Hey,

I quickly threw together some math and graphs to try to illustrate the soak vs. Defense arguments. I hope this is helpful. The graphs shows the average amount of damage you are going to take from a hit if the following conditions are true:

1. The blaster is a dmg 6 blaster.
2. The difficulty is 2 purple dice.
3. The legend states 0/2, this would mean 0 ability dice, 2 proficiency

This math doesn't take into account any extra fun abilities like critical hits or auto-fire.

Simple Conclusion: More defense is better, unless your opponent is very skilled.

(I noticed I cut off some of my image, the orange line is a sats of 2/0)

The chart is interesting, but the highest rank of soak listed (3) is the equivalent of an average person with a Brawn of 2 wearing heavy clothes, or a person with Brawn 3 and no external protection. I'd say a better chart would start at 2, or at least 1 since nobody has a Brawn of 0, and go up to at least 5.

Or take someone with a starting soak of, let's say 3 which is pretty basic for a PC and compare adding 1, 2, or 3 soak to 1, 2, or 3 defense. I expect the results may be the same but they may not be if you're reaching a point where the pistol may not do any damage at all against soak.

Interesting, so it looks like my intuition was wrong: Defense is probably better than Soak against swarms of weaklings, while Soak is more valuable against strong opponents. Though, of course, critical injuries may still be more of a concern with strong opponents, raising the value of threat generation.

Aside from Atama's point about where Soak usually begins, I'll also note that in my experience, most adversaries intended to be a combat challenge have at least a 3 in a relevant combat characteristic, so it might be more representative to start with 3/0 and see what happens as you turn greens into yellow.

Ahh. Wow. Of course, people would have more Soak than that. Opps.

I upped base damage to 12. So that results would be visible at all levels on my graphs.

Now since Def / Soak have different values. Assume Def has 0 , 1 , 2, 3 values on the bottom where it says 3, 4, 5, 6 for Soak.

Looking at this I am not sure my numbers are very accurate. Just to clarify how I got these numbers....

I took the chance of rolling a success on the the die in question and multiplied it by the value. For example, the ability die has a 37% chance of rolling a success and a 12% chance of rolling 2 successes. Hence the average # of successes was equal to 0.61. These stats were pulled from http://game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#ability=1

After calculating the average number of successes for difficulty, setback, ability, and proficiency i used this equation to determine the average damage a hit would do.

Average Number of Successes = Ability Chance * #ofDice + Proficiency Dice * #ofDice - Setback Chance * #ofDice - Difficulty Chance * #of Dice

Average Damage Taken = Base Damage + Math.Ceiling(Avg # of Successes) ) * Min ( 1 , Avg # of Successes) - Soak

My excel skills managed to automate the calculation and plotting of the changing variables of soak/def and skill/ability.

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."

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."

Reinforced clothing is my favorite armor because it is unobtrusive like armored clothing. (If you look at the time per attempt it's also quick to do.) And because it's clothing I wouldn't require "grew up making ARMOR", having a mother that was a seamstress or father that was a tailor or a tanner (leather worker) or even growing up/having been stranded an a poor/low tech/sparsely populated world for a month and being forced to take a menial job for a month is sufficient... for reinforced clothing... for any of the other armor templates I agree with you completely... I might even apply your argument to get the reverse result to have made anything else besides reinforced clothing you have to have a backstop of "I grew up making armor" but with gadgeteer as a starting spec i'd say you met that requirement

It is more about gaming the system than anything else.

when I first threw the character together a couple of months before the game I brought the 500 credit 2 soak armour.

a week or so before we started I got around to looking at the crafting rules and realised hey I should a made my own armour to start.

I then practiced a few roles.

500 creds is either 2 X 250 credits template @ soak 2 or 20 X 25 credits soak 1 template. So I could roll twice and put up with what I got or get 20 rolls to lower the difficulty, gimme adds to next roll and otherwise get a metric ton of advantages. Some of which would bring the soak up to 2. oh and I could sell the rest.

Now for me option 1 was the more characterful. it was a set of armour made by me that actually ended up being exactly the same as the brought one last. soak 2 500 creds (failed the first roll). As an additional the final peice has its chest plate be a plate from an old droid as she is going droid tech.

option 2 while it would have the better armour it would story wise need an excuse to make 20 sets of the template. Otherwise it was done purely for mechanical benefit and screw the story. I felt this was just cheesy.

Defense is a value that gets stronger the more of it you have: If you just have one dice on your armour it isn't likely to make a difference. But pair that up with a weapon and add in dodge/sidestep/Defensive stance and it starts looking a whole lot more formidable.

My party have three kinds of min-maxing defence.

The defenders - Average to low soak with high defence. My character Tobin (Gadget, assassin, force emerg, artisan and atuaru) is the main practicioner of this style with sense, three ranks of dodge and a guard shato (after jury, it works out 3 red, 1 purple and 4 melee and 3 ranged defence), and a few ranks of parry/reflect for those attacks I really want to catch. Though another character had started to branch out into it (two lightsaber shatos.) minus parry/ref. Ghost is also a gunner.

The soakers - These guys have 8 and above soak. Two are melee monsters and the other exclusively uses a disurptor pistol. A wookie, a Mandolorian and a outdated wardroid make up this set. I guess anyone who knows how to use a lightsaber well sits here.
The guns - Two types of fellas here, one who won't ever let go of the heavy blaster without coxing; the other a bomb specialist with all the blast upgrades. Needless to say, their definition of a good defence is to lay waste to entire squads that deserves it's own category. XD The former is a human replica droid, the latter is a Gand known throughout the alliance as Gandhi the Great.

Then theres the others that are awesome in skills, piloting and what not. ^__^

My thoughts?

Defence dice can be good but I find that one needs to invest in raising their "to hit" difficulty in order to make much use out of it. Even when it's well padded out offense will probably still outweigh defence so prepare to be praying on the dice gods a lot. In my opinion it's a high risk for a infrequent reward but being really hard to crit is awesome and not really reliable unless you are a force user; Despite 3 years, Tobin has only really been maimed once; compared to his next most experienced friend Gandhi who has lost a arm, a leg, both eyes, and after brain surgery needed to have a part fitted so he wouldn't just die. Basically, it's really helpful if you dig into it and get some cool gadgets to raise it further, but otherwise it's somewhat fickle.

Soak is reliable, even pierce weapons will probably hit a character less harshly, crits and breach is your worst foe with the latter. The con's is you often have to dive through multiple soldier trees; so you kinda gotta like that character archtype to really enjoy this.

On this level you have to take the cortosis quality into account. A high-Level Mando makes the word beskar tingle in my ears.

But BTT: I play a Gunslinger using two disruptor pistols with paired upgrade and a Dice Pool of YYYYGBBB (Accurate 1 with 2 aim-manouvers) + BBB (with quickstrike). There is PP as basic difficulty when shooting with both pistols, which changes to P with guns blazing. With 4 times Dodge this would change to RRP + additional Black Dices for defence. I need one success to hit, one advantage to trigger the second shot and two or four advantages (depending of sorry about the mess can be used) to activate two critical hits. With 4 times lethal blows that is one critical + 80 and another one +90. There is a 40/60 Chance for the end is nigh with the first crit and a 50/50 Chance with the second. So the only reliable defence is not to get attacked at all by taking out the gunslinger befor he can act.

So Yes - the Dice Gods are indeed your best friends.

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."

Reinforced clothing is my favorite armor because it is unobtrusive like armored clothing. (If you look at the time per attempt it's also quick to do.) And because it's clothing I wouldn't require "grew up making ARMOR", having a mother that was a seamstress or father that was a tailor or a tanner (leather worker) or even growing up/having been stranded an a poor/low tech/sparsely populated world for a month and being forced to take a menial job for a month is sufficient... for reinforced clothing... for any of the other armor templates I agree with you completely... I might even apply your argument to get the reverse result to have made anything else besides reinforced clothing you have to have a backstop of "I grew up making armor" but with gadgeteer as a starting spec i'd say you met that requirement

It is more about gaming the system than anything else.

when I first threw the character together a couple of months before the game I brought the 500 credit 2 soak armour.

a week or so before we started I got around to looking at the crafting rules and realised hey I should a made my own armour to start.

I then practiced a few roles.

500 creds is either 2 X 250 credits template @ soak 2 or 20 X 25 credits soak 1 template. So I could roll twice and put up with what I got or get 20 rolls to lower the difficulty, gimme adds to next roll and otherwise get a metric ton of advantages. Some of which would bring the soak up to 2. oh and I could sell the rest.

Now for me option 1 was the more characterful. it was a set of armour made by me that actually ended up being exactly the same as the brought one last. soak 2 500 creds (failed the first roll). As an additional the final peice has its chest plate be a plate from an old droid as she is going droid tech.

option 2 while it would have the better armour it would story wise need an excuse to make 20 sets of the template. Otherwise it was done purely for mechanical benefit and screw the story. I felt this was just cheesy.

Well, and it also gets to be less of an issue once you stop the theoretical crafting and look at the practical concerns. Namely, to get Reinforced Clothing with 2 soak, 1 melee defense, and 1 ranged defense you either need to roll 9 advantages or 5 advantages and a Triumph. That requires at least 4 or 5 dice and a lot of double-advantage rolls, which are never more likely than 1 in 6 on any given die. And while I don't have a problem with a character doing pre-game crafting, they're not using Practice Makes Perfect to stack up boost dice in the process because they're not in a session. That means if you have a 4 starting characteristic and 2 skill ranks, you need to roll a triumph on one proficiency, and a combination of 2 double advantages and advantage+success on the other three dice, and none of those can be canceled by the difficulty dice you're also rolling.

So while there's the possibility that in twenty tries you might be able to get 2/1/1 reinforced clothing if you have 4 Int and 2 Mechanics (or 4 Cunning and 2 Survival), you have much better odds of getting those stats if you try twice for Light armor with 5 advantages/2 advantages and a Triumph.

So by all means, if it makes sense for your character to try to build the perfect set of reinforced clothing so that they have unobtrusive protection, then go for it. Just don't complain when you don't actually get the results you were hoping for and have to compromise.

reliable defense against disruptor pistols is having 17 soak.

a droid gadgeteer/marauder (215xp) with (enduringx3 )7 brawn armor implant crafted cortosis superior augmented armor with kirium coating and armor master gives 17 soak

While you may roll 8 successes on your hits its unlikely you will have enough advantage to even activate a crit.

If you give the droid enough xp he could get to 20 soak

For every cheesey combo there is a cheesy counter Just hope your GM doesn't get ideas from this post

reliable defense against disruptor pistols is having 17 soak.

a droid gadgeteer/marauder (215xp) with (enduringx3 )7 brawn armor implant crafted cortosis superior augmented armor with kirium coating and armor master gives 17 soak

While you may roll 8 successes on your hits its unlikely you will have enough advantage to even activate a crit.

If you give the droid enough xp he could get to 20 soak

For every cheesey combo there is a cheesy counter Just hope your GM doesn't get ideas from this post

That's when the Hutt with the Light Laser Cannon on his repulsorsled shows up and eliminates the problem....

Well, and it also gets to be less of an issue once you stop the theoretical crafting and look at the practical concerns. Namely, to get Reinforced Clothing with 2 soak, 1 melee defense, and 1 ranged defense you either need to roll 9 advantages or 5 advantages and a Triumph. That requires at least 4 or 5 dice and a lot of double-advantage rolls, which are never more likely than 1 in 6 on any given die. And while I don't have a problem with a character doing pre-game crafting, they're not using Practice Makes Perfect to stack up boost dice in the process because they're not in a session. That means if you have a 4 starting characteristic and 2 skill ranks, you need to roll a triumph on one proficiency, and a combination of 2 double advantages and advantage+success on the other three dice, and none of those can be canceled by the difficulty dice you're also rolling.

So while there's the possibility that in twenty tries you might be able to get 2/1/1 reinforced clothing if you have 4 Int and 2 Mechanics (or 4 Cunning and 2 Survival), you have much better odds of getting those stats if you try twice for Light armor with 5 advantages/2 advantages and a Triumph.

So by all means, if it makes sense for your character to try to build the perfect set of reinforced clothing so that they have unobtrusive protection, then go for it. Just don't complain when you don't actually get the results you were hoping for and have to compromise.

Here's the thing... if you are having them roll it's either in front of you i.e. in session (possibly "session 0") or not in front of you (you're trusting what they told you they rolled)

If it's in person/session then disallowing practice makes perfect is a "I don't like the rules so I am changing them, if you're changing the rules then statements of odds assuming the rules are being followed obviously no longer apply.

If you're going to trust what they said they rolled you might as well just give them whatever they asked for without having them roll

Here's the thing... if you are having them roll it's either in front of you i.e. in session (possibly "session 0") or not in front of you (you're trusting what they told you they rolled)

If it's in person/session then disallowing practice makes perfect is a "I don't like the rules so I am changing them, if you're changing the rules then statements of odds assuming the rules are being followed obviously no longer apply.

If you're going to trust what they said they rolled you might as well just give them whatever they asked for without having them roll

Here's the thing: Practice Makes Perfect is only reasonably balanced, especially with regards to projects with negligible material costs, if the GM is able to set some limits around how much time the PC has to craft in any given session. Otherwise someone spends a couple hundred credits throwing dice until they have half a dozen or more boost dice to add to the roll they really want and the crafting tables become a buffet instead of a set of interesting trade-offs. Since I don't want to have to tell a player how long their character has been crafting during their backstory, I either have to set an arbitrary limit for what counts as "one session," or I disallow Practice Makes Perfect until the actual game starts. That's just how I'd handle it in my games. This is getting off topic, though.

Back on topic, Patrious, have you checked your equations for typos? They look fine to my basic understanding, but it doesn't make sense to me that one or two points of Defense would have such a big impact on an opponent with 2 yellow dice, and then switch to having no impact whatsoever with 3 dice.

Here's the thing... if you are having them roll it's either in front of you i.e. in session (possibly "session 0") or not in front of you (you're trusting what they told you they rolled)

If it's in person/session then disallowing practice makes perfect is a "I don't like the rules so I am changing them, if you're changing the rules then statements of odds assuming the rules are being followed obviously no longer apply.

If you're going to trust what they said they rolled you might as well just give them whatever they asked for without having them roll

Here's the thing: Practice Makes Perfect is only reasonably balanced, especially with regards to projects with negligible material costs, if the GM is able to set some limits around how much time the PC has to craft in any given session. Otherwise someone spends a couple hundred credits throwing dice until they have half a dozen or more boost dice to add to the roll they really want and the crafting tables become a buffet instead of a set of interesting trade-offs. Since I don't want to have to tell a player how long their character has been crafting during their backstory, I either have to set an arbitrary limit for what counts as "one session," or I disallow Practice Makes Perfect until the actual game starts. That's just how I'd handle it in my games. This is getting off topic, though.

So I can provide you or anyone who is interested with such a table for a template with specified upgrades and then you can look at the table and see if "on average" and the allow or disallow based on the table, and then once you have an acceptable table you can have them roll a percentile against the table and that 1 roll determines how long it took them to get what they wanted.

Here's the thing... if you are having them roll it's either in front of you i.e. in session (possibly "session 0") or not in front of you (you're trusting what they told you they rolled)

If it's in person/session then disallowing practice makes perfect is a "I don't like the rules so I am changing them, if you're changing the rules then statements of odds assuming the rules are being followed obviously no longer apply.

If you're going to trust what they said they rolled you might as well just give them whatever they asked for without having them roll

Here's the thing: Practice Makes Perfect is only reasonably balanced, especially with regards to projects with negligible material costs, if the GM is able to set some limits around how much time the PC has to craft in any given session. Otherwise someone spends a couple hundred credits throwing dice until they have half a dozen or more boost dice to add to the roll they really want and the crafting tables become a buffet instead of a set of interesting trade-offs. Since I don't want to have to tell a player how long their character has been crafting during their backstory, I either have to set an arbitrary limit for what counts as "one session," or I disallow Practice Makes Perfect until the actual game starts. That's just how I'd handle it in my games. This is getting off topic, though.

Back on topic, Patrious, have you checked your equations for typos? They look fine to my basic understanding, but it doesn't make sense to me that one or two points of Defense would have such a big impact on an opponent with 2 yellow dice, and then switch to having no impact whatsoever with 3 dice.

So I think the problem with my calculations is that once enough black dice are added that the chance of hitting someone is unlikely (or in my case, more likely to roll more hits than failures) the damage is then treated as if it were damage being averaged out over multiple attacks rather than 1 hit.

For example with the 3 yellow dice and 2 purp and 1 black. The attack is more likely to hit (more often than not) so you can "assume" that each attack will do its damage. Hence why the defense die seems to be "useless". However, once the 3rd black die is added in, now the likelihood of being hit every time has dropped and therefore we are averaging out the damage per hit. So over 2 rounds you would only be hit once. Hence why it looks like the 3rd defense die is protecting you so well.