he trys to pat you down for weapons. As a GM you can still narrate the cool stuff young describe ,there is nothing stopping that but giving the players the tactical choice to cause strain DMG takes the decision of the GM when there is so much other cool stuff you can do with it.

As GM you do not narrate this cool stuff in, your players do. They tell you why he stormtrooper dies WHILE trying to open the door, and he dies not from trying to open the door, but while doing it. Besides lockpicking is over the head of this minion, so why even try and not call for reinforcements and a specialist instead?

And getting beaten while trying to search someone must be one of the oldest movie tropes in history. The heroes always have the enemies come close and engage with a weapon search and then is this as the perfect timing to start that daring escape, knockdown the guy searching them (minions search action), grab his weapon (pc maneuver), start running (second maneuver) and start shooting (action).

Sorry but I edited my post.

Examples brawl check against an armored stormtrooper does 6 DMG, causing 1 total DMG.

A stormtrooper's perception check (difficult upgraded twice) allows you to cause significant DMG bypassing soak, and the player did nothing to bring this about, the stormtrooper did. Play how you like but doesn't this screw over the person putting points in brawl because the person who put points in stealth can easily out damage him by letting a stormtrooper search for a hidden it item.

Any with own screwups you mean occasional throwing them down into chasm when they attack you, leading them into flying through an asteroid field or making them do complex jumps or simply decide to break the chase. I think I saw all those a series of movies, if I just could remember the name of the series.

scnr. But yeah, I agree, it good old cinematic, narrative style to show how badass the character are when they deal with environmental problems which kill lesser people downright. The chances of survival are …

While I understand that and can run with it on occasion, how about more ridiculous ideas. Single Stormtrooper shows up , instead of shooting him because you know on average you are going to take 2 shots to kill and you might take damage, instead you tactically shut the door on the closet you are hiding knowing that be is going to screw up his skulduggery check enough that one maybe 2 checks is all that its going to take for him to kill himself or knock himself out.

Or how about you are captured and defeat your opponent with his own perception check as he trys to pat you down for weapons. As a GM you can still narrate the cool stuff young describe ,there is nothing stopping that but giving the players the tactical choice to cause strain DMG takes the decision off the GM when there is so much other cool stuff you can do with it.

My point is this, the major difference is that using threat this way is significantly more powerful than success from the players checks. Again this makes the player's successes second fiddle to your opponents threat rolls. At the end of the day its up to you how to play it but IMO threat shouldn't be more powerful than success when it comes to damage

Keep in mind that "defeating" an opponent -- especially a minion -- does not necessarily mean you kill them. The perception check threats can cause him to be distracted and turn away in the middle of searching you, allowing you to escape. There are all kinds of things that can happen as a result of a threat on a check that, mechanically, eliminate the minion from the encounter without actually injuring or killing them. Enough of those threats could be that they just got new orders and were sent somewhere else to cut you off or deal with something more important to their commander than you are. Congratulations! You just defeated the minion without firing a shot.

I understand where you are coming from, but I think you miss my points completely

Point 1, how would you feel about saying to a PC that each of their advantages cause 1 additional dmg to their opponent this could be narrated as lethal or non lethal DMG and the damage ignored all soak (ie has breach) even if their attack missed. Kind of seems over powered doesn't it, even so this still requires your PC to take an action,

Now tell him to forget that , you can do the same thing only instead of your roll, you can do this when your opponent tries to do something whither or not he succeds or fails, in fact the more successful your opponent is the more likely those negative dice rolled threat. So now you have the opposite of what we would all consider overpowered if it was in the players hands, being handed to the same PC on a plate without asking the PC to lift a finger. IE success was given to them by their opponents, and that success is dependant on them rolling threat in a skill check (BTW have you noticed, statistically the dice are biased to roll success with threat)

Point 2 - the DMG caused this way is not reliant on how good the PC is at doing something but how likely your opponent is at rolling threat, so things like setback dice on your opponents roll become more important than success on your own roll. A character with 3 brawn and rolling 3 success (1 DMG after soak) can be equalled in damage to his opponent succeeding on an attack roll but rolling 1 threat), the DMG to the stormtrooper is the same in both cases So in what world does a successful roll from a stormtrooper become more significant to the story or plot then the player trying to smack him down with a brawl check.

EDIT- in fact this encourages the players to, tactically,go for a load of defensive talents but completely forego offense , so they can ignore their attackers and make easy skill checks doing anything but attack their opponents so that they can recover strain, so that they can keep boosting their opponents difficulty so that they roll more threat, it should never be about how bad your opponent is but how awesome your players are

It also messes with the balance of talents like overbalance (spend three threat or despair to stagger an opponent, against a 10 soak opponent it would be better to cause three DMG as it would bee the equivalent of a 13 DMG hit)

Soresu Masters are considered by many as nearly undefeatable because of the defensive strength. And did you just claim that someone with 5 ranks of dodge and 3 ranks of sidestep is not awesome, but the guys shooting at him are just bad? All reactive actions are dealt via the pool system, your character is doing something even outside of his own actions, which is his contribution to the pool and his choice based on the narrative use of despair and threat. Threat are not disadvantages, they are actual threat made possible by an action. A double despair can literally vaporize your ship and the whole crew in starship combat and that is fine, that i the part I love about the his narrative dice pool system. This is a "tell the story of the dice" system instead of the typical "roll the dice to see if it really happens as you have imagined".

And while you are correct, forcing people to do stuff that they are not good at will usually cause them stress or get minions even killed. But that is still an action which makes this happen, so they take this risk willingly. You know the stories of non-electricians getting fried because they fiddle with their house electrics? Thats your minions trying to override that door controls. Waiting for that rival specialist with a decent skill to do that sounds like a rather logical move to me.

Indeed those defensive talents are one core element to a character's combat strength and one of the reasons why the adversary talent is so strong.

So there are some things you're missing here. First of all, the GM gets to rule on how all this threat is spent. In many of your examples, the GM is allowing ridiculous behavior. A stormtrooper taking a stray blaster hit is perfectly reasonable. An enemy suddenly passing out while patting down a prisoner is unreasonable. The GM is well within his rights to say, "No, that's stupid. Think of something else." Even with the stray blaster bolt, the GM needs to decide what to allow. If he wants to get the fight over with, and the players are kind of slogging through it, causing strain is great. On the other hand, if he wants things to last a bit longer, he can say that the blaster bolt singed the trooper, or caused a lot of fire and smoke next to him, so he takes some Setback instead of Strain. Or he's been driven out of cover, or whatever. The players offer suggestions, and the GM gets to tweak that suggestion.

As for the stormtrooper trying to pick the lock on a blast door, okay, I'll bite. First off, I have no idea why he would try to do that. He's gonna radio in and say, "Open the blast doors! Open the blast doors!" Or maybe, "I have the rebels locked down here, send some reinforcements and a tech to get this door open."

But lets say he does decide to pick the lock. Realize that even if the GM allows the threat to cause strain, it's gonna take 6 threat to put him down. That is a crapton of threat! If he rolls 6 threat, and my players say, "I think he just touched a pair of high-voltage wires and made himself part of the circuit," I'm gonna give it to 'em! "You hear tinkering behind the door, then a loud CRACK! The door slides open, and you see the stormtrooper lying on the floor, his boots and helmet across the room, and his hair standing on end, smoking. His eyes are wide open, but he doesn't seem to see you. He just lays there, twitching, muttering, 'Muh! M... muh!"

@ The Grand Falloon , yes thats correct, however if you go back to the start of the thread it was about firstly gms spending threat to cause dmg to minions and rivals, which btw im fine with as long as it fits the narrative.Threat is an excellent way to go about doing cool things to the bad guys, however, about 2 posts in, it moves to players spending threat from the opponents rolls to cause strain dmg for minions and rivals, it is this last part I have a problem with as a GM.

Although it does call out the GM can allow the players to choose how to spend threat , personally im against them using it as a case for just straight causing dmg to the NPCs (at least via strain) firstly it shows a lack of imagination , its also imbalanced since , for a player to cause X damage with an attack they have do cause X + Soak. Whereas, here, soak isnt in the equation as one strain to a rival or minion is one dmg and it woukd ignore armor.

I would, never, by default leave them the option of spending the strain, but im not against saying to the players "what about..." oand I am always open to suggestion about how to use the threat.

My only exception to this, is if a PC has taken the time and spent the xp to get any talent that calls for the use of threat or despair in it, for example overbalance or many of the reactionary lightsaber talents , in which case if the situation applies theb that PC is getting first choice on it.

And please stop twisting what I am saying and putting words in my mouth, I am just trying to point out the abuses / unfair situations that can occur by allowing the PCs by default to cause strain dmg to rivals and minions

Eg

And did you just claim that someone with 5 ranks of dodge and 3 ranks of sidestep is not awesome, but the guys shooting at him are just bad?

No, im just trying to say that letting pcs cause strain dmg on rivals and minions[ie effectively allowing the NPCs to defeat themselves using their own rolls] firstly a/ takes away from the PC with 5 ranks of blaster skill who can now be outdamaged by the guy with 5 ranks of dodge and b/ makes the whole system a bit topsy turvy because its now no longer about how good the PCs can perform against their opponents but how bad the opponents can be against the PCs. Personally I want my PCs making the attack rolls or using the talents they have bought to defeat their opponents. Not have the opponents take themselves out the game just because they roll threat ( at least not becausen the GM is too lazy to come up with a better way to spend the threat and the PCs just call strain dmg once again because its a rival or minion, and it happens to be the easiest way to defeat them, as I also said those defensive talents get cheapened by this also IMO

And did you just claim that someone with 5 ranks of dodge and 3 ranks of sidestep is not awesome, but the guys shooting at him are just bad?

In the above example with the npc attacking (3 green 3 purple and a black due to the sde step) and the PCs choosing to cause strain dmg the attacker did 6 dmg to himself over 6 attacks. Now the pc attacking(2 yellow, 1 green vs 3 purp 1 blck, npc has no defensive talents) The PC landed 2 hits one for 7 dmg and one for 8. If he had been attacking a rival with 5 soak he did 5 dmg. So the attacking Npc caused more dmg to himself than the Pc caused to him.Im not going to take away the fact that the guy with side step shouldnt be harder to hit(he should) but I have trouble with the game when that NPC outperforms the PC when it comes to the dmg caused on himself

Syrath I think your accidentally getting caught up in these Isolated/made up scenarios and forgetting the bigger picture. Yes it is powerful to use every threat generated by an NPC to cause strain damage, but sometimes you really need other things to happen, not every scenario is about bringing all the bad guys down. It's also not as likely that every single roll from an NPC will even generate Threat.

If a minion group is defeated with strain damage then I as GM would be happy to say they have laid down their arms and surrendered, possibly not every time but often enough (or in a social/narrative encounter are no longer taking part). The PC's then have a couple of choices; leave no witnesses and Murder them, leave them and suffer the long term consequences, or take those Minions with them and have to continue the adventure with tag along POW's!

Keep in mind that Damage in this system does not necessarily mean injury (only Criticals are actual Injuries), and a PC/NPC's Wound Threshold is only a measure of how much the aforementioned Damage they can take before being rendered unable to act. So a Minion or Rival that takes Damage from Strain can, and probably should, be considered out of the fight but not dead. So if you think your Players are using their Advantages this way too much, which you have every right to do, and you want to encourage them to diversify the use of them then do as has already been suggested and have the minions run, surrender, play opossum, or whatever. After a while of having to deal with potential prisoners they will find other things to spend their Advantages on.

As for Minions spending their Advantages on reducing Strain/Wounds, there is no RAW against it and because Damage is somewhat nebulas anyway, recovering a point or two in a round can be narrated as getting a second wind, or increased determination to fight on, or whatever. I'm all for this as it only really makes Minions/Rivals a tiny bit more difficult to overcome and last a little longer. Anything to keep the tension up in Combat is a good thing. However, if you find yourself over using this and not spending your Advantages on other cool things, feel free to not do it all the time either

Yes and I conpletely agree with you but I suppose what I perhaps didnt make clear, is that I dont think that letting the PCs (always) decide what to do with threat is a good move, and also allowingnthe PCs the option of selecting Strain dmg. In certainly always open to suggestion. Eg I have no problem narrating that an enemy in space combat takes a shot and misses with severalnthreat, then, narratively sayung thst the enemy ship hits some relevant obstacle and flies through the debris field and goes spinning into the abyss, provided that the narrative makes sense, sssuming enough threat was rolled to jusstify, but not because the PCs decided to spend the threat on causing strain dmg to the pilot.

Incapacitated doesn't necessarily mean dead, or even unconscious, just incapable of having any further direct effect during the encounter. I have minions that exceed their thresholds run away, go catatonic, and surrender all the time. Same goes for PCs; I let players narrate their incapacitation. One guy played dead.

In short: yes, you could strain out minions, but that's not interesting.

Not only is it not interestibg it can come about without any intervention from any PC, which is what I mean it cheapens their accomplishments. I love that the system can do this, but spending threat and despair (except the exception I mentioned before) should be (and unless you house rule it) is in the hands of the GM.

Edit and the Gm should use it in as interesting and cinematic way possible and yes sometimes that does mean throwing them over to the players. I suppose my whole argument should have been summed up, - Letting your players cause damage with threat is overpowered, uninteresting, and IMO a waste of threat. Since when did passing a boost die to a player (another -boring -use of threat) equate to being about the same effectiveness as 2 extra damage that ignores soak.

Not only is it not interestibg it can come about without any intervention from any PC, which is what I mean it cheapens their accomplishments. I love that the system can do this, but spending threat and despair (except the exception I mentioned before) should be (and unless you house rule it) is in the hands of the GM.

Edit and the Gm should use it in as interesting and cinematic way possible and yes sometimes that does mean throwing them over to the players. I suppose my whole argument should have been summed up, - Letting your players cause damage with threat is overpowered, uninteresting, and IMO a waste of threat. Since when did passing a boost die to a player (another -boring -use of threat) equate to being about the same effectiveness as 2 extra damage that ignores soak.

I guess I'd counter that minions and, to a certain extent, rivals are supposed to be nothing more than speed-bumps to the party. The outcome of the battle should be a foregone conclusion: either the party are fighting a literal swarm of minions and need to hold out long enough to retrieve the Maguffin or the players fall upon the minions and quickly dispatch them in new and inventive ways. There really isn't supposed to be much middle ground. In both cases, creative use of damage allocation (through the use of threats as "damage") don't really impact the -story-.

This is, of course, a discussion centered entirely around an -optional- play style -- allowing the PCs to allocate threats rolled by NPCs against them. By RAW, such allocation is always made by the GM (though I contend that this is boring, reduces player agency and doesn't properly mirror the situation when the players take action against NPCs) and, in that case, it's the GM's decision whether or not to "do damage" with rolled threat.

To be honest im good with giving the players the choice sometimes, and im also good with GMs that allow players to use soak, other GMs though should be aware of potential pitfalls that can occur by a blanket rule that allows players to cause, what could amount to be significant extra damage.

Rivals are not necessarily speed bumps nor are minions, the beginner game where they introduce minions they even point out the potential threat minions are that they are. Given how fragile players can be (at least when it comes to exceeding WT not when it comes to killing them), Ive even used rivals in the key battle at the end of a scenario, and there is nothing to say you cant give then the adversary talent.

I kinda think we're all arguing over nothing at this point, 'cause it seems like everyone is in agreement, but not quite understanding each other. It really seems like we're all saying:

1. Spending Threat to cause Strain is good sometimes, not so good other times.
2. The GM decides when it can work that way.
3. Different GMs will allow it at different times. Some will allow it any time the players can make a reasonable case for it, some only when certain conditions are in play. Both GMs are correct.
4. Overuse of Threat=Strain can be unbalancing, or even worse, boring and lame.