[Lowering intelligence means that he's mentally disabled or something along that line (intelligence 1 is a stat for beasts, i don't think *any* race has that as dump stat).

...Gungans do...

Stats are 4 brawn and 3 will, with 2's in everything else, apart from a voluntarily lowered intelligence (My character had no formal education and grew up in the slums).

You don't need to lower your intelligence to reflect lack of formal education, for that there is the skill Knowledge: Education, which you can leave at 0 to reflect that part of your charcter. Lowering intelligence means that he's mentally disabled or something along that line (intelligence 1 is a stat for beasts, i don't think *any* race has that as dump stat). Especially because someone growing up in the slums would have nothing in Knowledge: education but could have a decent amount of Knowledge: Underworld if he has interacted with the criminal world. Both skill are keyed to Intelligence.

As for the soak vs defence, i think that soak is always good, because if something removes or isn't stopped by defence it still has to deal with soak (except for stun damage).

Hmm, good point on the intelligence thing.

[Lowering intelligence means that he's mentally disabled or something along that line (intelligence 1 is a stat for beasts, i don't think *any* race has that as dump stat).

...Gungans do...

... Yeah, think I'll go ahead and not make intelligence a dump stat....

I looked through all the books I have and found that both Quarrens and Aqualish start with 1 in Intelligence.

You could also count droids if you want to be picky since they have a 1 in every stat.

Quarren and Aqualish are known for beeing rather stupid thugs usually. And Gungans well, they're Jar Jar Binks race, 'nuff said.

Soak is consistent and can be estimated easier. Defense is more multi faceted by reducing damage, causing failure and preventing crits/weapon effects.....maybe.

Pretty much this.

Better Soak means you know how much damage from an attack you're not taking. But the setback dice from defense can range from zero effect (come up blank) to stopping an attack entirely with that one failure symbol being just enough to cancel out the attacker's one success.

Then again, combat is designed in this system so that you're never going to be able to 100% avoid taking damage all of the time.

The B1 Battle Droid isn't particularly quick on the uptake either.

I think another factor to consider is whether or not your GM has a marked preference for certain encounter setups. If your GM likes to outnumber you with Rivals and Minion Groups with moderate stats, Soak is probably going to help you deal with the barrage of attacks coming at you a little better. If they like to use 1-3 really powerful opponents (or big minion groups), then trying to force a miss, or at least prevent a crit, with Defense goes up in value. One of my GMs prefers the former, and my character has had to skirt his Wound Threshold more often than he's taken crits.

If your gm has keeping the peace and one of the players in the group is good with mechanics have him/her/it make you some reinforced clothing, 25 credits per attempt and with not that many advantages you can get soak 2 and melee defense 1 and ranged defense 1

Withe 2 yellow and a green you can probably get it in 10 trys or less

I find you wanna bring your Soak with you to a fight and focus on building that with your xp and cash. There are a number of ways to add setbacks to an attacker's roll (cover, concealment, advantage expenditures) but none for increasing your Soak. You can do both of course, but if it's a choice I go for Soak, tossing a smoke grenade and diving for cover are easy enough.

Side question: Has anyone ever dedicated a thread to making X-stat Munchkins? For example, has anyone tried to use existing RAW splatbooks and offered an 'eleventeen' Soak character with all rules for beginning characters? With a Corellian Human, breaking a Piloting dice pool wouldn't seem too difficult, but has it been done with just the starting rules for beginning (not necessarily Knight Level Play) characters? It seems like something like this would have been done by the forum members, but...

People talked about in the past, but with the way that weapon effects like Ensnare and Concussive function it's a waste I think. A GM is going to have options to ignore Soak if they choose to.

I was tempted to make a Trandoshan Marauder and make him a master of hand-to-hand combat, with a starting Brawn of 5. But I decided eventually to make a more interesting, multi-faceted character. I think he would have been pretty cheesy if I'd gone through with it.

My character is the most combat-heavy member of the crew already and I don't want combat to revolve around him killing everything while the rest of the players watch, which would (A) make the rest of the group feel useless in combat, and (B) force the GM to throw harder stuff at us which would just make it worse for them. I've been focusing a bit more on non-combat stuff lately and also had him start using light ranged weapons more (rather than heavy) to dial it back a bit.

Yeah, it's honestly a crapshoot on which one is better. I will say, if you can stack up those setbacks you can really lower the odds of getting hit, though; I've got a player in my group who has 5 defense (don't remember how off top my head, but I'm fairly certain it's RAW, too). A character I've got has low soak and high defense, and it's a bit of a double-edged lightsaber; quite a lot of the time, I can get out of the worst of the attacks, but when I do take one, it's not pretty. That's in character for him though, so I'm fine with it (am taking Armorer to help with that though, plus it synergizes so well with Artisan). Then again, the only crits my guy pretty much ever takes are when going over my Wound Threshold, whereas the other players tend to get nickel-and dimed with wounds and take their fair share of crits (except of course for the 5 Defense dude, who also has an obscenely high soak

That does remind me, you might want to invest in Gadgeteer sometime in the future. Those Armor Master talents will give you the best of both worlds.

Yeah, it's honestly a crapshoot on which one is better. I will say, if you can stack up those setbacks you can really lower the odds of getting hit, though; I've got a player in my group who has 5 defense (don't remember how off top my head, but I'm fairly certain it's RAW, too). A character I've got has low soak and high defense, and it's a bit of a double-edged lightsaber; quite a lot of the time, I can get out of the worst of the attacks, but when I do take one, it's not pretty. That's in character for him though, so I'm fine with it (am taking Armorer to help with that though, plus it synergizes so well with Artisan). Then again, the only crits my guy pretty much ever takes are when going over my Wound Threshold, whereas the other players tend to get nickel-and dimed with wounds and take their fair share of crits (except of course for the 5 Defense dude, who also has an obscenely high soak

That does remind me, you might want to invest in Gadgeteer sometime in the future. Those Armor Master talents will give you the best of both worlds.

I thought about it, but I'm a bit of a compulsive min-maxer, and when I saw gadgeteer, I just thought, "There's no way I can handle the responsibility of this spec without devolving into outright munchkining. I'm at least trying to be better about this."

One suggestion: If you're willing to drop 1000 credits on armored clothing, consider Riot Armor (from Keeping the Peace) instead. It's about the same price, but gives you 2 soak and 2 hard points. And 2 hard points is enough to accommodate some very nice attachments once you get a few more credits.

One suggestion: If you're willing to drop 1000 credits on armored clothing, consider Riot Armor (from Keeping the Peace) instead. It's about the same price, but gives you 2 soak and 2 hard points. And 2 hard points is enough to accommodate some very nice attachments once you get a few more credits.

Don't have that book unfortunately

Besides, sometimes armor is as much about what it looks like as opposed to what it costs.

Armored Clothing would be a lot less … obtrusive … than Riot Armor, even though they are the same monetary cost and provide the same benefit to Soak.

So in theory, enough soak could prevent crits just as well if not better than defense. You can roll as many Advantages or Triumphs as you want but if your hit bounces off then you can't crit.

Only insofar as the Triumph is being used ineffectually (that is to say, against Soak that is higher than Damage). Nothing preventing the spending of a Triumph to impose different effects if you anticipate no damage being done. (Do also keep in mind the effect Successes have on base damage: any advantage above the base Success inflicts another damage. This can quickly add up and have a big effect on both Soak and the presence of a Triumph.)

Not quite sure what you're saying here. Advantages don't add to damage ever, directly. Only Successes do, but having even 1 Net success will add to Base damage. It isn't consumed as part of "hitting". This has been confirmed by devs. So, RAW and RAI means that if you roll your dice and end up with 1 Success and 2 Advantage, then you've hit and you'll do Base Damage + 1 (the Net Success) and get to spend your Advantage in some way.

So in theory, enough soak could prevent crits just as well if not better than defense. You can roll as many Advantages or Triumphs as you want but if your hit bounces off then you can't crit.

Only insofar as the Triumph is being used ineffectually (that is to say, against Soak that is higher than Damage). Nothing preventing the spending of a Triumph to impose different effects if you anticipate no damage being done. (Do also keep in mind the effect Successes have on base damage: any advantage above the base Success inflicts another damage. This can quickly add up and have a big effect on both Soak and the presence of a Triumph.)

Not quite sure what you're saying here. Advantages don't add to damage ever, directly. Only Successes do, but having even 1 Net success will add to Base damage. It isn't consumed as part of "hitting". This has been confirmed by devs. So, RAW and RAI means that if you roll your dice and end up with 1 Success and 2 Advantage, then you've hit and you'll do Base Damage + 1 (the Net Success) and get to spend your Advantage in some way.

No idea why I wrote that. I meant to say "any success above the base success". Brain fart.

So in theory, enough soak could prevent crits just as well if not better than defense. You can roll as many Advantages or Triumphs as you want but if your hit bounces off then you can't crit.

Only insofar as the Triumph is being used ineffectually (that is to say, against Soak that is higher than Damage). Nothing preventing the spending of a Triumph to impose different effects if you anticipate no damage being done. (Do also keep in mind the effect Successes have on base damage: any advantage above the base Success inflicts another damage. This can quickly add up and have a big effect on both Soak and the presence of a Triumph.)

Not quite sure what you're saying here. Advantages don't add to damage ever, directly. Only Successes do, but having even 1 Net success will add to Base damage. It isn't consumed as part of "hitting". This has been confirmed by devs. So, RAW and RAI means that if you roll your dice and end up with 1 Success and 2 Advantage, then you've hit and you'll do Base Damage + 1 (the Net Success) and get to spend your Advantage in some way.

No idea why I wrote that. I meant to say "any success above the base success". Brain fart.

And again, there is not such thing as a "base success" in this game. The results of a roll fall into one of two categories, either the roll succeeds (1 or more Net Successes) or it fails (0 or more Net Failures), and it either has Advantages or Threat.

So, 1 or more Net Successes is a success, resulting in all those Net Successes being added to the Base Damage.

i.e. a roll of sssafft == 1 Net Success, so you succeed and do Base Damage + 1 on the Hit.

You can also get the superior attachment for Armored clothing and have 2 soak 1 defense.

As far as our game progesses, a good doctor is your best life insurance.

High soak and a lot of Wound is good but expensive to get. Both from expierence as well as money and it is hard to get good armors. And than there's the point edwardavern mentioned on the first page of this thread. Heavy weapons and armor are very obvious and likely to get you into problems.

I think that soak and wounds are better than dodge and feats like that in the long run because a dodge-based character will get a hit sooner or later and some heavyier weapons like blaster rifles will take you out in one or two shots. On the other hand there are high-crit weapons like disruptors and talents like lethal blows that can take out even high-soak characters with just one or two shots. So as the game progresses defense becomes weaker.

So in my opinion the best defense is speed, preparation and crowd control. Try to be in a situation that you can act before the enemy, try to split enemy groups up and be prepared to have weapons that can effect a whole bunch of targets. Try to disable strong weapons with called shots or sunder, kill targets with strong attack before they can hit you, disperse crowds of minions before they can act. A good light-arms-user can take out a complete squad of stormtroopers with a single plasma grenade.

If your gm has keeping the peace and one of the players in the group is good with mechanics have him/her/it make you some reinforced clothing, 25 credits per attempt and with not that many advantages you can get soak 2 and melee defense 1 and ranged defense 1

Withe 2 yellow and a green you can probably get it in 10 trys or less

I have just started a Bounty hunter/Gadgetter and specifically did NOT do this pregame. This is the very definition of gaming the system. If you want a 2 soak armour go for the 2 soak template for 250 credits and maybe get 3 soak rather than making 10x that in armor for the same price. Unless they specifically have a background that reads along the lines of "I grew up making armor."

Yeah cause starwars characters never grow up fixing or building things as kids. Or if they do its easy stuff like protocol droids or pod racers not something difficult like reinforced clothing....

Yeah cause starwars characters never grow up fixing or building things as kids. Or if they do its easy stuff like protocol droids or pod racers not something difficult like reinforced clothing....

If your gm has keeping the peace and one of the players in the group is good with mechanics have him/her/it make you some reinforced clothing, 25 credits per attempt and with not that many advantages you can get soak 2 and melee defense 1 and ranged defense 1

Withe 2 yellow and a green you can probably get it in 10 trys or less

I have just started a Bounty hunter/Gadgetter and specifically did NOT do this pregame. This is the very definition of gaming the system. If you want a 2 soak armour go for the 2 soak template for 250 credits and maybe get 3 soak rather than making 10x that in armor for the same price. Unless they specifically have a background that reads along the lines of "I grew up making armor."

Honestly, as a GM, I'd be okay with this purely because he's talking about getting one of the other players to make the armor for him. That gives me an opening to say, "Okay, but the mechanic has a day job, so you've got to sell me on why your characters are so close to each other that they're willing to spend their nights and weekends building armor prototypes for you at cost." I'm always looking for ways to push players to build background connections between their PCs that they can play off of in-game (and it makes it easier to put the group together for the opening session). It's a moot point anyway, since neckbeardthepirate doesn't have access to the armor crafting rules.

Yeah cause starwars characters never grow up fixing or building things as kids. Or if they do its easy stuff like protocol droids or pod racers not something difficult like reinforced clothing....

"You spent your childhood making reinforced clothing for yourself? Great, you have ten kid-sized suits of reinforced clothing. They might fit the Chadra-Fan..."