How to adjudicate when character commandeer a speeder and drive it into the bad guys

By daddystabz, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

I had some of my players characters commandeer a speeder yesterday and ram it into a large group of baddies during a fight. There seems to be no rule for this sort of thing so I gave her a bonus die for the size and speed of the speeder and had each baddie make a Agility save essentially vs. her Pilot roll. I think if I had it to do over again I would also calculate in the handling of the vehicle.

What do you all think?

Force Move applies 10 x silhouette for damage. Seems like a good basis, then maybe make an attack roll using Pilot skill and any Threats or Despairs could be used for PCs getting injured in the collision or disabling the vehicle maybe. Use a sort of Blast type effect for anyone engaged with the primary pedestrian.

Starting with sil x 10 from force move is a good start, adding that much higher speed from planetary scale vehicles as another multiplicator and using a piloting check to see if you hit. Terrain modificators naturally apply and cover might make such a movie "impossible" to do, simply because you would crash the vehicle into something and creating a minor or major collision on the vehicle as well. Would be a good moment to get all those shields up front in that case.

And btw, the handling should be in every pilot roll anyway. Just like usually the speed and sil should be in each roll too.

First question:

Was the group minions?

I will assume yes for my answer. Basically, I would call for a pilot roll. I would add a boost for each point of speed the vehicle us travelling, any dice for handling, and the difficulty is the size difference between silhouette of the target and ship, modified further by cover, if any.

Damage is silhouette + success, triumphs will eliminate a minion. Failure mean they get out of the way easily. Advantage spent to eliminate a maneuver could be eliminating the cover flushing them out, possibly knocking them prone, forcing them to drop weapons, etc.

This happened in my group once, and while I can't recall specifically how I handled it I know it was first a Piloting (planetary) check vs. either silhouette difference or the target's Coordination skill. Then I think I just gave the NPC (who got hit by the speeder) a Critical Injury with +10 for each point of silhouette and +10 for each point of speed.

BTW, always remember, piloting in even remotely difficult terrain are against speed and half silhouette, with the lower of the two upgrading the higher value, adding handling on top of that and the setback dice from the terrain. Hitting someone on a road with a glider on the other hand … sounds like an easy drive by and a dead crowd of minions.

For vehicle vs vehicles we have rules for ramming in stay on target, btw.

One might be able to adapt the rules for Falling for this - seems like a reasonable approximation.

Improvised melee attack using piloting (planetary) skill. Silhouette x10 in damage added to die results (like Force Move ranged attack). Setback or Boost die based on speed and handling and other factors you might deem appropriate. Increased difficulty if the Speeder Silhouette is 2 more than the target.

This is how I handled it. Depending on the situation, I may allow parry to cause system strain to the vehicle. A successful hit may require a check to avoid losing control and crashing.

But I may read those rules in Stay on Target and use those instead.

Edited by Vulf

When our Rebels ran down an Imperial officer outside a coffee shop with our (rented from a chop shop) speeder I used Pilot/Planet to hit him. I got one blue die added because we had spent lots of time ahead of time scouting the area and one of the other PC's acted as a spotter, telling me when to speed up as he left the coffee shop. I think I got a second blue die based on the argument that people don't usually expect cars to try to run them down, they expect them to stop for them. I did Silhouette [2] x 10 damage. I ended up doing 40 points to him (I'm not sure if the extra was from a higher speed, extra successes on my attack roll, or both). The difficulty was determined by difference in Silhouette, just as for vehicle weapons.

Also, the cars bumper took a little damage from the Imperial hitting it, but with the x10 difference in damage scales, it soaked it all.

The good news is that having a wounded Imperial officer in the vehicle when the closest hospital was the Imperial Hospital attached to the Governor's Palace was a great way to get the gate guards to wave me in. Unfortunately getting out with the Rebel we were rescuing was much harder.

The GM has his revenge though - the random Imperial officer I ran down turned out to be an Inquisitor....

My GM's rules seem to work fairly well, but we should really see official rules for this.

Edited by pnewman15